The Productive Unconscious Architecture Experimental Psychology and the Techniques of Subjectivity in Soviet Russia 1919-1935

The Productive Unconscious: Architecture, Experimental Psychology and the
Techniques of Subjectivity in Soviet Russia, 1919-1935
MASSACHUSEJTS WN
OF TECHNOLOGY

by

Alla G. Vronskaya

SEP 2 2 201

Candidate of Sciences, Art History
State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow, 2007

LIBRARIES
L_BRARES

Specialist, Philosophy
Moscow State University, 2004
Submitted to the Department of Architecture
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the
History and Theory of Architecture
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
September 2014

Alla G. Vronskaya. All rights reserved.

/

The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute
publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any
medium now known or hereafter created.
Signature of Author:

Signature redacted
, epartment of Architecture, August 11, 2014

Certified by:

Signature redacted_
Professo~r

Accepted by:_

Sig n atu re

Mark Jarzombek
istory and Theory of Architecture
esis Supervisor
red acted

V
Takehiko Nagakura
Associate Professor of Design and Computation
Chairman, Committee for Graduate Students

E

Dissertaton Committee

Thesis Supervisor:
Mark M. Jarzombek
Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture
Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Reader:
Caroline A. Jones
Professor of Art History
Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Reader:
Danilo F. Udov5ki-Selb
Associate Professor of Architectural Design, History and Theory
Department of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin

3

4

THE PRODUCTIVE UNCONSCIOUS: ARCHITECTURE, EXPERIMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES OF SUBJECTIVITY IN SOVIET RUSSIA, 19191935
by
Alla G. Vronskaya
Submitted to the Department of Architecture
on August 11, 2014 in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the
History and Theory of Architecture

ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines how Soviet architecture employed the achievements of experimental
psychology in order to transform human subjectivity during the Interwar period, particularly in
the years defined by the First Five-Year Plan of Economic Development (1928-1932). In this
program of forced modernization, every resource-including human muscular, intellectual, and
emotional energy-had to be channeled into the construction of an industrialized economy.
Inspired by studies of unconscious, physiological responses to visual stimuli and by an
accompanying turn to psychologism in the philosophy of science, Soviet architects, artists, and
bureaucrats reinterpreted architectural work as the design of subjective perception, the purpose
of which was to produce an energetic subject who would actively and efficiently participate in
the implementation of the Plan.
The dissertation examines three episodes in which Soviet architecture and design aspired to
control the unconscious in order produce a new energetic subject. The first part explores the
theoretical research on unconscious perception conducted by Nikolai Ladovskii's Rationalist
architectural movement, which, following the philosophy of empiriocriticism, strove to
economize the energy of perception. The second illustrates how the theory of the unconscious
was tested and developed experimentally, assessing the program of wallpainting developed by
architect Moisei Ginzburg, Bauhaus designer Hinnerk Scheper, and others as an artistic and
architectural discipline that aspired to produce working energy. The third and final episode
exemplifies how unconscious perception was put to practical use in the Moscow Central Park of
Culture and Leisure under Betti Glan, where creative energy was evoked by material objects and
the spatial environment.
Thesis Supervisor: Mark M. Jarzombek
Title: Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture
5

6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many have granted me their support, involvement, and help while I was working on this dissertation.
Above all, I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Mark Jarzombek, Caroline Jones, and Danilo
Udovinki-Selb. Studying under them was a privilege and an honor. Mark Jarzombek has always
generously shared his time and support, never failing to provide a model of rigorous yet innovative
and intellectually challenging scholarship. Caroline Jones, a tremendous help in defining the scope,
argument and goals of this dissertation, has taught me that intellectual clarity can be combined with a
critical position. Danilo Udovidki-Selb has given me not only an expert knowledge of the history of
Soviet architecture, but also his unrivalred kindness and support at every step of my work; always a
pleasure, our discussions allowed me to define a critical position on the contested subject of Soviet
Interwar history.
I am thankful to other current and former faculty of the History, Theory and Criticism program at the
Department of Architecture at MIT, who taught me what architectural history is: David Friedman,
Arindam Dutta, Kristel Smentek, Stanford Anderson, James Wescoat, and Nasser Rabbat. I am also
indebted to all those professors outside of MIT, who granted me their advice and mentorship at
different points, particularly to Erika Naginski and Edward Dimendberg.
I am infinitely indebted to my fellow-students at HTC, from whom I learned a lot and who offered
me their support and friendship: Nicola Pezolet, Christian Hedrick, Sarah Katz, Ateya Khorakiwala,
Nancy Demerdash, Zameer Basrai, Karin Oen, Jordan Kauffman, Razan Francis, Ila Sheren, Ana
Maria Le6n, Rebecca Uchill, Yavuz Sezer, Azta Dawood, among others. I am particularly grateful to
Tijana Vujoievi6, a close friend and a fellow historian of Soviet architecture.
Several institutions generously provided financial assistance for my project. MIT granted me years of
financial support; Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) from the Social Science
Research Council provided me with resources for a development and elaboration of the dissertation
proposal; a grant from the Canadian Center for Architecture gave me an opportunity to map primary
sources at an early stage of research; a language study grant from the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD) enabled me to improve my German. I am particularly grateful for a junior
fellowship from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, which gave me a semester of carefree library
work amidst a paradisical setting, and for a predoctoral fellowship from the Getty Research Institute,
which provided me with a year of research at one of the best art history libraries. Finally, finishing
this dissertation was made possible by the Excellence Scholarship from the Swiss Government,
which granted me a year of writing while based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
in Zurich. I am especially thankful to all those who mentored me and helped my research in these
institutions: John Beardsley and Michael Lee at Dumbarton Oaks; Alexa Sekyra and Nancy Perloff at
the Getty; Laurent Stalder at the ETH Zurich; and to administrators, librarians and other stuff
members at these institutions.
Archival research in Moscow would not have been possible without the help of academics,
archivists, librarians and museum employees. Larisa I. Ivanova-Veen, Tatiana Lysova, Elena
7

Zabelina, and Tatiana Efrussi of the Museum of Moscow Architectural Insitute were helpful and
generous in guiding me through the Museum's collections. Pavel Kuznetsov and Maria Ametova of
the State Shchusev Museum of Architecture not only provided me with research material and helped
solving bureaucratic problems, but generously shared their passion for Soviet architecture. Elena
Tchugunova was a true fairy of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Marina I.
Sviderskaia, Nadezhda Prokazina and the other members of the Department of Classical Western Art
of the State Institute of Art Studies enabled me to remain involved in Moscow intellectual life
throughout the years I spent abroad, while with Maria Silina of the Russian Academy of Art I had
many discussions about early-twentieth-century aesthetic thought. I am indebted to the stuff of other
Russian libraries, archives and museums: Russian State Library, The Library of Architecture and
Construction, and the State Public Historical Library in Moscow; the Archive, the Photography
Collection, and the Soviet Department of the State Shchusev Museum of Architecture; the Russian
State Archive of Literature and Arts, and the Russian State Archive of Economy in Moscow; Russian
State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation in Samara. Finally, beyond Russia, I am
grateful to Dmitrij Chmelnizki for his generosity in sharing primary sources, and to Vera and
Nikolai Troitsky for exposing me to an unparalleled personal experience of early-Soviet architectural
life.
My friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic genersouly shared their experience, advice,
and emotional support. To Angelina Lucento, a friend and a colleague, I owe endless discussions
about Russian art and culture. Vessela Valiavitcharska, Jennifer Josten, Noa Turel helped me
navigate the labyrinth of American academia. Max Hirsh, Farshid Emami and Jaleh Jaleli, Florence
Lloyd, Michael Herchenbach, Neboj'a Stankovi6, Valerie Kobi, Mantha Zarmakoupi, Katarina
Kristianova, Isabelle Tillerot, and Kim F6rster made my time in Boston, Washington, Los Angeles
and Zurich unforgettable. The friendship of Dmitry Lisitsyn, Lidia and Igor Romanov, Nikolai
Makarov and Svetlana Paramonova, Tatiana and Daniil Levin, Anna Ruzhilova, and Maria
Malyshkina reminds me that Moscow always remains my cultural and emotional home. Sergei A.
Ivanov, Boris M. Sokolov, Galina D. Aslanova, Sasha Ortenberg and Irina Gutkin have shared both
friendship and mentorship that exposed me to the best of Russian intellectual tradition.
At the final stages of writing and preparing this dissertation for submission I was fortunate to have
the administrative help of Renee Caso at MIT and the copyediting assistance of Justin Humphreys.
Last but not least, I am thankful to my family for their unconditional love. My parents Genrikh
Vronsky and Olga Vronskaya have always been supportive of my academic career. Igor Demchenko,
my comrade of many years, has provided me with intellectual, productive, and emotional energy for
writing and beyond. Finally, our sons Vladimir and Stanislav, who arrived shortly before this
dissertation was finished, brought incomparable joy to our lives. It is to my newly expanded family
that I dedicate this dissertation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Defining the Problem: Research Question, Methodology, and Historiography

12

Discursive Framework: Energy, Life, the Unconscious

28

Soviet Economic and Cultural Context

38

Chapter One. Theory: the Psychoanalytical Method of Nikolai Ladovskii and the
Philosophy of Empiriocriticism (1919-1927)

58

Empiriocriticism

64

Psychological Aesthetics and the Economy of Mental Energy

80

Architectural Expression

98

The Architecture of Space

110

Rationalist Psychotechnics

128

Conclusion

157

Chapter Two. Experiment: Wallpainting and the Standardization of the Subject (19291932)
160
Color Harmonies

166

Space and Movement

182

Standardization

196

The Economy of Working Energy

224

The Narkmofin Residential Block and Unconscious Perception

234

The Architecture of Attention

246

Conclusion

254

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Chapter Three. Praxis: Moscow Central Park of Culture and Leisure and ObjectsOrganizers (1928-1935)

256

Collectivism

263

Organized Masses

278

Architectures of Organization

303

Organizing Individuality

327

Conclusion

353

Conclusion

357

Illustration Credits

371

Bibliography

377

Archival Sources

377

Printed Sources

378

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INTRODUCTION

Defining the Problem: Research Question, Methodology, and Historiography
When we refrain from using air conditioning or minimize the heating in the room, or
when we admire architects' skillful use of sunshades and other techniques of saving this scarce
and expensive product, electricity, we (even though hardly anything seems more postmodernist
than a concern for sustainability) unwittingly revive one of modernism's intrinsic imperativesthat of the economy of energy. The only difference is that today, we are worried about the
Earth's nonrecoverable organic resources, whereas a hundred years ago another resource seemed
equally vital and easily extinguishable-the energy of the human organism. Viewed as a unit of
work force by Marxism, as a cluster of muscle activity by physiology, as a center of sexual
energy by psychoanalysis, or as a materialization of dlan vital by Bergsonism (this list could be
easily continued), a human being turned into a repository of unique and fragile resource whose
balance was essential for the survival of both the person and the society. Moreover, in the
Interwar Soviet Union, psychological energy, transferable into productive labor, was seen as one
of the resources for a construction of an industrial economy. To manage this state property
prudently and with a scientific precision, Soviet theoreticians proposed relying on contemporary
psychological research, most importantly, on discoveries of experimental psychology, which
studied not reason, but automatic, physiological (in other words, unconscious) reactions. It was
12

believed that, regulating subjects' activity, the unconscious spared the employment of their
intellect, saving psychological energy for productive work. This dissertation argues that Soviet
Interwar architecture also aspired to contribute to economic construction-and through this, to
reclaim its disciplinary status and importance-by optically affecting the unconscious in order to
manipulate psychological energy under its various interpretations, as perceptive, creative,
productive, muscular, intellectual, or emotional.
The title of this dissertation, "The Productive Unconscious," refers to this role of the
unconscious as an economizer of the subject's psychological energy. In the 1930s, Walter
Benjamin introduced the term "the optical unconscious" pointing to new, previously
unnoticeable sides of reality-from horse movement to mass rallies-discovered by such optical
instruments as photograph and movie cameras. 1 The optical, for Benjamin, was not a predicate
of the unconscious itself, but rather characterized the medium through which it was discovered.
Benjamin placed optics not within the unconscious, but within consciousness-attention and
reason-while the unconscious operated, for him, through habit and the tactile. In the perception
of architecture, the optical and the tactile came together, the fomer working according to the
principles of the latter. In his canonical essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction" (1936) Benjamin wrote:
As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The
latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in
incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture,
in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human
apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical
Walter Benjamin, "Little History of Photography" (1931), Selected Writings, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press,
1996) 507-530; Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), liuminations
(London: Pimlico, 1999) 211-244. See also Rosalind E. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1993) 178-179.

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means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the
guidance of tactile appropriation.2
Perceived automatically, architectural images entered the domain of the unconscious, from
which they unnoticeably affected the person's attitudes and behaviours. Below I examine how
Soviet architects, in the years immediately preceding the writing of Benjamin's essay, discovered
this potential of their discipline. Striving to put these unconsciously perceived images to use,
they wanted to integrate architecture into the economic life of the state, most importantly, into an
ambitious program of forced industrialization launched by Stalin in 1928. The unconscious
became productive: now, rather than idly residing at the bottom of human psyche, it worked,
purposefully and fruitfully contributing to reaching society's common goal.
Scholarship over the last thirty years has demonstrated the pervasiveness of this energetic
psychological model of subjectivity within modernist culture, presenting it as the result of
attempts to reconceive the human and social sciences in terms developed by "hard" science.
Historians have demonstrated that the emergence of psychology was largely inspired by a desire
to get away from a speculative, "metaphysical" approach to human mind and take physics as a
model of scientific research. 3 Anson Rabinbach's comprehensive study (1990) elucidated how
the individual metamorphosed into a "human motor" due to these developments in science and
experimental psychology, 4 while Friedrich Kittler argued, several years earlier, that this

2 Walter

Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), Illuminations. Ed.
Hannah
Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 217-252 (240).
3 See, for instance, Lorraine J. Daston, "The Theory of Will versus the Sciences of Mind," William R. Woodward

and Mitchell G. Ash, eds. The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, (New York:
Praeger, 1982) 88-115.

4 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, (New York: Basic Books,
1990).

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transformation resulted from a "paradigm shift" in Western discourse of subjectivity from
maternal education ("the discourse of 1800") to psychophysics ("the discourse of 1900").
According to Kittler, "Instead of the classical question of what people would be capable of if
they were adequately and affectionately 'cultivated,' one asks what people have always been
capable of when autonomic functions are singly and thoroughly tested." 5 In its claim to scientific
objectivity, psychophysics (the name the new science received after Gustav Fechner's seminal
Elemente der Psychophysik, 1860) studied the relationship between psychological stimuli and

sensations and the perceptions that they provoked. A related science, psychophysiology, which
was especially popular in Russia with its strong tradition of physiological research, investigated
the relationship between stimuli and physiological bodily responses such as skin conductance
and heart rate. 6
Following these and other studies of the role played by experimental psychology in
nineteenth-century thought, present-day historians have began exploring ties between art and
architecture on the one hand, and the development of psychology on the other. Since aesthetics

5 Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990) 214.
6 Emerging in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century under the
influence of German-language research,

physiology explored processes happening in human and animal bodies under the influence of various stimuli (for
instance, in the work of Aleksei M. Filomafitskii [1807-1849], the founder of Moscow physiological school). In the
second half of the century, Russian psychology was dominated by the school of Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (18291905), who explained higher nervous activity of the humans by physiological processes; Sechenov's elimination of
the notion of soul made his work a target of official censorship and a magnet for radically-minded intelligentsia. His
most famous work, Reflexes of the Brain [Refleksy golovnogo mozga] (1863) was initially written for a liberal
journal Sovremennik [The Contemporary], commissioned by the journal's editor, revolutionary-democratic poet
Nikolai Nekrasov, as an overview of contemporary scientific discussion; the initial titles of the work (subsequently
banned by censorship) were "An attempt to reduce the origins of psychic events to physiological foundations" and
"An attempt to introduce physiological foundations into psychic processes." The next generation of Russia
physiology was dominated by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), a Noble prize winner famous for his work on
conditional reflexes (for which "Pavlov's dog" served the usual object of research), who until his death remained
among Soviet scientific elite.

15

and the nascent discipline of art history frequently provided mediating ground between the two
fields, they, too, have become the object of historians' avid interest: the work of Harry Francis
Mallgrave, Jonathan Crary, and Mark Jarzombek laid the foundation for this approach in the
1990s, followed by the subsequent publications of Juliet Koss, Spyros Papapetros, Zeynep

Qelik

Alexander, and other authors, particularly architectural historians.7 At the same time, the
subjective perception of the visual environment became a topic of research of those scholars
who, not assessing the history of psychophysiological aesthetics directly, approached its effects
from a variety of perspectives: the history of cultural imagination (Anthony Vidler, Giuliana
Bruno, Edward Dimendberg; this approach proved to be especially important for film and
literature studies), the history of artists' and architects' interest in sensual perception and its
significance for the development of modernist art theory (investigated primarily by art historians,
such as Michael Fried, Caroline Jones, Gordon Hughes), and a Deleuzian inquiry into the bodily
perception of art (James Elkins).

7 A notable precedent to this tradition is the work of Jose Arguelles (Jose Argd'elle4 Charles Henry and the
Formation of a PsychophysicalAesthetic, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972]); it did not, however, attract
much attention at the time it was published, and was only later rediscovered by scholars. See also Harry Francis
Mallgrave, and Eleftherios Ikonomou, eds., Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 18731893, (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994); Jonathan Crary,
Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Mark
Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2000); Juliet Koss, Modernism After Wagner, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010);
Spyros Papapetros, On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2012); Zeynep Celik Alexander, "Kinaesthetic impulses: aesthetic experience, bodily
knowledge, and pedagogical practices in Germany, 1871-1918," Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2007.
8

Anthony Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern
Culture, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2000); Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, (London: Verso, 2002); Edward
Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Michael
Fried, Menzel's Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002); Caroline A. Jones, EyesightAlone: Clement Greenberg'sModernism and the Bureaucratizationof the Senses
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Gordon Hughes, "Coming into Sight: Seeing Robert Delaunay's

16

An acknowledgement of psychophysiology's role as a model of thinking about the human
within the modernist tradition led to a reconsideration of the connection between modernism and
Enlightenment and to a consequent critique of Western rationality. It became obvious that the
modern European individual was conceived as predominantly irrational and driven by impulses
and desires, the true nature of which was hidden from him in his nalve belief that he was guided
by independent and conscious decisions.9 As Kittler argued, since the middle of the nineteenth
century, questions about meaning and content as products of subjective mind became
increasingly irrelevant, contributing to the mechanization of thinking about the human. This
denial of rational, individual subjectivity led ultimately to the emergence of artistic forms that
critiqued rationality itself, such as Dadaism, sound poetry and abstraction. Recently, prominent
social psychologists Daniel Wegner and John Bargh, among others, argued for the illusory
character of conscious will, which Wegner described as "a marvelous trick of the mind, one that
yields useful intuitions about our authorship-but it is not the foundation for an explanatory
system that stands outside the paths of deterministic causation." 10
The work of social psychologists has informed cultural critics that precisely because of
the illusion of rationality, to which our society clings, the modern Western individual is prone to
political manipulation by those whose messages, apart from their often meaningless verbal

Structure of Vision," October, Vol. 102 (Autumn, 2002): 87-100; James Elkins, Pictures of the Body: Pain and
Metamorphosis, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
9 On the nineteenth-century history of this argument see Daston, "The Theory of Will versus the Science of Mind."
10 Daniel M. Wegner, "The mind's best trick: how we experience conscious will," TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences,

Vol.7 No.2 (February 2003): 65-69 (68). See also Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will, (Cambridge
University Press, 2002); J. A. Bargh, P. M. Gollwitzer, A. Y. Lee-Chai, K. Barndollar, R. Troetschel, "The
automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 81 (2001): 1014-1027; R. Hassin, J. Uleman, J. Bargh, eds., The New Unconscious, (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

17

construction, convey a powerful affective charge. Thus, Brian Massumi, one of the most
distinguished proponents of contemporary "affect theory" uses an analysis of affective
perception as a tool of political criticism, arguing that postmodern politics is affective, and is
based on intensities and omissions rather than on logical reasoning. " He bases his approach on
the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins, an heir to the tradition of psychophysics, who in the
1960s developed a classification of basic (elementary) human affects.' 2 At the same time,
Massumi, writing from the standpoint of poststructuralist critique (influenced above all by the
writings of Gilles Deleuze), draws a distinction between affect and emotion. Unlike emotion,
which possesses a stable semantics, affect, according to Massumi, is vague, unstable and
contradictory (for instance, happiness might coexist with sadness). Massumi compares affect
with a bifurcation point in chaos theory-"the turning point at which a physical system
paradoxically embodies multiple and normally mutually exclusive potentials, only one of which
is 'selected."" 3 Likewise, the "energy" that the protagonists of this dissertation aspired to save or
produce was vaguely defined and experienced as an intensity rather than as an unambiguously
identifiable emotion. Usually remaining entirely within the domain of the unconscious, it could

&

" Brian Massumi, "The Autonomy of Affect," Cultural Critique, No. 31, "The Politics of Systems and
Environments," Part II (Autumn,1995): 83-109, and "Potential Politics and the Primacy of Preemption," Theory
Event, Volume 10, Issue 2 (2007). Interestingly, Massumi's (and affect theory in general) intellectual pedigree can
be traced back to the same thinkers whose work shaped projects and discussions assessed in this dissertation, first of
all, the empriocriticism of Ernst Mach: Gilles Deleuze, Massumi's major source of inspiration, rediscovered the
philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who, as a mathematician and a philosopher of science, directly
inherited to the tradition of anti-metaphysical thinking initiated by Mach.
The six affects initially distinguished by Tomkins were interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle,
distress-anguish, anger-rage, and fear-terror. Later, he added three more: shame-humiliation, "dissmell" and disgust.
The building-blocks of emotional world, affects, for Tomkins, were elementary and discrete, whereas emotions,
combined of affects, were complex and more ambiguous.
12

13

Massumi, "The Autonomy of Affect," 93.
18

immediately translate itself into actions whose true motives remained hidden from the acting
person.
The binary opposition between cognition and affect that Massumi constructs develops a
well established distinction between the conscious mind and the unconscious; linguistically
inexpressible (lacking a signifier), affect resides in the domain of the unconscious. Just as
psychoanalysis attempted to purify the notion of the unconscious from its earlier spiritual and
metaphysical connotations, affect theory aspires to purge the unconscious from an association
with subjective erotic experience, returning it to its objective scientific foundations. The critics
of Massumi's work (most importantly, Ruth Leys) have drawn attention to the problematic
character of the opposition between cognition and affect constructed by the scholar by pointing
out that the two frequently interpenetrate and influence each other.' 4 Likewise, this dissertation
refuses to recognize affect as fundamentally different from rational thinking. Rather, my
approach is to historicize their relationship, demonstrating how early modernism conceived of
cognition as rooted in affect and aspired to make thinking more efficient by stimulating its
affective component. As early as 1869 Eduard von Hartmann, perhaps the first theoretician of the
unconscious, underscored that it was in no way opposed to cognition. Rather, the unconscious
was its other, broader, form: "For if we can only be cognisant of the actual contents of
consciousness-thus can have no knowledge of aught out of consciousness-by what right do
we assert that that, whose existence is revealed in consciousness, could not also exist outside our
consciousness?"'
14

5

The content of that which is "outside of our consciousness" could be

Ruth Leys, "The Turn to Affect: A Critique," CriticalInquiry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011): 434-472.

Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious, transl. by William Chatterton Coupland, in 3 vols. Vol.1,
(London: K. Paul, Trench, Trtfbneg & Co, 1893) 2-3.
15

19

understood as un-cognitive, or intuitive. It was with this view that the celebrated scientist Henri
Poincare and Russian "philosopher of invention" Petr Engelmeyer each described conscious and
unconscious mental work as two necessary stages of the same creative process.16
By insisting on the inseparability of conscious and unconscious manipulation, this
dissertation also defies Massumi's distinction (which is also accepted by Leys) between
ideology, materialized in logical content-based forms, and affect, which is taken to be preconscious and therefore non-ideological. Rather than simply triggering political or other
behaviors whose reasons remain concealed from the actor (for instance, the laughter of a girl
whose cortex was mechanically stimulated during a brain surgery, a case discussed in a recent
psychological study by William Connolly; or Freud's example of meaningless actions, such as
opening an umbrella, suggested during a hypnosis session) affect creates psychological triggers
for behavior, the motives of which, although not entirely verbalizable, often require no invented,
external explanation and are thus not totally alien to the subject (unlike the example given by
Connolly, in which the girl every time explained her laughter with different reasons: "the horse is
funny" or "you guys are just so funny ... standing around"; or the case of Freud's patient, who,
when asked a similar question retorted that "As it was raining I thought you might like the
umbrella").1 7 In other words, even though affect might not create an idea, it can illustrate,
actualize, support, or highlight ideas that have already been incepted earlier. Affect could

16 Henri Poincar6, Science and Method, transl. by Francis Maitland, (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1914) 46-63;
Petr
Engelmeier [Engelmeyer], Teoria tvorchestva [The theory of creativity], (Sankt-Peterburg: Obrazovanie, 1910).
William Connolly, "Brain Waves, Transcendental Fields, and Techniques of Thought," Radical Philosophy,
No.
94 (1999). Leys uses Connolly's example to argue with him and to support her argument about the inseparability of
affect and cognition; ideology and affect, nevertheless, remain separated for her.
17

20

produce mental associations and direct thought in certain directions, slow or intensify thought, or
even replace some of its stages.
Downplaying the difference between ideology and affect, I will instead follow the
definition of ideology provided in Louis Althusser's canonical "Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses" (1969), which refers to late works of Marx, who defined ideology as a system of
ideas and representations, and in which "disappeared: the term ideas. Survive: the terms subject,
consciousness, belief; actions. Appear: the terms practices, rituals, ideological apparatus.,18
Althusser here defended two principal points: first, that "Ideology represents the imaginary
relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence"; and second that "Ideology has a
material existence." If the first thesis defined ideology as a product of imagination, the second
asserted its rootedness in ritual. "If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels,
prays, confesses, does penance (once it was material in the ordinary sense of the term) and
naturally repents and so on" explained the materiality of ideology Althusser, rephrasing the
maxim attributed to Blaise Pascal: "Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will
believe."' 9 The proximity of the materiality of Althusser's ritual practices and the innate
materialism of the psychological notion of the unconscious (in its psychophysiological,
psychophysical, and even psychoanalytical interpretations) prompted Althusser to compare the
two as equally intrinsic to human mental and social organization:
18 Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)" (1970), translated
by Ben Brewster. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (Monthly Review Press, 1971). Web. 3.4.2014.
<https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/deology.htm>.

19 Thus, for Althusser, "where only a single subject (such and such an individual) is concerned, the existence of the
ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by
material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of
that subject." Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses."
21

To give a theoretical reference-point here, I might say that, to return to our example of
the dream, in its Freudian conception this time, our proposition: ideology has no history,
can and must (and in a way which has absolutely nothing arbitrary about it, but, quite the
reverse, is theoretically necessary, for there is an organic link between the two
propositions) be related directly to Freud's proposition that the unconscious is eternal,
i.e. that it has no history.
If eternal means, not transcendent to all (temporal) history, but omnipresent, transhistorical and therefore immutable in form throughout the extent of history, I shall adopt
Freud's expression word for word, and write ideology is eternal, exactly like the
unconscious. And I add that I find this comparison theoretically justified by the fact that
the eternity of the unconscious is not unrelated to the eternity of ideology in general.
Even if, as Althusser believed, ideology and the unconscious has no history, ideological
manipulation with the unconscious certainly does; and this dissertation is an attempt to write this
very history. Holding affect and ideology together allows the dissertation to offer a new
perspective on the history of Soviet art and architecture, bypassing an otherwise vexing problem:
the relationship between the arts and politics. Indeed the fact that from the mid 1920s onward,
many artists and architects remained at the forefront of artistic life, "selling" their talent to the
regime, prompted some Cold-War and post-Cold-War historians to search for personal motives
and other possible explanations of this "bewildering" fact.2 0 Such a viewpoint asserts the
perversity of Soviet art and architectural life at the time, assuming that its "natural" course was
violently disrupted by state power. But as with any a priori position, this view is itself
ideological21 : it transforms an historian into a critic, journalist or detective who focuses on

See, in particular: Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "From Faktura to Factography," October,
Vol. 30 (1984): 82-119;
Dmitrii Khmel'nitskii, Arkhitektura Stalina: psikhologiia-i stil' ["Stalin's Architecture: Psychology and Style"]
(Moskva: Progress-Traditsia, 2007), translated into German as Die Architektur Stalins (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag
2007); Danilo Udovic'ki-Selb, The Evolution of Soviet Architectural Culture in the First Decade of Stalin's
'perestroika,'(Trondheim: [s.n.], 2009); Richard Anderson, "The Future of History: The Cultural Politics of Soviet
Architecture, 1928-41." Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2010.
20

Silvan Tomkins defined ideology as "any organized set of ideas about which human beings
are at once most
articulate and most passionate, and for which there is no evidence and about which they are least certain. The
foundations of mathematics, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, theology, epistemology, the theory of value,
22
21

particulars at the expense of the general-the commonalities between the modernist culture in
the USSR and other countries. An alternative to this approach has been developed,
predominantly in the USSR and European countries, since the late 1960s: concentrating on
historical facts and the formal qualities of Soviet art and architecture.2 2 Following a third
approach, which is both criticial and non-ideological, this dissertation presents the development
of Soviet architectural theory as a logical consequence of modernist European thought.2 3 It
locates the origins of Soviet modernist architecture within the development of European
modernism, and presents the Soviet case as the unconscious of Western modern and postmodern
architectural culture-a troubling, problematic unconscious that had been carefully repressed
from the histories of art and architecture.
To complicate the received Cold-War notion of Soviet totalitarianism, I suggest a
reassessment of Soviet modernist notions of subjectivity. Here again Althusser's essay might be

ethics, aesthetics, jurisprudence, government, theory of education and finally, theories about child rearing, more
recently called socialization-these have all evoked the most coherent and passionate controversy." Silvan Tomkins,
"Ideology and Affect," Exploring Affect. The selected writings of Silvan S. Tomkins. Ed. E. Virginia Demos
(Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1977) 109167(111).
For best examples of this approach, see, Anatole Senkevitch, "Trends in Soviet
Architectural Thought, 19171932: The Growth and Decline of the Constructionist and Rationalist Movements." Ph. D. dissertation, Cornel
University, 1974; Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneersof Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the
1920s and 1930s (New York: Rizzoli, 1987) and other publications of Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov; Jean-Louis
Cohen, Le Corbusierand the Mystique of the USSR: Theories and Projectsfor Moscow, 1928-1936 (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1992); Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art, Architecture, and the
City (London: Academy Editions, 1995).
22

In this respect, this dissertation inherits to the structuralist approach developed within
the framework of lateSoviet kul'turologia (cultural studies), which explored the development of "culture" as an independent and active
reality. See, in particular, Vladimir Papernyi, Architecture in the Age ofStalin: Culture Two (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), first published in Russian in 1984; and Boris Grois, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant23

garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), first published in

German in 1988.
23

of help. The theorist pointed to the linguistic confusion between two meanings of the word
"subject": "(1) a free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions;
(2) a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom
except that of freely accepting his submission." Moreover, Althusser supplemented these two
types of "subjects" with the Subject (with the capital S)-the subject par excellence, as "Unique,
Absolute, Other Subject"; the submission of a subject to the Subject, according to him, happened
freely and voluntarily.24 As will be argued below, the Subject of Soviet ideology was not a tyrant
or the state-rather it was the collective Soviet people or even the entirety of humanity. Only
gradually in the 1930s did Stalin assume the role of the representative of the Subject, a role
resembling that of a king who proclaimed himself the earthly representative of God. Thus, in
Althusser's terms, in the late-1920s Soviet modernist culture required that one had to sacrifice a
part of his or her free subjectivity (imperfect, deficient subject 1) and submit themselves (that is,
become subject 2) to the higher authority of the collective (the Subject) in order to receive a
fuller, better and truer subjectivity (an ideal subject 1). This argument is an enthymeme-a
syllogism with a missing but assumed premise: the latter states that by subjecting one's imperfect
self to the collective sum total of all selves, a person acquires a new agency as a part of the
collective. In subjecting herself to the collective, however, a person does not lose her
individuality; on the contrary, she compensates for her imperfection by enriching herself with the
individualities of the others. Like a blood transfusion, a medical procedure whose potential for

As a result, "the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the
commandments of the Subject, i.e. in orderthat he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make
the gestures and actions of his subjection 'all by himself. There are no subjects except by andfor their subjection."
Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses."
24

24

prolonging life was intensely explored in the 1920s Russia,25 participation in the collective cured
a person by infusing her with life and diversity of others. The dialectics of these transformations
will be assessed in all detail in the body of the dissertation; yet it is important to note here that it
was not a loathing of personality, but rather a belief in will and agency that motivated Soviet
architects' interest in psychophysiology and their desire to improve the person as a "human
motor."
Although Soviet architecture did not renounce human subjectivity, while construing the
ideal subject, it attempted to incorporate this subject into the totalizing system of social,
economic, political, and cultural reality, thus responding to one of modernism's intrinsic
imperatives-that of total organization. Few attempts succeeded in to demonstrating the
interconnectedness of modernism and totalitarianism. Representing a still-dominant approach
among political theorists, a recent publication by Richard Shorten, although aspiring to show
"exactly how totalitarianism is modern," asserted an absolute boundary between a totalitarian
modernism of Stalinism and Nazism and a liberal modernism of Western democracies. 2 6 Unlike
political scientists, cultural and intellectual historians have paid less attention to geopolitical
divides, which were, indeed, easily trespassed by theories and ideas. Boris Groys's seminal The
Total Art of Stalinism (originally published in German in 1988) exposed totalitarian ambitions
innate to Russian "avant-garde," accusing it of preparing ground for Stalin's violent dictatorship.
A different approach-the one that warned about its totalitarian potential but believed in the
It was, above all, promoted and developed by Aleksandr Bogdanov, one of the co-founders of the philosophy
of
collectivism, which, as will be demonstrated in the dissertation, during the 1920s, had a particular impact upon
Soviet architectural theory.
25

26

Shorten, Richard, Modernism and Totalitarianism:Rethinking the Intellectual Sources of Nazism
and Stalinism,

1945 to the Present(Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 1.
25

possibility for a "democratic" avant-garde-was offered by Michael Hays, who in the 1990s
characterized

the

dialectics

of freedom

and

totalitarianism

within

modernism

as

"posthumanism." Emerging as a response by architects to the fragmentation of the individual
during the era of industrial capitalism, posthumanism, according to Hays, eradicated from
architecture the holistic conception of an authorial and centralized humanist subjectivity that was
still pertinent to early modernism and replaced it with a subjectivity that was fragmented,
decentered, and serialized. "...Seriality, the renunciation of narrative time, the disprivileging of

the purely visual, and the thematization of incompletness and uncertainty are aesthetic corollaries
of the disenfranchisement of autonomous individualism," Hays argued, echoing Kittler's
observations. 27 Consequently, in art and architecture posthumanism led to a negation, sublation,
or masking of such formalist strategies of canonical avant-garde as self-referentiality, autonomy
and the grounding of every art in a particular domain of experience. Not unlike the postmodernist
turn to affect detected by Massumi, posthumanism led to a denigration of reason and rationality
and, as a result, to a dissolution of the notion of an autonomous Kantian individual.
Although influenced by Frankfurt school Marxism, Hays differentiated between
progressive and totalitarian posthumanism (exemplified by the work of Hannes Meyer and
Ludwig Hilberseimer respectively), this notion possesses a potential for ethically neutral usage:
addressing the essence of modernism in general, it avoids national boundaries and ignores
political affiliations. When applied to Soviet ideology, the notion of posthumanism allows us to
avoid viewing it through the lens of totalitarianism (i. e. necessarily predicated on the perverse
will of a leader) and invites us to interpret it as a part of modernist culture. I will thus treat the
Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: the Architecture of Hannes Meyer
and Ludwig
Hilberseimer(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) 5.
27

26

type of subjectivity constructed in Soviet Russia -in

particular, during the late 1920s-early

1930s-as posthumanist. In doing so, however, I will also depart from Hays's poststructuralist
approach that conceived the subject as textual sign, formed by ideological structures and implied
rather than described in a text.28 Rather, reflecting Massumi's program of departing from the
linguistic model and "finding a semiotics willing to engage with continuity," I propose to turn to
the subject's bodily reactions to architecture. Moreover, I want to render the posthumanist
subject concrete by turning to the actual discussions of subjectivity and examining the ways in
which this subjectivity was analyzed, fabricated, and manipulated in an historically specific
situation.29
To navigate within this historic specificity, my dissertation will follow the approach of its
own protagonists: it attempts to become conscious of what usually remains beyond the grasp of
consciousness. The peripheral and the seemingly meaningless, thus, emerge as the locus of
unfakeable truth. As Carlo Ginzburg has shown, psychoanalysis's interest in the unconscious,
Giovanni Morelli's method of art historical attribution through peripheral details, and even
Sherlock Holmes's "deductive" detective method, represent a new scientific paradigm that
emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, which located "the real" in what remained
beyond the control of the subject's rationality. 30 My dissertation will thus discuss forms and
genres that did not attract a lot of attention at their time because of their ostensible
insignificance; moreover, situated on (or, rather, between) disciplinary boundaries and not fitting
28

Hays, 33-35.

29 Brian Massumi, "Introduction" in Parablesfor the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 2002) 1-21 (4).
Carlo Ginzburg, "Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method," History
Workshop No. 9
(Spring 1980): 5-36.
30

27

into received narratives of Soviet "revolutionary" art, they have seldom been noticed by
subsequent scholars. Devoted to the architectural pedagogy of Nikolai Ladovskii and his group at
VKhUTEMAS (Vysshie khudozestvenno-tekhnicheskie masterskie, Higher Art and Technical
Studios; since 1927, VKhUTEIN, Vysshii khudozhestvenno-tekhnicheskii institut, Higher Art and
Technical Institute), the first chapter will focus on a project of designing the unconscious
perception of architectural form. The second chapter will assess the development of Soviet
theory of wall-painting-a discipline imported by the master of the Bauhaus wall-painting
workshop Hinnerk Scheper to the USSR, where it merged with Soviet, particularly with the
Constructivist interest in exploring the effects of architectural environments upon working
productivity. Finally, my third chapter will focus on the development of the Soviet theory of
landscape architecture: the so-called "parks of culture and leisure" were designed as spaces of
personal transformation through mass participation. I hope that by exploring these peripheries of
early-Soviet modernism-a periphery free both from an excessive public attention of
contemporaries and from the weight of later scholarly interpretative traditions-this dissertation
will delve into the processes of architectural thinking and theorization, bringing to light and
interpreting ideas that ultimately determined the visual language of the Soviet "avant-garde."

Discursive Framework: Energy, Life, the Unconscious
Russian and Soviet psychological discourse of subjectivity emerged in the context of
European intellectual culture, in which the notion of the unconscious circulated amidst a
constellation

of related

psychophysiology,

ideas.

Theories

empiriocriticism,

as

vitalism,
28

different as
psychotechnics,

Darwinism,
and

psychophysics,

psychoanalysis

all

demonstrated an adherence to a set of common principles and key notions: apart from the
unconscious, these included such concepts as life, work, attention, and energy.
Following the developments in the theory of electromagnetism, the concept of energy
[Kraft] appeared in German philosophical discourse as early as the 1840s as one of the
foundational notions of the "dematerialized materialism" of scientists like Hermann von
Helmholz, Ernst Haeckel, and Wilhelm Ostwald, which discovered energy as the source of all
mechanical, and thus of all human work.

In 1847, in his book Ober die Erhaltung der Kraft

(On the Conservation of Force), Helmholtz formulated what became widely recognized as the
law of the conservation of energy and the first law of thermodynamics: energy can be neither
created nor destroyed (a perpetuum mobile was, thus, theoretically impossible), but it could be
transformed from one type to another. Later on, in the 1860s, the discovery of the second law of
thermodynamics, which postulated an inevitable loss of energy during the process of its
conversion and ensuing entropy, added an even more pessimistic note to this idea. Now, energy
was understood as a scarce and ever-diminishing resource, whose inevitable exhaustion would
one day lead the Earth to an eschatological end.32
Energetics soon became so important that it began to be viewed as an alternative to
mechanicism-as a modern research paradigm that replaced the outdated materialist notion of
atoms with a contemporary concept of energy.

In 1855, William John Macquorn Rankine

Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York: Basic Books,
1990) 45-51.

31

" Rabinbach, 61-64.
See, for example, Abel Rey, L'inerge'tique et le mecanisme du point de vue des conditions de la connaissance
(Paris, F. Alcan, 1905); Boris S. Bychkovskii, Sovremennaiafilosofiia. Problema materii i energii [Contemporary
philosophy: The problem ofmatter and energy] (Sankt-Peterburg: T-vo Pol'za, 1911).
33

29

elaborated the principles of the new science in his Outlines of the Science of Energetics, which
suggested reformulating dynamics in terms of energy and its transformations. Energetics and
energeticsm as a broader worldview based on the primacy of energy over matter (a principle
sometimes also formulated as their identity) became extremely popular towards the end of the
nineteenth century, and was represented by many prominent scientists and social thinkers. Henri
Poincare believed that the principle of the conservation of energy could be used as the starting
point for the discovery of other, hidden, physical laws. 34 Wilhelm Ostwald interpreted every
physical activity (movement, beat, pressure, and so on) as a different kinds of energy. 35 Social
theorist Gustave Le Bon, whose views on mass psychology enjoyed a great popularity in Russia
(and, as the third chapter of this dissertation will demonstrate, impacted Soviet aesthetic theory),
developed a physical theory of his own, according to which, atoms were nothing but whirlpools
of energy. 36 Similarly, Pierre Duhem developed an anti-mechanist theory of thermodynamics, in
which the notion of energy occupied the position previously held by atoms.3 7 Russian thinker
Aleksandr Bogdanov applied the principles of energetics to psychology in his science of
psychoenergetics [psikho-energetika], which postulated the measurability and equivalence (that

34

See, Henri Poincare, La valeur de la science (Paris: Flammarion, 1905).

See, in particular, Ostwald's Die urberwindungdes wissenschaftlichen materialismus . Vortrag gehalten in der
dritten allgemeinen sitzung der versammiung der Gesellschaft deutscher naturforscherund arzte zu Labeck, am 20.
september 1895 (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1895); and his Grundri3 der Naturphilosophie (Leipzig:
Verlag von Philipp Reclam jun., 1908).
3s

Gustave Le Bon, L'volution de la Matidre (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1905); Gustave
Le Bon, L'volution des
Forces (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1907). More on the history of European and Russian energetics, Bychkovskii,
Sovremennaiafilosofiia.Problema materii i energii.
36

Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem, Traite d 'energetiqueou de thermodynamique gdndrale (Paris: Gauthier-Villars,
1911).

37

30

is, a possibility of replacing one with another) of psychic events. 38 A major source of influence
for Bogdanov and a correspondent of Duhem, Austrian physicist and philosopher of science
Ernst Mach asserted energy conservation as a fundamental principle of both physics and
epistemology.

39

This idea was subsequently developed by the other leader of empiriocriticism (as this
philosophy of science came to be known) Richard Avenarius, whose teachings, as this
dissertation will demonstrate, were particularly popular and influential in Soviet culture.40 Every
mental act, for the philosopher, required spending physiological energy ("The term energy
[Kraft] we are using here mostly in its physiological meaning; the sensations of strength and
weakness, relief and burden, might and exhaustion are considered here only as the concomitant
phenomena of consciousness," 41 defined energy Avenarius). Although saving mental energy was
the goal of any philosophy, Avenarius believed that a simple accumulation of energy was just as
Aleksandr A. Bogdanov, Empiriomonizm: stat'i po filosofli [Empiriomonism: philosophic
essays ], Vol. 1
(Moskva: Izd-vo S. Dorovatovskago i A. Charushnikova, 1904) 94-124; Vol. 2 (Moskva: Izd-vo S. Dorovatovskago
i A. Charushnikova, 1905) 43-50.
38

39 Ernst Mach, History and root of the principle of the conservation of energy (Chicago: The Open Court, 1911),

original German edition 1871. See also Luca Guzzardi, "Energy, Metaphysics, and Space: Ernst Mach's
Interpretation of Energy Conservation as the Principle of Causality," Science & Education(October 2012).
Although they never met personally, Mach and Avenarius corresponded and acknowledged
each other's
contributions since 1880. If Mach, the physicist, explored the projections of physical environment upon human
consciousness, the philosopher Avenarius examined how consciousness analyzed these projections, inquiring into
laws and patterns of the human mind. A Russian translation of Avenarius's book Philosophieals Denken der Welt
gemaj3 dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmajes. Prolegomena zu einer Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Philosophy as
thinking about the world according to the principle of minimal waste of energy. Prolegomena to a critique ofpure
experience, 1876) came out in 1913. Alongside Mach and Avenarius, the third leading proponent of empiriocriticist
philosophy, whose work was well-known in Russia, was Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929).
40

Richard Avenarius, Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemafl dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmajies
(Leipzig,
Fues's Verlag, 1876) 3. Translation by the author. German original: ,,Kraft ist hier zundchst in dem Sinne der
Physiologie genommen; die Empfindungen der Kraft oder Schwiche, der Erleichterung oder Beschwerde, der
Erholung oder Ersch6pfung werden nur als begleitende Bewusstseinserscheinung betrachtet."
41

31

harmful as its excessive loss, for it led to energetic "obesity": passivity, laziness, and weakness.
Instead, he developed a theory of energy balance, based on the notion of Vitaldifferenz (lifedifference): since life was based on a two-way flow of energy between the life system and its
environment, the psychic life of an individual, for Avenarius, was a balance of two processes,
assimilation, or the acquisition of energy from external environment, and desassimilation, or the
loss of energy of the organism to it.
In physics, the notion of Kraft was traditionally associated with muscular work, being
referred to as effort by Leonhard Euler in the eighteenth century and as travailby Jean-Victor
Poncelet in the first half of the nineteenth one. In general, during the nineteenth century, the
word "effort" was used by psychologists, whereas physiologists preferred a more scientific
"energy." Since a decrease in energy was associated with feelings of fatigue, the opposition of
energy and fatigue became a trope of nineteenth-century physiology, quickly penetrating into the
discourse of more subjectivist psychological approaches, and subsequently leading to a host of
various psychological and sociological disciplines and practical methods of organizing industrial
work, ranging from social helmoltzianism to Taylorism, from neurasthenia treatment to
psychotechnics.
Freud's teacher Ernst von Brdcke, a professor of physiology at the University of Vienna,
introduced

a science

of psychodynamics,

which presented

all organisms,

humans

notwithstanding, as systems of energy, subjected to the law of its conservation. A son of a
painter, Brdcke also maintained a keen interest in the perception of art and authored books
explaining the laws of color perception, perspective, and visual illusions from a physiological

32

point of view.4 2 Freud's interpretation of humans as repositories of libidinal energy develops
Bricke's ideas, while the term "psychodynamics" was later used to refer to a psychoanalytical
approach of Freud's students and followers Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Melanie Klein.
Concurrent to energetics, another kindred, school of thought impacted the intellectual life
of the nineteenth century. This was the theory of evolution, arising initially with the publication
of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Philosophie zoologique in 1809, and culminating with Charles
Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which followed half a century later. Ernst Mach, who came
of age as a scholar immediately after the publication of Darwin's major work in 1859,
acknowledged the influence of evolutionary theory upon his thought: philosophy and science, as
well as other forms of cultural activity, were, for him, nothing else but higher adaptational
mechanisms:
We are prepared, thus, to regard ourselves and every one of our ideas as a product and a
subject of universal evolution; and in this way we shall advance sturdily and unimpeded
along the paths which the future will throw open to us. 43
In 1865, Herbert Spenser in his Principlesof Biology, having introduced the term "survival of
the fittest," suggested enriching Darwin's theory with the Lamarckian idea of an inheritance of
adaptational transformations of organs, and finally to apply this new evolutionary theory to
thinking about society. Spenser's "synthetic philosophy" postulated that all forms of life
followed the same laws-above all those of evolution-and treated society as a "social
organism."
Ernst Wilhelm von Bricke, Die Physiologischen Grundlagen der neuhochdeutschen Verskunst (Wien: C. Gerold,
1871); Ernst Wilhelm von Bricke, Bruchstaicke aus der Theorie der bildenden Kfinste (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1877);
Ernst Wilhelm von Bricke, Die Darstellungder Bewegung durch die bildenden Kfinste (Wien: n.p., 1881); Ernst
Wilhelm von Bricke, Die Physiologie der Farbenfir die Zwecke der Kunstgewerbe (Leipzig: n.p., 1887); Ernst
Wilhelm von Bricke, Schdnheit und Fehlerder menschlichen Gestalt (Wien: Braumriller, 1891).
4

4

Ernst Mach, PopularScientific Lectures, trans. T. J. McCormack (La Salle: Open Court, 1986) 233.
33

Alongside adaptation, other forms of biologization penetrated cultural thought: instinct
and reaction, response to a challenge, survival and reproduction of a species, and many other
originally biological notions were commonplace. As the notion of the cultural process was thus
biologically reinterpreted, the mechanisms of its-collective-adaptation and survival were to be
conceived differently from those of an individual subject. Rationalizing, judging thought (an act
that always takes place within an individual mind), and other strictly individual processes, were
found to be superfluous to the a description of informational flow within humanity as a whole.
Instead, a new form was suggested that allowed speaking about collective conscious and the
transmission of knowledge within the genus-the unconscious.
The notion of the unconscious [das Unbewusste], which was first introduced to German
philosophical thought by Johann Friedrich Herbart in his Psychologie als Wissenschaft in the
1820s, was for the first time elevated to a major philosophical principle in the work of German
thinker Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906), particularly, in his Philosophie des Unbewussten
(1869)." Acting as a force common to people and animals alike, Hartmann's unconscious
performed purely biological, evolutionary functions. Hartmann argued against Darwin's vision
of natural selection as the prime mechanism of evolution, supporting, instead, a neo-Lamarckian
theory of adaptation. If Darwinism, for him, professed a "mindless causality," effectively
denying the possibility of adaptation, Hartmann's unconscious provided evolution with a

In Herbart's epistemology, consciousness was represented as a pool (the line of water being the threshold of
consciousness), in which some ideas rose while others sank only to reemerge out the depth of the unconsciousness,
when they were triggered by associations to conscious ideas. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherious Ikonomou,
"Introduction" in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 (Santa Monica, CA:
Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994) 1-88 (11, 24).
4

34

teleological, guiding channel, through which the species could move towards its biological
goal.45 Not chance but logic, even if unconscious, directed evolution.
Hartmann's thinking drew upon Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The
World as Will and Representation, 1818). Agreeing with the fundamental premise of
Schopenhauer's work, Hartmann felt that Schopenhauer strongly privileged will against its
counterpart, representation; Hartmann, therefore, devoted his work to an exploration of the
fundamental importance of the latter. Presaging Ernst Bloch's notion of utopia, Hartmann
pointed that will is impossible without an image of the desired result, i.e. without representation;
in this way the will can only exist as a representation. This representing will, Hartmann believed,
could exist either as an individual or as an objective phenomenon. The latter was a metaphysical
spiritual principle [geistige Ursache] existing independently of individual cognition, a universal
and collective representing will that Hartmann called the unconscious. Thus, Hartmann's
unconscious-unlike the concept in Freud's interpretation-existed not at the bottom of an
individual psyche, but as a locus of collective will: "When we... view the world as a whole, the
expression 'the unconscious' acquires the force not only of an abstractionfrom all unconscious
individual functions and subjects, but also of a collective, comprehending the foregoing both
extensively and intensively." 46 This interpretation, in fact, led Hartmann in later editions of his
work to replace the term das Unbewusste with das (iberbewusste (superconscious)-here a
parallel with Freud's

fber-ich is helpful again-which reflected the connection of the notion

with social experience.
4' Hartmann, vol.1, 44. Hartmann later developed his polemics with Darwinism in a book Wahrheit und Irrthum im
darwinismus. Eine kritische darstellungder organischen entwickelungstheorie (Berlin, C. Duncker, 1875), Russian
translation 1906.
46

Hartmann, vol. 1, 4-5. Hartmann's emphasis.
35

The social, species character of the unconscious was accepted by most of its subsequent
theoreticians-in fact, Freud's interpretation of the unconscious as a product of individual
childhood experience was rather unusual. Similarly to Hartmann, Carl Gustav Jung was
convinced of the a biological nature of the unconscious (which he termed "collective"), arguing
that alongside consciousness "there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and
impersonal nature..." 47 This collective unconscious, Jung believed, was inherited, rather than
developed individually. Likewise, Gustave Le Bon discovered a second, unconscious layer of the
soul that was responsible for collective identity. For both Jung and Le Bon, as well as for
Hartmann, the unconscious was identical in all people: for psychology, this meant that it
possessed experimentally discoverable laws and could be analyzed scientifically.
The biological, physiological nature of the unconscious did not, however, necessarily
lead to its absolute separation from reason. On the contrary, their relationship formed a complex
dialectics-to such an extent that in the philosophical system of Richard Avenarius the
unconscious considered a vital tool of the cognitive process. Thinking, or inventing new notions,
was according to Avenarius inherently unhealthy, and whenever possible the soul [Seele]48
tended to replace it with alternative strategies. Key among those were association and habit
[Gewohnheit], both of which allowed for the economization of energy by displacing perception
into the domain of the unconscious. Habit, the major strategy of economizing perceptive energy,
for Avenarius, was tightly connected with the emotion of pleasure, the familiar assuring and the
unfamiliar bringing discomforting feelings.

4

Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959) 43.

4

Contemporary cognitive science would have used the term "brain."

36

If we face the opposite of the familiar, the unfamiliar, it will become clearer to us that the
habit illustrates the tendency of the soul to economize energy. I hardly believe that
everyone who thinks of the notion "unfamiliar" does not feel at least a slight shadow of
displeasure; at any event, he feels this displeasure when he really must think of the
unfamiliar. To put it simply, [this happens] because the [idea of ] the unfamiliar is an
unfamiliar thought, i.e. a thought that exceeds familiar thoughts. Every notion which is
not contained within the system of our already acquired and tightly connected between
themselves notions, and which to think we nevertheless have to consider through some
relationship -be it a discovery, a conversation, or a new book or something elseclearly makes our soul experience fear or hostility at the necessity of thinking about the
new alongside the old. Such a thought, such a notion is "uncomfortable" for us and we
react at it with displeasure...
Avenarius's theory of unconscious thinking brought the evolutionary and energetic
discourses together, integrating them into an ostensibly anti-metaphisical, strictly scientific
philosophical system. It responded to the dearest aspirations of radical intelligentsia in Russia,
with whom it became highly popular both before and after 1917, impacting revolutionary art,
culture, intellectual life, and not least architectural theory. The role of the unconscious at "the
turning points of history" noticed by Benjamin in the "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction" 50 was well understood in a society that aspired to transform the everyday life,
habits and worldview of its members-and even more, to control human subjectivity changing
not only the content of people's minds, but also the way in which their minds operated.

Avenarius, Philosophieals Denken der Welt..., 8-9. Translation by the author. German original: ,,Dass somit die
Gewohnheit das Sterben der Seele nach Kraftersparniss illustrire, wird uns noch deutlicher, wenn wir den Gegensatz
des Gewohnten, das Ungewohnte in's Auge fassen. Ich glaube kaum, dass Jemand die Vorstellung ,,Ungewohntes"
denkt, ohne einen wenn auch noch so leisen Anklang von Unlust in sich zu fiilen; jedenfalls fiilte er diese Unlust,
wenn er Ungewohntes wirklich denken soll. Einfach, weil Ungewohntes denken ein ungewohntes Denken, d.h. ein
das Gewohnheitsmass dberschreitendes Denken ist. Eine jede Vorstellung, welche nicht in dem System unserer
bereits erworbenen, unter sich fest verbundenen Vorstellungen enthalten ist, und welche zu denken wir dennoch
durch irgend welche Verhiltnisse-sei es ein Entdeckung oder ein Gesprich oder ein neues Buch oder was immergen6tigt werden, lIsst uns deutlich die Scheu oder Abneigung der Seele vor dem Ungewohnten empfinden, vor dem
Zwang, neben dem Alten ein Neues zu denken. Ein solches Denken, eine solche Vorstellung ist uns ,,unbequem"
und wir reagieren darauf mit Unlust..."
49

50

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"
240.

37

Soviet Economic and Cultural Context
Communism is the power of the Soviets plus the
electrification of the entire country.
Vladimir Lenin
The period of modernist architectural experimentation in Soviet Russia covered by this
dissertation is framed on one end by the year 1919, when earliest Soviet modernist architectural
organization Sinskul'ptarkh was established, and on the other (somewhat more roughly) by the
year 1935, when architectural discourse finally stabilized around the canon of "Socialist
Realism."51 It is particularly focused on the period between 1928 and 1932, the era of the socalled First Five-Year Plan. It was during the First Five-Year Plan that the foundations of an
industrial economy were to be laid out as a tour de force of collective work, and it was then
when the most intense architectural discussions on ways of economizing human energy took
place. Moreover, although numerous examples from across the USSR could have contributed to
the comprehensiveness of the picture, the dissertation focuses on events and discussions that
happened in Moscow-the country's new and old capital (which had regained this status in
1918). The seat of state bureaucracies, in a situation when all accepted cultural life was
patronized by the state, Moscow became the place of most active theorizing and debate.
The end day of Soviet avant-garde is usually dated to 23 April 1932, when the decree of the Central
Commitee of
the Communist Party "On the Reconstruction of Literature and Artistic Organizations" replaced all independent
artistic groups with a system of "creative unions" (including the Union of Architects) analogous to trade unions that
united members of other professions. The creation of a single architectural organization intended to eliminate a
disturbing plurality of schools and approaches and develop "Socialist Realism" as the single "style" of Soviet
architecture. After a discussion that lasted several years, the canon of Socialist Realism finally solidified around
1935.
51

The most significant omissions from the story are the events that took place in Leningrad (St.
Petersburg), the seat
of such important for Soviet culture organizations as GINKhUK (Gosudarstvennyi institut khudozhestvennoi
kul'tury, State Institute of Artistic Culture) and IZORAM (IZO rabochei molodezhi, the Art of Working Youth).
52

38

Initiated by independent and state institutions alike, this debate centered on questions important
for the new state, a key among which were those concerning the economy of human energy as an
industrial resourse.
Energy-particularly, electrical energy-was both an economic priority and a symbol of
the revolution of 1917. As a resource indispensible for melting metal, it was to become one of
the most important components of Soviet industrialization. As a symbol of progress and
enlightenment, it was to bring modernity to the most remote corners of the former Russian
Empire. In 1920, at Lenin's request, a commission headed by his close friend Gleb
Krzhizhanovskii was formed. It included 200 scientists and engineers, who worked on the
development of the "The State Plan of the Electrification of Russia" [Gosudarstvennyi plan
elektrifikatsii Rossii, or GOELRO]. 5 3 This first large-scale Soviet economic plan, whose
implementation was to take ten to fifteen years, covered not only the production and distribution
of energy, but the country's entire economy, the core of which was to be energy. A series of
hydroelectric power plants (among them, the iconic Dneproges [Dnepr hydroelectric plant] in
Zaporozh'e, now Ukraine, designed by Viktor Vesnin and Nikolai Kolli among others, and
finished in 1927) was to provide electricity to newly organized coal development and metal
production facilities, as well as to giant industrial enterprises, such as the Stalingrad tractor
factory, founded in 1927.
When announced in 1920, GOELRO seemed a utopia even for the supporters of
bolshevism. For example, even British science fiction writer H. G. Wells, a devoted friend of the
new regime, could not overcome his disbelief in the program:
Among the latter was father Pavel Florenskii (an engineer by his first education), a VKhUTEMAS
teacher, a
supporter of empiriocriticism, and the author of celebrated studies on reverse perspective in Russian icon painting.
5

39

Did I realise what was already in hand with Russia? The electrification' of Russia?
For Lenin, who like a good orthodox Marxist denounces all "Utopians," has succumbed
at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians. He is throwing all his weight into a
scheme for the development of great power stations in Russia to serve whole provinces
with light, with transport, and industrial power. Two experimental districts he said had
already been electrified. Can one imagine a more courageous project in a vast flat land of
forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with no technical skill available, and
with trade and industry at the last gasp? Projects for such an electrification are in process
of development in Holland and they have been discussed in England, and in those
densely-populated and industrially highly-developed centres one can imagine them as
successful, economical, and altogether beneficial. But their application to Russia is an
altogether greater strain upon the constructive imagination. I cannot see anything of the
sort happening in this dark crystal of Russia, but this little man at the Kremlin can; he
sees the decaying railways replaced by a new electric transport, sees new roadways
spreading throughout the land, sees a new and happier Communist industrialism arising
again. While I talked to him he almost persuaded me to share his vision.
For Wells, as for many others, GOELRO was a miracle that Lenin's magic enthusiasm aspired to
perform, an enthusiasm capable of infecting others and thus bringing even the
most unrealistic dreams to life. Tightly connected with Lenin's name and personality, the
electrification of Russia found its symbol in a simple uncovered light-bulb hanging down from
the ceiling in a peasant home. Still a familiar expression in contemporary Russia, the so-called
"Il'ich light-bulb" [lampochka Il'icha], symbolizing the progress brought to Russian village by
the revolution, appeared in Soviet propaganda after Lenin opened a power station in a remote
village over hundred kilometers from Moscow in November of 1920.55

54

H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows (1921). Web. 3.28.2014. <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602371h.html>.

55 Il'ich was Lenin's patronymic, often used by Soviet propaganda as a familiar, unofficial way of addressing the
leader. The power station in Kashino village in Volokolamskii raion, 128 kilometers to the west of Moscow, was
opened in November 1920.
40

Lenin's contagious
enthusiasm proved to be
stronger
doubt:

than
the

unrealizable

Wells's
seemingly
GOELRO

plan was finished ahead of
schedule in 1931. By that
Fig. 1.1. Arkadii Shaikhet, X'ich 's Light Bulb, 1925.

time,

Lenin had passed

away, and although his mummified body still participated in the political life of the country from
the marble shrine of the Mausoleum on Red Square, the completion of the plan became a major
task and the mark of pride for the new leader. An heir to GOELRO, the much more ambitious
First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) announced by Stalin aspired to transform a poor agrarian
country, devastated by the revolution and the civil war, into a modern industrial state in the
course of five years. Focused on the creation of heavy industry-the means of production-with
the help of Western, particularly American engineers and technologies, the plan enabled an
exponential expansion of metal processing and the production of machinery. 6
Soviet cultural elite and left intelligentsia enthusiastically supported the goal and methods
of the First Five-Year Plan, seeking to contribute to its implementation. The year 1928 marked
not only the launch of the Plan, but also of a new cultural policy of the Soviet state. As Sheila
Among foreign companies actively working in the USSR were Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG and General
Electric. In 1928, American engineer Albert Kahn established an office in Moscow, which, employing 25 American
engineers, in the course of two years prepared four thousand Soviet engineering specialists and prepared projects
and technical documentation for 521 factories (See, Richard Anderson, "USA/USSR: Architecture and War," Grey
Room No. 34 (2009): 80-103). As a result of these efforts, already during the ten pre-WWII years the USSR
produced 40% of world tractors.
56

41

Fitzpatrick argued in her seminal 1974 publication, which compares the expression of earlySoviet propaganda with that of later Chinese history, during the years of the First Five-Year
Plan, the Soviet "cultural revolution" marked the turn from bourgeois cultural development to
the

beginning of class

struggle between

"proletarian

communists"

and

"bourgeois

intelligentsia." 57 Although Fitzpatrick's conclusions sometimes took the rhetoric of the time at
its face value, her emphasis on class struggle in culture pointed to an important factor of Soviet
culture of the First Five-Year Plan: a return to the first post-revolutionary years' heroic discourse
informed by the Romanticism of revolutionary struggle. In architecture, the late 1920s saw a
return to post-revolutionary radicalism, allowing Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co to call
this period in the USSR a second avant-garde, which followed the "first" avant-garde of the early
1920s. It was exemplified by the emergence of the concept of the house-commune, the socialist
settlement discussion, Tatlin's "Letatlin," and Ivan Leonidov's "utopian" projects.58 The projects
discussed in this dissertation-the psychotechnics of Nikolai Ladovskii, the wall-painting of
Hinnerk Scheper and Moisei Ginzburg, and Betti Glan's concept of the park of culture and
leisure-complement this list. 59

Yet, the "second avant-garde" detected by Tafuri and Dal Co was hardly a uniquely
Soviet phenomenon. A similar revival of "revolutionarism"--as well as a similar turn to
57 Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Cultural Revolution in Russia 1928-32," Journalof Contemporary History, No. 9 (January
1974), and Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1978). For a recent discussion of Fitzpatrick's notion, see a debate in Russian Review 58, No. 2 (1999): Michael
David-Fox, "What is cultural revolution?" Russian Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1999): 181-201; Sheila Fitzpatrick,
"Cultural Revolution Revisited," Russian Review Vol. 58, No. 2 (1999): 202-209; and Michael David-Fox,
"Mentalite or Cultural System: A Reply to Sheila Fitzpatrick," Russian Review Vol. 58, No. 2 (1999), 210-211.
58

Manfredo Tafuri, Francesco Dal Co, Klassische Moderne (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
1988) 195.

59 An exception is Nikolai Ladovskii's "psychoanalytical method," which belongs to a previous tradition, focused on

economizing rather than spending energy.
42

dictatorial politics in Germany and other Western countries- can be discerned in the cultures of
other European countries: Karl Ehn's Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna (1927-1930), the organization of
CIAM in 1928, and the tenure of Hannes Meyer as the director of the Bauhaus (1928-1930), can
all be viewed as examples of a similar tendency towards total planning, grand scale, and
rationalization. The eager collaboration of the avant-garde with political power conformed to the
much later assessment by Boris Groys, who saw the will to power as an innate driving force of
early modernist art and architecture. But in contrast to this controversial cultural explanation, a
different, historical point can be made: architecture's new ambitions, above all its refashioning as
urbanism, required a wholly new level of collaboration with the state and municipal
bureaucracies, a partnership that preferably involved access to administrative and even political
power.
While Michael Hays has characterized precisely these new ambitions of art and
architecture as posthumanism, he did not connect them with a particular time period within early
modernism. Unlike his study, this dissertation suggests that the peak of posthumanism can be
located within a relatively narrow historic period, namely the era that witnessed the conjuncture
of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union, the increasing influence of the Nazis in
Germany, and a turn toward a stronger role of state throughout the Western world in the
aftermath of the 1929 economic crisis. I will argue that it was the possibility of participating in
the implementation of the Plan, the symbol and epitome of posthumanism's fascination with
planning and rationalization-rather than lucrative contracts, naivete or persecutions at homethat attracted the Western avant-garde: among those who moved to the USSR were artists Bela
Uitz (1926); Hinnerk Scheper (1928), Erich Borchert (1929), Heinrich Vogeler (1931); architects

43

Hannes Meyer (1930), Mart Stain (1930), Ernst May (1930), Bruno Taut (1932); photographer
Tina Modotti (1931); and sculptors Will Lambert (1934) and Laszlo M'sziros (1935).
The transition from Lenin's GOELRO Plan to Stalin's First Five-Year Plan defined not
only a change in economic policy, but also in the official discourse of the Soviet state. If in the
early 1920s dialogue and planning focused on the economy and on the production of energy, in
the late 1920s it shifted to a discussion of energy spending. The situation was one in which the
entire industry was to be created ex nihilo, and the builders of new factories and cities could rely
only on very primitive, if any, technology and mechanization. The basis of Soviet
industrialization was manual labor. As a result, alongside electricity, human energy became
reinterpreted as a scarce natural resource, which had to be entirely reserved for the fulfillment of
the Plan: it was to be released during work hours and fully channeled into production. During the
year 1929, shortly after the First Five-Year Plan was launched, the shock workers [udarniki]
campaign, which originated in the early 1920s, dramatically increased in popularity, engaging
29% of all industry workers-just a year later, this number further jumped to 65%.60 As wage
differentiation and other capitalist strategies of spurring productivity were inaccessible in
socialist Russia, the campaign attempted to explore alternative means of achieving this goal.
Working in brigades, shock workers participated in "socialist competitions," whose winners
received public recognition and honors, as well as (often) better service in dining facilities and
priority in the allocation of scarce goods. However, unlike Stakhanovites-an initiative that
replaced shock workers' movement in 1935-who, in a much more capitalist spirit, worked
alone and received guaranteed material compensation for extra work, an ideal shock worker was
Lewis Siegelbaum, "The Shock Worker Movement." Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 29
May 2014.
60

44

driven by enthusiasm and comradely spirit rather than by an expectation of additional
remuneration. 6 1

Moreover, various techniques of industrial management, such as Taylorism and Fordism,
flourished in Soviet Russia from the revolution until the mid-1930s, particularly, during the First
Five-Year Plan. The necessity of the "scientific organization of labor" [nauchnaiaorganizatsia
truda, NOT] was first formulated by Lenin, who encouraged an exploration of possible ways of
labor rationalization. By the mid-1920s, over fifty organizations were preoccupied with this task,
among them special departments and laboratories of the Supreme Soviet of the National
Economy (an analog of the ministry of economic development) and the ministries, such as the
Council on the Scientific Organization of Labor under the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate
(the ministry of state control and revision). Most importantly, the Central Institute of Labor
[Tsentral'nyi Institut Truda, TsIT], founded and headed by poet Aleksei Gastev, was created in
1920 and remained active until Gastev's persecution in the late-1930s. 62 Unlike Taylor and Ford,
with whom he corresponded, and rather similarly to Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Gastev focused on
the human factor of factory work, attempting to rationalize the movements of workers and their
use of working time. Gastev was one of the members of the Time League [Liga Vremeni] (1923Stakhanovites was a movement that appeared in 1935 and was named after a coal-miner Aleksei
(born Andrei)
Stakhanov (1905-1977), who alone overfulifilled his norm 14-fold) worked alone and were driven by egoistic
interests, such as bonuses and prizes . Collectivism and social engineering were now considered inadequate for
stimulating work. "It was not our scientific institutes or engineering-technical officials who introduced new methods
of work, but Stakhanov, Busygin, Smetanin, and other worker-innovators. ... The fact that it was not engineers and
technicians, but the most advanced workers who discovered these new methods ... says that our engineeringtechnical personnel do not work well at rationalizing production," articulated P. P. Postyshev, the head of the
Ukranian party organization, the new Party line in 1935. P.P.P., Stakhanovtsky-novye lyudi epokhi sotsializma
[Stakhanovites-NewPeople o the Epoque ofSocialism] (Moskva: s.n., 1935) 26, 59.
61

In 1926, Gastev's activity brought him the Order of the Red Banner for "an outstanding energy and devotedness
to the task."
62

45

1926), a research organization devoted to finding ways of economizing time in all aspects of life,
and most importantly, at work. Another proponent of NOT, Osip Ermanskii, was an early
popularizer of Taylor's system; his own theory was elaborated in Theory and Practice of
Rationalization [Teoria i praktika ratsionalizatsii],which saw five editions between its initial
publication in 1925 and 1933. The book suggested that industrial management should be based
on the "principle of the optimum," which postulated that rationalization was defined by the
relation between an achieved result and the amount of energy spent for its achievement.
Alongside state and factory administrators, psychologists also eagerly explored various
techniques of operating with human energy: the two schools of applied psychology,
psychotechnics and pedology; as well as psychophysiology, the behavioral disciplines of
reactology and reflexology, psychoanalysis, and activity theory all offered different approaches
to rationalizing the human working machine. The heyday of applied psychology corresponded
exactly to the period of the First Five-Year Plan. A psychological alternative to Taylorism,
psychotechnics gained popularity in the USSR in the mid 1920s, offering techniques of industrial
management based on differentiential psychology. The All-Russian Psychotechnic Society was
founded in 1927; by 1930, there were more than one hundred psychotechnical institutions
throughout the USSR. A similar program of individual development was elaborated by pedology,
which, unlike psychotechnics, focused on the psychology of children. The first meeting on
pedology, which hosted over 350 presentations, took place in Moscow in late 1927 and early
1928. It formulated the discipline's mission as "the process of the production of a new man, [a
process] equal to that of the production of new machinery." 63 A particular supporter of these
63

Russian original:

"rpoxecc

npOH3BOAcTBa

HOBOrO

qeJIOBeKa

HapaBHe C HpOH3BOACTBOM HOBOrO o60pyAOBaHMA."

Nadezhda Krupskaia et al., "Iz rechei N. K. Krupskoi, N. I. Bukharina, A. V. Lunacharskogo, N. A. Semashko na 1

46

techniques, and of psycho-physiology in general, was the head of Narkompros (abbreviated from
Narkomat prosveshchenia, the ministry of culture and education) Anatolii Lunacharskii: out of
55 research organizations connected to Narkompros, 24 explicitly dealt with physiology and
psychology, while 79 projects of Narkompros and the ministries of health, labor, and social
security were devoted to the study and improvement of socialist workers' physiological and
psychological organization. 64 However, the idea of an innate, biological rather than social, basis
of intellectual abilities and predisposition for certain work (an idea on which psychotechnics was
based) made this science soon fall into disrepute, and after the infamous 1936 decree of the
Communist Party Central Committee "On pedological perversions in the system of
Narkomproses" applied psychology in all its forms was banned in the USSR.65
Narkompros politics was largely defined by the views and theories of its head Anatolii
Lunacharskii, a former student of Avenarius in Zurich, and his close friends and collaborators
who shared his philosophical and political views, including his brother-in-law Aleksandr
Bogdanov (Malinovskii), Bogdanov's schoolmate Vladimir Bazarov (Rudnev), and writer
Maxim Gorky (Aleksei Peshkov). Before the revolution the group (which also included other
pedologicheskom s'ezde" ["From the speeches of N. K. Krupskaia, N. I. Bukharin, A. V. Lunacharskii, N. A.
Semashko on the First Pedological Meeting], Naputiakh k novoi shkole [On the Way to a New School], No. 1 1928:
9-14 (9).
Margarete Vc'hringe; Avantgarde und Psychotechnik
Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik der
Wahrnehmungsexperimente in derfru*hen Sowjetunion(Gd'ttingenWallstein, 2007) 38-39.

6

On the history of Soviet applied psychology and its dissolution, see ; V. A. Kol'tsova, 0. G. Noskova,
Iu. N.
Oleinik et al., "Shpil'rein i sovetskaia psikhotekhnika" ["Shpil'rein and Soviet psychotechnics"], Psikhologicheskii
zhurnal [Psychological journal] Vol. 11, No. 2 1990: 111-133; A. V. Petrovskii, "Zapret na kompleksnoe
issledovanie detstva" ["A ban on a comprehensive research of childhood"], Repressirovannaia nauka [Science
subjected to repression], ed. by M. G. Iaroshevskii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991) 126-136; F. A. Fradkin, Pedologia:
mify i deistvitel'nost' [Pedology: myths and reality] (Moskva: Znanie, 1991); N. S. Kurek, 0 prichinakh i
sledstviiakh zapreta pedologii i psikhotekhniki v SSSR [On the reasons and consequences of the prohibition of
pedology andpsychotechnics in the USSR] (Moskva: n.p., 1996).
65

47

Bolsheviks), particularly Bogdanov, presented a serious rivalry to Lenin's leadership within the
Bolshevik faction. The group opposed, from a radically leftist standpoint, every aspect of Lenin's
platform: politically, they were "otzovisty" (left radicals who demanded to withdraw [otozvat']
social democratic representatives from the Duma [Russian parliament]); spiritually, they were
"god-builders" (neo-Romantics who believed in the primacy of spiritual over physical force);
philosophically, they were "Machists" (the followers of empiriocriticism of Mach and
Avenarius, which accused materialism of metaphysics and argued for a study of perception as
the only accessible form of reality). The group enjoyed the reputation as party intellectuals and
was indeed preoccupied with philosophical rather than with political and economic theories. In
fact Lenin's only philosophical work, Materialism and Empriocriticism. CriticalNotes on One
Reactionary Philosophy [Materializm i empiriokrititsizm. Kriticheskie zametki ob odnoi
reaktsionnoi filosofi], written in 1908, attempted to annihilate "the Bogdanovites" on their
territory-from a philosophical standpoint-breaking the radical intelligentsia's fascination with
Machism and attempting to sully their esteem for Bogdanov as its principal representative in
Russia. While the book enjoyed only moderate success, Lenin's political attack on Bogdanov
was much more effective: in 1909, Bogdanov's position was officially condemned and his group
excluded from the Bolshevik faction.
More than a translator of empiriocriticism into Russian, Bogdanov elaborated his own
version of the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius: "Instead of this [Avenarius's] theory I gave
another one, the origins of which I trace to Spinoza, and the main material for which was
provided, in my opinion by the views of Meynert and, partially, by the James-Lange theory of

48

emotion," Bogdanov explained his philosophical position.

In other words, Spinoza's monism,

which asserted the unity of matter and spirit (Spinoza's famous axiom was "The order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things") formed the main
reference point for Bogdanov's modification of empiriocriticism. 67 The two other sources were
the work of Viennese neuropathologist and anatomist and one of the teachers of Freud, Theodor
Meynert, who saw brain anatomy as the key to treating psychological disorders, and by the
influential theory of emotion formulated independently by William James and Danish
physiologist Carl Lange, according to which emotion was the mind's reaction to a physiological
state rather than its trigger.68
Furthermore

Bogdanov

counteracted

the

ostensible

academic

obtuseness

of

empiriocriticism with a Nietzschean exaltation of the strength and energy of life. Arguing against
Avenarius's principle of balance between acquisition and expenditure of energy, he claimed that
the full equivalence of these two processes would present an ideal conservatism, which was not
only unattainable, but also undesirable for living organisms, since, according to Darwinism, "a

Bogdanov, Empiriomonism, Vol. 2, 186. Translation by the author. Russian original:
"B3aMeH 3ToN TeOpHH A .gai
Apyrylo, pOAOHaaJI16HHKoM KOTOpON A cqHTaw CnHHo3y, a OCHOBHOHi MaTepHaJI AAJI KoTopON AaH, no moemy
MHeHHIO, BO33peHHMH MeNkHepTa H oTqacTH TeopHei 3MoIHA AKeMca-JlaHre."
66

67 However, in fact, already Fechner asserted a monism of mind and matter, which he considered to be two

perspectives on the same object. Likewise, in 1874 W. B. Carpenter in his Mental Physiology claimed that "just as a
curved surface appeared to convex or concave depending on the angle of vision... so phenomena seemed
psychological or physiological." See Daston, 104.
68 The theory was independently formulated by James and Lange in 1887-1890.
Using an example provided by

James, we do not see a bear, fear it, and then run. Instead, we see a bear and run - the emotion of fear being the
result of our physiological activity (increasing adrenaline level, heartrate, etc.). See William James, Principles of

Psychology, Vol. 2 (New York: H. Holt, 1890) 468.

49

condition for the true preservation of life is, in fact, a change of its forms."61 Not an
accumulation of energy or its prudent gradual expenditure, but the use of energy for brave,
audacious deeds-this was, for Bogdanov and his co-thinkers, the principle of true human
development.
Subsequently the principles of life and activity exploded empiriomonism, making
Bogdanov leave the domain of philosophy and return to the real world in his "universal
organizational science," or tectology (the book Tectology. The Universal OrganizationScience
[Tektologiia. Vseobshchaia organizatsionnaianauka ] appeared in 1913). While philosophy was
characterized by disinterestedness, exploring concepts for their own sake, tectology, Bogdanov
argued, put concepts to use as a tool for the planning and structuring of practical activity. The
whole complex world of culture-language, ideas and, ultimately, ideology-belonged to the set
of tectological instruments. Although subjective in their origin, they served the great objective
purpose of reconfiguring the material world: "Tectology does not 'find' the unity of experience,
but creates it, actively and organizationally. [...] The explanation of organizational forms and
methods by tectology leads not to a contemplation of their unity, but to a practical mastery over
them." 70 Thus, rather than decomposing reality into its elements (the task of philosophy, whose

69

Russian original: <(YCJIOBHeM AecTBHTeRJHoro COXpaHeHHA )KH3HH

ABIJeTCI, BOO6ge rOBOps, H3MeHeHHe e

43opM> . Bogdanov, Empiriomonism, Vol. 1, 102.
Aleksandr Bogdanov,

upairHleCKOMy OBJiaAeHHI0

HMH

.

seobshchaia organizatsionnaia nauka (tektologia) [General organizational science
(tectology)].Vol.1 (Sankt-Peterburg: M. I. Semenov, 1913), Vol. 2 (Moskva: Kn-vo pisatelei v Moskve, 1917). Web.
8.7.2014.
<http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/81713/33/
BogdanovTektologiya_%28vsebshhayaorganizacionnaya _nauka%29.html>. Translation by the author. Russian
original: «<Ps TeKTonorHH CAHHCTBO OrMTa He vHaXOAHTCA)), a Co3AaeTCA aKTHBHO-opraHH3aIHoHHWM Hy-reM.
[...]067CHeHHe opraHH3aIHoHHmx @OpM H MeTOAOB TeKronorHeA HalpaBJeHO He K cowepilaHHo HX e9HHcTBa, a K
70

50

highest point was, for Bogdanov, empiriocriticism), tectology studied the laws of the elements'
organization within complexes.
An amalgam of empiriocriticism and vitalism also became the principle behind
Lunachskii's Foundations of positive aesthetics [Osnovy pozitivnoi estetiki, 1903], a declared
attempt to build a system of empiriocriticist aesthetics.7 1 Applying Avenarius's Prinzip des
kleinsten Kraftmafes to aesthetic thought, Lunacharskii argued that everything that increases the
amount of energy (Affectional, a term he borrowed from Avenarius) in an organism was
aesthetic, while everything that decreased it was "anti-aesthetic." Moreover, while Avenarius
referred to cognitive energy expended during the perceptive process, Lunacharskii radicalized
the hidden evolutionism of energetist discourse in the concept of "vital energy." This continued a
tradition founded by the influential nineteenth-century Russian radical aesthetic thinker Nikolai
Chernyshevskii (1828-1889).

Just as Chemyshevskii's 1855 dissertation, written from a

standpoint of Compte's first positivism, "Aesthetic relations of art to reality" ["Esteticheskie
otnosheniia iskusstva k deistvitel'nosti"], argued that "the beautiful is life,"7 2 so life became the
ultimate category of Lunacharskii's aesthetic system and the only aesthetic criterion: beauty was,
ultimately, the "mighty and free life" itself.73 Pleasure experienced in the process of
multiplication of vital energy, for Lunacharsky, was the criterion not only for aesthetic, but also
for ethical judgments: the only objective basis upon which an animal identified something as
good or bad was its personal sensation of something agreeable or disagreeable, that is, of the
71

Anatolii

Lunacharskii,

"Osnovy positivnoi estetiki" ["Foundations of positive aesthetics"], Ocherki
realisticheskogo mirovozzrenia [Essays in realist worldview] (St. Peterburg: Izdatel'stvo S. Dorovatovskogo i A.
Charushnikova, 1903) 114-182. Reprinted as a book in 1923.
72 Russian original: <fIlpeKpacHoe ec'b GH3HL). Nikolai Chernyshevskii, "Esteticheskie otnosheniia iskusstva k
deistvitel'nosti" ["Aesthetic relationships of art to reality"], Chernyshevskii, Sochinenia v 2kh tt. [Works in two
vols.], Vol.1 (Moskva: Mysl', 1986) 76.
73 Lunacharskii, "Osnovy positivnoi estetiki," 51.
51

pleasurable or unpleasurable.74 For Lunacharsky, ethics, aesthetics and epistemology ultimately
coincided as good, beautiful, and true had to be defined in the same terms as that which furthered
life.71
In August of 1909 Bogdanov, Lunacharkii, and Gorky opened a party school on the
Italian island of Capri, where Gorky resided, with the purpose of educating a true proletarian
intelligentsia, which would replace their own generation of revolutionary intelligentsia of a
petty-bourgeois, lesser aristocracy, or a clergy background. Another major and unrealized
ambition of the school was a publication of a workers' encyclopedia, which would aim to obtain
a revolutionary role and significance similar to that of the French Encyclopedie. The school's
students were carefully selected by Russian local party committees among worker-activists and
smuggled from Russia to Capri, where they learned about the history of Russian empire and the
world, literature, the labor movement, and political economy. Although the school declared a
non-factional standpoint, it was considered extremely dangerous by Lenin, who started his own
alternative party school outside of Paris in 1911.
Even though the school proved to be short-lived and its impact turned out to be minimal,
the ideas underlying its program were revived on a much broader scale after the revolution. 76
While the "Leninists" were preoccupied with vital issues of preserving power and solving
political, economical and military problems, Bogdanov and Lunacharskii returned to Russia
David Graeme Rowley, Millenarian Bolshevism: Empiriomonism, God-Building, ProletarianCulture. Diss. The
University of Michigan, 1982, 68.
71 Lunacharskii, "Osnovy positivnoi estetiki," 38-39.
76 Having educated only 13 students, the school closed in December 1909. In 1910, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky,
Mikhail Pokrovsky, and their supporters moved the school to Bologna, where they continued teaching classes
through 1911 (there, they prepared 21 students). See Zinovia Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin
Controversy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) 36.
7

52

(where Gorky had remained since 1913). Lunacharskii reentered the Bolshevik faction
immediately after his return and, as a result, quickly acquired prominence as the leader of young
Soviet culture. Gorky, who reconciled with the Bolsheviks much earlier, instead, left the Party in
1917 in an act of protest against the goals and methods of the October revolution; he left Russia
in 1921 only to return for extended journeys in 1928-1929 and then for good in 1931, when he
was celebrated as the foremost Soviet writer and the patriarch of proletarian literature. Of the
group, Bogdanov alone never fully reconciled with the Bolsheviks. Though, as a result, his
impact on Soviet culture proved to be much less than that of Lunacharskii, it was nevertheless
extremely important during the first postrevolutionary years, penetrating multiple spheres of
intellectual life, including workers' education, art, and even economic planning. 77
In 1918, Bogdanov founded and headed Proletkul't-an organization of workers that
aimed at developing proletarian culture, independent of the culture of the bourgeoisie. 78 Funded
by the state and existing in parallel to the Narkompros, Proletkul't became an enormous
organization with its own publications, theaters, and studios for workers: at the peak of its
influence in 1920, it attracted 84 thousand workers and published 20 journals. Highly suspicious
of Proletkul't as a stronghold of Bogdanov's influence and opposed to its basic premise-an
For instance, one of the principal foundations of Soviet theory of economic planning, the theory of Bogdanov's
old co-thinker Vladimir Bazarov (who remained in Russia and did not participate in the Capri school, joining the
Mensheviks in 1917-1919, and who in 1922 became a member of the State Planning Commission [Gosplan] and a
leading Soviet theoretician of economic planning), was largely based on Bogdanov's tektology. See, in particular,
his K metodologii perspektivnogoplanirovania[Towards a Methodologyfor Strategic Planning] (Moskva: Gosplan
SSSR, 1924). The Mensheviks (literally, "those who are in a minority")-a faction of Russian Social-Democratic
Labor Party (RSDPR) that, alongside the Bolsheviks ("those who are in a majority") emerged after a 1903 dispute
between Lenin and Julii Martov over the party's organization (Martov's supporters, who proved to be a minority of
the delegates, argued for a looser and more flexible organization than that suggested by Lenin, who saw the party as
more cohesive and disciplined.
77

See Bogdanov's works Iskusstvo i rabochii kass [Art and the working class] (Moskva: Zhurn. "Proletarskaia
kul'tura," 1918) and Oproletarskoikul'ture [On the proletarianculture] (Leningrad-Moskva: Kniga, 1924).
78

53

incompatibility of the "old" culture with the new society-in 1920 Lenin succeeded in officially
subordinating Proletkul't to Narkompros; a year later, Bogdanov had to leave Proletkul't, and the
organization quickly started to lose popularity. Although Proletkul't and Bogdanov's other
endeavor in the field of creating proletarian culture-the Proletarian University, which was
opened in 1918, but closed half a year later due to the scarcity of resources during the Civil
War-proved to be short-lived, his third project, Socialist Academy of Social Sciences (since
1924, Communist Academy), also opened in 1918 with Bogdanov's active participation,
remained operative until 1936. Even after the demise of Proletkul't, Bogdanov's vision of
proletarian culture and his philosophy remained popular due the work of his allies, most of all
Lunacharskii's Narkompros.
Meanwhile, after his return to Russia, Lunacharskii was offered the position of the
minister (commissar) of culture and education [prosveshchenie], which he occupied until 1929.
As the minister who determined Soviet cultural policies for over ten years, Lunacharskii could
successfully propagate his opinions through numerous publications, reviews, lectures, and
personal meetings with the Soviet cultural elite. When VKhUTEMAS was founded in 1920 as
the major Soviet institute of art and design, he of course did not step aside. He was among other
matters actively involved in the battles between "realists" and "futurists" (traditionalists and
modernists) within VKhUTEMAS, in which he occupied a mediating position, not aligning
himself with either of the movements. At Lunacharskii's suggestion, the school accepted a
compromise, separating its teaching course into "synthetic" (learning painting in general) and
"analytical" (which separately studied different elements of painting) stages, the first satisfying

54

the demands of traditionalists for learning artistic skill, the second-the demands of modernists
for an objective and scientific analysis of artistic principles.79
Of the main arguments of this dissertation is that the ideas espoused by Bogdanov,
Gorky, and most importantly Lunacharskii

were actively studied and developed at

VKhUTEMAS and beyond. Architects, artists, and VKhUTEMAS "left" professors like
Ladovskii attempted to gain the minister's support for their cause and platform, substantiating
their arguments for an analytical approach to art with references to the aesthetic, scientific and
philosophical theories promoted by Lunacharskii. The collectivists' frame of reference-their
fascination with empiriocriticism, psychophysiology, evolutionism, and vitalism-all entered the
intellectual orbit of Soviet architects in the 1920s, despite of the obvious deviation from
Leninism in this position. When in 1921 Lenin, famous for his conservative tastes in art, visited
VKhUTEMAS, where Inessa Armand's80 daughter Varvara then studied, he jokingly asked the
students: "And, what are you doing at school, fighting with the futurists I assume?" The students
replied in a single voice: "No, Vladimir Il'ich, we are all futurists ourselves."81 Afterwards, the

79 In spring of 1921, After Lunacharskii's suggestion, the teaching course was divided into three stages: the

preparatory department, where aspiring students had to prove their ability for painting (synthetic method); the basic
department, where students learned an analysis of art (analytical method); and the special department, where
students mastered the skill of their art (synthetic method). See L. M. Khlebnikov, "Bor'ba realistov i futuristov vo
VKhUTEMASe (Novye materialy)" ["Struggle of the realists and the futurists at VKhUTEMAS (New material)"].
Web. 3.18.2014. <http://Iunacharsky.newgod.su/lib/lenin-i-lunacharskij/borba-realistov-i-futuristov-vo-vhutemasenovye-materialy>.
Inessa Fiodorovna Armand (born Elisabeth-Inbs St6phane d'Herbenville) was a French
born active member of
Russian social-democratic movement and a close friend and associate of Lenin.
80

Sergei Sen'kin, "Lenin v kommune VKhUTEMAS" [Lenin in VKhUTEMAS commune],
Molodaia gvardia
[Young guard], No. 2-3 1924. Reprinted in V. I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve [V. I. Lenin on literatureand art]
(Moskva: GIKhL, 1967) 717. Translation by the author. Russian original: <Hy, a 'iTo BBi AejiaeTe B IUKOne, ,OJDKHO
6mT, 6opeiecb c 4yTypHcTama?>> - emy oTBearnH xopoM: <da HeT, BnaiiwHp Hjmiiq, mM camH Bce
81

4yrypHcTI>>.

55

Soviet leader complained to Lunacharskii: "You've got a good, very good youth, but what are
you teaching it!" 8 2

Of the list of notions at the core of Soviet culture of the 1920s, the notion of energy alone
was, perhaps, equally dear to both Lunacharskii and Lenin. "You work a lot, you don't eat very
well, and, moreover, don't sleep. Nothing good can come out of you. You'll waste your force in
vain and will be good for nothing, whereas one has to preserve [this] 'state property' Lenin told
VKhUTEMAS students, who admitted to him that they spent entire nights arguing about the
urgent problems of art.8 3 This notion of human energy as valuable property of the state is central
to this dissertation. If Lenin's solution to the problem was to turn off the electricity in the
dormitory for the night in order to force the students to sleep, in what follows, I will assess
architectural responses to the same challenge-responses that took the results of psychophysiological research as their objective, scientific basis. In so doing, I show how Soviet
architects contributed to the posthumanist program of integrating human subjectivity into the
overarching system of total planning.

Sen'kin, 715. Translation by the author. Russian original: <Xopoma, oqeHb xopoma y Bac MonolAexb,
Bbi ee yHTe!>.
82

HO qeMy

. A. Armand, "Vospominania o Vladimire Il'iche Lenine [Recollections about Vladimir Il'ich Lenin]," Institut
Marksizma-Leninizma [Institute of Marxism-Leninism], ed., Vospominania o Vladimire Il'iche Lenine v desiati
tomakh [Recollections about Vladimir Il'ich Lenin in 10 vols.]. Vol. 8 (Moskva: Izd-vo Politicheskoi Literatury,
1991) 99-107 (104). Translation by the author. Russian original: <Pa6oTaeTe BM MHoro,-CKa3aJI OH HM,UHTaeTeCb rJIOXoBaTO, Aa euie He curre. 143 BaC HHxaKorO TOJIKa He IOJIyqHTc. Ba 3pA pacTpaTHTe CHJIM H HHKyga
He 6yAeTe roAHwmcA, a HaRo 6epeqi, «rocygapcTBeHHoe Ao6po . A Aam pacopADKeHHe, qTo6J B BameM
o61ge)MTHH BaKnJIo'aH CBeT Ha HO'q].
8

56

57

CHAPTER ONE

ECONOMIZING PERCEPTIVE ENERGY: THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL
METHOD OF NIKOLAI LADOVSKII AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF
EMPIRIOCRITICISM (1919-1927)

Contemporary aesthetics, say the "Rationalists," lies in the
economy of psychophysical energy within a person. The
main task of aesthetics is not to teach and contribute to the
development of capacities for the passive contemplation
and admiration of architectural objects. Rather it is to solve
problems through the expression and organization of form
and space, which would enable it to raise up, awaken
energy, and enrich a person's emotions. (It is not an
aestheticization but a healthy aesthetics). 84
Imagine a spring evening in the year 1920. A cold, poorly lit room at the Second
Independent

State Artistic

Workshops

(Svobodnye Gosydarstvennye Khudozhestvennye

Masterskie, SGKhM), the outpost of artistic avant-garde in post-revolutionary Russia. Unlike the
departments of painting and sculpture, the Architecture Department is still run by traditionalists.
Unknown to anybody in the audience, architect Nikolai Ladovskii stands to speak. He tells about
the drawbacks of the old academic approach to architectural education, which he condemns as a
passive imitation that kills live imagination and destroys one's desire to apprehend the real laws
Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Sovremennaia russkaia arkhitektura i zapadnye paralleli" ["Contemporary Russian
architecture and [its] Western parallels"], Sovetskoe Iskusstvo No. 2 (1927): 5-15 (12-13). Translation by the author.
Russian original: COBpeMeHHaA 3CTeTHKa, rOBopsr vpaIHoHanHCT--B 3KOHOMHH nCHXO-4H3HMeCKOH 3HeprHH
qeJIOBeKa. OCHOBHaA 3agaqa 3CTeTHKH--He yrm H cnoco6CTBOBaT TOMy, lTo6bI y noTpe6HTe pa3BHBaJIHCi6
84

CiioCo6HOCTH nacCHBHoro co3epixaIu(i
H Jno6oBaHHi
ofbewTaMH apxHTeKTypbL, a pemaT npO6neMy C TaKOfi
Bbpa3HTeCbHOCThIO H opraHH3oBaHHoCTh1o (@OPM H lpocTpaHcTBa, KOTOpmC 6MnH 6M cnoco6m HOAHHMam-,
6ygHTE 3HeprHo, o6oraIgaT 3MOMH eno2BeKa (He 3CTeTCTBOBaHHe, a 39OpOBaR 3CTeTHKa).

58

and methods of architectural creation. Ladovskii urges architects to think not about the orders
and proportions, but about the human who perceives them, arguing that only human emotional
and visual perception can form the basis of architectural composition. Most of all, however, the
students are struck by Ladovskii's maxim "Space, not stone, is the material of architecture,"
which defines the discipline as work with the content of subjective perception. 85
Having rejected old, classical, architectural theory, architects found themselves in a need
of a new methodology, a foundation for a new theoretical building. This foundation could leave
no place for artistic individualism; rather, it had to be based on the latest scientific achievements
and respond to the modem lifestyle. The motto "Space, not stone, is the material of architecture,"
which Ladovskii articulated at VKhUTEMAS summarizing his project for a new architectural
method, offered just such a foundation. It was a product of a cutting-edge, dynamic and complex
science-psychophysiology. Moreover, this science seemed to provide a bridge between
Geistwissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften, the sciences of spirit and the sciences of nature,
allowing for the analysis and repetition of the subjective, the unique and the individual; its
promise was nothing less than the creation of a science of beauty. Developed within the context
of experimental psychology, the notion of space signified the subjective side of external threedimensional reality. From the late nineteenth-century on, it was the subject of many
psychological investigations, gaining a new momentum with the emergence of Gestalt
psychology. Thus, asserting space as the building block of a new architecture, Ladovskii not only
redefined it as working with subjective images rather than material objects, but also pointed to

85 Selim

0. Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm [Ratsioarkhitektura] "Formlalizm" [Rationalism[Ratio-architecture]

"Formalism'] (Moskva: Arkhitektura-S, 2007) 140-143.

59

the methods of psychological manipulation, developed by scientists, as suitable instruments of
architectural work.
Philosophically, the psychophysiological perspective on the material world was
expressed and elaborated by empiriocriticism, a school of thought particularly important for
Ladovskii and his co-thinkers. Developed by Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius and highly
influential in Russia, empiriocriticism attempted to achieve in the philosophy of science
precisely what Ladovskii wished for architecture-a radical revision of its principles and
foundations on the basis of the latest findings of psychology. Renouncing ontology for the sake
of subjective (psychological) experience, empiriocriticism, for Ladovskii became both a method
and a model for architectural theory.
The blow to materialist philosophy that empiriocriticism represented aroused few
concerns for the Soviet architect. On the contrary, it attracted Ladovskii, offering him a way to
connect the product of architectural work to the subjectivity of the producer and the user. As
Mach and Avenarius represented the material world as the sum of the physiological sensations it
provoked, so Ladovskii, following their example, attempt to represent architecture not as a
material environment, but as its subjective perception. Architecture was dematerialized, and the
task of the architect shifted to constructing psychological and physiological sensations that
comprised images of architectural structures. The architect, thus turned into a master of the
human psyche, and was occupied with its improvement and rationalization. It was in this spirit
that Ladovskii interpreted the imperative of the economy of energy: following Avenarius, he
proposed to economize the energy of perception. As the philosopher was concerned with
economizing intellectual effort, the architect was to save perceptive energy by visually distilling
60

and emphasizing the building's spatial qualities. Ladovskii summarized the essence of his
method:
Like technical rationality, architectural rationality is based on the principle of economy.
The difference lies in the fact that technical rationality is the economy of labor and
material expended in the creation of an expedient building, whereas architectural
rationality is the economy of psychic energy expended in the perception of spatial and
functional qualities of a building. Rationalist architecture is the synthesis of these two
rationalities.86
This rationalization of perception became Ladovskii's major preoccupation, which
encompassed his other concerns: the development of a new visual language for architecture,
establishing relationships between physiological sensation and visual form, and developing new
pedagogical methods. This ambition of rationalizing perception as a valuable state property, of
making it more efficient and economical, was reflected in the expression "rational architecture"
[ratsional'naia arkhitektura; ratsio-arkhitektura] which the group used to describe its
methodology, and which subsequently led to the emergence of the term "Rationalism"; the latter
allowed subsequent scholars to avoid using the derogatory "Formalism," a nickname given to the
group by their major rivals, the Constructivists, and frequently used in the 1920s and 1930s.8 7
The expression "rational architecture" referred to "rationalization" [ratsionalizatorstvo], a
movement in Soviet post-revolutionary industrial management, which encouraged workers to
suggest new, more rational and economical, techniques and methods of their work.

86 Ladovskii,

"Osnovy postroenia teorii arkhitektury (pod znakom ratsionalisticheskoi estetiki)," 3.

The word "Rationalism" was coined as a counterpart to Constructivism by historian Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov.
See Margarete Vd'hringer , Avantgarde Und Psychotechnik : Wissenschaft, Kunst Und Technik Der
Wahrnehmungsexperimente in Der Fru*hen Sowjetunion(Gd'ttingenWallstein Verlag, 2007) 42.

87

Alongside inventorship [izobretatel'stvo],industrialratsionalizatorstvo(rationalization) was introduced
in Soviet
Russia in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. The Committee on the Inventors and Improvers [Komitet po
delam izobretatelei i usovershenstvovatelei] was formed in 1918, and "The Statute on Inventors" [Polozhenie ob
88

61

Throughout the 1920s, Rationalism/Formalism insisted on the necessity of the
experimental discovery of laws of perception of architectural forms, which was to be followed
by the development of a system of laws that would allow for a synthesis of these forms into
complex spatial compositions. In 1920, Ladovskii's group, the Working Group of Architects at
the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK), 89 planned to create a "laboratory, spacious enough
and equipped for experiments and possessing sufficient resources for making models, various
graphic works and approximate architectural stagings, which are so necessary for at least an
illusionary representation of space, without which architecture is unthinkable." 90
This program received a fuller development with the creation of Ladovskii's architectural
organization, Association of New Architects [Assotsiatsia novykh arkhitektorov], or ASNOVA,
in 1923. In addition to Ladovskii, its founding members included Ladovskii's closest associates,
Nikolai Dokuchaev and Vladimir Krinskii, the dean of VKhUTEMAS

Department of

Architecture Aleksei Rukhliadev, architects Efimov and Daniil Fidman, and Ladovskii's first
graduates Sergei Mochalov and Viktor Balikhin. ASNOVA's most active members later on
belonged to the generation of Ladovskii's students, which in 1923 became professors for the
course "Space" (introduction to architecture), which he developed at VKhUTEMAS: Sergei
izobretateliakh] of the Council of People's Commissars (the government) was passed on June 30, 1919. The
movement was revived and activized during the First Five-Year Plan: the All-Union Volunteer Society of
Rationalizers and Inventors was created in 1932. See: V. S. Poznanskii, "Na zare sovetskogo izobretatel'stva" ["At
the dawn of Soviet inventorship"], Izobretatel' i Ratsionalizator[Inventor and Rationalizer], No.6 (1959): 1-3; N.
Raigorodskii, "Vpervye v istorii" ["For the first time in history"], Izobretatel' i Ratsionalizator [Inventor and
Rationalizer],No.6 (1959): 19.
89 More

on this group and on the INKhUK, see below.

90 Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 11. Russian original: <Co3AaHHA H opraHH3aIiH JIa6opaTopHH AOCTaTOqHO

o 6 mHpHori H o60pyAOBaHHONI AJI npoBeAeHHA omhTOB H gOCTaTOfHfo 6oraToii cpeACTBaMH AIA BmiiiOJIHeHH
MoAenIer, MaKeToB, BCeB03MoXCHb1X rpa4HrqeCKHX pa6oT H npHMepHwX apXHTeKTypHuX HOCTaHOBOK, CTOJh,

Heo6XoAHMMx Aim

co3arHH

XOT

6bM

HJIJIIO30pHOrO

rpeAcTaBjieHHH npocTpaHcTBa, 6e3 KoTopOrO apxHTeKTypa

HeMmcJIHMa)).

62

Glagolev, Mikhail Korzhev, Ivan Lamtsov, V. Petrov, Yurii Spasskii, and Mikhail Turkus. 91 El
Lissitskii and Konstantin Mel'nikov were also counted among ASNOVA's members. 92 Together
with Ladovskii, Lissitzky co-edited Izvestia ASNOVA (No. 1, 1926), a newsletter that was
conceived as a Rationalist periodical organ rivaling Constructivist Sovremennaia Arkhitektura.
However in the tough economic situation of the early Soviet years the publication fell through,
and, in spite of another attempt at creating a serial publication three years later (Arkhitektura i
VKhUTEIN, #1, 1929) the Rationalists never received a venue for publicizing their ideas.
Instead, as a method of advertising their platform, they relied on their pedagogical practice at
VKhUTEMAS

(renamed into VKhUTEIN in 1927) hoping that their graduates would

disseminate Rationalist architecture throughout the country. Moreover, because they wer
absorbed in pedagogical activity, the leaders of Rationalism-Ladovskii, Krinskii, and
Dokuchaev-received relatively few practical commissions. As a result, the Rationalist
pedagogical practices at VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN constituted their most significant legacy
and therefore present the best material for assessing the group's architectural theory. Venturing
into the philosophical genealogy and implications of Ladovskii's architectural theory, this
chapter considers empriocriticism and the other psychologizing epistemological and aesthetic
theories employed by Ladovskii before turning to an assessment of his pedagogical techniques.

91 Among the other members of ASNOVA who had previously studied under Ladovskii were Vitalii Lavrov, Maria
Kruglova, Trifon Varentsov, Nikolai Travin, Georgii Krutikov, Liubov' Zalesskaia, Vladimir Myslin, Andrei Bunin,
Irina Tikhomirova, Militsa Prokhorova, Ivan Volod'ko, Nadezhda Bykova, Aleksandr Sil'chenkov.
According to Izvestia ASNOVA, in one of ASNOVA's meetings Lissitzky lectured on "Contemporary
architecture
in Europe and America. Impressions of an international trip," whereas at another one Mel'nikov presented on "The
construction of Soviet pavilion on the International exposition of decorative art in Paris." See Izvestia ASNOVA, No.
1 (1926): 6.
92

63

Empiriocriticism
"...The equality of Formalism with Machism, of course, is far from being accidental, as
the Formalists profess a subjective idealism in its newer reincarnation, adapted for the demands
of our time. This is why particularly Mach, this 'Kant inside out,' is the closest philosophical
figure for the Formalists." 93 Thus a Stalinist critic characterized the Rationalist philosophical
platform in 1932, explaining the necessity of overcoming sectarian differences (and, with them,
ideological deviations) within Soviet architecture. Indeed, at the time when the Plekahnov-Lenin
version of dialectical materialism was codified to the status of unquestionable wisdom, Machism,
which was vigorously condemned by Lenin in Materialismand Empiriocriticism(1909), became
a serious political accusation. Not only the Rationalists, but even Stalin had to forget his earlier
fascination with empiriocriticist philosophy. 94 In fact, already in 1927, in a vain attempt to
vindicate their reputation from frequent accusations (especially by the Constructivists) of
Machism, Rationalists Fedor Shalavin and Ivan Lamtsov tried to turn tables and to fight the
opponents with their own weapon: "A Constructivist does not accept the fact that human
perception is socially conditioned... However, operating with the psychophysiological nature of
a human, he cannot help sliding into a Machist swamp, and present us, on the basis of laws of

93 A. I. Mikhailov, Gruppirovki Sovietskoi arkhitektury [Fractionsof Soviet Architecture] (Moskva: Izogiz, 1932)
45. Russian original: "COBageHHe 4)OpMaiH3Ma C MaXH3MOM, KOHeqHO, He CxyqaHoe, H60 4OPMa2iHCTh
nponOBeAyIOT cy6reKTHBHm1 H~eanH3M B ero 6o0ee HOBOM, npHCnoco6neHHOM KYCJIOBHMM BpeMeHH BHAe. BOT
nosemy HMeHHO Max, 3TOT "KaHT HaHHaHKy", SBJISITCA HaH6ojiee 6nH3Kog c1HJoco4CKol 4rHypoi AJR
4OpmaJIHCTOB."

E. Van Ree, "Stalin as a Marxist Philosopher," Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 52, No. 4 (2000): 259308.
94

64

psychophysiology, with the notorious Machist "economy of thinking," which has long been
burred under the sharp blows of materialist criticism." 95
Unfortunately for Shalavin and Lamtsov, the word "Machism" remained associated with
their own-not their opponents'-theory. Eventually, this contributed to a fuller erosion of
Rationalism than that of Constructivism from the annals of early-Soviet architectural history, to a
more contemptuous attitude towards its material legacy, and consequently, to its obscurity
among architecture historians today. Although Stalinist critics probably understood the
potentially disastrous consequences of the charges they were bringing, they-if one is to be fair
to them-were giving an insightful scholarly assessment of Rationalist methodology, an
assessment that was more insightful in fact than those of later, sympathetic architectural
historians, both in Russia and in the West. Indeed, as recently published archival materials
testify, Ladovskii not only had a strong interest in Mach's epistemology, but persistently
educated his colleagues in it and did not hesitate to call empiriocriticism the philosophical
foundation of his architectural theory.96
This 1932 squabble-a desperate attempt to save their schools from imminent dissolution
within the nascent "socialist realism"-echoed

the high esteem for the founder of

empiriocriticism Ernst Mach (1838-1916) had enjoyed in early-Soviet culture. Secured by the
legitimization of empiriocriticism as a revolutionary theory by the Narkompros and the

Fedor Shalavin and Ivan Lamtsov, "0 levoi faze v arkhitekture (K voprosu ob ideologii konstruktivizma)" ["On
the left phase in architecture (To the question of the ideology of Constructivism)"], KrasnaiaNov' [Red Newness],
No.8 (1927): 226-239 (236-237).
95

96

Archival documents related to Ladovskii's early theoretical investigations, particularly
within the Institute of

Artistic Culture (INKhUK), have been published by Selim Khan-Magomedov in: Ratsionalizm, 102-138.
65

Proletkul't, 97 this esteem was rooted in Mach's status as the leading contemporary physicist and
philosopher of science, a status that he fully enjoyed during his lifetime both at home and abroad.
Max Plank, for example, remembering in his "Scientific Autobiography" the difficulties he had
experienced in the 1890s with the introduction of his quantum theory, wrote that "all my sound
arguments fell on deaf ears. It was simply impossible to be heard against the authority of men
like Ostwald, Helm and Mach." 98 Mach was particularly renowned for his work in
thermodynamics, optics, acoustics and the mechanics of supersonic velocity. 99 But these
concerns of a practicing physicist made him turn to philosophy, which had failed to provide an
adequate substantiation for his experimental work. As the historian of philosophy Anatolii Zotov
has argued, the particular philosophical problem that Mach faced concerned the notion of
scientific experience: since each experiment had a pre-conceived goal that was known to the
experimenter in advance, and since all experiments had to be reproducible, a Heraclitian everchanging universe (in other words, the materialist conviction that every object is unique) could
not conform to the requirement of repeatability. To anchor experimental physics in a permanent
and scientific foundation, Mach turned to a new scientific discipline, which had just emerged in

97 More on both organizations, see the Introduction to this dissertation.

98 Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor (London: Williams & Norgate,
1950) 30.
99 Ernst Mach (1838-1916) was a physicist, a renowned specialist in the field of thermodynamics, optics, acoustics
and mechanics of supersonic velocity. For most part of his professional career, between 1867 and 1895, he held the
chair of Experimental Physics at the Charles University in Prague. Dealing with dynamic (both rotating and
rectilineal) reference frames, Mach had to reject Newton's notion of absolute space and time, introducing into his
physics a principle that Einstein later labeled "Mach's principle" (or Mach's conjecture), which can be generally
formulated as ""Local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe." See Stephen W.
Hawking and George Francis Rayner Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Cambridge University Press,
1973) 1.

66

the 1870s, the physiological study of human perception, which analyzed perceptual mechanisms
by activating them in physical experiments.1 00
Not limiting its influence to physicists, Mach's empiriocriticism became an influential
epistemological model that fascinated thinkers across disciplines and geographic borders-or
provoked their hatred. Even Lenin-who, as Louis Althusser believed, could have said about
himself "I know that my formulations and definitions are vague, unpolished; I know that
philosophers are going to accuse my materialism of being 'metaphysical'. ... Whereas I treat
philosophy differently, I practice it, as Marx intended, in obedience to what it is. That is why I
believe I am a 'dialectical materialist"' 10 '-devoted

a year of his life (1908) to writing a

philosophical work whose sole purpose was to destroy empiriocriticism's influence among
Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. The ensuing publication, Materialism and EmpirioCriticism. Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1909), claimed that hidden behind
the fagade of Mach's and Avenarius's scientific objectivism was nothing else than subjective
idealism, which he traced back to "the old idealist," bishop George Berkeley. Particularly
irritating for Lenin was empiriocriticists' rejection of the fundamental for Orthodox Marxism
category of matter as metaphysical, that is, speculative and unscientific.1 02 The practical, and
perhaps, more important, purpose of the work was, however, to discredit his political rival,
Aleksandr Bogdanov, who enjoyed the reputation of being the Party's major intellectual and
100 Anatolii Zotov, "Vmesto predislovia" ["Instead of a preface"], Ernst Mach, Analiz oschuschenij i otnoshenie
fizicheskogo kpsikhicheskomu [Analysis of Sensations and the Relationship of the Physicalto the Psychic] (Moskva:
Territoria buduschego, 2005) 7-30 (13-14).
101 Louis Althusser, "Lenin and Philosophy" (1968), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York and
London: Monthly Review Press, 1971) 23-68. Web. 4.19.2014.
<http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/LPOE70i.html#s2>.
102 Vladimir Lenin, Materializm i empiriokrititsizm. Kriticheskie zametki ob odnoi reaktsionnoi filosofii
[Materialism and Empiriocriticism. Critical Notes on One Reactionary Philosophy] (1908). Web. 4.19.2014.
<http://magister.msk.ru/library/lenin/len14v01.htm#vved>.

67

whose philosophical adherence to empiriocriticism was well-known. 103 In 1906, Bogdanov
edited the Russian translation of Mach's Analysis of Sensations. In the preface, where he
attempted to explain "What cari a Russian reader seek in Ernst Mach?" Bogdanov charged
"comrade Plekhanov' 0 4 and his disciples" (by whom he, of course, meant Lenin) with
mummifying Marx, who, in his view, always based social-economical theories on the latest
scientific discoveries; thus, for Bogdanov, nothing could be more Marxist than modernizing
Marxism according to the latest scientific standard, even if philosophically it meant denouncing
materialism. 105

Although, hidden in the ivory tower of German-speaking academia, neither Mach nor
Avenarius ever expressed sympathy for radical political movements, many European socialists
accepted empiriocriticism as a kindred philosophical teaching. 106 In Russia, empiriocriticism was
embraced by the majority of the radical left intelligentsia, which kept alive the traditions of
1860s nihilism, renouncing all non-physiological explanations of human thoughts and behavior
103

More on Bogdanov-Lenin controversy see the Introduction to this dissertation.

Russian economist Georgii Plekhanov (1856-1918) was the most prominent of the so-called "Orthodox"
Marxists. In spite of some major disagreements, Lenin considered himself Plekhanov's disciple and based his
economic theory on Plekhanov's interpretation of Marxism.
104

105

Ernst Mach, Analiz oschuschenij, 35.

See, for instance, a translation of Friedrich Adler's panegyric devoted to Mach's 70th birthday
in The
InternationalSocialist Review, Vol. VIII No. 10 (April 1908): 577-588. Nevertheless, in the introduction to the
Russian edition of "U' ber das Prinzip der Erhaltung der Energie"["On the Principle of the Conservation of Energy"]
Mach wrote: "I recall that it was particularly difficult for me [as a child] to understand two phenomena: first, I
could not understand how the world could find pleasure in subjugating to a king for a single minute. The second
difficulty laid in the phenomenon that Lessing so perfectly expressed in the epigram: Es ist doch sonderbar bestellt,
Sprach Hinschen schlau zu Vetter Fritzen, Dass nur die Reichen in der Welt Das meiste Geld besitzen [It is very
strange, slyly said little Hans to cousin Fritz, that only the richest in the world possess most of money]. Multiple
fruitless attempts on the part of my mother to help me solve these two riddles could give her a very bad opinion
about my ability to understand things. ... Here, there are two ways of reconciling with reality: either the person
becomes used to the riddles and they stop torturing him, or he learns to understand them historically and since then
stops to look at them with hatred."
106

68

("You and I are just like frogs, except that we walk on two legs," claimed Yevgeny Bazarov, the
protagonist of Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons1 07). Vladimir Lesevich (1837-1905), the first
Russian popularizer of empiriocriticism in the early 1890s, in the 1860s was a member of
revolutionary nihilist "peopleist" [narodniki] group, later in his life shifting towards more liberal
political ideals. 108 Lesevich's book What is a scientificphilosophy? (on which Lenin commented
that the word "scientific" in the title outght to be read "fashionable, professorial, eclectic"109)
made Anatolii Lunacharskii, then a radically-minded Kiev gymnasium student preoccupied with
an attempt "to create an emulsion of Spenser and Marx" turn his attention to empiriocriticism
and eventually leave for Zurich in 1895 to study with Avenarius.1

0 Lunacharskii's

self-designed

program of study in Zurich included seminars with first-rate biologists (anatomy with Rudolf
Martin, physiology with Justus Gaule, and physiology of perception with Rudolf Wlassak) and
third-rate economists and political theorists (political economy with Fritz Platten and Marxism
with Russian Menshevik emigrant Pavel Aksel'rod). But, for Lunacharskii, "all this faded into

107

Ivan Turgenev, Ottsy i deti [Fathersand Sons] (1862). Lib.ru. Web. 4.19.2014. Russian
original: omR

wKe JImry1IKH,

CTo6oHr Te

TOJIbKO TO Ha HoraX XOHMM)>.

Vladimir Lesevich, Chto takoe nauchnaiaphilosophia [ What is a scientificphilosophy] (St. Petersburg: Tip. I.N.
Skorokhodova, 1891). Another popularizer of empiriocriticism, scientist and writer Mikhail Filippov, who until his
death during a chemical experiment was the editor of Nauchnoe obozrenie ('Scientific Review,' 1894-1903), a
journal that published, alongside Mach, Helmholz, and Bekhterev, the works of Lenin, Plekhanov, and other
Bolsheviks. Led by such left positivists as Lesevich and Filippov, Russian revolutionaries adapted positivism for
their purposes, taking it as a tool of purifying Marxism from its Hegelian metaphysical residue. See A I. Novikov, S
S. Gusev, and A F. Zamaleev, eds., Russkii Pozitivizm : Lesevich, Iiishkevich Bogdanov [Russian positivism:
Lesevich, Iushkevich, Bogdanov] (Sankt-Peterburg: "Nauka", 1995).
108

109 Lenin, Materialismand Empiriocriticism,footnote 39.
110 In Zurich, Lunacharskii became a part of "intellectually high milieu" of Russian radically-minded student body
of Zurich University, among whom were future prominent revolutionaries, such as Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich.
Anatolii Lunacharskii, "Vospominania iz revolutsionnogo proshlogo" ["Recollections from a revolutionary past"]
(1919), Nasledie A. V Lunacharskogo [The Legacy of A. V. Lunacharskii]. Web. 4.19.2014.
<https:/sites.google.com/site/lunacharskyfund/lib/vospominaniya-i-vpechatleniya/vospominania-iz-revolucionnogoproslogo>.

69

the background... compared to the work with Avenarius." 111 The future creator of Soviet culture
took both available seminars with the leader of empiriocriticism--one on philosophy and another
on "bio-psychology," designed around Avenarius's newly published book Kritik der reinen
Erfahrung (The Critique of Pure Experience, 1888-1890), a Russian resume of which
Lunacharskii published in 1905.112
The influence of Bogdanov, Lunacharkii, Gorky and their co-thinkers on Soviet avantgarde art and aesthetics has been traditionally underestimated by scholars, wa overshadowed by
Lenin's Orthodox Marxism. Moreover, the attempts of recent American scholarship to find
affinities between Soviet "avant-garde" (first of all, Constructivist) aesthetics and Frankfurt
school thinking have further obscured "the avant-garde's" indebtedness to empiriocriticist
tradition, while associating empiriocriticsm with vulgar materialism.1 1 3 Nevertheless, in the
relatively pluralistic postrevolutionary atmosphere, in which cultural politics were officially
delegated by Party leaders to their former rivals, empiriocriticist philosophical and aesthetic
ideas was far from denigrated. Empiriocriticism, in fact, had been at the core of Soviet modernist
architectural theory, which dates back to Expressionist group Sinskul 'ptarkh (Synthesis of
sculpture and architecture, 1919).114 Both in its Cubist-Expressionist style and in the range of

" Lunacharskii, "Vospominania iz revoliutsionnogo proshlogo."
A. Lunacharskii, R. Avenarius. Kritika chistogo opyta vpopuliarnom izlozhenii A. Lunacharskogo
[R. Avenarius.
Critique of pure experience in a popular account of A. Lunacharskii] (Moskva: Izd. S. Dorovatovskago i A.
Charushnikova, 1905).
112

Even such thorough and insightful studies as those by Hays and Fore deny empriocriticism its role in modernist
culture and radical thought. See Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist subject: the Architecture of
Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992); Devin Alden Fore, 'All the
Graphs': Soviet and Weimar DocumentaryBetween the Wars. Diss., Columbia University, 2005.
113

Shortly, after the inclusion of painters, it was renamed Zhivskul'ptarkh (Synthesis of] painting,
sculpture and
architecture, 1919-1920). The group included, among others, Cubist Sculptor Boris Korolev, the future
114

70

problems discussed within the group, Zhivskul'ptarkh presented a remarkable parallel to Berlin
Arbeitsrat flir Kunst (1918-1921), sharing the latter's fantastical mysticism. It was within the
Zhivskul'ptarkh heated discussions about the specificity of arts that Ladovskii suggested a
psychological definition of architecture through space: "Architecture is an art that operates with
space. Sculpture is an art that operates with form. For example, a painterly decoration of walls
will essentially remain a painting unless it helps to feel space, in which case it should be
considered architecture"-a definition immediately corrected by Korolev as a misunderstanding
of the analytical method: "One has to proceed from the elements on which this or that art is
based; space, however, is not an element but a general notion."

15

Expressionist mysticism and Cubist style were soon abandoned by Soviet artists, who
continued to elaborate empiriocriticist ideas within a different institution, the Institute of Artistic
Culture [Institut khudozhestvennoi kul'tury], usually abbreviated to INKhUK. Created in March
of 1920, INKhUK was presided over by Wassily Kandinsky, who successfully encouraged a
study of the psychological effects of art upon the beholder, but whose extreme subjectivism soon
provoked a rebellion of his more materialist-minded colleagues. Led by Rodchenko, in
November 1920, they established the Working Group of Objective Analysis within INKhUK.
Two architects, Nikolai Ladovskii and Vladimir Krinskii, joined this objectivist group a month

Constructivist Aleksandr Rodchenko, and the future Rationalists Ladovskii, Nikolai Dokuchaev, Georgii Mapu and
Vladimir Krinskii.
115

Russian original

of Ladovskii's words:

"ApxHTeKTypa-HcKyccTBo,

onepHpyoiijee npOCTpaHCTBOM.
CKyJibIITypa-HCKyCCTBO, onepHpyiogee @(OpMoA. HapHmep, y6paHcTBo CTeH pacKpaCKOA no CYaieCTBy 6yAeT
)KHBOHHCM6O, HO eci
OHO TaK paCr1OnOweHO,
TO nOMOraeT HORyBCTBOBaTh npOCTpaHCTBO, OHO ABJISeTCA
CpeACTBOM apxHTeKTypbl." Russian original of Korolev's words: "HywHo HCXOAHTh H3 TeX 3JieMeHTOB, Ha KOTOpwX
OCHOBaHO TO HJH HHOe HCKYCCTBO, r1POCTPaHCTBO we ecTE of6tee noHATHe, a He 3neMCHT HCxyccTBa." "The minutes
of the sixth meeting of the Commission of the development of problems of architectural-sculptural synthesis
(Sinskul'ptarkh)." Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 65.

71

after it was created and a year before the creation of VKhUTEMAS-just in time to take part in
the famous discussion on construction and composition.1 16 The group's makes an unambiguous
reference reference to "the method of science-the method of analysis." '7 Juxtaposed with
"synthesis" in the artistic discourse of the time, the word "analysis" also signified an objective,
scientific approach associated with the new, modernist vision of art. Unlike the traditionalists'
approach, which treated art as a technical skill and an artist's talent-as a divine gift, the
modernists' "analysis" aspired to create a science of art, to dissect art in order to reveal its
objective laws."I

In the early days of Rationalism, Ladovskii foresaw an "illustrated dictionary,

which meticulously establishes the terminology and definitions of architecture as a form of art,
architecture's separate properties, qualities, and so forth, and the relationships between
architecture and other arts.""' Although this dictionary (which within architecture reflected an
ambition analogous to that of the communist encyclopedia contemplated by Bogdanov and his
co-thinkers on Capri for Soviet revolution) never materialized, its echoes could be heard in the
VKhUTEMAS pedagogical programs, which approached architecture from the point of view of
its formal "elements," aspiring to create a system of these elements and the laws of their

Hailed by Western historians as the birthplace of Soviet avant-garde, the discussion, indeed,
allowed to formulate
many ideas that later defined artistic and architectural Constructivism. See Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer:
Russian Constructivism in Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
116

117

Russian original: «HaH6onee ixeiecoo6pa3HuM

MeTO9OM

IAs H3y'eHHA apXHTeKTypbI... cneAyeT HPH3HaTb
HayK--meToA aHarH3a&. Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Poiasnitel'naia zapiska k kursu 'iskusstvo
arkhitektury' dlia khudozhestvennykh tekhnikumov" ["Explanatory note to the course 'The Art of Architecture' for
art professional schools"], Sbornik materialov po khudozhestvennomy obrazovaniu [Collection of materials on
artisticeducation] (Moskva: Gos. Izd., 1927) 79-81 (79).
MeTOA

TOqHbIX

"8 Lunacharskii used the words "analytic" and "synthetic" in this sense in order to reconcile "the futurists" and the
"realists" at VKhUTEMAS. See Introduction to this dissertation.
119 "Protokol zasedania rabochei gruppy arkhitektorov INKhUKa" ["Minutes of a meeting
of the Working group of
architects at INKhUK" ], 26 March 1921, Khan-Magornedov, Ratsionalizm, 108.
72

composition.10 Their "psycho-analytical" (or sometimes simply "analytical") pedagogical
method was defined as "a segregated and consecutive (according to complexity) study of the
formal regularities of artistic forms, their elements and qualities on the basis of the physiology of
perception."1

Whereas "synthetic" courses at VKhUTEMAS offered a practical approach to the

development of artistic skill (painting, sculpting or designing under the guidance of a master),
the "analytic" cycle gave students a theoretical knowledge of the psychology of visual
perception. These analytic, so-called propaedeutic (offered at the beginning of students'
education), courses were based on connecting each artistic discipline with a formal element
dominant for that art: "Color" (developed by Constructivists Liubov' Popova and Aleksandr
Vesnin) served an introduction to painting, "Volume" (developed by Cubist sculptor Boris
Korolev)-to sculpture, "Space" (developed by Ladovskii)-to architecture, and "Drawing"
(that is, line)-as an introduction to graphic design.
The discussion on construction and composition exposed the differences within the
Working Group of Objective Analysis, and even before it was officially finished in April 1921,
various factions within the Group became institutionalized as separate working groups: those of
Constructivists, Objectivists, Sculptors, and Architects (the latter including Ladovskii and his
architect-colleague Vladimir Krinskii).

122

The Working Group of Architects, the first meeting of

A similar dictionary of artistic terms had, however, been composed by GAKhN, Gosudarstvennaia Akademia
Khudozhestvennykh Nauk (The State Academy of Artistic Sciences), which also based its research methodology on
psychophysiological aesthetics. The dictionary remained unpublished until recently. See Slovar'khudozhestvennykh
terminov [DictionaryofArt Terminology] (1923-1929) (Moskva: Logos-Al'tera, Ecce Homo, 2005).
10

Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Arkhitekturnyi fakul'tet VKhUTEMASa" ["Architecture Department
of VKhUTEMAS],
Arkhitektura. Raboty arkhitekturnogofakul'teta VKhUTEMAS [Architecture. Works of Architecture Department of
VKhUTEMAS] (Moskva: Izd. VKhUTEMASa, 1927) V-XIV (VIII).
121

The minutes of the meetings make clear Ladovskii's autocratic role as the founder of
the new architectural
theory: the discussions were rather Socratic conversations of the master with his disciples than genuine collegial
73
122

which took place on 26 March 1921, was actively meeting for approximately a year, until
INKhUK became monopolized by the Constructivists and the Productivists, and working groups
started to lose their autonomy. 123 The preserved minutes of the Working Group's meetings
document the first, most productive, year of its work: aspiring to elaborate new directions for
architecture, the Group sought an application of psychophysiological aesthetics and scientific
positivism, discussing the writings of Hermann Muthesius and Heinrich W61fflin alongside those
of a British empiriocriticist Karl Pearson and, of course, Mach. 124
An empiriocriticist agenda based on Mach's picture of reality was codified in the
Program of the Working Group of Architects-the earliest document of Rationalism, accepted
on 7 April 1921-which represented a synthesis of psychophysiological aesthetics and
empiriocriticist epistemology. It postulated that the goal of the group was to perform an "analysis
and synthesis" of the elements of architecture as expressive tools-i.e. as the means of producing
subjective sensations. Space, form and construction were taken as the three key (nuclear, in
Mach's terminology) elements of architecture, while the seven secondary (but not accidental)
elements were mass, weight, volume, color, proportions, movement, and rhythm. Introduced into
the Machian landscape of subjectively perceived qualities, the psychophysiological notion of

debates. Most likely, it was Ladovskii who determined the topics of the meetings and suggested readings to the
presenters. Petrov's talk, for example, was used by Ladovskii as the introduction to an explanation of empathy
theory, while the discussion of Muthesius's text became an occasion to introduce the ideas of the leading
empiriocriticist Austrian physicist Ernst Mach.
123

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 127.

Vladimir Krinskii, "Otchet o teoreticheskoi rabote gruppy arkhitektorov IKhUK" ["Report on
the theoretical
work of the Group of architects at INKhUK"], Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 126-127.
124

74

space became the most important element of architecture, and an investigation of spatial
properties was declared the first priority of the group.12 5
In the absence of objects that previously served as the basic structural units of
architectural language ("a wall, a roof, a column, a beam, a plinth, a pediment, etc." Ladovskii
described a list of such elements), the new architectural theory, for the architect, was to be
comprised of perceivable spatial qualities in the same way that Mach's epistemology imagined
the internalized universe as a set of elements of perception.1 2 6 Just as Mach suggested going
from sensations to bodies rather than from bodies to sensations,

27

Ladovskii insisted on defining

architectural elements first and only then, based on these definitions, developing a new notion of
architecture: "from a study of separate properties and qualities of a phenomenon-to building on
these foundations conclusions and definitions of the phenomenon itself."1 2 8 These qualities-the
formal, subjective properties of spatial perception-in turn, comprised the essence of
architecture and the object of architectural creativity. As Ladovksii's colleague and associate
Nikolai Dokuchaev observed, the formal task of architecture consisted in designing architectural
form in such a way, "that it is independently of the situation perceived as a form of a certain

125

"Protokol zasedania rabochei gruppy arkhitektorov INKhUKa," 26 March 1921, 108-109.

"Protokol zasedania programmnoi komissii rabochei gruppy arkhitektorov INKhUKa" ["Minutes
of the meeting
of Program Commission of the Working Group of Architects at INKhUK"], Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 108109.
126

Mach claimed that "Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of sensation (complexes of
elements) make
up bodies." Ernst Mach, Contributions to the analysis of the sensations (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing
Company, 1897) 22.
128 "Protokol zasedania rabochei gruppy arkhitektorov
INKhUKa," 26 March 1926, 108.
127

75

quality, which is given to it by the author"-the goal of architectural work, in other words, was
to design not the form, but its psychological correlate (i.e. the subjectivity of the viewer). 129
The absence of a thing and an absence of a boundary between a thing and the "I," was,
for Ladovskii, the key lesson of Mach's epistemology. Opposing Mach to Kant (most likely, to
dissociate empiriocriticism from the idealism of the latter), Ladovskii argued against the
mysticism of the unknowable object in such a way that the thing-in-itself assumed the qualities
of Marx's matter-a category whose preterition eloquently testified to its incompatibility with
Mach's (and Ladovskii's) philosophical system. Meanwhile, the subject, dissolved in the world
of psychological sensations and merged with an object, was not only demystified-it became
analyzable and constructable. In the end, it was this ultimate constructability of the subject that
attracted Ladovskii to Mach's teachings and that made empiriocriticism a useful tool for
Ladovskii's major tasks-namely developing a new architectural theory in post-revolutionary
Russia and teaching architecture at VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN.
The result of Mach's "radical doubt" about the existence of material world was its
reduction to subjective sensations of physical properties: colors, sounds, temperatures, times, and
spaces. Since every physical quality (or element, in Mach's terminology) existed in mind as a
sensation, the old dualism of spirit and matter was overcome, explained away as a mere
linguistic misunderstanding. The mosaics of elements/sensations that the world presented was
not chaotic, but rather organized into complexes, which, although never absolutely stable,
Translation by the author. Dokuchaev's emphasis. Russian original: <HayqHmcAs...
TaK o opM=sLm
[apxHTecrypHyio @OpMy], ITo6bI OHa BO Bcex cRyqaiX BocipHHHMaac6 3pHTeneM, KaK 4opMa onpegeneHHoro
KaqecTBa, AaHHoro eii aBTOpOMM. Nikolai Dokuchaev, ""Poiasnitel'naia zapiska k kursu 'iskusstvo arkhitektury'
129

dlia khudozhestvennykh tekhnikumov" ["Explanatory note to the course 'The Art of Architecture' for art
professional schools"], Sbornik materialov po khudozhestvennomy obrazovaniu [Collection of materials on art
education] (Moskva: Gos. Izd., 1927).

76

demonstrated a certain permanency. For the sake of ease in our orientation in the world, these
relatively stable complexes of sensations, connected in time and space, were called bodies. As a
result, concluded Mach, it was not bodies that produced sensations but, on the contrary,
complexes of sensations (or elements) that made up bodies. 130
No single body was absolutely stable in Mach's worldview: "My friend may put on a
different coat. His countenance may assume a serious or a cheerful expression. His complexion,
under the effects of light or emotion, may change. His shape may be altered by motion, or be
definitely changed." Nevertheless, "It is the same friend with whom I take my daily walk"-we
recognize a complex of sensations as our friend on the basis of permanent qualities, which
outnumber transitory ones.131 In other words, Mach saw a body as a combination of stable
nucleus qualities (which he also called permanent facts) and unstable, "annexed," accidental
ones.

32

The "I," for Mach, was also only a relatively permanent combination of qualities, a

"complex of memories, moods, and feelings, joined to a particular body (the human body)."1 33
This postulation of the ultimate instability of the ego led Mach to such philosophical findings as
the impossibility of death, but most importantly, it allowed him to argue for a principal
inseparability between the "I" and the world. This idea was most vividly illustrated by Mach's
drawing that showed how closing one eye changed the perceived vision of the world, forcefully
merging the body with it. The picture of external reality seen by Mach was now framed with his

130

Mach, Contributionsto the analysis of the sensations, 22.

131

Mach, Contributionsto the analysis of the sensations, 2-3.

132

Mach, Contributionsto the analysis of the sensations, 10.

133

Mach, Contributionsto the analysisof the sensations, 3.
77

own moustache, his nose and his eyebrow, while his
legs and hands were perceived as seamless part of
the environment. Mach wrote:

4*

Fig. 2.1. Mach's illustration to The Analysis
of Sensations, showing the merging of the
Ego and the world.

I find myself surrounded by moveable bodies in
space, some inanimate, others plants, animals and
men. My body, likewise moveable in space, is for
me a visible and touchable object of sense
perception occupying a part of sensible space
alongside and outside other bodies, just as they do.
My body differs from those of other people in
certain individual features but above all in that when
objects touch my body peculiar feelings supervene
that I do not observe when other bodies are touched.
My body is not quite as accessible to my eyes as the
bodies of others. I can see only a small part of my
head, at least directly. In general my body appears to
me under a perspective quite different from that of
all others: towards them I cannot take up that
optical point of view. 134

Ladovskii was open about his indebtedness to Mach. The most valuable part of Mach's
theory for him was its rejection of the notion of an object and its replacement with a vision of
more or less loosely connected complexes of elements. On 12 May 1920, during a discussion of
the laws of mechanics in architecture within the Working Group of Architects, the leader of
Rationalism presented empiriocriticism to his colleagues, effectively reducing it to this idea:
I will introduce you to the opinion of Mach, to his argumentation. You have drawn a
construction and you argue that this is architecture. Let us take a clock: it too has a
construction, but this does not make it architecture. We have, therefore, to start with
establishing scientific terms.
Mach says: "Objects do not exist in the world." Earlier, some theoreticians and
philosophers told us that an object exists, while others claimed that only our perceptions
are real. Both arguments, as it seemed, were correct, and no one could recognize a
Ernst Mach, Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry (Dordrecht and Boston:
D. Reidel
Pub. Co., 1976) 4.
134

78

mistake in the assumptions. There is no difference between you and a thing... "I" can be
infinitely extended. Existent are your body, mind, clock. A body is connected to a
thing-through an eye and the brain. I say about an eye "this is me." But I can also say
"the clock is also me." There is no boundary between myself and the external world. I
can connect myself to the globe. There is no boundary, but there is a link that is
convenient to confine oneself to.
What is an object? Earlier [people] thought about the object itself and its properties as an
object. This led philosophers to mistakes. Think only of Kant's useless attempts to give
corresponding notions. Mach is attempting to remove this strange error. He determines
that "only complexes of elements exist." They are changeable, but connected in time.
And those whose connection is more stable-these are the ones we talk about. Here is a
dress. We could have said now that it is a complex of certain forces. But this would be
inconvenient, because there are more stable and more temporal values; the latter do not
give it a definite character. Thus Mach says: only changeable complexes of qualities
temporally exist, while there are no things in themselves. 13 5
This epistemological reduction of bodies to elements of perception and their qualities
allowed Ladovskii to follow his program of using architecture to reorganize human subjectivity.
Moreover, Ladovskii's program of the development of a new Soviet subject-the major
preoccupation of all post-revolutionary thinkers and cultural bureaucrats-was also indebted to
empiriocriticism: if the vision of perceived physical reality was based on the writings of Mach,
the purpose, character, and structure of the new subject were conceived by Ladovskii under the

135 Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 119. Translation by the author. Russian original:
"Max rOBOpHT: <HpCMeTOB
He cyIecTByeT B MHpe>). Torga HaM TeopeTHKH, 4HnoCoh1 rOBOpHnH: OAHH--TO npeAmeT cyHiecTByeT, ApyrHe
yTBepKJAaJIH, TO cyIeCTByIOT JIHUIh HaIiH oHxyixeHHA. 06a yrBepXCAeHHA, Ka3aJiOCb,

unJ InpaBBI, H HCJIh3A 6un2o

paCIIO3HaTb OMIH6OK B nOCbIJIKax. Pa3HHIUm MeXAy BaMH H BeLLMO HeT... BmTAHyTh A

MOKHO lo 6eCKOHeqHOCTH.

CyuiecTByeT Bame Teilo, Co3HaHHe, qacI. Mewcy TeJfOM H ecTm CBR36 C BenVMo-Mepe3 rna3 H MO3r. A rOBOpIo o
rJia3e: u3TO A >. Ho 3 MOry CKa3aTh: RH Macu 3TO A>. Mexqy MHOIO H BHeUIHHM MHPOM HeT rpaHHmI. A MOry ce6A
CBI3aTb C 3CMHumM LUaPOM H T.A. ]FpaHHIXi He CyIeCTByeT, HO ecT CBI3b, KOTOpOil yAo6HO orpaHHlHTcA.
'ITO ecTm

npeAMeT? PaHime pa3ymeIH caM nIpeAMeT H ero CBOHCTBa BeImH. RnaroAapA 3TOMy 4HIcO4m
npe6bIBaIH B 3a6nyKAeHHH. BcnoMHre TOjmKO 6edCone3mue ycHaHA KaHTa AaT COOTBeTCTByIOHiHe HOHrTH.
3TO cTpaHHoe 3a6JIyAeHHe rEiuaeTcA ycTpaHHT Max. OH yCTaHaBnHBaeT, TO <CyHCCTByIOT TOJIrKO KOMIIJIeKCb
KaqecTB>. OHH riepeMeHHU, HO CBZ3aHI BO BpemeHH.
Tex Ma H rOBOpHM. BOT nAaTbe. Mm MOrJIH
HeyAo6HO, TaK

3ACCb eCT

6w

H Te, y KOTOpHbX B3aHMHaA

Tenepr cKa3am,

CB3b 6oJiee fpooJDKHTeJIfHa,--o

TO 3To KOMrJiIKC TaKHx-To CHn.

BeJIHqHHM 6oJIee IocTOAHHMe, ApyrHe-BpeeHHe;

Ho 3T0 6uno 6u

nocJIeAHHe He gaIOT emy
onpe~eneHHoro XapaKTepa. Max H rOBOpHT: CyIIeCTByIOT BO BpeMeHH TOJIbKO nepemeHHme KOMHf1KCM icaMecTB, a
BeIIerl B ce6e HHXaKHX He cyIIecTByeT."
KaX

79

impact of teachings of Mach's philosopher-colleague Richard Avenarius. In accordance with
Avenarius's viewpoint, with contemporary aesthetic theories, and with the values and principles
of early-Soviet culture, the new subject, most of all, was to become efficient and economical in
his or her every function. For architecture, Ladovskii believed, this meant an economy of mental
energy expended in the process of perceiving architectural form.

Psychological Aesthetics and the Economy of Mental Energy
The similarity of the Rationalist method's name, "analytical," or "psycho-analytical"
method, with the Freudian school of psychology was hardly unknown to Ladovskii, who keenly
followed contemporary psychological publications. Nevertheless, Ladovskii's method had little
to do with a Freudian analysis of sexuality. Instead, I would argue, the name was a deliberate
reference to the psychological theory that was associated first and foremost with the notion of the
unconscious-a notion at the core of Ladovskii's theory of architectural perception.'

36

Indeed,

the writings and theories of Sigmund Freud were known in Russia before the revolution and did
not disappear after. Several key works of Freud were published in Russian in the 1910s and
1920s. 13 The revolution led not to an oblivion, but to a revival of Freudian enthusiasm in Russia

For an example of dismissing the connection between Ladovskii's "psychoanalytical
method" and Freud's
psychoanalysis, see: Andrei Velikanov, Simuliiakr 1i ia drozhashchitiii pravo imeiu [Am I a shivering simulacrum
or do I have a right] (Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007); Aleksandr Rappoport, "Paradoksy
Ladovskogo" ["Ladovskii's paradoxes"], Prostranstvo VKhUTEMAS: nasledie, traditsii, novatsii [VKhUTEMAS
Space: Legacy, Traditions, Innovations] (Moskva: MARHI, 2010); Margarete VWhringer, Avantgarde Und
Psychotechnik: Wissenschaft, Kunst Und Technik Der Wahrnehmungsexperimente in Der Frihen Sowjetunion
(Gdttingen: Wallstein, 2007) 49. Most other scholars have been avoiding the question of the name of Ladovskii's
pedagogical method.
136

Among the translations were: Snotolkovanie (Traumdeutung, 1900), 1911; Totem i
Tabu (Totem und Tabu:
Einige Obereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker, 1913), 1923; Osnovnye
137

80

in the mid-i 920s, when it was reinterpreted as cognate to physiology and Marxism.
Revolutionary Karl Radek supported psychoanalysis in one of his "Pravda" articles in 1923,138
while in Literature and Revolution (1924) Leon Trotsky mentioned that, in his opinion,
psychoanalysis "can be reconciled with materialism."

39

Although fruitful, this revival was short-

lived: the Russian Psychoanalytical Society, for example, was created in 1922 and disbanded in
1930, the dates of its existence coinciding with the period in which\ psychoanalysis was tolerated
by authorities and popular among psychologists.
In the 1920s, a series of publications in academic and party journals undertook the task of
reconciling psychoanalysis with Marxism. It started with a 1923 article by Bernard Bykhovskii
"On the Methodological Foundations of Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory," published in a journal
of the Communist Academy, the major intellectual think-tank of the Soviet power. According to
psikhologicheskie teorii v psikhoanalize, 1923; Ocherki po psikhologii seksual'nosti (Drei Abhandlungen der
Sexualtheorie, 1905), 1924; Psikhopatologia obydennoi zhizni (Psychopatologiedes Alltagslebens, 1901), 1925;
Ostrota (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewujiten, 1905), 1925; Po tu storonu printsipa udovol'stvia
(Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920), 1925; a book on Freud, F. Vittel's, Freid. Ego lichnost', uchenie i shkola, was
published in 1925.
Aron Zalkind, "Freidizm i marksizm. Marksizm i psikhologia" ["Freudianism and Marxism.
Marxism and
psychology], Freid, Psikhoanaliz i Russkaia Mysl' [Freud, Psychoanalysis and Russian Thought] (Moskva:
Respublika, 1994) 145-167 (145).
138

139 Leon Trotsky, Literatureand Revolution, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1960, 220. Russian
original: "Ho 'qo

cKa3aTb HO HOBoWy ncHxoaHaJiHTHqecKori
HanpHMep, T. PageK (H i

BMeCTe C mM),

TeopHH

cDpefiAa? 1pHmHpma

JIH

OHa c MaTepHaJIH3MoM,

KaK

AyMaeT,

HIH xce BpaxKe6Ha eMy?" Two years later, Trotzky argued developed his

thought: "It would be too simple and crude to declare psycho-analysis as incompatible with Marxism and to turn
one's back to it. In any case, we are not obliged to adopt Freudianism either. It is a working hypothesis. It can
produce, and it does produce deductions and surmises which point to a materialist psychology. In due time,
experimentation will provide the tests. Meanwhile, we have neither reason nor right to declare a ban on a method
which, even though it may be less reliable, tries to anticipate results towards which the experimental method
advances only very slowly." Quoted in Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (New York:
Random House, 1959) 180. For the original, see L. Trotsky, Sochinenia (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1927), 430431. See alsom Alexander Etkind, The Eros of the Impossible. The History of PsychoanalysisIn Russia (Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1997); Martin A. Miller Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia
and the Soviet Union (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 87.

81

Bykhovskii, the core of Freud's teaching lay in his concept of the unconscious, which was fully
compatible with both Marxism and materialist psychology:
When you learn psychoanalysis better, you not only become convinced in its
compatibility with reactology, 40 but also start doubting its subjectivism. Subjectivism
seems to be a shell that obscures the essence. Indeed, psychoanalysis [is] a study of the
unconscious, of something that happens beyond the subjective "I." The unconscious
really impacts human reactions, frequently orchestrating them. The unconscious cannot
be studied through cognition, subjectively. This is the reason why Freud studies objective
manifestations of the unconscious (symptom, mistake, etc.), seeking for the conditions
of minimal participation of reason (dream, childhood). All this is undoubtedly admissible
for reactology. 14 1

Similarly, in his early article "Psychoanalysis as a system of monist psychology" (1925),
Aleksandr Luria (who was soon to become prominent Soviet neuropsychologist) viewed
psychoanalysis as a paradigm with allows to view personality in its entirety, as a unity of
biological and cognitive stimuli: "Psychoanalysis abruptly ends with metaphysics and idealism
of old psychology and lays (with the doctrine of reactions and reflexes of man) a solid
foundation of psychology of materialist monism, positively approaching the psyche of integral

Reactology-psychological approach developed in Russia by Konstantin Kornilov (1879-1957)
as a synthesis of
subjective psychology, physiology, and Marxism. It explored the notion of reaction, which was developed as an
expansion and development of that of reflex; the method of reactology consisted in measuring speed, strength and
form of reactions. In the 1930s, reactology was criticized and eventually dismantled (alongside other Soviet
psychological schools, such as reflexology, psychoanalysis, psychotechnics, pedology).
140

B. Bykhovskii, "0 metodologicheskikh osnovaniiakh psikhoanaliticheskogo
uchenia Freida" ["On the
methodological foundations of the psychoanalytical teaching of Freud"], Pod znamenem Marksizma [Under the
Banner of Marxism] No. 11-12 (1923): 158-177. Bykhovskii's emphasis. Translation by the author. Russian
original: «Kora 6Hxce 3HaKOMHIHCJI C 1CHXOaHaJ30M, He TOJImKO y6ewgaembCA B ero cornacyemocTH c
peaicronorHel, HO H HaqHHaemCCOMHeBaTmCI B ero cy6LeicrHBH3Me. Cy6LeicrHB3M icaxceTC 3aTeMHaIoHiefi cym
,ena o6onoKoA. B CaMOM Aenie, ncHxoaHamH3-yqeHHe o 6eCCo3HaTeJbHOM, o qeM-TO, IlpoHXOASieM BHe
npege1oB cy6feKTHBHoro K(>>. EeCCO3HaTeJImHoe peaJHo BO3AeNcTByeT Ha peaKIgHH opraHH3Ma, MaCTO pylOBOAA
HMH. EeCCo3HaTeJIbHoe He MOCeT 6Th H3yIaeMo qepe3 Co3HaHHe, cy6eKTHBHO. 3TO H CJIyxHT npH'HHOi TOrO,
ITO CIDpeA H3yaeT o6-ewTHBHbLe HPOBJIeHH 6eCco3HaTeJImHoro (cHmnToM, omIH6Ka H T.A.) HleT YCJIOBH
MHHHMaJnhHOrO yIaCTHR Co3HaHHi (CoH, ,eTcKHr Bo3pacT). Bce 3To 6e3ycJIOBHo IIpHeMJnHMO xmJ peaKTOnorHH>.
141

82

personality."

142

Bridging the conscious and the unconscious, psychoanalysis, according to Luria,

created a monist system of the kind advocated by Bogdanov.
Leaving aside question of correctness of these representations of psychoanalysis, it is
important to notice that the sexual component of Freudianism was consistently downplayed by
its Soviet adepts, who identified psychoanalysis with a positive study of the unconscious. Thus,
in his thorough study of psychoanalysis Valentin Voloshinov (sometimes identified as Mikhail
Bakhtin writing under his colleague's name) summarized its essence as a tripartite statement:
consciousness does not always have access to the true motives of human actions; actions can be
defined by unconscious psychological forces; these psychological forces can be brought to
consciousness with the help of special techniques. 143
By removing the unconscious from the domain of subjectivity, which was tied to
rationality and cognition, Bykhovskii connected it with the collective and the trans-individual,
understood as the instinctive, that is, in an evolutionist biological sense as belonging to species.
This unconscious was not opposed to consciousness, but rather presented consciousness's superindividual form, which enabled the coordination of individuals' efforts in the interest of the
Aleksandr Luria, "Psikhoanaliz kak sistema monisticheskoi psikhologii," Zigmund Freid, psikhoanaliz
i russkaia
mysl'. Sostavitel' V. M. Leibin. Moskva: Respublika, 1994, 168-194 (193-194). Translation by the author. Original
text: <4IcHxoaHaIH3, nepeHOCA yeHHe o tHCHeCKHX iBjiCHHSX B COBepmeHHo HHyIO IJOCKOCTh yeimu o6
opraHH'iecKHx npouieccax, pOHCXOAIHX B rMfhfHOM JCflOBe1 eCKOM OpraHH3Me, pe3KO HOpLIBaeT C MeTa4 H3HKOi
142

H

H1eajiH3MOM cTapofi

TBepAbX @yHAaMeHT

riCHXOjiOrHH H

HCHxojiorHH

3aK~iaAMBaeT (BMecTe

C yeHHem o peaKuwXx H pe4reKcax lenoBeKa)

MaTepHajIHCTHeCKoro MOHH3Ma, nO3HTHBHO noAxoAmIige

K nCHXHKe UeJhHOA

JIH'HOCTH>>.

Mikhail Bakhtin (pod maskoj) [(under a mask)], Freidizm. Formal'nyi metod v literaturovedenii. Marksizm i
filosofia iazyka. Stat'I [Freudianism. Formal Method in Literature Studies. Marxism and the Philosophy of
1

Language] (Moskva: Labirint, 2000) 117. Russian original:
HCKpeHHOCTH He BcerA

orpeAeRETLCA

1) MOTHBaIHA

ripH BCe ee Cy6'beKTHBHOA
2) HOCTYHOK HHorA MOKCT
CO3HaHHH; 3) 3TH ncHxHeCKHe CHJIM C
CO3HaHHH

COOTBeTCTByCT AeCNCTBHTCehHMM HpH'qHHaM nocTynKa;

HCHxHKe,

AOXOAIIEHMH
6mTb 9OBeAeHm aO Co3HaHH)D>.

CHJIaMH, AeHCTByIOUIHMH B

IIOMOIIIMO H3BeCTHMX IpHeMOB MOryT

HO He

83

9O

group. Highly popular in Russia, Eduard von Hartmann also used this notion as the major
philosophical principle in his Philosophy of the Unconscious (Philosophie des Unbewussten,
1869, translated into Russian in 1873-75). Represented by instincts (such as gregarious instinct
or the instinct of procreation), the unconscious for Hartmann allowed the species to survive and
to develop towards a common goal, providing evolution with a teleological, guiding channel.
This understanding of instinct was similar to its later interpretation by Freud in "Drives
[Instincts] and their Vicissitudes" ("Triebe und Triebschicksale," 1915), in which he grouped the
entire multiplicity of drives between "Eros" (the life instinct) and "Thanatos" (the death instinct):
purely biological in nature, these drives, according to Freud, existed in the psyche of every
human independently of his or her personal history as the deepest biological structures acquired
in the course of evolution.1
Apart from neo-Darwinism, both Hartmann and Freud were influenced by the newest
developments in physics, such as thermodynamics, whose "first law" declared that the amount of
energy possessed by a system always remained a constant: energy could be transformed, but
neither created nore destroyed. From physics, the notion of energy quickly spread to other
disciplines, being applied, for instance, to an understanding of human personality. As a student
of physicist and physiologist Ernst Brdcke, who was credited with the invention of
"psychodynamics," Freud made the notion of libido-sexual energy-the basis of his
psychoanalysis. Libido resided in the unconscious and always strove for release, often finding its
way out in self-destructive neuroses and hysterias, or in sublimation, which enabled art and other
14 Sigmund Freud, ,,Triebe und Triebschicksale" (1915), Internationale Zeitschriftfir (drztliche) Psychoanalyse,
III, 84-100; ,,Instincts and their vicissitudes," The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, 24
Vols., ed. James Strachey et al., Vol. 14 (London: The Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-1974)
117-140.

84

forms of creative and productive work; it could also be artificially released in the course of
psychoanalytic sessions.
While the notion of the human as a repository of energy remained widely accepted, its
sexual interpretation by Freud found few supporters at the turn of the twentieth century. More
commonly, this energy was seen as a vital one, necessary for maintaining life in the individual
body and in the collective. Possessing no destructive potential, this vital energy could be
transformed into creative energy, which contributed to the life of the species as a whole; thus,
rather than being released, it had to be economized. In his Philosophy as Thinking about the
World According to the Principleof the Smallest Measure of Force (Philosophieals Denken der
Welt gemd/3 dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmafies of 1876, translated into Russian in 1913),
Avenarius argued that philosophy helped the adaptive process by creating more logical and
efficient (economical) thinking by summarizing particular ideas into general notions and
determining relationships between the latter: "This striving to think the totality of objects in the
most energy-saving way, that is, under one notion, and therefore to allow for a comprehension of
all particular things, is [called] philosophy."

45

General notions economized energy since they

were based on the principles of association and habit [Gewohnheit], both of which displaced
perception into the domain of the unconscious. For Avenarius, habit was the major strategy for
economizing perceptive energy, and was closely connected with the emotion of pleasure, the
familiar assuring and the unfamiliar bringing discomforting feelings. Avenarius wrote:

Richard H. L. Avenarius, PhilosophieAls Denken Der Welt Gema'J D em Prinzip Des Kleinsten Kraftmajfes:
Prolegomena Zu Einer Kritik Der Reinen Erfahrung (Leipzig: Fues's Verlag, 1876) 43. German original: ,,Dieses
Sterben, die Gesamtheit der Gegenstinde am kraftersparendsten d.h. unter einem allgemeinen Begriff zu denken,
und somit ein Begreifen aller Einzeldinge zu erm6glichen, ist die Philosophie."
145

85

If we face the opposite of the familiar, the unfamiliar, it will become clearer to us that the
habit illustrates the tendency of the soul to economize energy. I hardly believe that
everyone who thinks of the notion "unfamiliar" does not feel at least a slight shadow of
displeasure; at any event, he feels this displeasure when he really must think of the
unfamiliar [things]. To put it simply, [this happens] because [the idea of ] the unfamiliar
is an unfamiliar thought, i.e. a thought that exceeds familiar thoughts. Every notion that is
not contained within the system of notions that [we have] already acquired, [which are]
tightly connected among themselves, and to think of which we nevertheless must
consider [them] through some relationships-be it a discovery, a conversation, or a new
book or something else-clearly makes our soul to experience fear or hostility at the
necessity of thinking about the new alongside the old. Such a thought, such a notion is
"uncomfortable" for us and we react at it with displeasure... 146
Introducing the notion of the unfamiliar, Avenarius situated it within an already
established physiological discourse, in which the concept of energy, applied to perceptive
capacities of people, was transformed into the notion of attention. Attention, according to
Jonathan Crary, appeared in the modem period as "a model of how a subject maintains a
coherent and practical sense of the world," 147 and which was (and remains) one of the
foundational categories of modem culture. Because energy, consciousness and attention were
fundamentally limited within the a body, thinkers as different as Adolf Loos and Georg Simmel
(as well as Frankfurt school theoreticians) were concerned with the unnecessary dispersion of
attention through wasted cognitive acts and that resulted in an inability to concentrate and to
Avenarius, Philosophie als Denken der Welt..., 8-9. German original: ,,Dass somit die Gewohnheit
das Sterben
der Seele nach Kraftersparniss illustrire, wird uns noch deutlicher, wenn wir den Gegensatz des Gewohnten, das
Ungewohnte in's Auge fassen. Ich glaube kaum, dass Jemand die Vorstellung ,,Ungewohntes" denkt, ohne einen
wenn auch noch so leisen Anklang von Unlust in sich zu fiilen; jedenfalls fiihlte er diese Unlust, wenn er
Ungewohntes wirklich denken soll. Einfach, weil Ungewohntes denken ein ungewohntes Denken, d.h. ein das
Gewohnheitsmass fiberschreitendes Denken ist. Eine jede Vorstellung, welche nicht in dem System unserer bereits
erworbenen, unter sich fest verbundenen Vorstellungen enthalten ist, und welche zu denken wir dennoch durch
irgend welche Verhdltnisse-sei es ein Entdeckung oder ein Gesprich oder ein neues Buch oder was immergen6tigt werden, lisst uns deutlich die Scheu oder Abneigung der Seele vor dem Ungewohnten empfinden, vor dem
Zwang, neben dem Alten ein Neues zu denken. Ein solches Denken, eine solche Vorstellung ist uns ,,unbequem"
und wir reagieren darauf mit Unlust..."
146

Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception. Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge,
MA: The
MIT Press, 2000) 4.
147

86

distinguish important from trifling; they considered this inability to be the result of excessive
architectural ornamentation (Loos) or of the hectic life in a modern metropolis (Simmel).148
Avenarius's Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmafies explored alternative, healthy, energy-saving,
cognitive models, of which the unconscious, initially identified with the automatic, became the
most important one.
In Russia, the concept of the economy of attention was explored by powerful Khar'kov
linguistic school, which instilled psychology into literary analysis. Its founder, Aleksandr
Potebnia (1835-1891), believed that the clue to understanding poetic language in the study of
unconscious human cogitative processes. 14 9 Potebnia's follower, Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii
(1853-1920) identified the waste of psychic energy with attention, or the employment of
intellect. Automatism, or the unconscious, for him, was its opposite, allowing one to achieve
results without spending energy.10 Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii argued that human mental life was
defined by a constant dialog between consciousness and the unconscious. Memory, for instance,
was seen by the scholar as the storage of cognitive acquisitions in the unconscious sphere.
Moreover, it was within the unconscious that the vast majority of cognitive acts took place as
automatic activities, which the consciousness noticed only in their latest stages. In this ability of
the unconscious to perform cognitive work tacitly Ovsianniko-Kulikovskii saw great potential

For a comparison of their agendas, see Michael Hays, Modernism and the PosthumanistSubject.

148

See Aleksandr Potebnia, Iz zapisokpo teorii slovesnosti [From the Notes on the Theory of Philology]
(Khar'kov:
Parovaii'tip. i litografiis7M. Zil'berberg, 1905).
149

150

Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, Voprosypsikhologii tvorchestva (S.-Petergurg: D.E. Zhukovskii,
1902).
87

for a rationalization of thinking: "This means that all the work was gratuitous for us, and a great
economizing of intellectual energy is obvious." 15 1
This idea of the productive unconscious found support among the Bogdanovite leaders of
the Proletkul't and the Narkompros, such as the worker literary critic Fedor Kalinin (18831920),152 an alumnus of Bogdanov's Capri Party School, who underlined the creative potential of
the unconscious in Proletarskaia Kul'tura [Proletarian Culture], the official Proletkul't
periodical in 1918:
The processes of scientific creativity are based on logical thinking and go under the
control of knowledge, which is expressed in collecting material necessary for the task and
assembling it into a logically purposeful chain. But this is not all. Our psyche is more
than merely consciousness: [consciousness] forms only its light, immediately given area.
Behind it is a vaster, darker side of psyche-the unconscious, the richest repository of
experience, of numerous emotions, elusive in their feebleness and extreme commonness,-experiences vaguely perceived and forgotten. When consciousness finishes the job of
accumulating and organizing material, then, if the discovery is ripe, the unconscious
relieves it, connects with the conscious area, entering it in a mighty, fruitful stream, and
from its hidden treasures contributes that which was needed for a solution to the task. ...
Poincare recalls how he made a mathematical discovery not in a moment of intense
calculative work, but while sitting in a car, thinking of something completely different.
At first sight, this seems to be an accidental discovery. But this is wrong. Here we can
obviously admit only one assumption: when an intensive work of consciousness on the
given topic stops, the work of the unconscious, which goes on in parallel, continues in its
own direction, even if consciousness is distracted by completely different tasks. 153

orpOMHoro c6epeKeHHA yMcTBeHHOi CHJI

.

151 Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, "Vvedenie v nenapisannuiu knigu po psikhologii umstvennogo tvorchestva
(nauchno-filosofskogo i khudozhestvennogo" ["Introduction to an unwritten book on the psychology of intellectual
creativity (scientific-philosophical and artistic)"], N. V. Os'makov, Psikhologicheskoe napravleneie v russkom
literaturovedenii [Psychological Trend in Russian Literature Studies] (Moskva: Prosveschenie, 1981) 109-121
(111). Russian original: 03TO 3HaIHT, TO BCA 3Ta pa6oTa o6olmnac HaM AapOM, H TyT HeJhb3 He BHiAeT

152 Fedor Ivanovich Kalinin (1882-1920) was an elder brother of the famous
Stalinist functionary Mikhail Ivanovich
Kalinin.
153 Fedor Kalinin, "Proletariat i tvorchestvo" ["Proletariat and Creativity"],
ProletarskaiaKul'tura [Proletarian

Culture] No.1 (1918):

10. Translation by the author. Russian original:
IpoTeKaHHe npoiieCCoB HayqHoro
OCHOBbIBaeTCI Ha jiorHqecKoM MbIJiiHHH H HAeT lOA KOHTpojieM Co3HaHH, KOTOpHE BbIpa)KaeTCA B
Co6HpaHHH tJIA nocTaBneHHOri 3aAa'H Heo6xoAHMoro maTepHana H IpHBeAeHHH erO B noriHeCKH ixenecoo6pa3Hyio

TBopeCTBa

88

Strictly physiological, the reading of the unconscious by Potebnia, Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii,
Kalinin and the like not only made this notion popular in Russian nineteenth-century and earlySoviet culture; it informed the reception of Freud in Russia and contributed to a great, albeit
short-lived, popularity of the founder of psycho-analysis.

154

This displacement of spatial, and more specifically, architectural, perception into the
domain of the unconscious was in an ostensible conflict with, probably, the most renowned
strategy of Russian Formalism-estrangement, or defamiliarization [ostranenie], developed by
Viktor Shklovskii around 1916. In "Art as Technique" Shklovskii directly attacked Avenarius
and Spencer as well as Potebnia and Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, constructing his energy-expensive
literary technique as a direct opposite of theirs.155 A precursor of Greenberg's notion of the
CBI3I6.

HO AenO

BceieJIo K 3TOMy. Hama ncHxHKa He HC'epHTBaeTcI CO3HaHHeM: 3TO-TOhKO ee
AOCTyrlHaH HaM o61JacT. 3a Helo CKPbIBaeTCR euie ropa3Ao 6o0xee o6mHPHa, TeMHaA

He CBOAHTC

CBeTM, HeHOCpeACTBeHHO

nCHXHKH-HOACO3HaHHe,

6oraTeftmi cKnaA oimrIa, xpaHHaHnme 6ecqHcnemHX nepeKHBaHHi,
cJIa6ocTH HiH KpaHHei o6uq0CTH,--nepexuHBaHHrN CMYTHO BOCHPHHAThX H 3a6ITbIX.
Korga CO3HaHHe 3aKaH'qHBaeT pa60Ty HaKOHrmeHH H ynopjqAo'%HBaHH, ecnH OTKPITHe Ha3pejfo, HOACO3HaTCehHOe
HPHXOAHT Ha HOMOII1b, BCTynaeT B CBA3L C O6JIacTbio Co3HaHHA, KaK 6w BpmBaACb B Hee MOryHM,
OHAOOTBOPIOHIHM riOTOKOM, H3 cBoero CKpITOrO 6oraTCTBa BHOCHT TO, qerO He XBaTaJIO Aim pemeHHA 3aAaH. A
B pe3yflbTaTe 3TOrO CHHTe3a ABJISeTCA KaK 66 HeoxmAaHHoe oTcpbiTHe, HeTO HOBOe, cnoco6Hoe AaJmbHeikmee
CTOpOHa

HeyHJOBHMbiX no CBoei

pa3BHTHe ijeioii oTpaCJIH 3HaHHA H MLCJIH HaiipaBHTh HO HOBbiM HyTXM, no HOB6IM MeToAaM. ... HyHamcape
paCCKa3WBaeT, KaK OH cAejiaiI OAHO OTKbITHe B MaTeMaTHKe He B MOMeHT Hanp2xeHHOi pa6oTm no BLNHCJICHHmM,
a Korga CaAHJICA B aBToMo6HJIb, AymaA COBepU1eHHO o ApyroM. Ha nepBHi
B3rnIA 3To Ka)KeTC cJIyqaiHHM

oTKpbiTHeM. Ho 3TO HeBepHO. 3gecb, OqeBHAHO, AOHyCTHMO TOJIbKO OAHO npeAlnoJIoxeHHe: KorAa HanpMeXHHa
pa60Ta CO3HaHHA no AaHHOMy Bonpocy npeKpa1maeTC5I, TO pa6oTa nOACO3HaHHA, npOHCXOAxiuaA napalneIbHO,
npOAOnxcaeTCA H HAeT CBOHM nyTeM, XOTA 6m CO3HaHHe OTBJIeKJiH COBCeM ApyrHe 3aAaqHA. See also Henri
Poincar6, Science and Method (1914), multiple editions.
154 Kalinin's argument about the creative role of the unconscious reminds of
the Jugendstil's interest in the

automatic and the unconscious, an interest fed by the popularity of occultism and the idea of artist as a medium.
However, unlike the mystical idea of the unconscious as a locus of presence of a "second personality" promoted
then, Kalinin's notion of the unconscious preserved the unity of ego. See Zeynep Qelik Alexander, "Kinaesthetic
impulses: aesthetic experience, bodily knowledge, and pedagogical practices in Germany, 1871-1918." Diss.,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007, 95-140.
155 Viktor Shklovskii, "Iskusstvo kak priem" ["Art as Technique"], Sborniki
po teorii poeticheskogo

iazyka

[Collections on the Theory ofPoetic Language], Vyp. 2 (Petrograd, 1917) 3-14. English translation of the essay can
be found in numerous editions.

89

avant-garde as an intellectual challenge, estrangement, at first sight, condemned the theories of
unconscious intellectual activity as regressive and, ultimately, anti-modernist. But although the
principle of economizing energy can, indeed, be easily dismissed as developing a lazy, nonthinking-in other words, a totalitarian-subject, the dialectical pair of modernist RussianGerman literary theory "economy of energy/estrangement" should not be interpreted as a binary
opposition or disintegrated in order to condemn the former principle for the sake of redeeming
the latter. 156 In fact, the notion of unconscious intellectual activity was far from discouraging
intellectual work and exploration: on the contrary, Avenarius took the waste of energy that
thinking entailed as an unavoidable evil, having devoted his career to understanding cognitive
process, while subsequent proponents of "unconscious" thinking also considered it to be serious
work that doubled rather than canceled conscious thinking.157
In the domain of aesthetic thought, the ideas of the economy of energy were, most
importantly, explored by German sculptor and thinker Adolf von Hildebrand, who applied
empiriocriticist epistemology to formalist aesthetics, and whose major theoretical work, an essay
Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst (1893), was translated into French, English and

Such well-intended rehabilitations of modernist aesthetic theory have recently
prompted contradictory
interpretations of their original programs. For instance, Juliet Koss, discussing the aesthetic theory of Adolf
Hildebrand claims that in relief sculpture "The power of an aesthetic impression was thus based on the intensity of
the energy the spectator expended"-in spite of Hildebrand's own claim that "any device that requires special
attention or special examination is ineffective." Juliet Koss, Modernism after Wagner (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2010), 178; Adolf Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," Empathy, Form, and
Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, Intr. and transl. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios
Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994) 227-280 (245).
156

Moreover, even the ethical assessments of the two aesthetic strategies can easily be reversed:
it can be argued, for
example, that the energy-wasting imperative of Shklovskii's defamiliarization asserted art's higher, mystical and
quasi-religious status, which ultimately gave no fewer possibilities for ideological manipulation.
157

90

Russian and was often cited by the Rationalists. 58 Similarly to Avenarius and OvsianikoKulikovskii, Hildebrand was convinced in the unhealthiness of dispersing attention as a waste of
perceptive energy; a good work of art, for him, allowed assessing its formal idea at a glance. 159
The job of an artist, accordin to Hildebrand, consisted in separating the essential from the
accidental (as Mach might have put it, the core from peripheral qualities) and emphasizing the
former: "When children draw a face as a circle with two dots for eyes, a vertical line for a nose,
and a horizontal line for a mouth, they present just this necessary effect, as a wholly adequate
image of our natural idea of effective form."16 0 'Effective form' [Wirkungsform] was the
phenomenal representation of an object, and was "always a joint product of the object, on the one
hand, and of its lightning, surroundings, and our changing vantage point, on the other." 16' The
contrary, ontological inherent form [Daseinsform] depended solely on the object and not on its
changing appearance, and could only be abstracted from effective form. An artist, for
Hildebrand, operated solely with effective form, exploring the laws of its formation and thus
creating not objects, but their phenomenal impressions. The architects of Renaissance Genoa, for
158

Adolf von Hildebrand, Leprobleme de laforme (Strassburg, Heitz, 1893); Adolf von Hildebrand,
The Problem of
Form in Paintingand Sculpture, transl. Max Meyer and Robert Morris Ogden (New York: G. E. Stechert & co.,
1907); A. Gildebrand, Problemaformy v izobrazitel'nom iskusstve [The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts], transl.
N. B Rozenfel'd and V. A. Favorskii (Moskva: Musaget, 1914).
159 Adolf Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German
Aesthetics, 1873-1893, introd. and transl. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA:
Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994) 227-280 (245).
160 Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 235. A similar understanding of art had been suggested by
Karl Pearson, a British mathematician and a positivist philosopher (condemned by Lenin alongside Mach and
Avenarius), who, revoking Avenarius's principle of economizing energy claimed: "The single statement, a brief
formula, the few words of which replace in our minds a wide range of relationships between isolated phenomena, is
what we term a scientific law." Thus, art, for Pearson, allows one to find "concentrated into a brief statement, into a
simple formula or a few symbols, a wide range of human emotions and feelings." Both science and art were seen by
Pearson as products of creative imagination-put on service to cognition-and could thus rely on similar principles.
Karl Pearson, The GrammarofScience (London: A. and C. Black, 1900) 31, 35.

161 Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 233.
91

example, solved the problem of extremely narrow streets by leaning cornices down and making
them shorter, by which they achieved the effective form of a normal cornice observed from a
distance: the inherent form was only a means of creation the desired effect; likewise, "if an
architect establishes an inherent form only on the basis objective reality, without considering the
impression that it has to produce in the given site and location, then he is not creating for the eye
16 2
and is not yet creating an artistic form."

Exploring the objective physiological mechanisms of a subconscious formation of
effective form, Hildebrand came to the conclusion that it is determined by the movement of
eyeballs within the eye socket, thus connecting visuality with kinesthetics. Thus the sculptor
distinguished between two types of vision, seeing [schauen] and scanning [abtasten (literally,
touching)].

63

Seeing occurred when an object was observed from a distance: the remoteness of

the subject from the object allowed the latter to be observed it in its entirety; the resulting image
was a flat, two-dimensional picture, which presented one with a purely visual idea
Adolf Hildebrand, "Anhand zur 6. Auflage. Nachtrigliche Aufsitze zum Problem der Form",
Das Problem der
Form in der Bildenden Kunst (Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz (Heitz & Mindel), 1918) 130-136. Hildenbrand's
162

emphasis. Translation by the author. German original: ,,Stellt der Architekt die Daseinform nur aus DaseingrUnden

fest, also nicht nach MaBgabe der Wirkung, die sie an Ort und Stelle zu machen hat,--so hat er nicht fur das Auge
geschaffen und hat die kiinstlerische Gestaltung noch nicht begonnen." Russian translation: Adolf Hildebrand,
,,Prilozhenie k shestomu izdaniu. Dopolnitel'nye stat'i k probleme formy" [,,Addition to the sixth edition. Additional
articles on the problem of form], Problemaformy v izobrazitel'nom iskusstve [The Problem of Form in the Fine
Arts], transl. N. B Rozenfel'd and V. A. Favorskii (Moskva: Musaget, 1914) 84-87.
Hildebrand's "scanning" [abtasten] (the term from the 1994 translation by Harry F.
Mallgrave and Eleftherios
Ikonomou in Empathy, Form, and Space) should not be confused with "scanning" [schauen] of Robert Vischer
(same translation). Vischer, who was not translated into Russian and arguably not well-known (and whose theory,
therefore, is not examined in this dissertation) already in 1872 distinguished between seeing [sehen] and scanning
[schauen]: similar to Hildebrand's pair (which was obviously a development of Vischer's thought), seeing was
visual, whereas scanning was kinesthetic. Vischer, however, unlike Hildebrand, opposed the unconscious process of
seeing to a conscious process of scanning (movement and, thus, activity evoked consciousness), while Hildebrand
considered both seeing and scanning unconscious processes. Robert Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form: A
Contribution to Aesthetics," Empathy, form, and space : problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893. Santa Monica,
CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994, 89-123 (93-94).
163

92

[Gesichtsvorstellung] of the object. Scanning, on the other hand, took place when the distance
between the subject and the object was minimal. The closeness required movement of eyeballs,
which resulted in obtaining several images that were then mentally combined into one. Scanning,
therefore, produced kinesthetic images [Bewegungsvorstellungen], which alone allowed a
comprehension of volume and three-dimensionality. 164 It was in the rift between the visual and
the kinesthetic images that Hildebrand located the formation of effective form, and it was the
transition by means of the the unconscious mechanisms of connection between the two that he
held to be the domain of artistic creativity.
A sculptor, according to Hildebrand, worked with kinesthetic ideas, representing his
impressions directly; and from these ideas a visual image was then formed. A painter, on the
other hand, directly expressed his visual ideas on the surface: his task was to create a distant
image that would give a full idea of form. 165 But the most developed mode of the representation
of space was relief, Hildebrand's favorite medium, whose rejuvenation was judged by
contemporaries to be his major artistic achievement: relief employed both kinesthetic and visual
ideas to create both a clear distant image and an impression of volume. Operating with several
surface planes, relief united these planes, creating a feeling of coherency of effective form and
inviting the eye to follow its movement within. 166 It was relief that Hildebrand found the most
kindred to architecture in its artistic form, since as architecture's task was "to unify its forms as
an effect of relief."1 67 For instance, Hildebrand explained that a Greek temple, "offers a close
164 Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 229-236.
165

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 231-232.

166

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 251-253.

167

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 260.

93

spatial mass: the columns are placed so close to each other that they function as perforated,
frontal layer of space. What we perceive is not a spatial body fronted by columns: the columns
form part of the spatial body and our ideal movement into depth passes between them."'

68

Thus

the idea of space was created through "arranging objects (and with them the kinesthetic idea that
they evoke) in such a way that they do not remain fragmented but become continuous"; within
space individual objects became transformed into structural components of a seemingly
continuous and unbroken whole, the "kinesthetic framework."

169

A sculptor interested the practical application of psychophysiological aesthetics to his
work, Hildebrand spent most of his time in Munich and was likely to be known to both to the
future head of INKhUK Wassily Kandinsky (who lived in Munich between 1896 and 1915) and
the future rector of VKhUTEMAS (between 1923 and 1926), the graphic designer and art
theorist Vladimir Favorskii (in 1906-1907, a student in the Munich school of a Hungarian painter
Simon Holl6sy). Together with N. B. Rosenfel'd, Favorskii translated Hildebrand's essay into
Russian in 1914. Apart from Favorskii, a leading Russian and Soviet graphic artist and art
pedagogue, Hildebrand was read and propagated by Ladovskii's friend and early collaborator
Cubist sculptor Boris Korolev, and by Ladovskii himself. It was through Hildebrand that
Ladovskii received the ideas of unconscious perceptions and their interpretation being connected
to the physiology of the eye, and of space as a coherent, continuous environment that binds
separate objects together.

70

Moreover, as well as German-language positivist philosophy, the

German-language tradition of formalist aesthetics (first of all, the writings of Hildebrand and
168

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,"
259.

1 69 Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine
Arts," 239.
170

See Dokuchaev, "Poiasnitel'naia zapiska," 88; Mikhailov, Gruppirovki
Sovietskoi arkhitektury, 44.

94

W6lfflin) enjoyed a great popularity in Russia. Constituting the mainstream of aesthetic
discourse before the Revolution, in the aftermath of October 1917 it was somewhat mitigated by
various sociological approaches. Yet, the formalist core of the psychological and energetic
approach to aesthetics remained intact. Its stronghold, in particular, was the Russian Academy of
Artistic Sciences (Gosudarstvennaia akademia khudozhestvennykh nauk, RAKhN; from 1925
on, State Academy of Artistic Sciences, GAKhN ), the state-run think-tank of aesthetics and art
history organized in 1921 in order "to synthesize the sciences of art [iskusstvovedcheskie nauki]
in three major directions: sociological, psychophysical, and philosophical, by means of an
analytical study of individual arts" and to be "an expert-consulting organ in the matters of art"
for the Soviet state.' Kandinskii initially headed the Psychophysical department of RAKhN,
where he moved after he was forced to leave INKhUK. But in 1921 he left Russia-officially, in
order to open a Berlin branch of RAKhN. It was left to the new head of the Psychophysical
department, art historian and pedagogue Anatolii Bakushinkii (1883-1939) to lead the
development of psychophysiological aesthetics and-in spite of his own traditionalist artistic
tastes-to contribute to a popularization of the energetic discourse among modernist artists and
architects.
Bakushinkii's theory, articulated in his 1925 book Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo i
vospitanie [Artistic creativity and education] was based on a distinction between two primary
modes of aesthetic perception: empathy [perezhivanie] and cognition [poznanie]. Although

P. S. Kogan, "0 zadachakh akademii i ee zhurnala" ["On the tasks of the Academy and its journal], Iskusstvo.
Zhurvnal Rossiiskoi Akademii Khudozhestvennykh Nauk [Art. The Journal of the Russian Academy of Artistic
Sciences] No.1 (1923): 5-12. Russian original: "riyrem aHaHrrHecKoro H3yeHHA oT~leJILHMX HCKYCCTB
CHHTe3HPOBaTh
HcKyccTBoBeAtlecKHe
HayKH
B
TpeX
OCHOBHTX
HanpaBneHHX:
coIXHoorH'IecKoM,
HCHXO4H3WieCKOM H 4)HJIoCo4)CKoM"; "6um6 3KcnepTHo-KoHcyIbTaTHBHM opraHom 1o BOnpOCaM HCKyCcTBa."
171

95

another term, vchustvovanie, is usually reserved for the notion of empathy in Russian
7 -Bakushinkii clearly wanted
aesthetics M
to distance himself from empathy theory, which was

too often accused it subjectivism-the definition of perezhivanie betrays it genealogy and
exposes Bakushinskii's opposition's indebtedness to Lipps's distinction between subjective and
objective knowledge. Perezhivanie, governed by emotion and will, was an irrational internal
recreation of an artistic image "with all the exertion of the forces of soul" [so vsem
napriazheniemdushevnykh sif] within the viewing subject, a recreation that excluded the external
world. Poznanie, on the other hand, was based on logics and cognitive processes concerning with
the external world and its objects "not in the process of their creation, but as a given thing" [ne
kak tvorimogo, no kak chego-to dannogo]. Perezhivanie was the only "basic and original, truly
artistically-creative" act, to which poznanie was subordinate as a 'materialization' of artistic
image. This secondary cognitive mode of perception included both "material-technical" and
"analytical-cognitive"

moments

[momenty

material'no-tekhnicheskii i

analiticheski-

poznavatel 'nyi].173

Artistic perception, according to Bakushinskii, "went to the depths of the unconscious,"
where it "formed the elements of consciousness." If an artist moved from the unconscious to the
conscious, expressing his internal, initially intuitive, vision in a materialized form, the artistic
perception of a beholder moved in the opposite direction-from the perception of material form
towards the inner, ultimately irrational, states of consciousness. Artistic perception, Bakushinkii
See, for instance, N. B. Rozenfel'd, V. A. Favorskii, "Ot perevodchikov" ["From the
translators"], Gildebrand,
Problemaformy, 12-15.
172

Anatolii Bakushinksii, Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo i vospitanie [Artistic Creativity and Education] (Moskva:
Novaia Moskva, 1925). Web. 4.20.2014 <http://setilab.ru/modules/article/view.article.php/162/c24>. Bakushinskii
himself prioritizedperezhivanie over poznanie and even defended mimetic art as the one that facilitates a creation of
internal image.
1

96

explained in empiriocriticist terms, impacted a person from without, organizing such lower
cognitive processes as primary sensations (color, shape, line, light, mass, volume, and so on, as
well as their combinations in space and on a plane), which were then united into primary
complexes. At this stage, however, these states of consciousness provoked a reaction of the
will-a "creative need in internal organization of external impressions," which resulted in
elementary emotional reactions. 174 The next step in the process of perception of a work of art,
Bakushinkii explained, consisted in forming increasingly more complex combinations of primary
sensations into complicated networks, which were then contextualized within the contents of
consciousness and compared to the beholder's previous experience. From the integration of
formal elements of a painting on a plane [postroenija elementov kartiny na ploskosti] (which
Bakushinskii defined as a "construction") the perception of a beholder moved towards
illusionary depth, to the perception of (again, illusionary) color, light, volume, distances, and
their relationships. These relationships among the represented objects led to a perception of the
content of art, its subject-psychological form [k siuzhetno-psikhologicheskoiforme].Along this
movement from form to content the conscious, cognitive mode of perception [poznanie] acquired
an ever greater role. A pure poznanie, thus, could occur only in relation to pure content, in which
all formal elements were eliminated. Moreover, the increased the role for consciousness was
accompanied, for Bakushinkii (as for Avenarius), by an intensification of attention, leading from
a state of an absolute distraction during the perception of formal elements to an utter
concentration of attention in the rational perception of content.

174

Bakushinksii, Khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo i vospitanie. Translation by the author. Russian
original:

"TBOpICCKyIO ioTpe6HOCT B BHyTpeHHCe OpraHH3aIlHH BHCIUHHX BnetaTJIeHHa."

97

Responding to empiocriticist agenda of economizing perceptive energy, the postulates of
aesthetic theories of Bakushinskii and Hildebrand were actively used by Rationalist thinkers.
Most importantly, the Rationalists explored the problem of the perception of architectural
form-the fundamental problem that, for them, determined not only the methods of generating
visual form, but the meaning and purpose of architecture and the essence of architectural
creativity.

Architectural Expression
Both Ladovskii and Lissitzky argued vehemently against any form of cognitive work in
the perception of architecture6-sometimes severely criticizing their Rationalist comrades. One
of the earliest projects of Rationalism, Vladimir Krinskii's "Sky-scraper in Moscow" (19221923) attempted to find an architectural expression for Vladimir Mayakovsky's famous line
"[we] thump into the skies reinforced concrete" [[my] v nebesa sharakhaem zhelezobeton]. 175
175

Krinskii cited Mayakovskii's poem "My idem" ("We are coming," 1919). The poem
opened with the words:

KTo Bb?
M6I
pa3HOCMHKH HoBOi Bepm,
KpacoTe 3aAaIgei

xceie3HmA TOH.

MTo6 HpHpogaMH XHJMMH He cKBePHHAH
B He6eca mapaxaem iKejie3o6eToH.
flo6eirTenH,
mecTByem no cBeTy

cKBepLi,

CKBO3b6 peB CTapHKOB 3UOMH.

[Who are you?
We
are carriers of a new faith,
[which] gives an iron tone to beauty.
So that squares wouldn't defile with [their] meager natures
[we] pump into the skies reinforced concrete.
The winners,

98

Highly popular among the "futurists," this Mayakovsky's verse was jokingly disapproved by
Lenin: "Why to thump [it] into the sky? We need reinforced concrete here on earth."1 76 If Lenin
was concerned with a waste of valuable concrete, Ladovskii and Lissitzky saw a similar
problem-an unnecessary waste of cognitive resources-in Krinskii's project. To address the
problem of the expression of the building's hidden reinforced concrete construction, Krinskii's
sky-scraper employed purely semiotic (metonymic) means: concrete rods of the building's
skeleton literally represented the iron structure hidden within the concrete walls. In Charles S.
Peirce's classification of signs the sky-scraper was an icon, representing the literal, visual
appearance of a hidden object (for instance, construction). Although iconicity was definitely a
more "avant-garde" semiotic technique than symbolism, and was frequently discussed in relation
to American sky-scraper construction (Ladovskii, for example, noted that frequent Gothic
motives were intended to provoke a comparison with Gothic temples, associated with a strive
upwards 177), Lissitzky opposed it just as any semiotic techniques in architecture: "The vast
majority [of people] confuses construction as it is and the forms in which it is expressed. This

[we] march through the world
under the wicked roar of old men].
"Neboskreb na Lubianskoi ploshchadi. Proekt V. F. Krinskogo. 1923" ["Sky-scraper on Lubianka square. A project
of V. F. Krinskii. 1923"], Izvestia ASNOVA No. 1 (1926): 5;Vladimir Krinskii, "Vozniknovenie i zhizn' Assotsiatsii
Novykh Arkhitektorov-ASNOVA" ["Emergence and life of the Association of New Architects-ASNOVA"],
Sovetskaia Arkhitektura [Soviet Architecture] No.18 (1968): 20-28 (23-24). See also Khan-Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm, 128.
I. A. Armand, "Vospominania o Vladimire Il'iche Lenine [Recollections about Vladimir Il'ich Lenin]," Institut
Marksizma-Leninizma [Institute of Marxism-Leninism], Vospominania o Viadimire Il'iche Lenine v desiati tomakh
[Recollections about Vladimir Il'ich Lenin in 10 vols.]. Vol. 8 (Moskva: Izd-vo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1991) 99107 (104). Translation by the author. Russian original: x3aqem we B He6eca mapaxam? )Kene3o6eToH HaM Ha 3eMJIe
176

HyxeH)).

Enael [Nikolai Ladovskii], "Neboskreby SSSR i Ameriki" ["Sky-scrapers of the USSR and America"], Izvestia
ASNOVA No.1 (1926): 4-6. Ladovskii's initials N. A. L. are easily read behind the pseudonym "Enael'," just as "El"
in Lisstizky's pen-name stands for the first letter of his name Lazar'.
177

99

vertical-horizontal grid of "construction" is stuck to the fagade today as meaninglessly as pointed
arches or rooster's crests of "style a' la russe" were stuck yesterday."1 78

Figs. 2.2-2.3. Vladimir Krinskii. Sky-Scraper in Moscow. 1923.

Lissitzky's critique of semiotic techniques as inappropriate for architecture was informed
by the so-called empathy theory, first developed in 1873 by German philosopher of aesthetics
Robert Vischer in his treatise Ober das optische Formgeftihl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik (On the
Optical Sense ofForm: a Contributionto Aesthetics). Empathy [Einfdihlung] was, for Vischer, an
unconscious, irrational process of losing oneself within an external object: "...I project my own

life into the lifeless form, just as I quite justifiably do with another living person. Only ostensibly
do I keep my own identity although the object remains distinct. I seem merely to adapt and attach
myself to it as one hand clasps another, and yet I am mysteriously transplanted and magically
' El Lisstiskii, "Arkhitektura zheleznoi i zhelezobetonnoi ramy," Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost' [Construction
Industry] No. 1 1926: 59-63 (59). Translation by the author. Russian original: <...1peo6nagaioiee 6onbimHHCTBo
KOHCTpyKIUHIO,

KaK TaKOByiO,

rOpH30HTaJI6HyIO KJIeTKY ((KOHCTPYKIUHH

C TeMH

4)opMaMH,

B KOTOpbIX OHa BhIpaxKaeTCA.

JiInIT ceroAHHA Ha 4)acaa C TaKOA

Bqepa cTpejibqaTbie apKH, HJIH IeTYIIIKH «CTHIA pIOCC

.

ryTaeT

100

Ke

3Ty BepTHKahHO-

6eccMiucJieHHOCTlO,

KaK

IIIHHIH

transformed into this Other."1 79 Fundamental for late-nineteenth-century aesthetic thought,
particularly in Germany and in countries like Russia, that moved within its cultural sphere,
empathy theory could hardly be avoided by any aesthetic thinker. Thus although Hildebrand
never used the term Einfzihlung, his explanation of the mechanism of unconscious artistic
perception betrays an indebtedness to this concept: "Just as the child learns to understand
laughter and tears by joining in the process and is able to feel, through muscular activity that he
himself calls forth, the inner cause of the pleasure or pain, so does all gestural expression and all
movement on the part of others become for us a comprehensible expression of internal processes,
a comprehensible language."' 8 0 This mechanism of projection animated new, previously
unknown phenomena, connecting them to similar appearances that one encountered in the past.
The notion of empathy was particularly important for Expressionism with its
preoccupation with provoking strong, emotional responses to visual form. Although trying to
dissociate his thought himself from empathy theory, when elaborating the notion of expression as
a personal, subjective contribution of an artist to the creation of form, a contribution intended for
a subjective response, Hildebrand constructed a mechanism of its production that operated not
through an objectivist psychophysiological trigger-response scheme, but through a visceral
identification with an object. Uniting kinesthetic and visual ideas into a category of (visual) idea
[Vorstellung], Hildebrand claimed that it was informed by but was by no means reducible to
perception [Wahrnehmung].18 1 Art presented "die Vorstellung,... nicht die Wahrnehmung."

182

179 Robert Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form: a Contribution to Aesthetics," Empathy, Form,
and Space, 89-

124 (104).
" 0 Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 261.
181 The category of Vorstellung was brought into the center of metaphysical
philosophical discussion by

Schopenhauer and, later, Hartmann, who elevated it to the status of the creative source behind Schopenhauer's will.

101

For instance, rather than representing movement as a blurry hindered perception, as a
photographic camera would have, an artist would choose an expressive moment of this
movement, and thus a static form. This opened a path to illusionism, and indeed, Hildebrand
admitted that "the expression that we see in form does not always accord with reality."1 83 Thus, a
weak person might have possessed a strong jaw line, and a moving voice might have belonged to
a person who "feels nothing."184 The task of artistic creation was, for Hildebrand, not an
expression of the inherent form through an effective form, but the creation of a Vorstellung
through a manipulation with Wahrnehmung. To describe the creation of a Vorstellung, a
subjective, personal experience of an object, Hildebrand used the notion of expression. "In the
representation, this imprint [effect upon the beholder's psyche] must be tangibly and forcefully
expressed," clarified Hildebrand, and the intensity of expression-the measure of artist's
personal contribution to the form-was the requirement of a true work of art.185
The cradle of Soviet modernism, Expressionism attracted Ladovskii and Krinskii during
the Sinskul'lptarkh/Zhivskul'ptarkh period (1919-1920), and remained important for such
prominent architects as Il'ia Golosov and Konstantin Mel'nikov throughout the 1920s and

It was later developed by Hildebrand's friend Conrad Fiedler, who juxtaposed Vorstellung to cognition as an artistic,
irrational form of comprehending the world to a logical one. Mallgrave and Ikonomou, "Introduction," Empathy,
Form and Space, 30
Hildebrand, Das Problem der Form, Strassburg, 1901: 101 (English translation:
Hildebrand, "The Problem of
Form in the Fine Arts," 263). In psychology, the notion Gesichtsvorstellung was employed by Wilhelm Wundt. See
Hugo Mfinsterberg, Beitra~geZur Experimentellen Psychologie(Freiburg:Mohr, 1889).
182

183

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,"
262.

1'

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts," 262.

185

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,"
236.
102

beyond.18 6 Little wonder, then, that the notion of empathy was at the center of early-Soviet
discussions of artistic perception. At an INKhUK meeting devoted to the questions of perception
of architectural forms (14 April 1920) A. Petrov argued that architectural forms should exhibit
qualities of animate objects in order to make the beholder "feel" architecture by an analogy with
their own body:
The more similar architectural work is to a human organism, the more vividly it is
perceived. This explains the cause of our desire to endow inanimate objects with qualities
that we understand. This is the origin of such expressions as "cold stone" [khladnyi
kamen 1, "sonorous colonnade" [zvuchnaia kolonnada], and so on. When they become
understandable, works of art agitate us more strongly. For example, intuition has always
been parallel to poetry. The latter has always dealt with sketching human feelings. Thus
the ubiquitous comparisons and identifications by analogy. Poets say: "The air does not
want to overcome its slumber" (Pushkin), "The blind [town] square sneaked nearby"
(Mayakovsky). Poetical method endows inanimate objects with the qualities of animate
ones, because they are most understandable for us. I believe that a similar method existed
in architecture. The analogy of the human in art goes deeper. As there are male and
female rhythms in poetry, there were as female and male principles in architecture. The
example of Ionic and Doric orders is already quite compelling.' 8

Speaking of Mel'nikov's Paris Exhibition pavilion, prominent art critic Mikhail Ilyin, for instance,
classified the
architect as an Expressionist. M. Illyine, "L'expressionisme en architecture," L'Architecture d'Aujourdhui, Vol.1,
No. 2 (1930): 29-31.
186

1 A. Petrov, "Voprosy vospriiatia arkhitektumykh form" ["Questions of perception of architectural forms"],
Minutes of the Working Group of Architects at INKhUK, 14 April 1921, quoted in Khan Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm, 112. Translation by the author. Russian original: <('eM 6obme apXHTeKTypHoe npOH3BeAeHHe
HaHOMHHaeT CBOHM cTpoem qenOBeecKH OpraHH3M, TeM Apqe OHO BOCHpHHHMaeTCI. 3THM 06'%AcHCTcA HpHHHa
HaInero CTpeMjiHH3

HaAlefHTb

HeoAymeBxHeHme

BeAH Ka'qecTBaMH, riOHETHEIMH HaM. OTcioAa BapaxKeHHA,

noAo6HMe: "xJiagHbma KaMeHL," "3ByqHas KOJIOHHAa'" H T.ri. AeniasiC6 IOHHTHbiMH, HpOH3B~CAHHA HCKyCcTBa
6onbmue HaC BOJIHyIOT. TaK, HanpHMep, HHTyH11s BcerAa 6sma napaueabHa H033HH. flociiAHAA Bcerga HMwea
Aeno CpHCOBKOI 'noBe'eCKoro 'IyBcTBa. OTcioxa oqeHb HaCTO BCTpeqaioHec cpaBHeHH H oToKAecTBnieHH no
aHajiorHH. Ho3Tmi rOBOpAT: "CBOii ApemoT npeBO3MO'L He XOqCT Bo3AyX" (FymKHH); "cienaA nro~iagh KpaiacE
61H3KO" (MaKOBCKHR). MeTOg y riO3TOB CBOAHTCZ K nOAO6HMM HBaCHHiM HnoAyIHBH X npeAmeToB
KaiecTBamH npeAmeToB oAyIeBjieHHux, KaK HaH6ojiee HaM HOHATHMMH. Ho-Moemy, uoAo6Hmui we MCTOA
cyuwecTBOBa H B apxHreKType. AHanorH qeJxOBeqecKorO B HcKyccTBe HAeT rTy6xe. KaK B r1033HH (yHecTByIoT
MyxcKHe H )KeHCKHC pH4iMbI, TaK H B apxHTeKeype ecT Halajna xeCHCKOe H MyKcKoe. HpHmep HOHHqeCKHX H
AopHIecCKHx OpAepOB AOBOJE6HO y6eAHTeJieH cam no ce6e>>.
In his quotation, Petrov somewhat distorted the line from Mayakovsky's poem "Ulichnoe" ["Streety"] (1913)
"Podniav rukoi edinyi glaz, krivaia ploshchad' kralas' blizko" ["Having propped [her] only eye with a hand, oneeyed square sneaked nearby].

103

Petrov was, in fact, articulating the same principle that Maxim Gorky who, looking back
at his writing method in 1928, described as the essence of artistic work:
Imagination is, in its essence, a thinking about the world, but thinking predominantly in
images, "artistic" [thinking]; one could say that imagination is an ability to endow natural
elements and objects with human qualities, feelings and even intentions. We read and
hear: "the wind whines," "moans," "the moon thoughtfully shines," "the river whispered
old epics," "the forest frowned," "the wave wanted to move the stone; it winced under its
blows, but did not surrender," "the boot did not want to climb on the leg," "glass panes
sweated"-although glass does not have perspiratory glands.18 8
Ladovskii's attitude to empathy was, however, more cautious, being closer to that of
Heinrich W6lfflin, who, alongside Conrad Fiedler, Theodor Lipps, and August Schmarsow, in
the 1880s redefined empathy as the beholder's psychological identification with an observed
object.18 W615fflin, whose work was particularly well-known in Russia,190 saw empathy as an
intuitive kinesthetic perception, in which the subject's body became the standard for measuring
and judging the outside world.191 This concept was developed by him in regards to architecture
Maxim Gorky, "0 tom, kak ia uchilsia pisat"' ["How I learned to write"] (1928), Maksim
Gorky. Web. 5.31.2014
< http://gorkiy.lit-info.ru/gorkiy/articles/article-351.htmn>.
Translation by the author. Russian original:
«Boo6paxeHHe To)e, B CyIIHOCTH cBoeri, MMIHJICHHe o MHpe, HO MmIJUeHHe HO rIpeHMyIiecTBy o6pa3aMH,
<OxyAoxKecTBeHHoe>); MO)KHO cKa3aTh, qTo Boo6paxeHie - 3TO Crloco6HoCTh npHgaBaTE CTHXHAHmM B3IHHM
188

.

npHpoALI H BeuxaM qeJIOBeqecKHe KaqecTBa, IyBCTBOBaHH31, AaKe HaMepeHHI.
Mib qHTaem H CJIuIHm: Berep nnaMeTM, KCTOHeTh, (<3aAyM'IHBo CBeTHT JIyHa)), «peKa HaenIrhBaJia cTapue
6banHHBmx, jieC HaxMypHRICAD, KBoJiHa xoTeJia CABHHYTM KaMeHL, OH MOpHHMCA 110A ee yAapaMH, HO He yciynaJI
e>), ((CTyJI KpJiKHyJI, TO'HO ceie3eHb]>, (<Canor He XOTeJI BJIe3aTh Ha HOry , (CTeK3Ia 3aHOTeJIH,- XOT y CTeKoJI
HeT HOTOBMX KeJe3
189 Less rooted in experiment and more connected to literature and art theory,
an alternative, Anglo-American
tradition of empathy theory, was represented by Vernon Lee, Kit Anstruther-Thomson, William and Henry James.
190Although in Russia, W6lfflin's German-language dissertation was probably read by only a handful of art

historians and aestheticians, such works as Renaissance and Baroque (1888) and Classic Art (1898) were translated
and widely discussed. For instance, it was referenced by a member of the Working group of architects A. Petrov
during an INKhUK discussion of the evolution of forms. See Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 117.
191 W6iffiin's works were translated into Russian both before and after the Revolution: Renaissance und Barock
(<PeHeccaHC H 6apoKKo&, 1913); Die Klassische Kunst ( KnaccHqecKoe HcKyCCTBoh, 1912); Kunstgeschichtliche
Grundbegriffe (0OCHOBme HOHETHI HCTOpHH HCKyccTBa>, 1930); Italien und das deutsche Formgeftihl
( HcKyccTBo HTaJIHH H FepMaHHH 3noxH PeHeccaHca&, 1934)-the latter translated just three years after its initial
publication in German (1931).

104

already in his 1886 dissertation, "Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture," where
W61fflin, arguing against Vischer's emphasis on visual perception, claimed that "Physicalforms
possess a characteronly because we ourselves possess a body. If we were purely visual beings,
we would always be denied an aesthetic judgment on the physical world. But as human beings
with a body that teaches us the nature of gravity, contraction, strength, and so on, we gather the
experience that enables us to identify with the conditions of other forms."

192

Likewise, endorsing the idea that art has to provoke an emotional response of the
beholder,1 9 3 Ladovskii warned against a possible confusion of empathy with a mimetic
representation of nature (an identification suggested by the German art historian Wilhelm
Worringer' 94) and connected it, instead, with abstraction, understood as a scheme of general
organization. Analyzing Petrov's argumentat, Ladovskii accused it of unscientific vagueness and
suggested reducing it to an axiom "An object interests us insofar its organization resembles
ours."'9

5

Such compositional qualies (in Ladovskii's Machist terminology, the principles of

W611flin's emphasis. Empathy, form and space, 151. See also, John Macarthur, "Movement and tactility:
Benjamin and W6lfflin on imitation in architecture," The JournalofArchitecture, Vol. 12, No. 5 (2007): 477-487.
192

We understand the external world through our internal experience. In the outside world we can
be interested in
separate properties and qualities as well as in their complexes. These complexes can be close to us, they can be more
understandable than the very organization of man. In these complexes I feel myself, although I still do not know my
own organization; it is in them that I see, feel and comprehend this organization. Perhaps, an object, without being
human-like, will closely and clearly resemble to a human his like. It is likely, for example, that some two stones,
resting one upon the other in a certain way, sometimes would remind us of a living individual. A maximum of man
is more understandable to us than a man.
193

Juliet Koss has drawn parallels between Worringer's opposing notions, having emphasized
that Worringer
understood abstraction as uneasiness and thus related it to defamiliarization (estrangement) avant la lettre, while
empathy, for Koss, contained an element of self-estrangement, distancing from the self, and thus, discomfort.
However, rather than Worrigner's actual intention, this interpretation seems to be accentuating its theoretical
potential. Juliet Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy," The Art Bulletin, Vol. 88, no. 1 (March 2006): 139-57 (148).
194

Minutes of the Working Group of Architects at INKhUK, 14 April 1921, quoted in Khan-Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm, 113. Translation by the author. Russian original: 4Hac npegmeT KHTepecye nocToJmIKy, HOCKOJ16KY
OH HanOMHHaeT cBoeiE opraHH3aIVwei--Hamy>.
195

105

organization of elements within a complex) as symmetry, for example, were intuitively
understandable to a person due the organization of his or her own body: "Let us consider an
example: a man is built according to a vertical symmetry. I express this vertical symmetry
somewhat brighter, although abstractly and schematically. And although it results in an
abstraction, in it I can easily see a resemblance with a person; perhaps, this abstraction will have
become more humane for me." 196
Rejecting iconicity, the Rationalists continued to explore the possibilities of architectural
expression, following the direction pointed to by Russian formalist theory, which promulgated
the category of expression [vyrazhenie], free of not only likeness but even resemblance to an
object, over representation [izobrazhenie], whether symbolic or metonymic. 197 The field for
investigation was, perhaps, opened by the structure of Russian language itself, in which the term
vyrazhenie [expression] possesses a double meaning. Since the word is comprised of the prefix
vy-, signifying a movement out, and the root razh, connected to obraz (image), it means literally
an expression through image. Obraz, in turn, derives from the root rez (to cut), which connects it
to such words as razit' (to fight) and vrag (enemy). Vyrazenie is thus related to both izobrazhenie
(a creation of image) and srazhenie (a battle). These two lines of meaning, as it were, were
projected into the Rationalist program, which substituted vyrazhenie as a single term with a pair
vyrazitel'nost'/vyiavIenie (expressivity/revealing) that usually appeared in the descriptions of
Rationalist student assignments. Vyrazitel'nost' (expressivity, distinctiveness) referred to
Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 113. Translation by the author. Russian original: 0BO3bem IrpHMep: qejIOBeK
rocTpoeH [HO] BepTHKajiH CHMMeTpHH. A 6epy H iKaK-To Aple, XOTA H OTB3ieqeHHO H cxeMaTHHO, Bbipa)KIO 3Ty
BepTHKaBhHyIO CHMMeTpHIO. 1, HeCMOTPA Ha To, TO nonyqaeTcA a6cTpaKIuHm, A B Herl nerKo MOry BHAeTh CXOgCTBO
C 'IeJIoBeKoM, BO3MOKHO B 3TOl a6cTpaKIIHH AJi MeH 6yAeT 6oBmme ieJIOBeiecKoro
.

196

19 7

D. S. Nedovich, "Vyrazhenie," Slovar'khudozhestvennykh
terminov, 106.

106

hyperbolizing and otherwise accentuating the properties of form in order to attract viewers'
attention and make them noticeable. Vyiavlenie (revealing), on the other hand, comprised of the
prefix vy- [out] and the root iav' [appearance], was understood as a revelation of inner truth
through phenomena. To use Hildebrand's terminology, if vyrazitel'nost' was preoccupied solely
with inherent form, vyiavlenie dealt with expressing inherent form through the effective one. In
the words of a prominent Rationalist and VKhUTEMAS pedagogue Nikolai Dokuchaev,
To express [vyrazit ' a form means to give its characteristic properties, that is, to make
obvious its, say, geometrical structure-its rectangularity and proportionality, the
commensurability of its surfaces, etc. In other words, here the artist-architect has to be,
essentially, a geometer. To reveal [vyiavit'] a form means to make its structural
properties-all the basic characteristics of form-visually clear and sharply perceived. In
other words, an artist, an architect, wishing to endow its architectural form with certain
qualities and properties, has to make these properties correctly perceived (according to
his vision) by considering all possible impediments, such as: changing conditions of light,
the distance and viewpoint from which the form is viewed, the impact and influence of
the surroundings on the form, etc. Here, the artist has to approach the task as a
composer. 198
Vyrazitel'nost', a concept initially promoted by Dokuchaev, dealt with direct impression
that an artwork left upon the psyche of the beholder, with vivid and active images that stimulated
certain emotions and thus certain types of behavior; it most directly expressed the essence of
architecture as an art. Dokuchaev believed that art had to create "more intensely visually
Dokuchaev's emphasis. Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 90. Translation
by the author. The presence of
this opposition in Ladovskii's pedagogical conversations was also recorded by Selim Khan-Magomedov in his
interviews with former Rationalists. Khan-Magomedov, however, misidentified exposure with abstract assignments,
and expressivity-with the industrial ones (Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 162). Russian original: <Bbipa3HTb
4OpMy-3HqHT gaT ee xapaxrepHme npH3HaKH, T.e. cAeRaTa
3aMeTHbIMH ee, HaIpHMep, reoMeTpH'ecKyIo
CTpyKTypy-IpAMOyrObHOCTb H H3BeCTHyIO HpOnOp1XHOHaJLHOCT, COH3MePHMOCTh ee ruiOCKOCTeA H T.A. IHLIMH
CnOBaMH, 3Aecb xyAo2KHHK-apxHTeK'rop AOjmeH 6MTm, B CyMlHOCTH, reoMeTpoM. BmzBwr6 OOpMy-3TO 3HaqHT
c~enaT ee CBOriCTBa CTpyKypb-Bce OCHOBHMe rIpH3HaKH 4opMM-3pHTeibHO eTKO H ACHO BOCIpHHHMaeMbMH.
ApyrHMH CJIOBaMH, XyAO)KHHK, apxHTeKrop, KenasI npHAa CBoeA apxHTeKT.[ypHoii] 4opMe OnpeAenemHe
KaecTBa, CBoNcTBa-AojDweH cAejiaT eiije 3TH CBOenCTBa upBHJ1bHO BOCIpHHHMMeMmH (KaK 3TOO xoqe'T
XyAOXKHHK), fyTeM y-ieTa BceX B03MOXHMX 3aTpyAHeHHiA, KaCOBLM: MeHHfoI11HecI
YCJIOBHS OCBemeHHA, paCCT0ozHH
H TORKH 3peHHm, c KOTOpmX OpMa 6yAeT paccMaTpHBaTcr, BO3ACeCTBHe H BiHKHHe Ha 4IOpMy oKpyxaioiiuten
o6cTaHOBKH H T.g. 3Aecb XyAO)KHHK AOJDKeH IIOAOiiTH K3aAaqe ywe KaK KCOMHO3HTOp>.
198

107

perceived forms," and thus to produce an above-average stimulation of the visual nerve. This
was, for him, the difference between products of art and those of nature (as those studied by
physicists): whereas art highlighted the characteristic making it obvious to the beholder, the
characteristic in nature could only be discovered by science.1 99
Thus refined by Ladovskii from an Expressionist metaphysical connotation, the notion of
vyrazitel'nost' merged with its counterpart, vyiavlenie. Along the way, however, it lost clarity
and distinctiveness, which eventually led to its de facto disappearance from Rationalist
theoretical discourse (although it remained shyly present, as a self-explanatory term, in the
formulations of student assignments). Instead, it was vyiavlenie, revealing, an "objective" and
"scientific" notion, that became the predominant Rationalist interpretation of expression.
Ladovskii postulated:
Can we permit [dopusitit';can also be translated as "assume"] that an architect, building
a form, would not know how it will be perceived by the beholder? Such an assumption
[dopuschenie] would signify a complete unscrupulousness [besprintsipnost'] and
inability of any mastery of geometric expressivity. It is necessary to postulate that the
architectural-geometric perspective on material form consists in a reworking [of it]
that allows the spectator to see its true geometric character as much as is necessary
for the given situation. 2 00

199 Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Arkhitektura i tekhnika" ["Architecture and technology"], Sovetskoe iskusstvo [Soviet Art],

No. 8-9 (1926): 3-9 (3); Khan-Magomedov, Patsionalizm, 114; Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 88.
2 00

Izvestia ASNO VA, No. 1 (1926): 3-4. Ladovskii's emphasis. Translation by the author. Russian original: <MOXHO
JIH AOnyCTHTh, ITo6M apxHTeKrop cTpoA 4OpMy He 3HaJI KaK ee 6yAeT BOCHHHMHmaTh 3pHTeIb? TaKoe AonyeHHe

03Ha-2ijo 6m HOJiHyIO 6eCIpHHHIIHHOCTh H

HeBO3MOXHOCTB KaKoro 6m TO HH 6mi2o macTepcTBa B o61acTH
reomeTpHlecKofi Bmpa3HTieHoCTH. Heo6xoHMo yCTaHOBHTh nojioKeHHe, TO apXKTeKrypHo-reoMeTpHecKan
CTOpoHa MaTepnaabHO4 *1OpMbI 3a1ioC0aeTC
B TiKOnh en HpopaGoTKe, HpH
KOTOPONi 3pHTCJIL
AeriCTBHTeJibHO BHR1HT ee reoMeTpHqecKyio XapaKTePHCTHKY B TOff Mepe, B KOTOPOi
3TO Ho6X0oXHMO AJIm
gaHHoro cjiy'am. Ladovskii's emphasis.

108

The elaboration of the concept of vyiavlenie [revealing] can be traced back to the seminal
1921 discussion of the relationship between construction and composition at INKhUK.2 0' In the
course of the discussion, Ladovskii had defined construction as an "absence of superfluous
materials or elements" and interpreted composition as the basic method of architecture-"a
hierarchy and subordination" [ierarkhiia,sopodchinennost1, presenting both as particular cases
of the artistic problem of revealing, vyiavlenie.2 0 2 Ladovskii illustrated his idea with drawings of
a cube, the first of which, "Construction," revealed the geometrical form of the object, while the
second, "Composition," revealed the object's compositional center, to which "the whole design
is subordinated... according to the principle of similarity and movement."203 Construction, in
other words, allowed for the revelation of a singular form, whereas composition dealt with
revealing relationships of several forms or several elements within a form. Since composition
was proclaimed by the Rationalists to be the method of organization of space, the "material of
architecture," revealing was to become the predominant architectural method.

More on the discussion see Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, U istokov formirovaniia ASNOVA i OSA-dve
arkhitekturnyegruppy INKhUKa [At the Roots of the Formation of ASNO VA and OSA-Two Architectural Groups
of INKh UK] (Moskva: Arkhitektura, 1994), and Maria Gough, The Artist As Producer:Russian Constructivism in
Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
201

202

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 105.

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 105. Translation by the author. Russian original:
nO1lqHHeHO... no npHHIxHny noAo6HA H gBHKeHH>>.
203

109

BCe

nocTpoeHHe

Figs. 2.4-2.5. Nikolai Ladovskii, "Construction" and "Composition", 1921.

Situated at the core of the architectural work, revealing became the major task of
Rationalist pedagogical assignments, developed throughout the 1920s, while composition was
interpreted as the key architectural method, which alone enabled the creation of space.
Ladovskii's pedagogy, methodically moving from more elementary to more complex
architectural tasks, mirrored of the Rationalist vision of architecture as a system of subjectively
perceived forms and psychological rules of a system's design.

The Architecture of Space
When in the fall of 1920, the First and Second SGKhM were united into VKhUTEMAS,
Higher Art and Technical Studios, Ladovskii, Krinskii and Dokuchaev each received their
individual workshops. The three workshops immediately united into Obmas [Ob'edinennyelevye
masterskie], United Left Workshops, allowing Ladovskii to push for autonomy within
VKhUTEMAS and to acquire independence in developing an educational program. Obmas,
110

which functioned for the three academic years between 1920 and 1923, and the course "Space,"
which Ladovskii secured for himself afterwards, were among the primary introductory (so called,
propedeutic) courses that VKhUTEMAS offered to incoming students in a series of classes,
whose purpose and structure resembled the Bauhaus Vorkurs. "Space" became the most
developed course within this "objective" (analytical) system of VKhUTEMAS propaedeutic
courses. Moreover a Rationalist, Rukhliadev, became the dean of the Department of
Architecture, solidifying the Rationalist influence among architects and making architecture the
stronghold of Formalism and empiriocriticism, while leaving painting and applied arts to the
Constructivists. 204 Even when in 1924 Aleksandr Vesnin opened a Constructivist architectural
workshop, the influence of the Rationalists within VKhUTEMAS remained predominant.205
This psychological reality that architecture had to construct was defined by the
Rationalists as space-a subjective, refracted reflection of the material world. Thus student
assignments given out at United Left Workshops aimed at analyzing the laws of the
psychological formation of space and at mastering the art of constructing coherent spatial
perception. This approach was based on a typology of perceptual qualities, which were
While members of ASNOVA taught the course "Space" and Cubist sculptors Boris Korolev and Aleksei
Babichev taught "Volume," most other pedagogues of the Basic Department belonged to the Constructivist
movement: Aleksandr Vesnin, Liubov' Popova, and Gustav Klutsis ("Color"); Anton Lavinskii ("Volume"); and
Aleksandr Rodchenko ("Graphics"). Constructivists' explorations of these formalist problems within VKhUTEMAS
and beyond testify to their own interest in psychophysiological aesthetics, an interest yet to be explored by
scholarship.
204

This situation was recorded by Bruno Taut, who-as if trying to compensate for his very own influence upon
Soviet modernist architecture at its earliest, Expressionist, period-commenting on the differences between Soviet
and European architectural avant-gardes, mentioned that Soviet architects "are prone to a purely artistic approach.
This deviation is especially pronounced at the Architectural Department of VKhUTEIN. Therefore, visiting it, I
considered it necessary to emphasize the necessity of strengthening practical education." Bruno Taut, "Stroitel'stvo i
arkhitektura novoi Moskvy" ["Construction and architecture of new Moscow"], Stroitel'stvo Moskvy [The
ConstructionofMoscow], No. 4 (1929): 12.
205

111

subsequently united into an organized complex spatial image. When the Basic Department was
formed at VKhUTEMAS in 1923, the architectural introductory course was officially recognized
as "Space" and was taught and elaborated by the first generation of Ladovskii's VKhUTEMAS
graduates (among them Viktor Balikhin, Sergei Glagolev, Mikhail Korzhev, Ivan Lamtsov, V.
Petrov, Iurii Spasskii, and Mikhail Turkus). "Space" developed Ladovskii's typology of spatial
sensations and adapted it for the purposes of architectural education. The course assignments
were classified according to three different parameters: the genre of expression (abstract or
architectural), the artistic task (formal expressivity or the revealing of form), and finally, the
formal quality to be expressed (geometrical, physical, mechanical, or spatial properties), such
that each assignment presented a combination of the three.
Unlike the two latter distinctions, which reflected the Rationalist understanding of
architectural work, the first, according to which the Rationalists differentiated between industrial
and abstract subjects, was strictly pedagogical in purpose. Traditionally-presented industrial
assignments, submitted as architectural plans and drawings, prepared students for the real
working situations of solving practical problems and presenting their work to clients. On the
other hand, conceptual abstract assignments represented a formal idea for an architectural
solution and were often submitted in clay, paper, wire, wood, or other sculptural media,
justifying the name of Ladovskii's famous "model" [maketnyi] method of design.2 06 This method

Commonly, the Rationalist assignments were initially developed as sketches,
then visualized as threedimensional models (in clay, often with the supplementary use of cardboard, paper, wires, wood, and other
materials), which were afterwards measured and represented on paper. Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 146.
Perceived as a radical innovation, clay modeling also allowed Ladovskii to "proletarize" architecture, visually
transforming his students from clean and dressed intelligentsia into dirty laborers in working smocks: so dirty, in
fact, that they were not allowed out of their workshops into the school corridors. Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov,
Mikhail Korzhev (Moskva: Russkii Avangard, 2009) 42-43.
206

112

allowed an easier evaluation of form under various changeable effects, such as light, atmosphere
and view point.20 7 But most importantly the model method represented the Rationalist vision of
the building as an enclosed voluminous form, a vision that gestated within the Zhivskul'ptarkh
Expressionist search for a synthetic art that eliminated distinctions between architecture and
sculpture. "Because architecture operates with space," declared Ladovskii in one of
Zhivskul'ptarkh meetings, "and sculpture-with form, it would be best to design the exterior of a
building as a sculpture, and the interior-as architecture; the thickness of walls is not important.
With this design, the outer form [of a building] would not necessarily express its inner
content." 208 Although this definition was soon complicated by the Rationalist discussions, in
which sculptural form was proclaimed only a prerequisite for the proper architectural work that
connected forms in space, the group always preserved Ladovskii's initial interpretation of the
individual building as sculpture.
Ladovskii's assignments also followed the distinction between revealing and expression,
putting a particular emphasis on the former. Moreover, as a Rationalist architectural object
revealed not an inherent form that could be intentionally modified by an architect but an ideal
geometrical form existing in the architect's mind, Rationalist revealing bordered on illusionism.
The Rationalists explored how inherent form could be evoked through controlling effective form,
making a kind of manipulation possible: any quality could be "revealed," independently of
whether or not it was really characteristic for the form.
207

Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Poiasnitel'naia zapiska," 81.

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 67. Translation by the author. Russian original: "TaK KaK apxHTeCrypa
orepHpyeT HpoCTpaHCTBoM, a CKyJImypa-opMofi, To camoe npaBWMHJoe 6ygeT CHapyxH npoecrHpOBaTi
3AaHHe KaK cKyIbrlTypy, a BHyTpH-KaK apxHTeKTypy, TOJUIHHa CTeH He HMeeT 3HaqeHH. HpH TaKOM
208

rpoeKTHPOBaHHH He

BCerga HapyHaIb

BHA BLIpa3HT BHyTpeHHee

113

co;Iep)KaHHe."

Similarly, the second order of classification, which dealt with the spatial properties of
perception, resulted from a Rationalist reading of empiriocriticism. Spatial perceptual qualities
were classified into geometrical and physical (which included mechanical) ones and the means
of their organization; if the former expressed forms and their perceived properties, the latter
dealt with relationships between forms. This structure was reflected in the order of assignments
that the students received. Most elaborated were geometric and physical properties, subdivided
into a complex hierarchical system. For instance, a typology suggested by Viktor Balikhin
asserted and analytically described the categories of surface, volume, mass, weight, and
construction:
A.

Geometric qualities of form in space.
1. Types of surfaces: a). plane; b). curved surfaces (cylindrical, conical etc.,
convex and concave); c). angles formed by polyline surfaces or by intersection of
planes-internal and external.
2. Volume as a form, comprised of a closed system of surface. Typical volumetric
forms: cylinder, parallelepiped, cone, sphere, etc., and their combinations.

B.

Physical-mechanical properties of form.
1. Mass (of volume)-enclosed space infilled with matter. Systems of elements,
exposing mass, have to evoke a visual penetration inside the volume and the
sensation of the degree of density of its infill with mass.
2. Weight (of volume)-the movement of mass downwards under the force of
gravitation.
3. Construction-a balancing system of couplings of interacting forms under the
effect of the gravitation force.

Khan-Magomedov, Viktor Balikhin (Moskva: Russkii avangard, 2009) 83-86.
Translation by the author. Russian
original: <A. FeoMeTpwsecKHe CBOiCTBa (opM B ipOCTpaHCTBe.
1. THMJ HOBepXHocTe: a). nroCKoCm; 6). KpHBbe HOBepXHOCTH (IMHApHqecKHe, KOHHteCKHe H ripot.,-BOrHyTuC H BmnyKme); B). yrma, o6pa3yeMbe jiOMaHHIMmH llOBepXHOCTHMH HnH nepeceteHHem
nniocKocTeA,-209

BHyTpeHHHe H BHeLIHHe...

2. 06beM-KaK (4OpMa, o6pa3yeMaA
napannenemHHeA,

B.

KOHYC,

<DH3HKO-MexaHHqecKHe

map H

T.fl.,

CBOiCTBa

3aMKHyTOA

CHCTeMOrl noBepXHOcTer. THHOBmC 4OpMw

a TaKce HX KoM6HHaixHH...
4OpM.

114

06,eMOB:

IHJIHHp,

Complex geometrical forms were treated by the Rationalists as combinations of simple ones, and
the clear representation of a complex fonn was accordingly based on an expression or revealing
its elementary components. Articulations (horizontal and vertical for a cylinder; horizontal and
the articulations of the generatrix for a cone; parallel sections for a sphere), 21 0 accentuations of
the size of angles, the dimensions of the building, and the three-dimensionality of architectural
form were used to highlight the qualities of these elemental forms. This led to recommendations
for bending and intersecting plane surfaces in order to express or reveal an angle; for using scale,
module and for proportional relationships for an articulation of dimensions; and for the use of
projecting cornices and spatial voids (galleries and arches) for the representation of volume.
The very first assignment given by Ladovskii at his newly organized course at Obmas at
VKhUTEMAS in October 1920 drew on the program of his own INKhUK "Construction"
drawing. "What does it mean to reveal a geometric image?" asked Ladovskii, "Would we see in
a mathematically-correctly built parallelepiped some other form-a sphere, a cone, a cylinder,
etc.? No, we will see neither a sphere nor a cylinder, but neither will we see a cylinder with the
geometrical properties specified in the assignment." 21' The assignment was formulated as a set

1. Macca (o6 ea)--3anoiHeHHe 3aMKHyTOrO IpocTpaHcTBa MaTepHeH. CHCTeMTa 3JieMeHTOB, BbIMBJIIM0ouHe Maccy,
AOJDKHbI BLI3LIBaTb 3PHTeJIbHo HpOHHKHOBeHHe BHYTPL of6eMa H oIgy11eHHe CTeiiCHH HrjiOTHOCTH 3aIOJIHeHHA ero
MaTepHeH.

2. Bec (o6tema)--ABHeHHe MaCCLI
3. KoHCTpyKuHA-ypaBHBeuIeHHa

BHH3

no0 AeHCTBHeM

CHCTeMa

CHJIM TSKCeCTH.

COnpsDxeHHA B3aHMoACecTByIIMHX

0opM nOg

AerCTBHeM cJMM

TSDKecTH.

B. PaCnonoweHHe HOBepXHOCTeri H 06eMOB B npocrpaHcTBe (oprHH3a4i
F. KoMuo3HIJHoHHo-opraHH3yIoIgHe cpeCTBa-xI nocTpoeHHA H

npocTpaHcTBa)...
4OpM H HX

BMSIBjieHHA

CHCTCMM

B

npocTpaHcTBe>).
210

Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 93.

Ladovskii's emphasis. Izvestia ASNOVA No. 1 (1926): 4. Translation by the author. Russian original: ((HO O
03HatIaeT BLISIBHTh reompTpaHk
ofip3? Pa3Be B MaTeMaTH'eCKH npaBHJIEHO riOCTpOeHHOM -i-Ae
[napauiLenenHne~e] MM yBHRgHM KaKyio-JIH60 HHyIO 4opMy-Inap, KOHyC, IIHIHHgP H T.n. HeT, MM B HeM He
115
211

of data that dictated both inherent and effective form of the object: dimensions (a parallelepiped
with a horizontal projection of 20x20 meters and a height of 30 meters), and the ephemeral
conditions of light (sunny) and the spectator's viewpoint (eyes at 1,6 meters from earth; the
distance between the subject and the object no more than 30 meters; the spectator was dynamic,
but the speed of her movement was no more than 15 meters per second). The students, also had
to consider that the movement of the sun could simultaneously illuminate two of the
parallelepiped's sides. The assignment asked the student to reveal the following: "1. The
direction of surfaces that form the sides of parallelepiped in relation to the coordinate spaces
(spatial orientation)... 2. A clear comprehension of ribs. 3. The equality of sides. 4. The
relationship of a base side to the height. 5. The regularity of side surfaces. 6. The straightness of
angles (i.e. the angles equal 90')." All these had to be exposed using vertical and horizontal
articulations, chiaroscuro, and the character [faktura] of surfaces.2 1 2
Describing a successful solution, by a student V. Petrov, 2 13 Ladovskii clarified:
One must put an identity sign between each pair of parallelepiped sides that are seen
simultaneously, that is, between all of its sides.
This means that the articulations of all the sides of the parallelepiped must be identical.
If, for example, we inscribe a circumference into each of the parallelepiped's sides in
such a way that the spectator could, during the process of perception, define the identity
of the diameters of each pair of simultaneously seen circumferences, this would show a
certain degree of approaching the image to its geometric essence, and would demonstrate
clearer the equivalence of distances of separate ribs from the front rib.

yBHAHM

HH

mapa,

HH IAHJIHHApa H T.l., HO MU TaKKe
reomeTpaqecKaHH Ka'eCTBaMH, KoTOpme AaHM B 3aAaHHH)>.

He yBHAHM

n-Aa

[napauenenHne

a]

C

TeMH

Nikolai Ladovskii, "Osnovy postroenia teorii arkhitektury (pod znakom ratsionalisticheskoi
estetiki)," Izvestia
ASNOVA No. 1 (1926): 3-5.
212

213

Unrelated to A. Petrov, a member of the Working Group of Architects
at INKhUK.

116

Having inscribed additional half-circumferences, we will comprehend the relationship
between the base and the height: 1:1/, the equality of sides and all its consequenceseverything with a certain degree of approximation, which can be achieved with the
help of these elements.2 14

epT

L4epr, 4.

3.

Figs. 2.6-2.7. V. A. Petrov. Parallelepiped. Abstract Assignment on Exposure of Form. 1920 [left], and Nikolai
Ladovskii, Geometrical analysis of Petrov's project [right].

This initial formal idea represented in an abstract assignment was to be given flesh and
blood subsequently, when an architect would develop the project and prepare it for a presentation
to the client. An industrial assignment, in which considerations of function, technology and
construction played a prominent role was naturally quite different in its goals and in the methods

214

Ladovskii's

emphasis.

Ladovskii,

"Osnovy postroenia

teorii arkhitektury

arkhitektury

(pod

znakom

ratsionalisticheskoi estetiki)," 4. Translation by the author. Russian original: <Heo6xoHMo HOCTaBHTh
TOxcgeCTBa MeKLcy KaxwoH napoN OAHOBpmCeHHO

BHAHMbMX

CTOPOH

3HaK

n-ga [napamienHenmnega], cJegOBaTeIbHO,

Mexcgy BCCMH CTOpOHaMH ero.
3TO O3HMiaeT, ITO mnieHeHHA Ha HOBepXHOCTH Bcex CTOPOH n-ga [napaminenHIInega]
EcJiH, gJ1

npHMepa,

M16

BHHrIiM HO OKpYWHOCTH Ha Ka)KlINM

oJHmii 61mT6

TO)KaeCTBeHHbI.

H3 CTOPOH n-ga [napannieneHnea], TaK MTo6bI

OgHOBpeMeHHO BHgHMbIX
CyIHOCTH, 6yAeT
OKpy)KHOCTeH, TO 3THM 6yAeT ;aHa HeKas CTCHenen npH6IH)eHHA o6pa3a K ero reomeTpHi CKOL
6onee yACHeHO paBeHCTBO pacCTOAHiN oTeJIbHbIx pe6ep OT nepeAHero pe6pa.

3pHTeJIb MOr lIpH BOCIIpHATHH OripegeIHTb paBeHCTBO

BHHcaB

eige HOg

Ka)grlo

napbi

OTHOiIeHHe OCHOBaHHA K BbICOTe 1:1/2
CTCHeHH HpH6JIHnKHHI, KaKoe MOryT AT

nOJIyOKpy)KHOCTH, M1I yACHHM

BbITeKIOIIuHe cJIeCTBHA, BCe B H3BeCTHoH

AHaMeTpOB

117

, paBeHCTBO CTOPOH H

3TH 3JIeMeHThD).

Bce

of its solution from an abstract assignment. For instance, "Parallelepiped" was followed by
"Grain elevator" (offered in 1921 and 1922):
Required: to design an elevator for storage of dry grain, total capacity 31,000
sacks=3,580 cubic meters.
Technical requirements: 1). The elevator must be divided into a series of separate cells
for storing grain. The latter can have following sections: circular, square, rectangle,
triangle, six- or eight-angle. ... The material for cells: brick, iron, reinforced concrete.
2). The grain is received through pouring reservoirs, where it arrives from railroad cars. It
is then elevated by hoists to the attic (upper ) storey, where, after going through purifying
devices, it is poured down to the separate cells (cameras) of the elevator.
3). All the spaces of the elevator must have a convenient connection via internal and
external staircases.
Architectural requirements: It is required, on the basis of the knowledge received from
the previous work on exploring form, to expose and express the form of the elevator as a
holistic volumetric structure; in order to achieve this, maximal use of various surface and
volumetric form and surface [faktura] of separate constituent parts is recommended
(Dokuchaev, 1921).215

Nikolai Dokuchaev, "Programma na izuchenie form dlia II-oi gruppy Osnovnogo
otdelenia Ob'edinennykh
masterskikh VKhUTEMASa," quoted in Khan-Magomedov, Mikhail Korzhev, 56-57; Khan-Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm, 165-167. Translation by the author. Russian original: <Tpe6yeTCA CnpoeKTHpOBrTi
CHJIOC AnI
XpaHCHHA cyxoro 3epHa, o6uIerl BMecTHMocTmio OKOjiO 31 000 MemKOB=3,580 icy6. MeTpOB.
215

TeXHHviecKHe Tpe6oBaHHn
1. CHJIOC AO3IXeH 6MT pa3geiieH Ha pAA oTgeJ~hHbIx mee9K ARA xpaHeHHr 3epHa. CeteHHe ocnemAHHx
AOHyCKaeTCA: Kpyrjloe, KBaApamoe, iipMoyrOJIbHoe, TpeyroJmHoe, ImeCTH H BocwMHyroJIbHoe.
... MaTepHaaI AqIu
eeK: KHpmHr, Keji3o, KeJIe3o6eTOH.
2. Hoiata epHa OT CCMIHmx pe3epByapOB, xyga 3ePHO HIOCTyIaeT H3 2KeJle3HOQOpOEHbIX BarOHOB, AOJDKH
1IPOH3BOAHThCH IpH nOMOuxH 3JeBaTOpa Ha qepgaHM (BepXHHn) 3Tac, rAe 3ePHO npH IOMOIH
TpaHcopTHpyioIgHx JieHT, pMONAM OqHCTHTeJIiHMe IpH6opm, ccmaeTC B OTgeJIbHM xmeAKH (KaMepM)
cHnoca...

3.

Bce iiOMeigeHH1 cHoca goxmm HmTi

ygo6Hoe 103TaWHOe coo6IgeHHe UpH rIOMO1H

BHyTPeHHHX HJH

BHCIHHX JiecTHHgI...
Tpe6oBRHH

apXHTeKTypHhIe

Tpe6yeTcA, Ha OCHOBe nOJIy-ieHHMX 3HaHHH H3 ripeAzjgyigeH pa6oTI Ha H3yqeHHe (lOpMM, BhMBHTh H Bmpa3HTh
4opy CHJIoCa KaK rleJocTHoro, o6'eMHoro coopyxeCHH; xIA 3TOrO KenaTeJI]HO MaKCHMajmIHOC HCriOJIb3OBaHHe
BO3MOW.HMX HJIOCKOCTHIX H o6',eMHmx 4DOpM H OaKTypI OTAeJIbHmX COCTaBHMX 3JIeMeHTOB CHJIoca...>

118

The solution of Mikhail
Korzhev consisted of eight equal
cylinders arranged in two rows,
which

easily

made

comprehensible the plan, a 1:2
rectangle. The project relied upon

on
Fig. 2.8. Mikhail Korzhev. Grain elevator. Industrial Assignment
Exposure and Expression of Form, 1922.

the contrast between rectangles

and circles, a contrast that created

a tension of dynamism and statics within the composition. On the one hand, the articulations of
cylindrical sections made the "fagade" of the elevator read as a grid of horizontal rectangles,
each segment representing the proportional relationships of the whole structure; at the same time,
the diagonals of the pedestal and the loft neutralized each other, conveying a feeling of dynamic
monumentality, which was accentuated by a slight-almost unnoticeable-narrowing of the
cylinders towards the top. On the other hand, the circles (the wheels on the ladder and on the top,
the circle quadrants at the bottom and the curves of the cylinders) emphasized the rotation that
lay at the heart of the functional program of the structure, making the beholder feel the
movement of the grain from the bottom left, up the conveyor ribbon and then towards the right,
following the diminution of the size of the wheels, then abruptly falling down into the elevator
and afterwards gradually sacking towards the left, where the circle, as it were, began anew.
If in expressing a geometrical quality, an architect investigated the form's surface, by
addressing a physical quality he or she was penetrating deep inside the form: the material, mass
and weight; a subcategory of physical, mechanical properties, were related to the forces and
119

tensions at play in each particular part of the form under the effect of the force of gravity, thrust,
and torsion. The mass (consistency, solidity, viscosity, or fragility) of form was to be expressed
through a characteristic treatment of the material (something that Tatlin had pioneered in his
counter-reliefs), through faktura (the character of surface), the spatial openings within the form,
and, finally in the form itself. For the expression of weight the Rationalists recommended to use
the form (such as a cone standing on its apex), articulations (shorter geometrical division towards
the bottom of the form), or the deformation of form (e.g., sagging).2 16 Mechanical propertiescompression, tension, elasticity, torsion, and shearing-were expressed by the form itself, its
deformations, articulations, an exposure of material and its surface treatment.
The most characteristic mechanical property was construction, "an expression of dynamic
moments of the work of a system of forces, which are included into the given architectural
structure"; since it served to express the coordination and functional subordination of the parts to
the whole. An architectural construction, therefore, had to be distinguished from a technical one
as a "formal transformation of the system of elements and their forces," that is, an image of
mechanical properties ("the functional logic of the system") rather than their employment for the
creation of a materially realizable form.2 17 As in the case of geometrical properties, the
psychological laws of physical properties were determined in the course of experiments: in one,
Ladovskii hung an obelisk with its top down to ascertain that it could achieve "quite a sinister
expression of a weighing heaviness" (the ensuing law that he discovered stated that in relation to
the horizontal plane, on which it rested, an object looked the heavier the closer its center of

216

Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 93-94.

217

Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 95-96.
120

gravity was located to this plane).21 8 In another experiment, he determined that a rectangle with a
narrower top and a wider base (a corner at the top of the rectangle was cut and added to the
bottom) looked heavier than a regular rectangle with the same surface.
An abstract assignment on physical properties offered in the Rationalist studios in 1922
asked to create an impression of stability in a destabilized form. 219 The students were presented
with a vertical parallelepiped leaning at 600 towards the horizon; its center of gravity was beyond
the outlines of the base (that is, according to the law of gravity, the parallelepiped had to fall);
nevertheless the assignment asked to demonstrate, using compositional means and the
deformation of form, that the form was stable. The project of student Arkadii Arkin radicalized
the situation, making the volume lean upon a single point. It presented the volume of two cones,
one inserted within the other; a series of parallelepipeds placed in parallel to each other was
superimposed on top of the cylinders. The ideal horizontality of parallelepipeds created an
impression that the whole construction was in a state of stasis, each parallelepiped firmly
occupying its place in the hierarchical order. Moreover, enhancing the impression, the
parallelepipeds' width increased towards the bottom, while their number multiplied to produce
an effect of support.

218

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 121.

219

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 176.
121

Fig. 2.9. Arkadii Arkin. Abstract assignment on exposure of physic and mechanical properties of form
(mass and balance). 1922 [left]. Fig. 2.10. Unknown author. Restaurant above the sea. 1922/23 [right].

A concomitant industrial assignment, given in the academic year 1922/23, asked for the
design a restaurant, hanging dangerously from a rocky cliff above the sea, such that visitors
would feel safe, experiencing the structure as stable. The assignment stipulated a 300 angle of the
cliff, from which the restaurant had to project off as a series of three to seven architectural floors.
It also had certain functional requirements: an aerodrome on top of the cliff, and a pier
connecting the reataurant with a bus station by means of a leaning elevator; below the cliff, a
horizontal building of the sea port had to be placed by the water. Similarly to Arkin, an unknown
author of one of the submissions emphasized horizontality designing a structure that appeared as
a series of static parallel horizontal volumes rather than as a single dynamic structure. As a result
the upper, most boldly projected, tier of the restaurant gave an impression of resting upon the
lower ones rather than hanging, as it actually was, from a rock on a single console. Moreover, the
restaurant's lower levels, which were not parallelepipeds but prisms, were placed directly below
the surface of the rock, which made their tops appear submerged. The entire structure appeared
to have grown naturally from the cliff, while the angle of the restaurant continued its natural
122

angle, returning, as it were, its original shape to nature, which was modified by a vertical slicing
the rock's upper part.2 20

The third type of assignments suggested by Balikhin, "Arrangement of surfaces of
volumes in space," or simply "the organization of space," dealt with what the Rationalist theory
considered to be the very essence of architectural creation. Not a mere container of objects,
space, Ladvoskii believed, was at once the "material" and the final project of architectural work.
Thus the so-called spatial assignments were the culmination of the Rationalist propedeutic
program, given after the assignments on geometrical and physical properties of form had already
been mastered. First and foremost they asserted the status of architecture as a discipline based on
kinetic and dynamic visual perception.
Towards the mid-1920s Ladovskii moved on to pursue his other interests (first of all,
urban planning), leaving the elaboration of the "Space" course to his disciples, the young
graduates of VKhUTEMAS.

Applying Mach's analysis of experience to the study of

architectural perception in the late 1920-s, this first generation of Ladovskii's students, by then
already young professors of architecture, engaged in an ambitious project of elaborating a
Rationalist theory of composition. After graduating from VKhUTEMAS in 1926, Ladovskii's
former students Viktor Balikhin, Mikhail Turkus, and Mikhail Korzhev decided to spend a
summer, collaboratively working on this project. The three rented a house in a village Kriushi
near Moscow, where, visited by V. Petrov, Iurii Spasskii, and Ivan Lamtsov, they elaborated a
classification of compositional elements that included such new (unexplored by Ladovskii)

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 177. The project was also published by El Lissitzky
in Russland: Die
Rekonstruktion Der Architektur in Der Sowjetunion (Wien: A. Schroll, 1930).
220

123

elements as surface, and metrical and rhythmical rows.2 This, eventually published by Krinskii,
Turkus, and Lamtsov in 1934 as Elementy arkhitekturno-prostranstvennoikompozitsii [Elements
of architectural-spatialcomposition] and was reprinted in the 1960s, remaining a key text book
on architectural composition for generations of Soviet architecture students.
While construction, this guiding principle of Constructivism, was reduced to one of the
physical properties of form, the notion of composition received in the Rationalist theory a much
more prominent place than in the thinking of their rivals. Composition became the principle that
united individual forms into a coherent whole and thus served as the principle of creating space,
a "system of arranging elements, determining the order of these elements into a whole
architectural organism-form (a system, exposing to the spectator the character of subordination,
combination, and location of separate elements that comprise an architectural form)."2 22
Compositional principles included relationships and proportions, statics and dynamics, and
rhythm.
According to Viktor Balikhin, who in 1926-1928 taught a course titled "Organization of
space" at VKhUTEMAS, artistic organization was nothing else than a composition in threedimensional space. Drawing a parallel with the principles of musical composition, Balikhin,
Turkus and Korzhev suggested four methods of composition in architecture: 1) relation
(juxtaposition of two magnitudes of forms and their elements), e.g., nuance and contrast; 2)
More on "the summer in Kriushi" see Khan-Magomedov, Mikhail Korzhev, 84-90.
The diary documenting the
theoretical work of Balikhin, Korzhev, and Turkus in Kriushi in 1926 has been also published by Khan-Magomedov
(MikhailKorzhev, 143-171).
221

22

Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 83.

.

Translation by the author. Russian original: <... CHcTema
pacnonoweHHA 3neMeHTOB, ycTaHa1BHHBaou1aA oripeAeaieHHE IOPAOK coeTaHHA 3THX 3MeJiHTOB B iIejlHE
apxHTeKTypHEII opraHH3M-(opMy
(cHcTeMa, BLnBmIOiIaA 3pHTeCjo xapaicrep nolpHHeHHA, co'eTaHmH
H
pacnojioieKeHHA oTAeJibH>ix 3JIeMeHTOB, CTPOAIDHX apXHTeKTypnyio 4)opMy)

124

proportions (relations connecting three and more magnitudes); 3) meter (a row formed by
identical forms, recurring with different intervals); and 4) rhythm (a row formed by a
transformation of form and interval). As a complex of elements, a composition had to
demonstrate unity, that is, a certain permanence of qualities that would allow a beholder to
identify it as a form. Unity guaranteed that the complex was a system subjected to the laws and
principles of organization and was thus navigable.
As in the theory of music and poetry, in the compositional theory of the Rationalists
rhythmical and metrical rows were characterized both by repetition and regularity of elements
and intervals: if rhythm dealt with their successive change (increase or diminution), meter was
defined by their equality. Metrical rows presented a canvas, a spatial skeleton of a form,
analogous to musical bars comprising the base of a melody, while metrical motives were
compared to musical chords. Combinations of metrical rows expressed force, serenity,
monumentality and scale (examples given by the team included St. Marco and Dneproges).
Rhythm, on the other hand, as the law of connection of spatial forms and elements, represented
the culminating method of organizing spatial complexes, and could express more lightness (as in
the example of Reims Cathedral) and dynamism. Combining various spatial elements (qualities)
with the method of their organization, one could achieve an almost infinite variety of rhythmical
rows. A combination of several rhythmical or rhythmical and metrical rows produced complex
rows with new spatial qualities.2 2 3

223

More on rhythmical rows, see Chapter Three of this dissertation.

125

An example of a Rationalist student
abstract

compositional

assignment,

"Exercise on Creating an Expressive Spatial
Design

Composition

Volumes"
Fig. 2.11. Tatiana Druzhinina, "Expressive Spatial

was

with Architectural

submitted

by

Tatiana

Druzhinina in 1929/1930. The model, an

Composition," VKhUTEIN, Moscow, 1929-1930.

abstract arrangement of spatial forms, was an enclosed, united, and dynamic composition. It
suggested a diagonal movement, directed towards the compositional center on the edge of the
plane, at the intersection of the major diagonal "avenue" and a subsidiary perpendicular route.
The central of the three perpendicular blocks in the middle divided the composition into two
equal parts, whose symmetry and thus coherence within the whole was guaranteed by the equal
distances between the central and the side blocks. The slightly off-diagonal row of horizontal
blocks increased the width of the avenue towards the compositional center: together with the
greater length of the far left block, for a beholder at the starting point on the right it made the
compositional center appear closer than it actually is. Finally, the curve going from the starting
point towards the left indicates a possibility of the shift of direction. The assignment organized
the movement of the beholder,

bringing different forms together in a single coherent

environment. It asserted the psychological definition of space, articulated by German
psychologist Carl Stumpf: "What we perceive originally and directly is the visual field, the
whole visual field... If this continually changes through movement, we retain the disappearing

126

parts in our minds and unite them with the newly perceived spaces into a whole. Thus, out of
many spaces arises one space; this is explained by the continuity of space." 224
Although simpler Rationalist compositions included those of wall surfaces, the most
complex and important of them dealt with large-scale open-air multi-structure complexes and
landscapes, which allowed for a dynamic perception: large public parks and, most importantly,
urban settlements. This connection of space with movement and, thus, time, led to the
appearance of the concept of space-time (famously used in architecture by Siegfried Giedion) as
a unified continuum, the spatial and temporal dimensions of which do not exist independently of
each other. Likewise, the goal of a Rationalist composition was to create an expressive surface or
that made a visitor experience the dimensions and the properties of the environment through
walking. The endpoint of movement, imposed by an architect, was architecturally expressed as
the compositional center. Such central organization tacitly attracted people to its core, provoking
their movement in the desired direction, and thus allowed the composition to fulfill its mission as
"dynamics" or "the organization of visual movement in the desired direction." 225
From revealing the form of a parallelepiped to composing large-scale urban projects,
Rationalist pedagogy asserted the value of the energy-saving, immediate, unconscious perception
of architectural environments-a perception of ideas imbued into the form by its designer and
possibly contradicting imperfect material reality. Rationalist pedagogy asserted the special status
Carl Stumpf, Uber den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1873)
278.
Translated into English in Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, "Introduction," Empathy, Form and
Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, 1-85 (60). Stumpf's 1907 book Erscheinungenund Funktionen
(Phenomenaand [psychic] functions) was translated into Russian in 1913 as Karl Stumpf, "Iavlenia i psikhicheskie
funktsii," Novye idei vfilosofii, Sbornik 4 (St. Petersburg: Obrazovanie, 1913).
224

2

For examples of Rationalist spatial projects, see Chapter Three of this dissertation.
127

of the architect as a master of human mind and as an author of this higher-than-material truth. As
the remainder of this chapter argues, this new responsibility led to new demands being placed
upon architects, particularly, upon their own psychological and physiological profiles.

Rationalist Psychotechnics
The master who could reveal to a layman the hidden properties of spatial forms and make
them legible and unconsciously recognizable, an architect had to possess a particular vision of
the world, easily (i.e. while expending a minimal amount of perceptual energy) noticing and
analyzing regularities and relationships of formal elements. The eye and its physiological
properties thus became a focus of attention for the Rationalists', who explored various methods
for its assessment and examination with the goal of developing an objective, scientific
explanation of architectural talent. The idea of a special architectural vision, physiologically and
psychologically different from that of a lay person, became particularly important for Rationalist
pedagogy, where it legitimized the evaluations of students' work as rooted in objective
physiological conditions rather than in subjective preferences.
Such a scientific, experimental analysis of architectural vision became the task of the
Architectural Research Laboratory [Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria]
within the Architecture Department of VKhUTEIN, opened by Ladovskii in 1927, which was
usually referred to as the Psychotechnical Laboratory. Arguing for the necessity of such a
laboratory, Ladovskii referred to Hugo Minsterberg, the late German founder of this
psychological discipline who had taught at Harvard University: "Psychotechnics cannot create
artists... but it can provide all of them with a basis for achieving in the most reliable way those
128

particular goals to which they aspire and, above all, for avoiding certain pitfalls... A widely
developed psychotechnics can, in the future, make its own demands of composers, even if it were
constantly confirmed that genius finds unconsciously that which science develops with great
effort.

226

Miinsterberg's principles and methodology seem to have been an important model for
Ladovskii, who attempted to reconstruct the famous Harvard psychological testing rooms at
VKhUTEIN. According to Minsterberg's description, eight of more than forty rooms of his
laboratory were "entirely black so that no light may be reflected from their surface." 227 Likewise,
Ladovskii managed to acquire within VKhUTEIN a special testing room, which was entirely
painted in black (including the floors and the ceilings) to avoid distractions and possible spatial
reference points: a contemporary remembered that "the black room produced a whimsical
impression, all filled with various devices with stretched threads and bright color spots for the
experiments with color. It looked as if it were on fire." 228 Famously, the hired house-painters
refused to paint the room and Ladovskii and his associates paint it on their own.
Minsterberg's psychotechnics was based on differential psychology, a study of persistent
traits in the psyche that permitted a classification of personality types. His major work on
psychotechnics, Grundziige der Psychotechnik [Fundamentals of Psychotechincs], written and

Nikolai Ladovskii "Psikhotekhnicheskaia laboratoria arkhitektury." Selection translated from the Russian
by
Anatole Senkevitch (Anatole Senktevitch, Jr., Trends in Soviet Architectural Thought, 1917-1932: the Growth and
Decline of the Constructivist and Rationalist Movements." Diss., Cornel University, 1974, 335-336); Hugo
Miinsterberg, Grundzaige der Psychotechnik(Leipzig: Barth, 1914) 610.
226

2

Hugo Mfinsterberg, Business Psychology (Chicago: La Salle Extension University, 1915) 13-14.

228

Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, GeorgiiKrutikov (Moskva: Russkii avangard, 2008) 39-40.

129

published in German in 1914, 229 consisted of two subfields: the first gave predictions about
possible changes in the psychic life, while the second explored how psychic life might be
altered. 230 The first subfield thus included research on individual physiological and
psychological faculties and was conducted in a laboratory with the help of special testing
machines. In order to study a complex psychological trait, Minsterberg suggested splitting it into
several elementary properties and testing the capacities of a subject on each of these
parameters. 231 The second subfield, which studied the way psychology could impact
consciousness, explored various forms, stages and degrees of influence, from a one-time
manipulation of a person's behavior to a permanent effect upon his or her values.
Although it never saw an English translation, the Russian version of Grundziige der
Psychotechnik came out in 1922.

Other Russian publications and translations of German texts

on psychotechnics quickly followed.

Alongside Germany and the USA, psychotechnics

229 As the study of psychology's practical use, psychotechnics completed
Miinsterberg's system of psychological
sciences. As such, it followed causal psychology (which studied the content of consciousness) and teleological
psychology (which examined actions and associations of psychic life).
230 G. Miunsterberg [Hugo Miinsterberg], Osnovy psikhotekhniki
[Foundationsofpsychotechnics]. Vol.1 (Moskva:

Russkii knizhnik, 1922) 33.
231 Miunsterberg,

Osnovypsikhotekhniki, 65.

232 Albeit spectacular, the psychotechnics' heyday was brief: in
1936, it was declared a bourgeois pseudo-science in

the Soviet Union; in 1942, it was banned in Nazi Germany. Stem immigrated to the United States, where
Miinsterberg had worked from 1897 until his death in 1916, while their Soviet colleagues were subjected to
repression. In spite of Mfinsterberg's recognition in the United States, in the New World psychotechnics never
gained an importance comparable to the one it enjoyed in Germany and Soviet Russia. In English, Miinsterberg
preferred to address his field as "applied psychology," emphasizing the practical benefits that his study could bring
to businessmen.
233 The following works of Miinsterberg were published in Russian
translations: Psikhologia [Psychology] (Sankt-

Peterburg, 1908); Psikhologia i uchitel' (Psychology and the Teacher) (Moskva: Mir, 1910); Soedinennye Shtaty
Ameriki [The United States of America] (Sankt-Peterburg: Brokgauz-Efron, 1913); Amerikantsy [American traits :
from the point of view of a German] (Moskva: Tip. A. P. Poplavskogo, 1906); Osnovy psikhotekhniki [The
Foundations of Psychotechnics], vols. 1-2 (Moskva: Russkii knizhnik, 1922-1925); Sbornik statei po prikladnoi

130

became especially popular in the young Soviet Union, which aspired to create a modem
industrialized economy. The All-Russian Psychotechnic Society was founded in 1927,
publishing a journal and establishing branches in several cities; by 1930, there were more than
one hundred psychotechnical institutions throughout the USSR. 23 4 Like Taylorism and Fordism,
the other forms of industrial management, psychotechnics found patronage among the high state
and Party officials, one of the most active among whom was Anatolii Lunacharskii. As a result,
out of 55 research organizations connected to the Narkompros, Lunacharskii's ministry of
culture and education, 24 explicitly dealt with physiology and psychology, while 79 projects of
the Narkompros and the ministries of health, labor, and social security were devoted to the study
and improvement of socialist workers' physiological and psychological organization.

In the

1920s, psychotechnics also successfully penetrated into higher education, where it attempted to
replace the old examination system. "Technical giftedness" [tekhnicheskaia odarennost'] was a
quality that psychologists particularly suggested to be tested in those aspiring to become Soviet
technical specialists.2 3 6

psikhologii [A Collection ofArticles on Applied Psycholgoy] (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe tekhnicheskoe izdatel'stvo,
1922); Psikhologiai ekonomicheskaia zhizn' [Psychology and Economic Life] (Moskva: Sovremennye problemy, N.
S. Stolliar, 1924).
As a science of labor management, psychotechnics competed with Taylorism. In 1920, the famous
Soviet
proponent of Taylorism, Alexei Gastev, founded the Central Institute of Labor (Tsentral'nyi institut truda) for the
research in the newly created field of the Scientific Organization of Labor (nauchnaia organizatsia truda). It was
within the umbrella of this institute where Isaak Spielrein opened the first psychotechnical laboratory. If Taylorism
suggested a mechanistic reduction of the human body and psyche, psychotechnics exhibited a biological
determinism, postulating the innate inequality of people's abilities.
234

Margarete V6hringer, Avantgarde Und Psychotechnik: Wissenschaft, Kunst
Wahrnehmungsexperimentein Der Frufhen Sowjetunion(Gd'ttingenWallstein, 2007) 8-39.

23s

Und Technik Der

236

S[olomon] Gellershtein, "Psikhotekhnika i komplektovanie vuzov" ["Psychotechnics and the selection
of

university students"], Krasnoe studenchestvo [Red Studentship] No. 28 (1929): 34-41.
131

Following these trends in Soviet psychology, Ladovskii saw an important role of his
Psychotechnical Laboratory in architectural education, endowing it with several missions. First,
it was to deal with the analysis of the elements of architecture and their interaction, studying
their effects upon the psyche, and to conduct experimental testing in spatial disciplines that
utilized these elements. Second it was to study the connection of architecture with society,
economy, and technology, focusing on such problems as the impact of architecture on everyday
life, functionalism, standardization, and NOT (the scientific organization of labor). Finally, the
Laboratory was to study questions of architectural pedagogy and psychotechnics. This third set
of questions, which was centered around the evaluation of students' abilities, was the foremost
focus of the Laboratory and served the foundation for research in the other two areas. Ladovskii
himself, with the help of his former student Georgii Krutikov, was in charge of the
psychotechnical section. While it also explored the attitudes and peculiarities of the spatial
perception of architectural consumers, treated as professional and social groups (workers,
students, white-collar workers, etc.) with the help of psychological questionnaires, the focus of
the Laboratory was the physiological suitability of architecture students to their professional
roles, which was tested with help of specially construed apparatuses and tests, partially borrowed
from psychotechnical literature and partially designed by Ladovskii's collaborators. 237 Ladovskii
explained: "So many misunderstandings stemming from the lack of terminology could the
laboratory eliminate in the evaluation of the quality of architectural work. The arbitrariness of

Georgii Krutikov, "Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri
Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete
VKhUTEIN" ["Architectural research laboratory within the Architecture Department of VKhUTEIN"], Izvestia
ASNOVA No. 1 (1926): 2-4.
237

132

judging competition entries is notorious. Only when the laboratory functions properly can the
misunderstandings between the pedagogues and the students finally be eliminated." 23 8
Ladovskii found an objective way of evaluating students' work-a scientific correlate of
architectural talent-described by the Rationalists as a capacity for "seeing" architecture, in the
psychological notion of eye-balling, glazomer (German Augenmaji), a frequently tested
parameter in psychotechnics. According to Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon that came out
shortly before Minsterberg's Grundzaige, eye-measuring, as the faculty of estimating the
magnitude of distance, angle, mass, space, and other properties without special instruments,
found many applications in practical life of people. It was important for butchers, who needed to
cut the required measure of meat, as well as for land surveyors, engineers, the military,
draftsmen, painters, sculptors, and, of course, architects. 239 Thirty years later, the definition of
eye-measuring as precision peculiar to architectural work was repeated by a Jugendstil architect
August Endell: "The so-called "measuring by eye" [Augenmapi] makes it possible to judge
relationships of scale through feeling, and one knows how extraordinarily precise this can be. ...
And those who have lived among painters and musicians know how well they communicate
through inflection, gesture, and so on, despite of the impossibility of an exact description."240

Nikolai Ladovskii "Psikhotekhnicheskaia laboratoria arkhitektury (v poriadke postanovki voprosa)," Izvestia
ASNOVA No. 1 (1926): 7. Translation by the author. Russian original: OCKOIBKO HeAopa3ymoHHA 2i6opaTopH
morna 6M ycTpaHHT HpH ogeHKe Ka'necTB apxHTeKTypHoH pa6oTI H3-3a OTCyTCTBHK o6IWeo6A3aTenHoi
238

TePMHHOJIOrHH Aa)Ke B cpe~e CdeugHaAHCTOB. CnyiaiHocT oueHKH KOHKypCHbIX ripOeKTOB o6I1eH3BecTH. CTpaCTH
BO3HHKaIOIHe MeKAy

HeAaroraMH H yaUIWMHC Ha nOqBe B3aHMHOrO HeHoHHMaHHA,
Ao HpaBHJIhHOH HOCTaHOBKH pa6oT na6opaTOpHH>.

He moryT 6MTb ycTpaHeHW

239 Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon: Allgemeine Deutsche Real -Encyklopadie 13th ed., vol. 2 (Leipzig:
F.A.

Brockhaus, 1882) 193.
240 August Endell, "Architektur-Theorien," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 10 (1914): 54. Quoted in Zeynep Celik
Alexander, Kinaesthetic impulses, footnote 73. On the question of "measuring by eye" or "visual discrimination,"

133

Substituting artistic talent, the eye, as a measuring and analytical device, became a crucial
instrument of architectural work. The muscles of an architect's eye were to be no less trained
than the muscles of a factory worker's hand, and just as the movements of an experienced
worker were precise and measured, so was the eyesight of an architect. Thus all the
psychotechnical apparatuses that Ladovskii invented and installed in the Laboratory were
designed for measuring glazomer, this basic unit of the evaluation of artistic giftedness.
Oglazomer (from the word ob'em, volume) tested the ability to evaluate volume; ploglazomer
(from the word ploskost', surface) served for surface values; liglazomer (from linia, line)
measured the capacity to estimate linear values; while uglazomer (from ugol, angle) tested the
faculty of estimating an angle and the degree of horizontality or verticality of a line. The simplest
of Ladovskii's psychotechnic devices, liglazomer, consisted of a freely hanging ruler turned with
its back side towards the subject. The person was asked to mark the required length on the ruler
with the help of a slide, and the magnitude of his or her mistake was evaluated by the scale on
the ruler's other side. The slide in ploglazomer was a sheet of glass marked with lines. Using the
slide, the subject was asked to cut a certain part of the flat figures under the glass, and the degree
of precision was evaluated by folding scales. Oglazomer used utilized the surface of water,
which filled geometrically-shaped vessels, while the graduated cylinders, from which the water
flowed, served as the scale demonstrating the degree of precision. Finally, uglazomer consisted
of a vertically situated rotating circle, which could be turned to mark an angle of a certain
magnitude; the results were checked by using the scale on the circle's back side.

see Theodor Lipps, "Die empirischen Tduschung des Augenmasses," Zur Einffihlung (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann,
1913) 359-379.
134

kolai Ladovskii, Liglazomer [left], and ploglazomer [right].

Figs. 2.14-2.15. Nikolai Ladovskii, Uglazomer [left], and oglazomer [right].

The machines invented by Ladovskii were based on similar psychotechnical apparatuses
designed by professional psychologists (most importantly, McCorry and Nikolai Levitov) for
vocational testing. 24 1 Particularly similar to liglazomer, one of these apparatuses, which was used
for testing glazomer of tram and bus drivers, presented a four-meter horizontal ruler fixed one
meter below the ceiling; an arrow, moving parallel to the ruler, allowed for the division of the
ruler into segments. The subject was asked to divide the ruler into two, three, or four equal parts,

See, for instance, N[ikolai] D. Levitov, "Problemy, metody i osnovnye
vyvody issledovania po difpodboru v
FZU po kholodnoi obrabotke metalla" ["Problems, methods and main conclusions of a research on differentiated
selection of students for factory schools specializing on cold metalworking"], Differentzial'nyipodborv shkoly FZU
241

metallopromyshlennosti [Differentiated selection of students for metal industry factory schools] (Moskva: NII

Okhrany zdorov'ia detei i podrostkov, 1935) 5-59 (22-23).

135

while psychologists measured the degree of his or her visual precision.2 4 2 What Ladovskii's
Laboratory thus aimed to achieve was not a novel, idiosyncratic approach to architectural work,
but rather an introduction of architecture into the sphere of established psychotechnical
research-a psychological discipline that had confined itself to the study of manual and technical
labor, avoiding the question of whether or not physiological characteristics impact creative work.
One device stood out from of Ladovskii's other measuring apparatuses.

243

The only one

that did not have the word glazomer in its title, it served not only for evaluating students'
capacities but also for furthering architectural theoretical research. This device, prostrometr
(from prostranstvo, space), as its name implies, measured space itself and was designed for "an
experimental testing of spatial disciplines." 244 The device consisted of two identical pairs of
transverse surfaces on which objects could be positioned in a variety of ways. The two horizontal
surfaces could change the angle of incidence, whereas the vertical surfaces were fixed, making a
screen that prevented the subject from evaluating the incidence angle. The subject was to occupy
a fixed position in front of a rectangular binocular frame exactly on the axis of the boundary

A. I. Tupikova-Fraishtadt, "Apparat dlia ispytania lineinogo staticheskogo glazomera" ["Machine for testing
linear static glazomer"], Voprosy somaticheskogo i psikhotekhnicheskogo profpodbora voditelei mestnogo
transporta [Questions of somatic and psychotechnical professional selection of drivers of local transport].
(Leningrad: Transportnoe upravlenie Lensoveta, 1936) 195-196.
242

A report on the activity of the Laboratory mentioned another "machine for testing spatiality [prostranstvennost'],
ponderability [vesomost'] and balance; [a machine] giving possibility of visual comparison of architectural projects
in regards to the above-mentioned qualities." As no evidence of this machine has been preserved, its appearance
and working principle are unclear apart from the fact that, just like prostrometr, it was based on the principle of
comparison and was the closest to fulfilling Ladovskii's dream of objectifying the task of evaluating students'
projects. See Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 371.
243

G[eorgii] Krutikov, ,,Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete
Moskovskogo Vysshego Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta" ["Architectural research laboratory within the Architecture
Department of Moscow High Art-Technical Institute"], Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost' [Construction Industry] No. 5
(1928): 372-375 (374).
244

136

between the two horizontals, so that she could not
evaluate the degree of the surfaces' incidence, while a
system of scales measured analyzed magnitudes. In one of
the tests, the researchers put geometric figures on both
horizontal surfaces and asked the subject to evaluate their
spatial depth, determining which of the left figures was

~ ~~\
~

~

'

equally distant from the screen as the selected figure on
~4245
the right.
Responding to Munsterberg's physiological

Fig. 2.16. Nikolai Ladovsk Prostrometr

approach to Augenma3 no less than other Ladovskii's

apparatuses, prostrometr depended on contrast and comparison, asserting them as the principles
of the construction of space.
Comparison, indeed, had been singled out by physiologists as one of the most important
constituents of glazomer. Levitov believed that the processes of comparison, differentiating, and
evaluation have a special importance for the function of glazomer.2 46 Likewise, summarizing the
achievements of contemporary physiology in the 1940s, a then-leader of Soviet physiology
Sergei Kravkov (who in the 1920s had taught a course on visual perception at VKhUTEMAS)
could define glazomer as "a faculty of the eye to compare spatial magnitudes." 247 Mach, too, had
believed that scale [Maj3stab],although was inherently being inherently a comparison of external
bodies, was nevertheless based on human perception: all standards and measurements could
245

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm, 369-370.

N[ikolai] D. Levitov, "Problemy, metody i osnovnye vyvody
issledovania po difpodboru v FZU po kholodnoi
obrabotke metalla," 22.
246

247

Sergei Kravkov, Glaz i ego rabota [The Eye and Its Work]
(Moskva: Izd. Akad. nauk SSSR, 1945) 292.

137

likewise be traced back to a physiological comparison.2 48 Aesthetic thinkers also defined
glazomer/Augenma3 as a comparison, or in the language of architectural theory, as spatial
relationships. As harmonic relationships between elements formed the essence of architectural
composition, Augenma3 was recognized as the most important talent of an architect, just as
musical ear was a necessary requirement of a composer. Eduard von Hartmann, the author of the
first theory of the unconscious, had already in 1886 asserted that Augenmafi for architects and
musical ear for the composers were of equal importance, but if Augenmaj3 had a relational,
comparative quality, the musical ear had an immediate character. Architecture, he argued, was
perceived by Augenma3 as an understanding of relationships between objects, while music was
perceived by musical ear directly, as a pleasing or displeasing sensation.2 4 9 Comparison was also
recognized as a decisive factor in the formation of a spatial image in psychophysiological
aesthetics. According to Hildebrand, it allowed the mind to organize separate spatial objects into
a coherent picture, to establish relationships between them, and to organize space through these
relationships: "...The image, as appearance, consists of a complex of contrasts that-if we are to
receive a truly living image of real spatial nature-must singly and collectively stimulate the idea
of form and space. The unity of appearance... consists of the interaction of contrasting factors
and their combined ability to evoke the appearance of a spatial whole." 250
Pictorial impression, for Hildebrand, created a relative standard of measure, against
which other measures were compared. In order to understand a form, that is, to create a visual
248

Mach, Analysis ofSensations, 343.

Eduard von Hartmann, ,,Die Stellung der Baukunst in der modernen Asthetik," Westermanns Illustrierte
Deutsche Monatshefte (1886): 743-760 (744).
249

25

Hildebrand, "The Problem of Form," 241.
138

idea, one mentally transformed all actual dimensions into relative ones. In 1908, in an article
entitled "A contribution to understanding of artistic connections of architectonic situations"
(,,Beitrag zum Verstdndnis des kiinstlerischen Zusammenangs architektonischer Situationen")
Hildebrand moved from an analysis of individual buildings to an examination of their mutual
visual effects upon each other.2 51 For Hildebrand, as for Mach and other authors, Augenmaji was
the faculty of the estimation of dimensions of objects through comparison of their spatial
magnitudes and was, thus, closely connected with the concept of scale, or MaJtab. Literally
meaning "a measuring yard" in German, the word "Majtab" in both German and Russian (to
which it was transliterated from German as masshtab) referred to a module, a unit of
comparison.
The notion of Ma3tab first appeared in the context of psycho-physiological aesthetics in
Hermann Maertens's book Der optische Masj3tab oder die Theorie und Praxis des dsthetischen
Sehens in den bildenden Kinsten [OpticalScale, or the Theory and Practiceof Aesthetic Seeing
in Fine Arts, 1877]. Maertens was the first to treat an optical Ma/3tab as a psychological
phenomenon distinct from the actual dimensions of a building: he was interested in the influence
of the distance between an observer and a building upon the building's perceived qualities, and
determined that a building had to be viewed at a 270 angle, whereas a 450 angle allowed the eye
to dissolve in details, and an 180 angle caused the image to dissipate within the environment.2 5 2
Adolf von Hildebrand, ,,Beitrag zum Verstsndnis des kinstlerischen Zusammenangs architektonischer
Situationen," Raumkunst No. 19 (1908).
251

Hermann Maertens, Der Optische-Maassstab, oder, Die Theorie und Praxis des dsthetischen Sehens in den
bildenden Kfinsten (Bonn : Max Cohen & Sohn, 1877). For a discussion of Maertens's book, see Albert Erich
Brinckmann, ,,Der Optische Mailtab ffir Monumentalbauten im Stadtbau," Wasmuths Monatshefte fir Baukhunst
Heft 2 (1914): 57-72 (57); Akos MoravAnszky, "The optical construction of urban space: Hermann Maertens,
Camillo Sitte and the theories of 'aesthetic perception'," The JournalofArchitecture Vol.7, No.5 (2012): 655-666.
252

139

The focus of Maerten's interest was the building in and of itself, which he treated as "a small
world of its own" without consideration of its surroundings which he believed could only
obscure its proper evaluation.
In 1914, art historian and critic Albert Erich Brinckmann developed the notion of Majitab
by elaborating Hildebrand's parenthetical idea that optical Ma3tab could be used for an analysis
of buildings' visual proportional relationships within an urban environment. In his article "Der
optische Mafitab fir Monumentalbauten im Stadtbau" ("Optical Scale for Monumental
Structures in City Planning") Brinckmann introduced into urban theory a new set of notions,
such as the visual effect of buildings' Mafitab upon each other and the Leitlinie, or the optical
transition between two different architectural scales, an expression of Mafitab through an
articulation of the surface of a building.

For both Hildebrand and Brinckmann, an urban

Mafitab as the standard of measuring was conditioned by the habitual forms of everyday life: the
Castel Sant'Angelo, for example, was perceived in all its magnitude only because of a small
town that grew on its top. 2 54

Dokuchaev recommended Brinckmann's article to architectural students and pedagogues,
and the ideas expressed in it came to play an important role for the Rationalist architectural
theory. Like Brinckmann, the Rationalists were interested in a building not as an isolated
phenomenon, but as an element of a spatial ensemble, thus Mafitab was transformed in their
theory into an instrument of compositional arrangement. However, while the German theorists
Brinckmann, ,,Der Optische Mal3tab fur Monumentalbauten im Stadtbau.". Brinckmann's article was cited by
Dokuchaev in ,,Metodicheskaia zapiska," 97.
253

Hildebrand, "K ponimaniu khudozhestvennoi sviazi arkhitekturnykh situatsii" [,,To an understanding of artistic
connection of architectural situations"], Gil'debrand, Problema formy v izobrazitel'nom iskusstve, 157 [original
German publication, Raumkunst No.19 (1908)].
254

140

spoke of Ma3tab as a predominantly subjective category of architectural perception, Rationalist
theory emphasized a different aspect of the word's meaning-that of measuring. In other words,
the Rationalists strived to clarify and conceptualize the notion of Ma3tab by differentiating its
two different senses: that of "a standard of measuring the real dimensions of a building" (actual
MaJ3tab) and that of "a standard of measuring the perceived dimensions of a building" (optical
Mafitab); it was the latter that predominantly interested the Rationalists.

Brinckmann and

Hildebrand had suggested comparing forms of monumental architecture to the habitual
dimensions of everyday life but the Rationalists rejected this approach, expressing the scale of
architectural form as a proportional relationship of its parts, which in turn were apprehended
through their comparison with proportional relationships within a human body.256 Thus
Ladovskii's article on "Sky-scrapers of the USSR and America" in Izvestia ASNOVA asserted
that Mafitab was the central architectural problem of sky-scraper construction, and argued that
neither German nor American architects could satisfactorily solve this problem, the first being
too idealist and "psychological" (here, Ladovskii obviously targeted Expressionist architects),
the second, on the contrary, forgetting about the person and creating proportional relationships
within the building by using a window-frame as a standard of measure.5
Lissitzky's photomontage on the last page of the same newspaper issue further explored
the notion of Maj3tab as a measuring device and a function of human perception. Paraphrasing
Protagoras, it declared, "Man is the measure of all tailors. Measure architecture with

255 Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 97.
256

Dokuchaev, "Metodicheskaia zapiska," 84.

25 7

Enael' [Nikolai Ladovskii], "Neboskreby SSSR i Ameriki," 5-6.
141

architecture" [Chelovek-mera vsekh portnykh... Arkhitektury mer'te arkhitekturoi]. 258 The full
manifesto-like text, which accompanied images, read:

Man is the measure of all tailors
[Our] great-grandmothers believed that the Earth is the center of the world,
And the man is the measure of all things.
[They] said about these objects:
"What a mighty giant!" [photograph of a skyscraper, which
was initially juxtaposed to a photograph of Aleksandr III's
statue] 2 5 9

And this is even now compared with nothing else but
a fossilized animal [photographs of an iron construction and of a fossil
skeleton]
Compare this neither
with bones, nor with meat [montage of dirigibles and an iron construction]
Learn to see that which is
in front of your eyes,
Directions for use:
Throw [your] head back, lift the paper, and then you will see [collage with dirigibles]

Here is the person, the measure of a tailor [montage with a
pattern]

But measure architecture with architecture. [photograph of a skyscraper in a perspective]. ,260

The enigmatic message of the collage has inspired various interpretations. 261 To
understand it, one has to refer not only to the context of ASNOVA VKhUTEMAS pedagogy, but
2

s1 IZVestia ASNO VA, 8.

259

See V6hringer, Avantgarde Und Psychotechnik, 44-48.

260

Ivestia ASNO VA, 8. Translation by the author. Russian original:

(dIeIOBeK mepa Bcex riOpTHbX
Flpa6a6ymIKH BepHJIH, 'TO 3eMJI i~eHTp mHpa, a meJioBeK mepa BceX BeLefi.
Fpo TaKHe BeIgH rOBOPHJIH "KaKOH MOry'HA BeJIHKaH!"

A Tacoe H cefi'ac CpaBHHBaBOT

He cpaBHHBaATe

He HHa'e, KaK c HcKonaeMmIM xHBOTHLIM.

3TO HH C KOCTAMH, HH C MACOM.

HayuTeCb BHgemT TO, 'ITO nepeg

BaIMHMH rJIa3aMH.

BOT 'eJIoBeK-nopTHoMy Mepa,

A ApxHTeKrypy MEPbTE ApxHTeKTypoib.

142

also to Lissiztky's other work. In "A. and Pangeometry" (1925), Lissitzky revealed that the
phrase "Man is the measure of all tailors" belonged, in fact, to Hans Arp, Lissitzky's friend and
associate during his Swiss sojourn, and was pronounced by Arp at the first Dada event in Zurich
as early as 1916.262 In an early essay "The measure of all things" ["Das Mass aller Dinge"] Arp
accused humankind of attempting to order the whole universe according to its own standards,

The opponents of ASNOVA, especially after the Soviet cultural turn of the mid-1930s, suggested to read it as a
summon to 'artpour 1'art, a declaration of a complete separation of architecture from the economic and political
realities of the country. See R. Ia. Khiger, Puti arkhitekturnoimysli [Directionsof ArchitecturalThought] (Moskva:
OGIZ-IZOGIZ, 1933) 49, whereas contemporary scholars have tried to suggest more sympathetic interpretations of
the collage.
261

German scholar Margarete Vhringer saw the clue to its meaning in the arrow that points to the envelope with the
pattern and a picture of a boy in the low right corner, above an inscription "This is the person, the measure of all
tailors." The image, which VWhringer because of the pointing arrow believed to be the key one for the whole
collage, spoke not about measuring the world through a person, but, on the contrary, about measurable and measured
human. Only those who challenged their perception, went on with her interpretation VWhringer, could see how small
a person in fact was. As for architecture, it "follows its own laws,... sets its own scales [Mal3stibe], and grows, as
[does] technology, way beyond the person [weit iber den Menschen hinaus]." Moreover, "Not technology, but only
the measuring of people makes this incomparable architecture possible. Because how, when not through a
knowledge of the laws of human perception, could these [laws] be set in motion in architecture?" Architecture, for
VWhringer, canceled a Renaissance exaltation of the role of man, revealed to people their dwarf scale, and opened in
front of them the magnificence of the universe. Although an assault on Renaissance humanism was definitely a part
of Lissitzky's message, V6hringer's interpretation, it seems, leads to far from Lissitzky's major point, the
measurement of architecture, leaving the meaning of the collage's headline unexplained. See V6hringer, Avantgarde
und Psychotechnik, 44-46.
A different interpretation of the collage was suggested by the late Russian scholar of avant-garde architecture Selim
Khan-Magomedov. The collage, Khan-Magomedov believed, dealt not with the tasks of architecture, but with the
architectural idea [obraz]. "Lissitzky's photomontage is constructed in such a way that it included the images of
architectural engineering objects, which, as [the collage] says, should not be seen as a reflection of habitual
architectural ideas; rather, an architectural idea [arkhitekturnyi obraz] should be seen as architectural means of
expression, and it is through these means that the power of the impact of a work [of architecture] should be
measured." Khan-Magomedov believed that what was measured in architecture was the strength of the
psychological effect, while the whole architectural image had to be perceived akin to a Rationalist student exercise,
as a demonstration of architectural means of expressivity. Such a reducing the role of architecture to a statement of
its own possibilities (in fact, not too distant from 1'art pour 1'art), left the meaning of Lissitzky's slogan
unexplained. See Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, Lazar' Lissitzky (Moskva: Russkii Avangard, 2011) 239.
262 El Lissitzky, "A. and Pangeometry," El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts (Greenwich, Conn: New York Graphic

Society, 1968) 348-353 (348).
143

which resulted in chaos and madness. Attempting to subordinate the world, man ruined both the
world and himself:
Man behaves as if he had created the world and could play with it. Pretty much at the
beginning of his glorious development he coined the saying that man was the measure of
all things. Then he quickly went to work and turned as much of the world as he could
upside down. The Venus de Milo lies shattered on the ground. Man has measured with
the measure of all things, himself, measured and presumed [Mit dem Mass aller Dinge,
mit sich selbst, hat er gemessen und sich vermessen]. He has tailored and pruned away all
beauty. This cutting to measure gave rise to a fashion shop, the fashion shop gave rise to
madness in all its forms. Confusion, unrest, nonsense, insanity and frenzy dominate the
world. Foetuses with geometric double heads, human bodies with yellow hippopotamuses
heads, fan-shaped monsters with trunks like elephants, stomachs with teeth on crutches,
corpulent or emaciated pyramids with dragging feet and tears in their eyes, clods of earth
with sex organs, etc., have appeared in painting and statuary.2 63
In the same spirit, Lissitzky replaced rational cognition with animal-like, intuitive means
of orienting oneself in reality. The chief among them was the category of seeing. "Seeing, of
course, is also an A." [,,Das Sehen ist ndmlich auch eine K."] was the epigraph of "A. and
Pangeometry." By the time Lissitzky wrote these words, the notion of seeing in German aesthetic
thought had a long and rich historiography. "Aesthetic seeing" [dsthetisches Sehens] was used by
Maertens, who -distinguished it from a profane seeing, which did not allow for the evaluation of
optical MaJ3stab. Later, "looking at" [das Sehen] as an unconscious artistic way of perceiving the
world was analyzed by W61fflin as a key to an explanation of the changes of style in the history

263

Jean Arp, On My Way: Poetry and Essays, 1912-1947, transl. Ralph Manheim (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz,

1948)35.
In another essay, Arp clarified his position putting his aphorism into the context of Dada anti-rationalism and
absurdism. Measuring everything with a human as a standard, for Arp, was a manifestation of the mind's assault
against nature, which went against the principle of life. Instead, "He was no longer to be the measure of all things,
no longer to reduce everything to his own measure, but on the contrary, all things and man were to be like nature,
without measure." This is why Dada argued against rationality and for the return to nature: "Dada is for the
senseless, which does not mean nonsense. Dada is senseless like nature. Dada is for nature and against art. Dada is
direct like nature. Dada is for infinite sense and definite means." Arp's Dadaist irrationalism was no mysticism, but
rather the evolutionist unconscious as a non-cognitive, animal-like "going the right way."

144

of art and one of the parameters according to which he constructed his famous oppositionary
pairs (das Sehen, for example, could be "linear" or "painterly").264 As a more active notion, das
Anschauung, the idea was picked up by Brinckmann, who called for a development of
Anschauungstheorie, a general system of ways of seeing.2 65 Lissitzky's ASNOVA collage
similarly asserted seeing as a special tool of an artist's or architect's work: "Learn to see that
which is in front of your eyes, Directions for use: Throw [your] head back, lift the paper, and
then you will see [uvidite]." Here "seeing" [videt'] meant a reception of the world, its
internalization by the subject's consciousness. This interpretation of seeing as an act of mind
rather than that of the eyes, stemmed, perhaps, from the differentiation between the Russian
verbs to look at, smotret', and to see, videt'. In 1926, ASNOVA's most outspoken theoretician
Nikolai Dokuchaev claimed that "an architectural pedagogue... first of all has to attend to
teaching a student to look at [smotret'] an object and, having explained the basic principles of
our perception, to see [videt'] the most characteristic for the object-what it consists of and how
its elements are united into a coherent architectural milieu." 266 If this first notion, smotret',
borrowed from the German-language theory, was physiological and intuitive (although subject to
training and control), the second, videt', added by Dokuchaev, referred to a conscious, cognitive
act.

Heinrich Wd'lffliqr Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem Der Stilentwicklung in Der Neueren Kunst
(Mid'nchen H. Bruckmann, 1921) 11-12.
264

265 Albert E. Brinkmann, Plastika i Prostranstvokak osnovnyeformy khudozhestvennogo vyrazheniia [Plastics and

Space the Main Forms ofArtistic Expression] (Moskva: Izd. Vsesoiuznoi Akademii Architektury, 1935) 11.
Dukuchaev, "Poiasnitel'naia zapiska," 79. Dokuchaev's emphasis. Russian original: BHHmaHHe nperoAaBaTeui
apxHTeKTypEI, KaK H npeniogaBaTeI5 BCX pocTpaHCTBeHHX HCKyCCTB, npecAe cero oAojHo m6T o6pameHO Ha
TO, 1ITo6Ei HayqHTh yqaiuerocA CMOTpeTb Ha H3yqaeMTI o6'LeKT H, Coo61XHB OCHOBHbie HpHHIIHlM Hamero
BocHpHATHA,--HayqHThCI BHAeTb HaH6Ojiee xapacrepHoe Ans AaHHoro o6'eicra: H3 qero OH COCTOHT H KaK ero
3JiemeHTM CJaaIBOTCA B ieiyio apXTICrypHyio cpeAy.
266

145

As videnie (seeing) dealt with the mental organization of architectural objects, that is,
establishing relationships between them, Majstab became one of its important instruments. A
system of proportional relationships between objects, Mafistab was based on comparing objects
to the one chosen as the module, which had been traditionally defined as a human being. It was
against this humanization of urban Majstab that Lissitzky's collage protested. When MaJ3stab
was specified not according to the dimensions of a body, but by architecture itself, buildings
stopped looking colossal and the human no longer appeared as a dwarf. Only when architecture
was looked at not from the habitual human perspective but in the way it itself dictated, and when
man did not impose on it his standard on it (the false rationality of Arp), could one really see
architecture, that is, understand how the modem city is organized.
It was this concept of "seeing" as understanding organization that was expressed by
Lissitzky in the photomontage. In order to "see" architecture, that is, to understand its
organization, Lissitzky suggested changing the conditions of our perception-the viewpoint. It
was the "great-grandmothers"' isolating distant viewpoint (Maertens's ideal 27* angle) that
produced phantasmagorical transformations of architectural forms into people and animals. 2 67
Instead, Lissitzky (as well as Rodchenko, who around the same time started making his famous
Devoid of a context, a building could dramatically change its optical Majtab, undergoing
miraculous,
phantasmagorical transformations. This phantasmagorical potential of optical an optical isolation of a building was
noticed by Hildebrand, who evoked an effect of bewilderment not unlike the experience of walking through a night
forest, which made one feel a dwarf surrounded by mysterious, gigantic mountains and castles. This effect,
according to Hildebrand, was employed by Gothic architecture, which operated with repetitions of major
architectural elements on a small, decorative scale or, sometimes, in various scales, as with the decorative turrets of
various sizes in Milano Cathedral. Without dismissing the Romantic "fascination of the dim, the incomprehensible,"
this "breathe of the world of the unreal," Hildebrand confined it to architectural imagination, "because it is
characterized by the preservation of architectural form," whereas sculpture, for him, demonstrated an opposite
tendency-an enlargement of decorative details to a scale of architectural elements, illustrated by an inflation of
decorative volute in Renaissance churches." Hildebrand, "Koe-chto o znachenii razmerov v arkhitekture" [,,Einiges
iber die Bedeutung von Gr6ssenverhiiltnissen in der Architektur"] (Pan, 1899), Gildebrand, ProblemaFormy, 122123.
267

146

urban photography) proposed looking at modem architecture from an almost 900 point of view.
Only from this perspective could a beholder "see" architecture by entering into an immediate
psychological relationship with it, a relationship that positioned one vis-A-vis the object, allowing
one measure its properties by recording her own physiological response. For Lissitzky, the
person was not a standard of measure ("the measure of all tailors"), but a measuring subject, who
evaluated architecture by comparing her own physiological responses to different buildings.

147

ElOBEK MEPA ICE
AOPTHbI
A

Nfl02

M ite

4

\

~

E U 4E>
wnut*a

t4Cn

e<W 'i4t

I

n~n ~

n i st M
E

TE

Fig. 2.17. El Lissitzky, Man is the Measure of all Tailors, 1926.

148

The Rationalists interpreted "seeing" architectural form as a complex process, in which
glazomer was only an elementary unit, and in which comparison provided a basic tool of these
units' psychological combination. What was constructed from them, was a spatial composition,
organized and regulated by other, second-order faculties and methods. "For an investigation of
more complex faculties it is necessary to divide them into a series of simpler components, which,
in turn, are subjected to numerical measurement. It is in this direction that an investigation of the
sense of architectural composition is being directed," wrote Ladovskii's former student and
younger colleague Georgii Krutikov.2 68 Ladovskii defined the first, basic properties of
architectural talent as attention [vnimanie], unfolding it as memory, glazomer, and the'sense of
relationships. Attention was considered an expenditure of mental energy but properly developed
these basic psychological traits-the biological prerequisite of becoming a successful architectallowed an architect to perform his or her work in an energy-efficient way. The second-order
properties, interpreted by Ladovskii as spatial giftedness [prostranstvennaia odarennost],
included spatial coordination, spatial orientation, spatial visualization [prostranstvennoe
predstavlenie], spatial imagination [prostranstvennoe voobrazhenie], and spatial combination.
These were tested with help of templates of basic geometric or volumetric forms, in which a
student had to combine certain two- or three-dimensional figure. 269 Attention, that is, memory

Krutikov, ,,Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo
Vysshego Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta," Stroitel'naia promyshlennost', 373. Translation by the author. Russian
original: <(IpH HccJieAOBaHHH 6oee cnoiummx cnoco6HocTei Tpe6yeTca npeABapreIbHoe pac'ueHeHHe
roc3ie1AHHX Ha piA 6oee npocTx CoCTaBHuX 3JIeMeHTOB, KxaOBIC y)Ke H nOABepraIOTc 'HCJIOBOMy H3MepeHHo.
268

B TaKOM HaripaBJIeHHH BegeTc HCCJIiAOBaHHi 1yBcTB apxHTeKTypHOA KOMHO3HIWH>.
269 To test spatial imagination, spatial combination, and spatial systematizing, the subject was shown a drawing
of a

geometric figure and asked to combine it from the set of templates of basic geometric forms. The same task was also
posed for simple volumetric elements, which had to be combined into a required shape. The development of this
group of tests, in particular, spatial combination, or "a diverse possible arrangement of (flat, volumetric) forms one
with respect to another in (two-dimensional, three-dimensional) space," Ladovskii delegated to his doctoral student

149

and glazomer in its physiological sense, belonged to the domain of looking at, smotrenie, while
spatial giftedness, understanding and mastering space, as the higher faculty of creative mind, was
associated with seeing, videnie. The correct way of looking at ("Directions for use: Throw [your]
head back, lift the paper, and then you will see" taught Lissitzky) and employing glazomer
guaranteed the correctness of seeing-an understanding of, in Dokuchaev's words, what is "most
characteristic for the object-what it consists of and how its elements are united into a coherent
architectural whole."270
The results of the tests that the students took were recorded in a special personal profile
that supplemented their academic transcript. The form, developed by Ladovskii, consisted of
three columns, Index, Rank, and Category, as well as a grid for a graphic representation of the
psychological profile of architectural giftedness; and a space for a general conclusion.2 7 1
According to the cumulative result of the tests, the students were divided into five groups
(categories), and already before meeting a student in person the pedagogue could see what the
weak sides of his or her talent were. Later on, assuming that good pedagogy led to the
development of talent, the profile graph allowed for monitoring improvements and conducting an
objective and precise registration of the success of the architectural education.
Georgii Krutikov, having recommended him to refer to mathematical combinatorics (teoria soedinenii). Krutikov
soon discovered, however, that combinatorics did not consider the spatial location of objects and their orientation in
space, and completed it with his own formulas, which described the relationships between three-dimensional objects
in space.
2

1

Dukuchaev, "Poiasnitel'naia zapiska," 79.

The index, i.e. a grade for the test, was to be determined differently for each test. For instance, in a test consisting
of ten tasks, three solved tasks would give the index three, while four solved tasks would give four. Alternatively, in
a test involving the use of a mechanism, a student might be asked to divide a line into halves; a one centimeter
mistake would give an index of one, while a the mistake of two centimeters would make it two and so on. Krutikov,
"Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri arkhitekturnom fakultete VKhUTEIN" Arkhitektura i
VKhUTEIN, 2-4.
271

150

U

*2

.. I
.......
Fig. 2.18. Nikolai Ladovskii, Student Profile Form,
VKhUTEIN, 1929.
Attention

I Spatial Giftedness

Memory
Figures
Angle
Mean Coefficient

Spatial Coordination
Vertical
Horizontal
Mean Coefficient

Glazomer
Line a
Line b
Square
Volume
Angle
Mean Coefficient

Spatial Orientation
Spatial Visualization
Spatial Imagination
Spatial Combination
Test 1, 2
"Alpha"
Mean Coefficient

The Sense of Relationships

Mean Coefficient of Spatial Giftedness
Motor Giftedness

The personal profile form, which Ladovskii developed and suggested to use at
VKhUTEIN, closely followed recommendations for evaluation of professional potential and
151

intellectual giftedness of university students, suggested in 1927 by Soviet psychologist Petr
Antonovich Rudik (1893-1989).2 Tailoring his research to an evaluation of giftedness of
technical and social sciences students, Rudik, using to German-language terminology, defined
his subject "not as an 'Intelligenz,' but as a 'Begabung'

,"273

that is, not as only intellectual, but

also as a physiological prerequisites for learning. Rudik proposed measuring this giftedness
according to a scheme, which, with the exception of spatial giftedness, evaluated the same
parameters as Ladovskii's form:
I. Attention
1. Concentration [of attention]
2. Division [of attention]
3. Productivity [of attention]
II. Memory
4. Memory for numbers
5. Memory for words
6. Memory for figures
7. Keenness of observation
III. Intellectual giftedness
8. Speed of associations
9. Richness of verbal associations
10. Combination of words
11. Combination of phrases
12. Logical combination
13. Understanding of analogies
14. Understanding of meaning
IV. Motor giftedness
15. Speed of writing numbers
16. Speed of writing letters
17. Speed of writing strokes
18. Simple reaction
19. Complex reaction
272

P[etr] A. Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie [Intellectual Giftedness and Its Evaluation] (Moskva:

Izdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskogo Universiteta, 1927).
273

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost' i ee izmerenie, 3, 14.
152

V. Complex processes
20. Hearing
21. Reading
22. Cleverness [soobrazitel'nost']
23. Capacity for orientation
[ ...
]I

VI. Technical giftedness
24. Eye-balling [glazomer]
25. Perception of forms
26. Imaging of forms

27. Combination of forms2 74

274

1.
2.

3.
4.

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie, 37-38. Translation by the author. Russian original:
I. BHH~MaHHe.
KOHeHrpaiHr
PacnpegeaeHHe
HpOxyAKTHBHOCmb
II.HaMSITb
Haammifnle

5. HaMSTh CIOB

6. Hamsm 4ryp
7. Ha6mozaTenbHOCTM
III. HHTejueKTyamHaA OAapeHHOCTB
8. CKopocTb accoiHamiH
9. BoraTcTBo CJIOBeCHIX accogHaHii
10. KOM6HHHPOBaHHe CJOB
11. KOM6HHHPOBaHHe 4pa3
12. KOM6HHHpOBaHHe norimeCKoe
13. HOHHaHHe aHajiorHH
14. HOHHaHHe CMICJIa
IV. MOTOpHas OAapeHHOCTL

15. CKopocT IHCbMa uH4p
16. CKopocm rHCbMb 6yKB
17. CKopocT IIHCbMma nanoqeK
18. [IpOCTaI peaKuHA
19. CJIOKHaA peaKUHA
V. KoMnneKcme riOLgeCCc
20. CjymaHHe

21. MTeHHe
22. Coo6pa3HTeJMHOCM
23. Cnoco6HOCT OpHeHTHpOBaThCSh
[ ...
]I
VI. TexHHecKaA OAapeHHOCTL
24. F'aDoMep
25. BocnpHATHe 4Opm
26. HpegcTaBneHHe 4)OpM
27. KOM6HHHpOBaHHe 4opM)).

153

fi

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880

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jaf

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Fig. 2.19. Psychological Laboratory of the N. K. Krupskaia Academy of Communist Education. Psychological
profile of general giftedness. Tests edited by P. A. Rudik. Series A2.
Fig.2.20. Psychophysiological Laboratory of the Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University. Forms for the results of
psychotechnical tests.

This scheme, Rudik explained, was based on the work of Charles Edward Spearman, who
viewed giftedness as a general function of central nervous system; as a result, persons were
viewed not as an autonomous agents, but as organisms interacting with an external environment.
Perception was taken as the first, basic response of an organism to external stimuli; it was
followed by a processing of perceptual data, which in turn led to responsive action.

275

Just as in

Rudik's list of recommended tests, the prerequisites of perception-attention and memorywere the first properties tested by Ladovskii, with the specification that he was particularly
interested in their visual components (memory for figures and angles). Subsequent properties
275

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost' i ee izmerenie, 10-12.

154

evaluated students' capacity for processing the data of perception. Key among them, for Rudik,
was intellectual giftedness, which defined how a student understood and remembered material.
Tailoring Rudik's scheme for students of architecture, Ladovskii replaced intellectual giftedness
with glazomer and spatial giftedness (both properties were assessed by Rudik as an additional
group defined as technical giftedness-"an ability to identify and combine geometrical forms in
a certain way, as well as a capacity for precise visual perception"276). Glazomer, as "the base on
which other technical functions will emerge" 277 presented for Rudik a combination of perceptual
and processing tasks and thus was a prerequisite for the more complex function of spatial
combination. Both were evaluated by Rudik with help of paper tests borrowed from various,
mostly American, psychotechnical publications. Spatial combination, for instance, Rudik and
Ladovskii both proposed testing with the "Alpha Test," in which the subject had to compose a
square out of its chaotically mixed parts, a test that was developed by Robert Yerkes to select
recruits for the United States army during the First World War.2 78 Ladovskii wished to explore
this most complex function of processing spatial perception Ladovskii further, delegating this
work to his doctoral student Georgii Krutikov, who based his research on mathematical
combinatorics [teoriasoedinenii].279

276

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie, 35.

277

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie, 35.

278

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie, 37.

Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalism, 367. See Krutikov's article "Prilozhenie teorii soedinenii k issledovaniiu
i
izmereniiu sposobnosti prostranstvennogo kombinirovaniia" ["An application of mathematical combinatorics to a
study and evaluation of capacity for spatial combination"], Arkhitektura i VKh UTEIN No.1 (1929): 5. Krutikov soon
discovered, however, that the combinatorics was insufficient for an analysis of elements in space.
279

155

For both Rudik and Ladovskii, psychotechnics offered an objective, scientifically-precise
way of selecting students and evaluating their educational success. Devoid of any arbitrariness
and subjectivity, psychotechnical testing also discarded the questions of individual preferences,
tastes, and even motivation. According to Rudik, who cited an example of American universities
that successfully employed psychotechnical testing for the selection of incoming students, "The
choice of this or that higher educational institution cannot be treated as the personal matter of
each individual candidate. It also possesses an important significance for the state, because the
state makes huge investments into the organization of higher educational institutions." 280 Yet
developed as a way of avoiding authoritarianism of the "master," Ladovskii's focus on the
objectivity of judgment and evaluation through quantifying subjective physiological and
psychological processes ultimately led to a dictatorship of the testing machine. When
architectural talent was redefined as a capacity of spending a minimum of energy, its old criteria,
such as originality and insight, became no longer valid. Probably the most famous subject to fail
a prostrometrtest was none other than Le Corbusier who, during his visit to Moscow in 1928,
became fascinated with Ladovskii's experiments. Unfortunately for Le Corbusier, it was
established that the images of reality that his two eyes provided were too different from each
other: the French master therefore suffered from a defect of stereoscopic vision. 2 8 1 The verdict
signified

Corbusier's

complete

physiological

incapability

for

architectural

work-an

impossibility of easy, unconscious imagining spatial relationships. A modernist dream, a tool of
2 80

Rudik, Umstvennaia odarennost'i ee izmerenie, 15-16. Translation by the author. Russian
original: cBu6op Toro
HJIH HHOrO By3a He Mo2KeT paCCMaTpHBaThCA KaK iwHioe AeO Ka)Koro OTgIbHOrO KaHAHAaTa. OH HMeeT H
6onbmoe o6uHerocyAapcTBeHHoe 3HateHHe, riOCKOJhKy rocyAapCTBO BKiaAMBaeT rpoMaRme cpeAcTBa Ha
opraHH3aIIHIO BMCIIIHX yqe6HMX 3aBeAeHHr.
281

The anecdote

is reported by VWhringer after Khan-Magomedov's words. VWhringer,
Avant-garde und

Psychotechnik, 35.
156

quantification of what had been previously believed to possess a divine, super-human statusart, talent, and genius-Ladovskii's machine killed artistic independence alongside artistic
arbitrariness.

Conclusion
This chapter has argued, that Rationalist architectural theory and subsequently pedagogy
had their methodological foundation in German-language empiriocriticism, especially in the
work of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius. The latter's imperative to economize perceptive
energy was wholeheartedly embraced by Nikolai Ladovskii, who transformed it into a guiding
principle of his work and an axiom on which he built of his architectural theory. Alongside
Avenarius's imperative, Ladovskii's theory was indebted to Mach's epistemological model,
which presented the world as a sum of subjective psychological sensations. Such a
subjectivization of reality seemingly endowed architects with an unprecedented role and power:
as designers of perception, they became true demiurges, capable of constructing and changing
reality at will. Reflected in VKhUTEMAS rector Pavel Novitskii's slogan "All power to
architecture" and emphasized by Boris Groys's comparison of avant-garde to totalitarianism, this
self-proclaimed importance of architecture asserted architects' extraordinary individual freedom
in formal solutions as well as in their underlying ideological program. Nevertheless, Ladovskii's
testing apparatuses betrayed a failure of this model: by mechanicizing the notion of perception,
Ladovskii sacrificed individuality for efficiency's sake. Applied to architectural perception, the
mottos of the day, standardization and economy, standardized the architect in the name of
physiological norm. In 1928, the year Ladovskii's prostrometr rejected Le Corbusier's
157

architectural vision and the First Five-Year Plan was launched, this standardization was an avantgarde idea, aspiring to contribute to the general program of the economy of resources for the
sake of the economic Plan. By the time the Second Five-Year Plan began in 1933, the price of
this standardization became all too clear: alongside the abnormal, it eliminated the individual.

158

159

CHAPTER TWO

DEVELOPING PRODUCTIVE ENERGY: WALLPAINTING AND THE
STANDARDIZATION OF THE SUBJECT (1929-1932)

Hey you, twenty-year-olds,
We call for you.
Drumming,
Bring pails of paint.
We will paint anew.
Shine, Moscow!
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1919)282

The multi-level model developed explained 51% of the
variability in the learning improvements of the pupils, over
the course of a year. However, within this a high level of
explanation (73%) was identified at the "class" level,
linked entirely to six built environment design parameters,
namely: colour, choice, connection, complexity, flexibility
and light.
From a Building and Environment article (2013)

283

In the 1940s, Fernand Leger claimed that the idea of painting the facades of houses in
different colors was first developed by him during the First World War together with Leon
282 Vladimir Mayakovsky, "My idem" ["We come"] (1919), multiple editions. Translation by the author. Russian
original: 0311, ABagiaTHIeTHHe! I B3IBaeM K BaM. I Eapa6aHI, I TaHHTe KpacoK Bd~pa. I 3aHOBo o6ipacmCsi.
CHAA, Mocima! MaRKOBcKHR, Ma HAeM>>.

Peter Barrett, Yufan Zhang, Joanne Moffat, Khairy Kobbacy "A holistic, multi-level analysis identifying the
impact of classroom design on pupils' learning," Building andEnvironment Vol. 59 (2013): 678-689 (678).
283

160

Trotsky, with whom he often talked about "the thrilling problem of a colored city" during his
Montparnasse furloughs. "The idea of a blue street, a yellow street aroused his [Trotsky's]
enthusiasm," and the Bolshevik, according to LMger, wanted him to go to Moscow to implement
his theories of color on its streets.

284

Recounted at the moment of the transformation of Trotzky

into a cultural legend and an icon of romantic revolutionarism after his assassination by Stalin's
agent in 1940, this story is likely to be apocryphal or, at least, exaggerated.285 Nevertheless,
Leger's anecdote is elucidative in that it highlights the political potential of color in architecture.
An extremely powerful psychological stimulant, color could inspire and excite like no other
formal instrument of an architect. It could call people for streets and barricades, energize them
for work and military feats, intensify their joy or sorrow. 2 86 Moreover, as the Soviet designers in
the late 1920s-early 1930s discovered, color could affect people in a much subtler way, by
impacting their physiological functioning, intellectual activity, and aesthetic response.
This chapter will focus on wallpainting, a discipline that emerged on the boundary of art
and architecture during the late 1920s-early 1930s, to demonstrate how an ideological program
controlled the artistic medium through the manipulation of physiological responses a formal
property, color. Examining the history of wallpainting as an artistic genre and architectural
Fernand Lager, "Modem Architecture and Color," American Abstract Artists, transl. George L. K. Morris
(New
York, 1946). Reprinted in Fernand LUger. Functions ofPainting.New York: Viking Press, 1973, 149-153 (152). The
same anecdote is repeated in Leger's "A New Space in Architecture," Art d'Aujourd'hui (1949). Reprinted in LUger,
FunctionsofPainting, 157-159 (158).
284

Trotsky, after all, was deported from Paris in early 1916, when hardly anyone could predict the proximity
and
success of the Bolshevik revolution-which gestated and started, in any event, not in Moscow but in St. Petersburg
(then Petrograd).
285

In 1919, Malevich and Lissitzky formed Unovis in Vitebsk, where they contributed to the revolution by painting
the facades of houses in Suprematist compositions for the sake of propaganda. In 1921, socialist Bruno Taut (one of
the most popular German architects in Russia at the time) became the chief architect of Magdeburg, where he started
his campaign of painting the facades of the town.
286

161

discipline in the USSR, this chapter will situate its emergence in the context of Soviet economic
history, especially focusing on the forced industrialization that the country underwent during the
First Five-Year Plan, and connect wallpainting to the new intellectual program that supported it.
In accordance with the demand of the day for the mobilization of every resource (including that
of labor) for building an industrial economy the new Soviet subject above all had to possess a
higher level of energy, to be transformed him or her into an indefatigable working machine. This
chapter argues that Soviet wallpainters attempted to use color as a tool for increasing the
functionality of their subjects as elements of the Soviet economic apparatus by helping them to
save their productive, working energy. To substantiate this claim, I first assess the notion of color
and its relationship to architecture that existed in Soviet and, to some extent, German,
architectural thought in the late 1920s, before turning to explore how these theories were merged
with the results of psychophysiological research-the concepts of fatigue, attention, and
unconscious perception-in order to make wallpainting an instrument of social engineering.
A discussion of wallpainting also allows entry into the late-1920s debate on the essence
and the future of art: far from today's understanding of it as a modest practical task of coloring
surfaces, at its modernist heyday, wallpainting aspired to nothing less than becoming a new art of
color, which was destined to both kill painting and become its new incarnation. The debates and
discussions on wallpainting revolved around its status of an autonomous artistic genre-a
modern, technological, and deindividualized art of working with color. Not artistic caprices, but
considerations of economy and scientific calculation governed the choices of colors and the
methods of their application. Most importantly in the context of the First Five-Year Plan,
wallpainting was a form of art that allowed for standardization-a development of unified

162

solutions for certain typological, functional, regional and economic conditions-thereby bringing
artistic production into the orbit of economic development.
In art and architecture, planning and standardization promised the creation of works that
made quality available to everyone. This promise prompted Constructivist artists (Rodchenko,
Stepanova, and Popova, among others) to turn away from their early, "laboratory,"
experimentation towards the so-called Productivism, which postulated the replacement of
autonomous art with industrial design. Mass-produced, standardized solutions for art and
architecture destroyed the aura and ritual of humanist art famously described by Benjamin in
1936. Without sliding into Greenbergian kitsch, they defied the values of autonomy, selfreferentiality, media-specificity and individuality in the work of art that were intrinsic to
canonical modernism.287 The program of wallpainting continued the work of the Constructivists
on the dissolution of art, simultaneously overcoming this program by suggesting alternative ways
of engaging color (freed, as the modernists wanted, from the restrictions of narrative and style)
into the life and working activity of people.
Aleksandr Rodchenko's "Last painting," a part of the "5x5=25" exhibition in Moscow
(1921), demonstrated which outcomes carried an analytical redefinition of painting as color.2 88 It

In the early 1920s, Laszl6 Moholy-Nagy had his famous "Telephone paintings" produced at a
local enamel
factory. The artist recalled: "In 1922 I ordered by telephone from a sign factory five paintings in porcelain enamel. I
had the factory's color chart before me and I sketched my paintings on graph paper. At the other end of the
telephone the factory supervisor had the same kind of paper, divided into squares. He took down the dictated shapes
in the correct position. (It was like playing chess by correspondence.) One of the pictures was delivered in three
different sizes, so that I could study the subtle differences in the color relations caused by the enlargement and
reduction." LAszl6 Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision and, Abstract ofan Artist (New York: Wittenborn, 1947) 79.
287

"5x5=25" was an abstract art exhibition held in Moscow in September and October 1921. Each
of the five
participating artists (Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Alexander
Vesnin) exhibited five paintings (hence the exhibition's title).
288

163

presented three canvases, each monotonously painted into one of the three primary colors. To the
satisfaction of art critic Nikolai Tarabukin, Rodchenko not only eliminated narrativity and
figuration from art-he bereaved art of any idea and meaning:
And when the artist really wanted to get rid of representation, he achieved this only at the
cost of destroying painting and only at the cost of destroying himself as a painter. I am
referring to the canvas which Rodchenko offered to the attention of an astonished public
at one of this season's exhibitions [5x5 = 25, 1921]. This was a smallish, almost square
canvas painted entirely in a single red colour. This canvas is extremely significant for the
evolution of artistic forms which art has undergone in the last ten years. It is not merely a
stage which can be followed by new ones but it represents the last and final step of a long
journey, the last word, after which painting must become silent, the last 'picture' made by
an artist. This canvas eloquently demonstrates that painting as a figurative art-which it
has always been-is outdated. If Malevich's Black Square on a White Background,
despite the poverty of its artistic meaning, did contain some painterly idea which the
author called "economy," "the fifth dimension," then Rodchenko's canvas, which is
devoid of any content, is a meaningless, dumb and blind wall [tupaia, bezglasnaia,
slepaiastena].289

In contrast to the Renaissance vision of painting as a window to reality or even to Malevich's
Black Square that offered an experience of the transcendental, Tarabukin declared Rodchenko's
work to be a solid, blind wall. Dumbness, muteness, blindness-the characteristics used by
Tarabukin to describe the wall-ness of Rodchenko's canvas--deprived it of an ability to perceive
Nikolai Tarabukin, "Ot molberta k machine " (Moscow, 1923). Translated by Christina
Lodder in Modern art
and Modernism: A CriticalAnthology. Ed. by. F. Franciscana and Ch. Harrison. London: Harper and Row, 1986,
135-142. Russian original: <(H Korga XyAO)KHHK 3axoTei AeCTBHTeJIbHO H36aBHThCR Or H3o6pa3HTeJIHOCTH, OT
289

3TOrO AOCTHr jiHmIb LxeHOIO yHHtiToeHHA )KHBOIIHCH H ueHOIO CaMOy6HiicTBa, KaK HHBonHca. A HMelO B BHAY
nOJIOTHO, KOTOpOe PoAqeHKO Ha OAHOA H3 BMCTaBOK MHMHIero Ce3oHa npeAJIOKHJI BHHMaHHIO yAHBJIeHHMX

3pHTeneii. 3To

6mjiO

He6oJIbInoe, noTH

3BOJI1OIHH XyAOXCeCTBeHHMX

(4opM,

KaB.apaTHoe noJIoTHo,

KOTOPYIO COBepLUHJIO

cnjiOIUB

3aKpaIeHHoe OAHHM KpaCHbM iBeTOM. B
nocJieAHee AeCrTHJeTHe, 3TOT XOJICT

HCKYCCTBO 3a

spe3BbraAHO 3HaMeHaTeJIeH.

OH HC SBJISeTCS y2e 3TaIoM, 3a KOTOpbIM MOryT IOCJIeAOBaTb HOBbLIe, a ripeAcTaBJIHeT
co6oio nocnegHHf, KOHe'HMEai mar B ARHHHOM nyTH, riOCJIeHee CJIOBO, nocne KOTOpOrO peli KHBOHHCia ;IOJDKHa
yMojiKHyib, nocneAmoio

<(KapTHHy>), Co3,aHHyIO xygo)mHKoM. 3To nojioTHo KpaCHopetoHBo AoKa3MBaeT,
TO
)KHBOrIHCb, KaK HCKyCCTBO H306pa3HTeJnbHOe,--a TaKOBrIM OHO 6b1IJIO BCerAa,--H3xcHjia ce6A. Ecinm sepHmii KB8apaT

6eJIoM (OHe MaieBHa, nIpH Bcerl CKYAHOCTH CBoero xyAoxcecTBeHHoro cMicJIa, corepKaJI B ce6e HeKyio
)KHBOIIHCHyIO HgeIO, Ha3BaHHyIO aBTOPOM (<3KOHOMHSO&, <IAITOC H3MepeHHeo, TO HOJOTHO PoxqeHo JIHMeHO
Ha

BcAKoro cogepmaHKr: 3To TynH, 6e3rjiaCHaI, cIenaA CTeHa&. Nikolai Tarabukin, Ot mol'berta k mashine [From
Easel to the Machine] (Moskva: Rabotnik prosveshchenia, 1923) 11-12.

164

and to be perceived, destroyed any possibility of a connection between the work of art and the
viewer. The wall, in other words, embodied lifeless inanimate matter. At the same time,
however, Tarabukin insisted on viewing Rodchenko's canvas as an example of easel art rather
than as decorative wall-painting: being analytically segregated into its pure elements, painting
exposed its material, mechanistic nature and, bereaved of soul and life, was destined to die. 2 90
Similarly to Rodchenko and Tarabukin, Soviet wallpainters announced the death of art as
an individual creative endeavor and suggested to replacing it with a technologized and
deindividualized

medium. However, while denying architecture aesthetic pleasure and

intellectual significance, they preserved its connection with the subject and the environment. In
doing so, they rehumanized Tarabukin's wall, which was no longer meaningless, dumb and
blind, but on the contrary, intelligent, responsive to its surroundings and affecting the person
perceiving it, while simultaneously dehumanizing the subject. The latter, deprived of aesthetic
and intellectual qualities, was transformed into a physiological machine, a chain of stimulusresponse reactions. No longer bearing individual differences, this subject was an object of
scientific experiment, understandable, predictable and controllable. If psychophysiology
analyzed this subject into its constituent parts, Soviet wallpainters believed that it was the goal of
architecture to synthesize this subject by means of psychological stimuli provided by the
environment, of which color was one of the most effective. The subject, not the surface of the
wall, was the ultimate object of the wallpainters' work.
Examining the history of wallpainting in the late-1920s and -early 1930s USSR, this
chapter will focus on the group of artists and architects united around Maliarstroi (from
290 Tarabukin, Ot

mol'bertak mashine, footnote 3.
165

maliarnoe stroitel'stvo, literally, wallpainting construction), a state research and design center
for wallpainting, active in Moscow from 1929 to 1932. The architectural work of Maliarstroi was
led by two former Bauhaus designers-the head of the Wallpainting workshop Gerhard Hermann
Heinrich (Hinnerk) Scheper (1897-1957) and his student Erich Willi Borchert (1907-1944)who collaborated with their Russian colleagues (architects Moisei Ginzburg, Nikolai Ladovskii,
and El Lissitzky; artists Leiba Antokol'skii, Boris Ender, and others) both within and beyond the
organization. Functioning during the time of the First Five-Year Plan, Maliarstroi was the fruit of
the state economic program and, more specifically, of the politics of standardization, which
became a priority in industry, in architecture, and even, as this chapter will argue, in social
engineering. Maliarstroi became the site of dialogue, conflict and the mutual influence of
German social-democratic and Soviet models of modernist subjectivity: if the former believed
that the improvement of physiological functions alone would improve the general energetic level
of the subject, the latter drove the economizing imperative to its logical conclusion, saving the
subjects' mental energy by prescribing directions of movement and emotional attitudes.

Color Harmonies
Exemplified by the rivalry of Ingres and Delacroix as the battle between line and color,
debates on the essence of painting shaped European art theory during the nineteenth century,
presaging the dominant discourse of twentieth-century American art criticism. Much of early
abstract art continued the Romantic Delacroix tradition with its focus on color, and as early as
1916, Kazimir Malevich used an association of painting with color to support his argument
against

figuration.

Painting,

according

to Malevich,
166

had

to

transform

itself into

"chromatography": "We will only have a clear perception of color when we are rid of the utopia
of representational painting and when chromatographic representation has acquired a lucid, twodimensional surface. ... Color-is a unit, an element; by incorporating light physical matter
acquires energy which acts on our nervous system." 291 Similarly in 1919 a disciple of Malevich
and a VKhUTEMAS pedagogue 292 Ivan Kliun suggested to replace painting with "Color art":
But if the art of painting, the art of expressing nature, has died, the color, paint, as the
basic elements of this art, have not died. Liberated from the centuries-old bond of nature,
they have begun to live their own life, to develop freely, and to display themselves in the
New Art of Color-and our color compositions are subject only to the laws of color, and
not to the laws of nature." 293
When architects and artists accepted the axiom of a constitutive power of perception, they
embarked into a thorough psychological and physiological study of perceptual mechanisms.
Already Kandinskii's 1920 program for the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow,
one of the early Soviet avant-garde research initiatives, specified that
... We should collate materials from the various sciences that work in one way or another
with color. We should inform specialists in these sciences of the aims of the Institute's
research on color and should invite them to come and work with us. Most prominent
among these kinds of sciences are physics, physiology, and medicine (diseases of the eye,
choromotheraphy, psychiatry, etc.)." 2 94

Malevich, "Chromatography," Complete Works in Five Volumes, vol. 5 (Moskva:
Giliia, 2005). Quoted in
Aleksandra Shatskikh, "Color and Light in Suprematism," Licht Und Farbein Der Russischen Avantgarde : Die
Sammlung CostakisAus Dem Staatlichen Museum FurZ eitgeno~ssischeKunst Thessaloniki = Light and Colour in
the Russian Avant-Garde, ed. Miltiades Papanikolaou (Kdcln DuMont, 2004) 466.
291

Ivan Vasil'evich Kliun (real last name Kliunkov; 1873-1943) was a member of early
Russian avant-garde,
affiliated with Futurism and Suprematism, subsequently a member of INKhUI and a professor of State Independent
Art Studios (since 1920, VKhUTEMAS) in 1918-1921.
292

293

Ivan Kliun, "Color Art" (1919), Licht Und Farbe in Der Russischen Avantgarde,
469.

Wassily Kandinsky, "Program for the INKhUK," Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art,
in 2 vols., ed. Kenneth
C. Lindsay, and Peter Vergo. Vol. 1 (Boston, Mass: G.K. Hall, 1982) 455-471 (460).
294

167

Although Kandinsky's eclectic theory recommended supplementing these sciences with "the
sciences of the occult" and believed that positive sciences could not replace artistic intuition,
which alone allowed opening art to its true goal, the "inner experience of man," Kandinsky's
followers, having rejected his mysticism, maintained his interest in the perception of color. 295
The association of painting with color was rooted in the identification of every art with a
particular domain of sensory experience, a system developed by formalist aesthetics; as such, it
determined the "objective" and "analytical" system of introductory courses at VKhUTEMAS,
which indentified architecture with space, sculpture-with form, and painting-with color.2 96
Though initially the analytical approach to color at VKhUTEMAS possessed traces of
Kandinsky's mysticism, in the mid-1920s (particularly during the rectorship of Pavel Novitsky in
1926-1930), it acquired a new, scientific character. The scientization of artistic education at
VKhUTE1N (as VKhUTEMAS was renamed in 1927) was simultaneous with similar processes
at the Bauhaus (especially during the directorship of Hannes Meyer in 1928-1930) and was
perhaps even more systematic. Specialists in psychology, physiology, logics and other
philosophical and scientific disciplines were invited as guest lecturers to Dessau, 297 and at
VKhUTEMAS leading Soviet psychologists and physicists working on color taught color theory
courses on a permanent basis. Among them was prominent psychologist Sergei Kravkov, whose
major affiliation was with the Laboratory of the Psychophysiology of Sensations at the
Psychological Research Institute at the Moscow State University, and who in the 1920s
2 95

Kandinsky, "Program for the LNKhUK," 471.

296

More on this system, see Chapter One of this dissertation.

See Peter Galison, "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism," Critical
Inquiry Vol.
16, No. 4 (1990): 709-752.

297

168

specialized in the physiology of senses, particularly eyesight, exploring the connection between
the eyes and other sensorial organs, and the body in general.2 9 8 Also working at
VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN was another psychologist, Boris Teplov, who specialized in military
masking, exploring the interaction of sensations, the spatial merging of colors, the thresholds of
saturation and the effect of various light irritants. 29 9 In the early 1930s, Sophia BeliaevaEkzempliarskaia, a psychologist interested in the perception of music, who simultaneously
worked at the Acoustic Laboratory of Moscow Conservatory and (alongside Kravkov) at the
Psychophysical Laboratory of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences, also joined VKhUTEIN,
which by then was reorganized as the Moscow Institute of Architecture and Construction. 30 0
Also teaching color theory course was biophysicist Nikolai Fedorov, who researched the
adaptation of sensual organs to physical irritants and who in 1935 published A Course of General
Color-Theory, in which he introduced Soviet audience to the science of colorimetry, or color
measurement. Fedorov's colorimetry took vision as an instrument of measuring the sources of

Sergei Vasil'evich Kravkov (1893-1951) was a student of the leader of Russian psychophysiological
school,
specialist on spatial perception Georgii Chelpanov. In 1926, Kravkov published a Russian translation (with an
introduction) of Ostwald's Einfaihrungin die Farbenlehre.During the 1930s and 1940s Kravkov became one of the
most prominent Soviet psychologists, specializing on the physiology of eyesight. His books include: Glaz i ego
rabota [The Eye and its Work] (1932, multiple reprints); Ocherk obshchei psikhofiziologii chuvstv [An Account of
the General Psychophysiology of Senses] (1946), Vzaimodeistvie organov chuvstv [Interaction of Sense Organs]
(1948), Tsvetovoe zrenie [Color Vision] (1951). See also, Margareta Tillberg, Coloured Universe and the Russian
Avant-Garde: Matiushin on Colour Vision in Stalin'sRussia, 1932. Diss., Stockholm University, 2003, 254-255.
298

299 Boris Mikhailovich Teplov (1896-1965) was another student of Chelpanov. During the 1920s, he developed
the
question of military masking from a psychological point of view. Since the 1930s, Teplov was mostly preoccupied
with differential psychology and the development of a talent (particularly, musical talent).
Sofia Nikolaevna Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia (1895-1973) was a Soviet musicologist and psychologist with a
particular interest in visual illusions and in the psychology of music (musical perception, age- and social-groupspecific musical development).
30

169

color waves of energy.301 Bringing together the physical and the psychological approach, his
method defined color as a "general name for all sensations arising from the activity of the retina
of the eye and its attached nervous mechanisms, this activity being, in nearly every case in the
normal individual, a specific response to radiant energy of certain wave-lengths and
intensities." 3 02

Accepting colorimetry's dualist division between perceived color and radiant energy, the
teachers of color theory at VKhUTEIN considered both psychological

and physical

interpretations of color; most of them, however, prioritized the former over the latter. A course
developed by Teplov in 1929, for example, started with a detailed historical survey of color
theories from the seventeenth century on, covering, among other approaches, those of the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists Newton, Boyle, du Fay, and Mayer, of German
Romantics Goethe and Runge, and of precursors of modem physical and psychophysiological
theories such as Maxwell, Betzold, Briicke, Helmholz, Ostwald, Hering, and Teplov's own
teacher Petr Lazarev. The most substantial part of the course, "Contemporary theories of color,"
was divided into "physical" and "psychophysical" sections. The physical sections dealt with the
reflection of light, the absorption of light by matter, the effects of interference and polarization,
the optical mixture of colors and even color photography. The second, psychophysical sections,
which constituted the most detailed and extensive part of the program, were devoted to visual
perception, the mechanisms of the eye, the Weber-Fechner law, psychological color effects (such
Nikolai Tikhonovich Fedorov (1891-1952) was a student of physicist Petr Lazarev
(the founder of biophysics-a
science that bridged physics, psychology, and medicine). Like his teacher, Fedorov explored color as both a physical
and a psychological phenomenon. See also, Tillberg, "Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde," 253-254.
301

L. T. Troland, "Report of Committee on Colorimetry for 1921-1922," Journal
of the OpticalSociety ofAmerica
Vol. VI (August 1922): 531-532.
302

170

as afterimages) and pathologies of color vision, the contrasts of colors and their laws, and
various methods of measuring color, most importantly, Ostwald's system that understood every
color as a mixture of pigment with black and white.303
However, even the most scientific of the courses taught at VKhUTEIN never lost sight of
artistic expression as the ultimate goal of the knowledge of laws of perception. As the 1929
VKhUTEIN program proclaimed, color was a method of the painterly expression of form.30 4
Artistic composition of color, even in the courses taught by physicists and physiologists,
remained the ultimate goal of study, while the laws of physiology and color perception were
treated as instruments for its achievement. This ultimate artistic purpose is evident, for example,
in the structure and order of exercises in a sketchbook ofh practical assignments on color theory
[Praktikum po tsvety] compiled by a student of Painting Department Aleksandr Lushin between
1928 and 1930 (most likely for Fedorov's course).305 Covering various aspects of the theories of
Ostwald and Maxwell, the relationship between saturation and luminosity, and the optical and
material mixing of colors, the sketchbook contains 24 exercises that Lushin completed for the
Color Theory course. Starting with more general and introductory material, connected to the
contrast of light and dark and the concepts of luminosity and saturation, it proceeds to
exerciseson the spatial, material, and optical mixing of colors and the effects of color contrasts
and ends with color harmonies at the conclusion of the course.
Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI). VKhUTEMAS Collection (Fond
681). Program of the
course "Color Studies" for VKhUTEIN prepared by N. T. Fedorov, 1929.
303

304 N. T. Fedorov, Program of "Color Studies," 2.

Aleksandr Fedorovich Lushin (1902-1994) was a Soviet painter and stage set
designer, who studied at
VKhUTEIN in 1928-1930 and at the Leningrad Academy of Arts in 1930-1933, subsequently working in many
Soviet theaters. About him, see Militsa Pozharskaia, Aleksandr Fedorovich Lushin. Moskva: Khudozhnik RSFSR,
1985. The book at the Getty Research Institute (Vkhutemas collection).
305

171

Figs. 3.1-3.2. Aleksandr Lushin, Practicum of color theory. Student exercise book, VKhUTEIN, 1928-1930. A
sketch of twelve color tones (after Ostwald) [left]; A sketch of harmonic triads of chromatic colors [right].

In spite of the effort to teach students the latest developments in color science, the
program of VKHUTEIN, designed by a Cezannist painter Konstantin Istomin, still left space for
its subjective interpretation by an artist, insisting-in the spirit of Malevich-on an artist's right
to be guided by his or her intuition rather than the laws of science:
The discipline of color aims at studying color as an optical and painterly phenomenon,
which possesses certain quantities and is capable of building a form. Connecting color
with major laws postulated by the science of color, the program does not assume an
abstract color, received from a ray of sun, but does always mean the paint, with which a
painter operates, and assumes a right to make certain observations, which a science does
not consider sufficiently precise and which follow a somewhat subjective tendency of
perception, but which are justified by colorful works of art or are deductively derived
from the laws and relationships, already established by science.306
Konstantin Istomin, "Programma po distsipline tsveta (lyi kurs Osnovnogo Otdelenia)" ["Program of the
discipline of color (1st year of the Basic Department"] (1924). RGALI, VKhUTEMAS Collection. Published in
Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, Vkhutemas: 1920-1930 : Tekstil', Skul 'ptura, Zhivopis' Grafika, Keramika, Metall,
Derevo, Arkhitektura [VKhUTEMAS: 1920-1930: Textile, Sculpture, Painting, Drawing, Ceramics, Metal, Wood,
Architecture] (Moskva: Lad'ia, 1995) 383-384. Russian original: <ASLcuHrnHHa UBeTa HMeeT uenbIO H3y-teHHe
UBeTa, KaK oHTHeCKOPO H )KHBOHHcHoro 5BieHHA, Hmeio~uero onpegeiieHHme KOnHMecTBa H cdoco6Horo
rocTpoHT, 4opMy. CBsI3brBaA UBeT C OCHOBHbIMH 3aKoHaMH, yCTaHOBJieHHMMH HayKOH 0 IBeTe, pOTpaMMa He
rpexgonaraeT OTBjie'eHHOrO IJBeTa, nony'eHHoro H3 COJIHe'HOPO nyta, HO BCAKHH pa3 rogpa3ymeBaeT KpacKy,
172
306

VKhUTEMAS's emphasis on the artistic, formalist understanding of color theory as a
study of the combinations and mutual effects of various tones reflected mainstream thinking
about color in Soviet Russia during the 1920s: associated with painting and within the
framework of aesthetic formalism, color was, first and foremost, interpreted as an instrument of
visual expression on a plane. However, this interpretation did not preclude laboratory
physiological research. On the contrary, painters conducted a number of experiments to
investigate the aesthetic properties of color. Some of the most influential among those were
conducted in Petrograd, subsequently Leningrad, by Mikhail Matiushin. Trained as both a
musician and an artist, before the 1917 revolution Matiushin was one of the leaders of Russian
futurism, composing the futurist opera "The Victory Over the Sun" and editing some the bestknown futurist books. 3 07 In the the aftermath of the revolution, he devoted himself to developing
his concept of "organic culture" and to theories of artistic vision. When in the late 1920s
wallpainting emerged as a separate discipline, Matiushin actively entered the debate about its
status and methodology, and proposed basing the latter on his theories of complementary colors.
His student Boris Ender, who left Leningrad for Moscow in 1927 to join the Maliarstroi team,
was a major proponent of his teacher's ideas beyond his circle and provided a link between

KoTopoH onepHpyeT XYO)CHHK H HO3BOJIHeT ce6e

upaBo AaTb

HeKOTOp~ae Ha6noeHHA, He CqHTaiOJI1HeCA HayKoH

pH1BOCIIHSTHH HeCKOJILKO Cy6beKTHBHbA yKMOH, HO onpaBAiBaemie IIBCThiMH
HaMATHHKaMH HCKyCCTBa HIH AeAYKTHBHO BIBCAHH~ue H3 yCTaHOB3ieHHMX y)Ke HayKori 3aKOHOB H oTHOIeHHi
For an abridged English translation of the program see also "Programme for a Course in Colour. VKhUTEMAS.
Institute of Artistic Culture (1923)," Licht Und Farbe in DerRussischen Avantgarde, 478-479.
.

BHOJIHe TOqHbIMH H HMeio1iiHe

307 "Victory over the Sun" (Russian, "Pobeda nad solntsem") (1913) was "the
first Futurist opera," its music

composed by Matiushin, libretto written by Aleksei Kruchenykh, and costumes and stage set designed by Kazimir
Malevich. The house of Matiushin and his wife Elena Guro in St. Petersburg was the place of meeting of Russian
Futurists, and the two also founded their own publishing house Zhuravl' to publish Futurist books.

173

Matiushin's theory of color and the nascent discipline of wallpainting, continuing research on
color perception in the direction started by his teacher. 308
But let us return to the origins. One day in the early 1920s, while walking along the banks
of the Neva in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) the landscape watercolorist Albert Benois

309

saw a group of people painting the river while facing the opposite direction. Initially convinced
that he had encountered a group of lunatics, he soon recognized among them Matiushin and his
students, who practiced artistic "seeing" with the backs of their heads.3 10 Matiushin formulated
his concept of "expanded seeing" [rasshirennoesmotrenie], as a fuller, more precise and correct
kind of visual perception under the influence of the theory of the "fourth dimension" of
theosopher Petr Uspenskii (Ouspensky). 3 1 1 The program of his group Zorved (from archaic
Russian roots "zor," from zret', to see, and "ved," from vedat', to know), asserted a 360* of

Boris Vladimirovich Ender (1893-1960) entered Petrograd State Independent Artistic Studious
in 1918, where he
studied first with Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin and then with Matiushin. After graduating in 1923, he proceeded to work
under Matiushin in the Department of Organic Culture of Leningrad State Institute of Artistic Culture (usually
abbreviated to GINKhUK) and exhibited with the Workshop of Spatial Realism at the Petrograd/Leningrad
Academy of Arts (1918-1926), headed by Matiushin.
308

309

Albert Nikolaevich Benois (1852-1936) was a brother of the more famous artist and art critic
Alexandr Benois.

3 From A[nna] P[etrovna] Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Avtobiograficheskie
Zapiski [Autobiographic Notes], in 3 vols.,
vol. 3 (Moskva: Izd. Akad. chudozhestv, 1951) 20. Quoted in Jelena Rakitin and Wassily Rakitin, ,,Als Kiinstler
sind Sie kein so versierter Praktiker wie wir," Matjuschin und die LeningraderAvantgarde : eine Ausstellung im
Badischen Kunstverein Karlsruhe, 27. April - 9. Juni 1991, ed. Heinrich Klotz (Stuttgart: Oktogon, 1991); and in
Tillberg, Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde, 157.

Ouspensky's first book, The Fourth Dimension, appeared in 1909; his second book,
Tertium Organum-in
1912.The fourth dimension, for Ouspensky, was the truth, which was beyond understanding by the limited capacities
of reason and human senses; it was the reality encountered by the soul after death. It could not, therefore, be
comprehended rationally; instead, a higher sense of space could be developed by developing intuition. Matiushin's
"Of the book by Gleizes and Metzinger Du Cubisme" and "The Artist's experience of a new dimension" bear a
particular impact of Uspenskii's ideas. More on Matiushin and Uspenskii see Tillberg, Coloured Universe and the
Russian Avant-Garde, 178-181.
311

174

seeing as a new, fuller and more precise way of artistic vision. In Zorved manifesto (1923)
Matiushin wrote:
Zorved is the essential act of vision (a visual field of 3600) its genesis on the pristine
virgin ground of experience.
Zorved is characterized by a physiological change of the former way of looking and
entails a completely different method of representing the visible.
Zorved incorporates for the first time into the field of vision the previously closed 'rear
plane'; all the space remaining 'outside' the human realm, as a result of incomplete
experience.
New facts have revealed the influence of space, light, color and form on cerebral centers
throughout the neck. A number of experiments and observations carried out by the artists
of Zorved clearly establish the sensitivity to space of the visual centers situated in the
occipital part of the brain. This unexpectedly unveils a strong force of spatial perceptions,
and since the most precious gift for the human being and artist is to know space, from this
starts a new step and rhythm of life that does not flow into any form labeled 'left' or
'right.' 3 12
Matiushin's expanded seeing was based on the so-called Purkinje effect (or Purkinje
shift), a phenomenon first recorded by the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkinje (Purkyne),
who in 1825 pointed out that the colors of the red end of spectrum were perceived as brighter at
the light of the day and duller under a twilight, while blues, on the contrary, acquired luminosity
until, in darkness, the distinctions of color gave place to the contrast of light and shade.31 3
Moreover, if during the day the sight was focused at a 30-60' angle, in twilight one could
observe a field of 180 degrees. The Purkinje effect was explained at the turn of the twentieth
century by a German physiologist Johannes von Kries, who proposed that retina consisted of two
types of photo-receptors: cones, which were situated in the center of the eye and were
Matiushin, "Ne iskusstvo, a zhizn'," Zhizn' iskusstva [The Life ofArt] No. 20 (1923): 15. English translation by
Tillberg, p. 139-140 (140).
312

See Jan Evangelista Purkinje, Neue Beitrdge zur Kenntniss des Sehens in Subjectiver Hinsicht (Reimer: Berlin,
1825).
313

175

responsible for daytime vision, and peripheral rods, which became active at the lower levels of
light.3

4

For years, the theory of cones and rods remained the dominant explanation of the

mechanism of seeing, and was taught in the VKhUTEMAS color theory courses and beyond.
Referring to this cutting-edge physiological research of von Kries, Matiushin proposed
combining central vision, associated with a narrow focus, precision, and a clear rendition of
color, with peripheral vision, characterized by broad focus and an ability to capture light and
contrast. 315
Moreover, Matiushin aspired to expand the angle of seeing even further, to a full 360*.
To do so, one would have had to see with the back of her head, and indeed, in his physiological
experiments, the artist discovered that the occipital part of brain acted as an independent visual
center that was not connected to the eye. 3 16 The brain, according to Matiushin, was able to obtain
a visual non-retinal perception directly through the skull; thus, his pedagogical program strove to
develop in his students the ability for backside seeing. 3 17 In an exercise that Matiushin frequently
assigned, he asked the students to select a passer-by and to keep track of both that person's and
See Johannes von Kries, Die Gesichts-Empfindungen Und Ihre Analyse (Leipzig:
Veit, 1882); Johannes von
Kries, Abhandlungen Zur Physiologie Der Gesichtsempfindungen Aus Dem PhysiologischenInstitut Zu Freiburg
(Hamburg: Voss, 1897).
314

On Matiushin's use of the Purkinje effect, see Tillberg, "Coloured Universe and
the Russian Avant-Garde,"152154; and Alla Povelikhina, "Antropologizm Matiushina: sistema 'ZOR-VED' pri vospriiatii natury" ["Matiushin's
anthropologism: Zor-Ved system at an education of nature"], Organika. Bespredmetnyi mir prirody v russkom
avandarde XY veka" [Organics. Abstract World of Nature in Twentieth-Century Russian Avant-Garde] (Moskva:
RA, 2000) 43-49.
315

According to contemporary science, the occipital part of brain cortex is most
intensely activated by visual
stimuli. Tillberg, Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde, 157 (footnote 101).

316

Although Matiushin's program of neck seeing might now seem grotesque, it did in fact follow the lead of
psychological experiments. As reported by Borchert in Maliarnoedelo, M-r Burrow of the London Association for
the Blind had determined that the blind felt themselves better in a blue room than in a red one. See Erich Borchert,
"Krasochnoe oformlenie zhilishch" ["Color Design of Dwellings"], MaliarnoeDelo [ Wallpainting] No. 1 (1931): 89.
3

176

their own movements, connecting the two. Later, after the passer-by disappeared behind the
students' backs, they had to keep track of his movement without turning the head backwards. 3 18
As expanded seeing allowed for a simultaneous observation of the object (the focus) and
its background (the periphery), Matiushin could embark on an exploration of the relationship
between the two. As a painter, he was particularly interested in the contrasts of color connected
with the shift of the eyeball between the object and its context. 319 Along this shift, so Matiushin
claimed to have discovered, in the brain of the beholder, the background acquired the color
complementary to the one of the object, while a third, psychological, color appeared around the
object as a halo until the main color finally died out under the impact of the complementary.

32

The addition of the third color (which he called the linking [stsepliaiushchii]one) to the dyad of
the primary and the complementary formed the core of Matiushin's theory of painting. It allowed
him to overcome the effect of mutual dulling that occurred when contrasting colors were mixed
with each other, and thus establish a visual equilibrium between an object and its context.
As Matiushin's group explored the effect of complementary color that appeared
psychologically when one closed one's eyes after looking at a colored shape, it had to approach
The exercise was subsequently complicated by the task of keeping track of several people
moving into different
directions. Boris Ender, "Material k issledovaniiu fiziologii 'Dopolnitel'nogo smotrenia (Dnevnik opytov opisania
mestnosti s poviazkoi na glazakh)" ["Materials to a study of physiology of 'Complementary seeing' (A diary of
attempts at describing an environment with a band on the eyes"]. RGALI, Boris Ender collection.
318

319 See Larisa Zhadova, "Tsvetovaia sistema M. Matiushina" ["Matiushin's color system"], Iskusstvo [Art] No. 8

(1974): 38-42. Reprinted in: Mikhail Matiushin, Spravochnikpo tsvety. Zakonomernost' izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh
sochetanii [Color Handbook. The Laws of Variabilityof Color Combinations] (Moskva: Izdatel' D. Aronov, 2007)
5-12 (9).
Matiushin determined that a perception of color had three temporal periods. At first, neutral
background acquired
a pale complementary color. Then, the main color was surrounded by a sharp halo of the complementary color, and
a third color appeared in the environment. Finally, the main color died out under the influence of the complementary
color. Mikhail Matiushin, Spravochnikpo tsvety.
320

177

color contrast as a cognitive rather than retinal phenomenon, explaining it as a function of the
brain rather than the eye. Matiushin then turned to recent physiological research in order to
locate the centers of the brain responsible for production and fixation of a psychological color
effect. The common physiological knowledge was that two types of visual centers existed in the
brain, the first located in the middle of the brain, and the second-in the cortex, Matiushin
connected the less-well-known cortex centers with the psychological phenomenon of
complementary color. These cortex centers, Matiushin discovered, were concentrated in the
posterior, occipital part of the brain. In a GINKhUK laboratory experiment, a specially
constructed black room was divided into two parts by a solid screen. In the first part of the room,
Matiushin placed an electric lamp covered with color sheet, while in the second, the subject was
seated with his back "facing" the screen, with a the distance between the subject and the object
between one and four meters. The only opening in the screen was a small hole, which was
hermetically closed with a hose that ended in a cap on the head of the subject. The only point in
the second part of room that the beam of light from the first part could reach was the occiput of
the subject. After the subject's vision and mind were adjusted to the darkness of the room and all
previous impressions disappeared, the experimenter turned on the lamp, asking the subject-who
was left unaware of the color of the screen used to cover the lamp and thus of the nature of the
beam that her occiput was confronting-to describe her impressions. Although, compared to
experiments with the retinal vision, the subjects needed significantly more time to fix and record
their impressions, in the end they inevitably succeeded doing it, describing their sensation as a
complex networks of interrelated psychological visual phenomena. The physiological discovery
of Matiushin was-so he claimed-that the color perceived by the subject was not the one of the

178

color

screen,

but

its

complement.

Complementary vision, Matiushin concluded,
was a result of the perceiving activity of the
hchbyase
f

h

bai,

ccpialcrtx

Sthe eye.
E

Matiushin's students actively furthered
Fig. 3.3. Mikhail Matiushin and Maria Ender. The
change of color shape and color background in time,

with the eyes closed. 1930s.

and developed their teacher's theory. The
most significant contribution was that of the

siblings Ender, painters Boris (1893-1960), Ksenia (1894-1955), Maria (1897-1942) and Geogrii
(1898-1963), all of whom studied under Matiushin and were members of Zorved. 32 1 Developing
Matiushin's theory, Maria Ender studied the complementary perception of form, while Boris
Ender explored complementary spatial perception, developing a theory of "complementary
seeing" [dopolnitel'noe smotrenie]-a notion that referred both to Matiushin's "expanded
seeing" [rasshirennoesmotrenie] and his interest in complementary colors.322 In August and
September 1924, Boris Ender conducted a series of experiments near Leningrad that explored the
perception of a blindfolded subject. In one of them, he tightly covered his eyes with a kerchief
and asked his collaborators to guide him towards the endpoint-a place that he had never seen
before. Remaining blindfolded, for half an hour he recorded the visual impressions that he
Maria Ender, one of Matiushin's closest and long-lasting
collaborators, wrote an introduction to the Color
Handbook in a desperate attempt to save their work and Matiushin himself from the accusations
in formalism,
inevitable in the new situation of a toughed artistic control and the anti-modernism campaign that took
a new turn in
1932.
321

Complementary seeing, for Ender and Matiushin, was not
only the effect of complementary colors, but "every
spatial volume perception, which is complementary to a direct one." Ender, "Material k issledovaniiu
fiziologii
'Dopolnitel'nogo smotrenia," 1.
322

179

received through the back of his head; the blindfold was then removed and Ender continued to
record the impressions received through his eyes.
In January 1927, GINKhUK was merged with the State Institute of Art History
[Gosudarstvennyi institute istorii iskusstvs], where Matiushin received an Experimental
Laboratory of Physical-Physiological Foundation of Fine Arts,3 23 while Maria Ender became his
assistant. Meanwhile, Boris Ender became an assistant at the Committee of Contemporary
Artistic Industry,3 2 4 headed by architect Aleksandr Nikol'skii, the leader of the Leningrad section
of the constructivist group OSA. 32 5 There, Ender started work on the projects for wallpainting,
and shortly afterwards moved to Moscow, where wallpainting was at that time actively promoted
by the officials and developed as a separate branch of architecture by the Constructivists at OSA
and Stroikom and the Rationalists at ASNOVA.3 2 6 Matiushin too discovered in wallpainting a
possibility of rescuing abstract art, using his system of color triads to claim expertise in this field.
The claim was substantiated in 1932 when the State Publishing House of Fine Arts in Leningrad
published the results of a project, in which Matiushin was engaged since 1929, as A Handbook of
Color. A Pattern of the Convertibility of Color Combinations-a set of tables demonstrating

323

Russian: Eksperimental'naia laboratoria fiziko-fiziologicheskikh osnov izobrazitel'nogo
iskusstva.

324

Russian: Komitet sovremennoi khudozhestvennoi promyshlennosti.

On Nikol'skii's approach to color in architecture, see: Moisei Ginzburg, "Itogi i perspektivy"
["Outcomes and
Perspectives"], Sovremennaia Arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No. 4-5 (1927): 112-118 (116), and Selim
0. Khan-Magomedov, Aleksandr Niko 'skii (Moskva: Russii avangard, 2009) 48-62.
325

In 1928, in Leningrad Institute of Civil Engineers, Nikol'skii created a Scientific-Research
Cabinet and, within it,
a Laboratory of Color, which was headed by Maria Ender. Vera Shueninova-Nikol'skaia, the architect's wife, was a
volunteer there, focusing on the problem of the relationship between color and form and the principles of exterior
coloration of buildings. See Alla Povelikhina, "GINKhUK. Otdel Organicheskoi Kul'tury" ["GINKhUK. The
Department of Organic Culture], Organika. Bespredmetnyi mir prirody v russkom avangarde [Organics. An
Abstract World of Nature in Russian Avant-Garde] (Moskva: RA, 2000) 50-58 (55).
326

180

primary, context, and linking colors that were recommended for use on internal and external
walls of buildings. 327 Matiushin's color tables offered a ready-made, mass-produced recipe for
the calculated visual effect of color combinations that always looked brilliant and fresh.

Fig.3.4. From Mikhail Matiushin, Spravochnikpo tsvety. Zakonomernost' izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh
sochetanii [ColorHandbook. Laws of Variability of Color Combinations]. Band 3, Table 17. A-Primary Color;
B--Linking color; B-Context color.

Developed by Ender, Matiushin's theory of complementary seeing, in spite of its
manifest scientific and experimental character, bore many traces of a theosophic interest in the
irrational. Turning a color into its opposite, complementary seeing produced a reversed image of
reality-or rather represented the reality's other, normally concealed side. The visual activity of
the brain that Matiushin discovered went unnoticed by the subject and thus belonged not to the
domain of the cognitive, but to the unconscious. The occipital part of the brain cortex provided
visual perception that was mediated neither by retina, nor by areas of the brain,\ responsible for
cognitive, analytical activity. Like the images of the Freudian unconscious, the images produced
by neck vision, were obscure, dark, and left in the periphery of consciousness. Nevertheless, they
played a key role in our perception of reality, providing a context for the retinally perceived
Mikhail] V[asil'evich]. Matiushin, Spravochnikpo tsvetu. Zakonomernost'
izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii
[Color Handbook. Laws of Variability of Color Combinations] (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo
izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv, 1932). Due to the difficulty of the technological process, the illustrations to the book had
to be hand colored and were performed by Matiushin's students I. Val'ter, 0. Vaulina, S. Vasiuk, V. Delakroa, D.
Sysoeva, E. Khmelevskaia. This explains the low circulation of the book, which comprised 400 copies.
327

181

object and thus determining its final appearance in consciousness. A consideration of
complementary seeing-paying attention to the context, to the xelationship between the object
and its periphery, and to the metamorphosis of colors and shapes that happened with the change
of the context (when, for instance, the subject was physically moving or flipping the pages of a
book)-allowed the painter to control the psychological impression that an artwork produced in
the mind of the beholder: the luminosity of color, the perceived size and shape of volumes and
other elements of perception.

Space and Movement
At VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN and within the system of formalist aesthetics in general,
color was predominantly associated with painting. Accordingly, many modernist architects,
banished color from their work as an old-fashioned quality, bound to individualistic subjectivity,
aestheticism, and emotionality. They saw color as distracting attention from the aspects of space
and form and thus tied to the Loosian crime of ornament. When Mies van der Rohe administered
the design of the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, a showcase of modernist residential
architecture, the sole condition placed in front of the participating architects was that the
buildings had to have flat roofs and white exteriors. 32 8 Two years before Weissenhof was opened
for public in 1927, Le Corbusier formulated his famous "law of Ripolin," named after French
paint company that produced white enamel. Connecting good architecture with the white, the law

Mark Wigley, White Walls, DesignerDresses: The Fashioningof Modern Architecture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1995) xiv.
328

182

of Ripolin emphasized both formal purity and the physical and moral hygiene with which white
was associated.3 29
However it was soon realized-not the least by Le Corbusier, who was a painter as well
as an architect-that color could be not an enemy, but a friend of architecture. In particular,
interpreted as tone, color was defined through the intensity of white or black, and could thus
express form like no other medium; it was the gradations of tone that Corbusier suggested for use
in architecture, while reducing the number of pure colors to two or three.3 30 In a special 1929
issue of the Constructivist architectural journal Sovremennaia Arkhitektura [Contemporary
Architecture] devoted to architectural polychromy, the editor of the journal and the major
theoretician of architectural Constructivism Moisei Ginzburg published an article by Boris
Teplov that discussed the distinction among colors made by his German colleague David Katz.
Following Katz, Teplov divided colors into surface [poverkhnostnye tsveta /Oberfldchenfarben],
329 See Le Corbusier, "Le lait de chaux : La loi du Ripolin," L'art decoratif d'aujourd'hui(Paris: G. cres et cie,

1925) 187. Ripolin was a paint and enamel company, whose products were famously used by Picasso and Le
Corbusier.
In "'Salubra,' Source text of 'Polychromie architecturale' Le Corbusier wrote: "The painter intervenes here.
Each color (vermillion differently from carmine, black differently from ultramarine, etc.) possesses degrees where
its richness, its opulence on the one hand, its signification on the other, can lead to a clear purity; this observation
can also be negatively formulated: each color, during its transition from lighter to darker, possesses drab, or
unpleasant, hollow, non-expressive regions, that the painter carefully avoids. On a painting, the classification is
more subtle and relative, because a tone is strongly influenced by numerous other colors or values which
immediately surround it. As in architecture, only two or three colors or values are present, the choice of expressive
values is more categorical; a judgment is necessary that can be formulated this way: this 'tone-value' is more
suitable for the wall and its specific quality is more characteristic for it." "'Salubra,' Source text of 'Polychromie
architecturale', Heer, The Architectonic Colour, 217-218 (218). On the interaction of color and tone see also Le
Corbusier, "Polychromie architectural." English translation as "Architectural polychromy. A study made by an
architect (also involved in the adventure of contemporary painting) for architects" in Polychromiearchitecturale:Le
Corbusiers Farbenklaviaturenvon 1931 und 1959 = Le Corbusier's color keyboards from 1931 and 1959, ed.
Arthur Rif'egg, vols. 1-3. Vol.1 (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhf'use; 1997) 94-141; and in Jan de Heer, The
Architectonic Colour: Polychromy in the PuristArchitecture of Le Corbusier, transl. George Hall (Rotterdam: 010
Publishers, 2009) 219-238.
330

183

film [besfakturnye tsveta / Fldchenfarben] and spatial [rasprostranennyetsveta/Raumfarben].331
Whereas the last category dealt with transparent colors, rarely encountered in life, the first two
groups, distinguished through brightness and saturation, were frequent and important for
architecture. Bright and saturated film colors were glossy, immaterial and abstract, while surface
colors were material and solid, connected to the object they covered. Being mixed with black or
white and thus less saturated with pigment, especially in their pure forms, surface colors were
able to convey such architectural properties as facture, form, and distance.
It was this form-making property of color tones that Le Corbusier had in mind when, in
in a 1928 letter to Italian architect Piero Bottoni, he called colors "creators [crdatrices]of space."
Color, he argued, played an important architectural role as it could make planes look closer or
farther away, causing parts of architectural constructions "disappear" within the landscape; color
could become a camouflage that destroyed the weight and density of volumes. 332 Le Corbusier's
reasoning almost literally repeated that of German formalist art historian August Schmarsow,
who in 1893 used the psychological notion of space to define architecture: "Our sense of space
and spatial imagination press toward spatial creation [Raumgestaltung]; they seek their
satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space

David Katz, Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung.
(Leipzig, 1911) 1-30. English translation 1935. In his article "Prostranstvennye i 'vesovye' svoistva tsveta" ["Spatial
and 'weight' properties of color"] (MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting]No. 2 1931: 5-8) Teplov referred to Raumfarben
asprostranstvennye.
331

See Wigley, White Walls, DesignerDresses, 217. Among Soviet psychologists, Teplov was especially interested
in the camouflage potential of color. On architecture and camouflage during a later period, see Jean-Louis Cohen,
Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War (Montr6al: Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 2011).
332

184

[Raumgestalterin]."3 3 3 Exemplified by the VKhUTEMAS system of introductory courses, this
definition of architecture as space became widely accepted by modernist architects, and Le
Corbusier was certainly paraphrasing it when he paired color and space. Yet in doing so, he
achieved nothing less than an identification of architecture with color-a dissolution of
architecture as a material reality and a reconstitution of it as a fully psychological phenomenon.
In a 1932 letter to a student of Kiev Institute of Construction Viktor Nekrasov (who was to
become a major Soviet writer and later a political dissident and emigre) and his fellow-students,
Le Corbusier pointed to color as one of the fundamental principles of his approach to
architecture: "An architect may thus work with color as he works with proportions, or rather (if
you will), as he would work with the geometric relations between surfaces or volumes." 334
Purism-the art movement developed by Le Corbusier (or rather by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret,
Le Corbusier's real name, which he used as his signature as a painter) alongside Amed~e
Ozenfant and Fernand Leger-rejected the dulled palette of analytic Cubism, to which it was
otherwise greatly indebted, without sacrificing the Cubist concern with form: painting itself was
redefined by the Purists as an expression of form through color.3 35

33 August Schmarsow, "The Essence of Architectural Creation," Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German
Aesthetics, 1873-1893, 287.

Quoted in S. Frederick Starr, "Le Corbusier in the USSR: New Documentation," Oppositions No. 23 (1981):
123-137 (132). Le Corbusier's letter was sent in response to the students' assurances of solidarity after the
announcement of the results of the first tour of the Palace of the Soviets Competition.
34

335 The relation of form and color also had been the subject of interest at VKhUTEMAS. At their propedeutic
workshops, Cezannists Aleksandr Osmerkin and Aleksandr Drevin taught courses on the relationship between color
and form: "Expression of Form through Color" (Osmerkin) and "Simultaneity of Color and Form" (Drevin).
Likewise, Constructivist Gustav Klutsis, who taught the propedeutic discipline "Color" between 1924 and 1930,

approached color as surface, exploring the interaction of color with planar and volumetric form and the surface of

the material.
185

The art theories of Le Corbusier-an idol of Soviet modernist architects, particularly the
Constructivists-and his Purist associates were also known and well-respected in Moscow. In
the same 1929 issue of Sovremennaia Arkhitektura devoted to color in architecture, Ginzburg
published just one article devoted to an artist-Fernand Leger-giving the majority of color
illustrations in the issue to reproductions of Leger's works. 33 6 The editors of the journal
explained that they saw his work not as easel painting, but as an analytical exercise in exploring
the spatial and surface role of color, a prerequisite for future laboratory experiments.3 3 7 Indeed,
Leger's palette and form-making techniques inspired Ginzburg's first color experimentation.
Already in the early 1920s, teaching at MVTU

(Moskovskoe Vysshee Tekhnicheskoe

Uchilishche, Moscow Higher Technical College), he conducted an experiment with the purpose
of defining the rules of color in architectural space and of compensating psychologically for its
functional imperfections. The architectural problems to correct in the given situation of MVTU
space were the darkness of the room, which faced north and overlooked a tiny courtyard, and its
visual division due to several small vaults on the ceiling. To enhance the luminosity of window
light through a stark contrast, Ginzburg painted the external wall black and also applied black to
the ceiling to eliminate the perceived partitioning of the room. The wall opposite to the windows,
however, received a bright lemon-yellow coloration, which, according to Ginzburg, due to its
nonabsorptive character endowed even a diffused ray of light with a sunny saturation. The two
remaining walls Ginzburg painted orange in order to give the cold and dark room more
On Leger's views on color and architecture in the 1920s and 1930s, see his "L'Architecture
polychromie,"
L'Architecture Vivante, Autumn/Winter 1924, and his lecture "Les rapports de l'architecture et de la peinture,"
published as Fonctionsde la peinture, Paris, 1965 (German translation: "Mauern, Architekten und Maler," Mensch.
Machine. Malerei. Bern, 1971).
336

Redaktsia SA [SA Editorial board], "Pochemu my pomeshchaem zhivopis' Lezhe" ["Why we are publishing
Lager's painting"], Sovremennaia Arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No. 2 (1929): 58.
1

186

"warmth" and to provide contrast to both black and yellow and thereby to accentuate the spatial
properties of the room. 33 8
The use of color as a spatial modulator was developed by ASNOVA, which launched a
research on spatial properties of color as one of its priorities. Moreover, more so than their
Constructivist rivals, the Rationalists exhibited an interest in enhancing the formal expressivity
of architecture: Nikolai Travin in the Khavsko-Shabolovkii residential complex and Georgii
Mapu in Budennovskii village, each transformed the external walls into red and white geometric
compositions.339 Before the arrival of Scheper, who reoriented Maliarstroi towards a
functionalist, Constructivist line of work, ASNOVA was quite successful in acquiring patronage
and a certain theoretical dominance over Maliarstroi. The Rationalists had long expressed an
interest in color as a strong factor of psychological impression: as early as 1926, for instance,
Ladovskii prepared a scheme for the painting of the facades of houses on Miasnitskaia street in
Moscow.

34

However, by the time Maliarstroi was created, Ladovskii had left ASNOVA in a

protest against the formalism and "scholasticism" of his former students, who became
preoccupied with solving formal architectural and compositional problems. It was exactly these
problems that ASNOVA now attempted to solve with wallpainting. When the first issue of
Maliarnoe Delo went to press in 1930, it included a welcoming salute from ASNOVA, which
hailed "an elucidation, from both artistic and a technical points of view" of color "as a mighty
Moisei Ginzburg, Zhilishche: opytpi'ailetnei raboty nad problemoi zhilishcha [Residential Construction:
an
Experience of Five-Year Work on the Problem ofResidential Construction] (Moskva: Gosstroiizdat, 1934) 93-94.
338

339 On Travin's project, see Vitalii Lavrov, "Uchastie 'ASNOVA' v zhilishchnom stroitel'stve Mossoveta" ["The

participation of 'ASNOVA' in Mossovet residential construction"], Stroitel'stvo Moskvy [The Construction of
Moscow] No.1 (1928): 14-16.
"Doma ili ulitsy? Otkrytoe pis'mo Mossovetu" ["Houses or Streets? An Open Letter to Mossovet"],
Izvestia
ASNOVA [ASNOVA Newsletter] No.1 (1926): 6.
340

187

tool of artistic expressivity."341 In an open meeting of
f

j

ASNOVA,

devoted to the project of re-painting of

Moscow in February 1930, Rukhliadev claimed that the
major purpose of color in a city was an aesthetic effect
udw
4kA4

u

in:

; WI (which was, in fact, more important than the aspects of

1:

t"2 ~hygiene), which could be viewed as surface and spatial
tasks.3 42

a ;WAamas
When in November 1929 a discussion on "The
Fig.3.5. Khavsko-Shabolovskii

Planned Project for a Re-Painting of Moscow" was

residential complex, Plans of exterior

coloration. Nikolai Travin, 1928.

initiated, ASNOVA played a central role in formulating

its terms and framework. Among the participants of the discussion, which continued throughout
the early 1930, were Leiba Antokol'skii from Maliarstroi; Viktor Balikhin, Aleksei Rukhliadev,
V. Petrov and Aleksandr Sil'chenkov from ASNOVA; Gustav Klutsis from VKhUTEIN;
members of the artistic groups AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), "4
Arts," and "Being" [Bytie], as well as the representatives of various municipal bureaucracies.

343

In spite of some unavoidable disagreements, the parties concurred that the painting of the street
facades of Moscow buildings had to be centralized and subjected to a uniform plan that would
regulate and organize the city. With the participation of ASNOVA, Antokol'skii prepared and
submitted three alternative projects for discussion by architectural groups. In the first, so-called
341 "'ASNOVA' privetstvuet vykhod v svet zhurnala 'Maliarnoe Delo"' ["'ASNOVA' welcomes the launch of the
journal 'Maliarnoe Delo'], MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting] No. 1-2 (1930): 53.
The minutes of the meeting were published in L[eiba] Antokol'skii, "0 planovoi okraske gorodov" ["On a
planned painting of cities"], MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting],No.3 (1931): 5-13 (11-13).
342

343 See Antokol'skii, "0 planovoi okraske gorodov."
188

belt, version, rings of prismatic colors radiated from the red center (the Kremlin and the Red
Square) not unlike Delaunay's circles of color perception. The innermost part of the city was
painted in warm red-orange hues, which gradually merged into yellow-green further from Red
Square, while the middle ring of the city was given green to ice-blue tones transforming into blue
and violet on the periphery. Finally, in the suburbs, the violet turned into grey and white. The
second, zonal, version of the scheme resembled Newton's color wheel: in this model, each
district of the city received one of the seven colors of the spectrum. However, since within each
district the intensity of coloration increased towards the center and decreased towards an almost
white periphery, Newton's wheel was transformed into Ostwald's color triangle. Finally the
third, arterial version suggested painting every major thoroughfare of Moscow (all of which ran
from the periphery towards the center) to shades of red, brighter in the center and whiter towards
the edges of the city. In addition, all major squares in the city were to receive their own
distinctive color. 3 " While the belt version would inform visitors about their distance from the
Kremlin, the zonal version offered a more complex, double-level orientation scheme, allowing
them to know which part of the city they were in and at the same time to understand the
center/periphery relationship by looking at the colors of outside walls. The most complex and the
closest to the informational program of Signaletik, the arterial version informed the visitor about
the importance of a street and as well as starting and ending points. In all the versions, the
streets, from major boulevards to side lanes, were treated as corridors leading from a square of
one color to a square of another, and the tone of houses was gradually modified to allow a
seamless transition from one color to the other.

344 Antokol'skii,

"0 planovoi okraske gorodov," 6-8.
189

Figs. 3.6-3.8. Antokol'skii's three schemes for the repainting of Moscow. Reconstruction by A. V. Efimov (1978).

Antokol'skii's schemes bore a clear relation to ASNOVA compositional theory, above all
to the theory of architectural rows, which was developed in the mid- and late-i 920s as an attempt
to restructure the principles of architectural composition to be similar to those of music. A linear
sequence of elements arranged as a pattern of objects with different properties set at intervals of
various lengths, compositional rows were based on a rhythmical progression. Just as an
underlining musical rhythm structures and organizes melody, so architectural rows created a
matrix on which a composition was laid out. Intensifying at important moments, rhythm dictated
both the organization of architectural tissue and the physiological reactions of the viewer. In so
doing, it enabled orientation, which the Rationalists interpreted as an understanding of
hierarchical relationships within the city. In his lecture at the "Space" course at VKhUTEIN, a
member of ASNOVA, Ivan Lamtsov, pointed to the parallel between music and architecture as
the two arts that brought chaos into harmony:
As in music, the chaos of spatial forms in architecture is an absence of coordination in the
joint influence of a visual sensation, which leads to an impediment of the possibility of
orientation in all systems of irritations and in beholding each of them separately. Visual
sensations of forms located without an order interrupt each other equally chaotically

190

Fig. 3.9. Viktor Balikhin, Color Rows. Museum of the Moscow Institute of Architecture (MARHI).

(without any sequence or in a completely random sequence), thereby impeding an
analysis [razbor] of the material received by a visual organ.345
Applied to urban facades, color rows helped save the energy of city dwellers by
preventing color fatigue, which could be provoked by too monotonous and dull as well as by
excessively contrasting colors, which contributed to the nervous overstimulation of a
metropolis. 346 A gradual modulation of color eliminated monotony while allowing the eye to
adjust to color transitions. In the words of Lamtsov, "In regards to rows of differently arranged
identical forms, one can speak of a calmer or less irritable movement, and vice versa: when
perception requires constant exertion, it leads to a faster appearance of fatigue if there is no other

Ivan Lamtsov, "K voprosu o tonal'nosti v arkhitekture" ["To the question of tonality in architecture"].
Unpublished manuscript. Museum of the Moscow Institute of Architecture. Ivan Lamtsov Collection. Translation by
the author. Russian original: JIo aHaJiorHH c My3bIKOH-xaoc npocTpaHCTBeHHbIX ( OpM B apXHTeKType ecT
345

OTCyTCTBHe corJiacOBaHHOCTH B COBMeCTHOM gerCTBHH Ha 3pHTe~jbHOe oIIyIIgeHHe, BcJIeACTBe qerO 3aTpyAHeTCx
KwAytIO H3 HHX B oTgeJIbHoCTH.
BO3MONKHOCTb OpHeHTHPOBaTbCA BO Bcex CHCTeMax pa3gpaeHHA H Co3epiIaTa
nepe6HBa1oT gpyr gpyra
6ecnopMA~o1Ho
ce
TraK
B
6ecnOIpAKe
3pHTeJIbHoe pa3gpaxeHHe OT 4OpM pacnoomieHHbIX
(pa360p B
3aTpyAHAIOT
3THM
H
(BHe BCSKOH nocIeAOBaTeJrhHOCTH HJIH IocJIeAOBaTeJIbHoCTH 'IHCTO cJIy'arHHO)

nOCTyIaioIIem maTepHaJie
346

RAvopraHa 3peHHRic.

Erich Borchert, "0 planovoi okraske Moskvy" ["On a planned [re-]painting of Moscow"], Maliarnoe Delo

[Wallpainting] No.

1 (1932): 8-13.
191

neighboring row with another accent that would have allowed for a rest." 347 Accordingly, in
Antokol'skii's plan for the re-painting of Moscow as well as in other Maliarstroi projects, the
transitions were carefully arranged by zones of similar or complementary colors that
corresponded to the psychological afterimage of color and was thus believed to aid a
physiologically smooth transition.
Similarly to the members of ASNOVA, Antokol'skii suggested using color in order to
create a rhythm-a pace and direction of movement within the city. All the three versions of
Antokol'skii's project prompted the visitor to move towards the center, thereby asserting its
superior ideological and social significance. Even more so than in the two others, in the belt
version, the colors' dynamogenic strength increased from the depressing blues of the periphery
towards the vibrant red center. As the visitors were approaching the Kremlin, their heartbeat and
breath would be intensified, their attention would be captivated by the brightness of architectural
color, and their memories of everyday life would recede, being replaced with the new
excitement. Having lost their former individual identity, the visitors would associate themselves
instead with the country and political order through whose heart they were moving. The
rhythmical movement, the pace of which was dictated by modulations of color, focused attention
on a central focal point and contributed to the effect of trance and suggestibility created by
Antokol'skii's environment.

3

Lamtsov, "K voprosu o tonal'nosti v arkhitekture." Translation by the author. Russian original: "UpH

PaCCMaTpHBaHHH PAAOB OAHHaKOBLIX 4)OpM, HO C paJH'HOA xiaCTOTOA B HX paCCTaHOBKe-MOKHO rOBOpHTh o
6onee CHOKORHOM ABHKceHHH H MeHee pa3ApaxHTeJbHOM, H HaO60pOT, Korla rpH paCCMaTpHBaHHH Tpe6yeTcA

6eclpepWBHoe

HanpoKeHHe, oTqero 6mcrpee noIBeTrC

ApyrHM aKLueHTOM Ha KOTOPOM MOKHO

6iuro 6m

yCTanoCm, eCJIH HeT euxe no COCCTBy

oTxoxHyTL."

192

ApyrorO

pAAa C

These rows, structured by tone, lightness, and saturation, established a sequence that
fixed teh relationships among objects and dictated the direction of the gaze. As common
psychological knowledge had it, the gaze naturally followed a trajectory from the less to the
more saturated and from achromatic towards chromatic colors. 34 8 Thus, just as was prescribed by
the German proponents of color coding, Antokol'skii aspired to overcome the chaos of spatial
perceptions and reveal the hidden logics and meaning of urban structure, making it logical and
navigable by controlling the direction of the gaze and movement. His projects, like those of
Burchartz and Meyer, classified color as the material and aimed to allow one to understand and
navigate within it. But while Signaletik only coded the function of architectural environment,
leaving the choice of direction to the discretion of the subject, color rows both classified the
function and prescribed the visitor's route by assigning each part of the city a certain ideological
importance, thus establishing a hierarchy of those parts.
ASNOVA suggested approaching the task of the re-painting of Moscow by choosing one
street as a site of experiment which, if successful, could later be replicated throughout the city.
This street had to be long and complete, leading from one square to another. It had to be one of
the busiest streets of the city in order for the subsequent discussion to attract as many opinions as
possible. Furthermore, the street had to possess a full variety of buildings: contemporary and
historic, important and ordinary, as well as houses that could not be painted due to revetment.
The suggestion was heard and in 1931 not one but five central streets were chosen as the sites for
the wallpainting experiment, each assigned to an artist: Arbat to brothers Sternberg, Tverskaia to
Luk'ianov, Petrovka to Levin, and Kuznetskii Most and Dzerzhinskii street to El Lissitzky. The
348

S. S. Alekseev, B. M. Teplov, I. A. Shevarev, Tsvet v arkhitekture [Color in Architecture]
(Moskva-Leningrad:

ONTI-Gosstroiizat, 1934) 77.

193

final program was a compromise between the desire of the bureaucrats to give the city a grey
tone (a position, against which most of the artists protested), and the colorful proposals of
Antokol'skii. The Stenbergs suggested turning the grayness of the scheme into an opportunity to
work with light and shade, giving the facades various tones of grey and emphasizing windowframes and doors with black coloration. 34 9 The grey streets were to differ in its shades (Arbat, for
instance, was to be painted in blue-grey), and each would move from a lighter color on one side
to a darker on the other. Intersections were to be emphasized chromatically albeit not with very
bright colors, but with light-green or light-brown. To facilitate the orientation, the streets also
had to be stripped of old signboards and given new ("of the type used in Berlin") directional
signs. Although this program was initiated, as the other Maliarstroi initiatives were, it never went
beyond the initial experimental stage. 350
Like Ginzburg's use of color as a spatial modulator, Antokol'skii's use of color as a
modulator of movement illustrated the two architectural functions of color within the formalist
aesthetic system. By creating an improved-lighter, wider and higher-environment or by
making certain areas of the city seem more solemn, festive, and important, both Ginzburg and
Antokol'skii created psychological space by manipulating physiological sensations. Elaborated
in detail in ASNOVA's theory of color rows, this program was soon proclaimed outdated and
regressive by Scheper and Borchert, who brought to Maliarstroi a Bauhaus enthusiasm in regards
to technology and an indifference to a psychological notion of space.

349

E. Zagorskaia, "Khudozhestvennoe oformlenie Moskvy," Za proletarskoe iskusstvo, 1931, No.8, 31.

"Ulitsy-udarnitsy" ["Streets-Shock-Workers"], Brigada Khudozhnikov [The
Brigade of Artists] No. 4 1931,
Supplement "Izo-Gazeta" ["Art Newspaper"].
350

194

After his arrival in the USSR, Borchert expressed a negative opinion of Antokol'skii's
plan as well as of its realization in the experimental streets. Both the dull grey actually applied on
the streets of Moscow and the chromatic colors of Antokol'skii's plan were, according to him,
too abstract and too intellectual: they did not consider the real, lived life of the city, which the
multiformity and heterogeneity of the buildings and their colors had to reflect. However, an
acknowledgment of diversity, for Borchert, did not contradict mapping a certain architectural
typology, which, without endangering its complexity, organized a chaotic Simmelian metropolis
into a rationalized system.
What does one have to start from when designing the color scheme of a city? First of all,
from the heterogeneity of the architectural elements of such a city as Moscow, where
administrative centers, new architecture, old architecture (in which one has to distinguish
historically valuable buildings and buildings, which do not have any historic or artistic
value) coexist. There are empty squares, rivers, department stores, and, not least, the socalled "small architectural forms" [malaia arkhitektura]-newspaperkiosks and so on;
adding to the picture are the objects of transportation and movement and signalling
systems and equipment connected to them, and, finally, cinematic billboards and other
neon advertisement, posters, and so on. 35 1
If for Antokol'skii energy could be saved by helping the visitor to orient herself through
giving fagades arbitrarily ascribed colors that conformed only to the general color scheme of the
city and informed only the location of the building-Borchert believed that energy was produced
by the city as a place of past and present social encounters, and should be equally distributed
among its parts rather than confined to one quasi-religious ideological center. Rather than
Erich Borchert, "0 planovoi okraske Moskvy," 12. Translation by the author. Russian original: (43 qero xce
HYXHO HCXOAHTh IpH ripOCKTHpOBaHHH KpacONHoro o4(OpMneHH ropoga? Hpexcge Bcero H3 yqeTa MHoroo6pa3HA
apX1reKrypHLX 3JiemeHTOB TaKoro ropoAa, KaK MociKB, rAe H8JHmo HMeIOTCg aAMHHHCTpaTHBHmC ieHTpim, HOBax
351

apxHTerrypa, cTapas apxHTerrypa, rpHqeM B nocnezAHek HyKHO pa3JH'aM 3AaHH, LXeHHMI
oTHomeHHH, H 3AaHHA, HC HMCIOmHC HHKaKOH HH HCTOpHmecKO
CBo60AHMe rJOumagH,

peKH,

,

HH xygoKecTBeHHOH

pa3HOo6pa3HaI
unaKaTm H T.H.W.

ieHHocTH. WMeIOTCA

yHHBepM8rH, H He Ha noCiCeAHeM lla8He TaK H83LIBaeMaA oMaMax apxHTeKTypa)>--

ra3eTHMe KHOCKH H T.H.; XIA AOHOJIHHHA KapTHHM-UpeAMeTm TpaHCfOpTa H
HHMH

B HCTOpHeCKOM

CrHjiH38H

H o60pyAOBaHHe, HamoHeL

195

KHHOpeKJaMa

H

HepeABHCeHHA, H cBm3aHHme C
ApyrHe 0CBeTAIMHeCC> pemaMm,

prescribing the route for the subject, Borchert's suggestion asserted a free-will subjectivity,
which, aided by the color of the streets, organized and classified the city. While Antokol'skii
reassigned this organizational work to the architect in order to economize the subject's energy
that would otherwise be spent on this analytical operation. Nevertheless, substituting
individuality with social and historic typology, Borchert stopped short of sanctioning
Antokol'skii's authoritarianism, which had only drawn the energy-saving imperative to its all too
logical conclusion.

Standardization
In 1927-1929, Malevich's former students Nikolai Suetin and Il'ia Chashnik worked in
the Committee of Artistic Industry headed by Constructivist architect Aleksandr Nikol'skii.352
"Nikol'skii is very attentive and is constantly asking for advice; it is evident that he would be
pleased to have us as his assistants," commented Chashnik in a letter to his friend, "but so far he
cannot hope for this, because the time has not come-and, I believe, never will come-for
Constructivist architects to reign over painters." 35 3 In 1927, Chashnik reported with satisfaction a
The committee function within the the State Institute of the History of Fine Arts [Gosudarstvennyi institut istorii
iskusstv]. Chashnik and Suetin both studied under Malevich in Vitebsk UNOVIS, where they participated in
Malevich's program of painting suprematist compositions on the street facades of houses as a revolutionary
propaganda.
352

A letter from Chashnik to Ts. Iu. Gorodneva, 19 August 1927. Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche.
[Malevich on Himself Contemporarieson Malevich], ed. I. A. Vakar, T. N. Mikhienko, in 2 vols. Vol. 2 (Moskva:
RA, 2004) 317. Quoted after Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, Aleksandr Nikol'skii. Moskva: Russkii Avangard, 2009,
50. Translation by the author. Russian original: xHHomEcKKA o'eH6 BHHMaTeieH H Ha KaxcAOM mary cnpamumaeT
COBeTOB, 1o BCeMy BHAHO, MTO OH c'eT 6b1 xJIm ce6A rPHETHbUM oJIo)KeHHeM, eci 6EIMMa COrIiCHJIHC cTaT ero
aCCHCTeHTaMH, HO 1OKa Ha 3To eMy He HPHXOAHTCA paCCxHTmIBaTB, H60 eige He HacTyHJIo BpeMS apXHTeKTOpOBKOHCTPyKTHBHCTOB gapHTL Hag XyAOXCHHKaMH, H A AyMalo, 'ITO H He HaCTyuHT, a noKa nycKar ce6i
3

o6HagzexHBaeT...>>.

196

recently completed project ahd been well received by Stroikom, an organization created for the
development of standardized plans for residential construction on a mass scale, where he and
Suetin aspired to obtain a position. Happy that Stroikom, "into which, as it seems, we will [now]
be able to infiltrate [vlezt']," had a favorable opinion of their work, Chashnik immediately
explained that his interest in the organization was purely careerist, and that Stroikom was "of
course, no authority for us, and therefore we are waiting for Kazimir Severinovich [Malevich]
who most likely will be critical."3

4

Malevich, however, was not critical: he himself tried to

"infiltrate" Stroikom in 1927, when he offered to organize a laboratory for the research of color
and form there.35 5 Evidently wishing to attract the attention of Stroikom to his potential as a
wallpainter, around the same time Malevich submitted an article on color to Sovremennaia
Arkhitektura, whose editor, Ginzburg, was Stroikom's leading member. Moreover, Malevich
offered to collaborate with the same Nikol'skii (the leader of Leningrad Constructivists and
Ginzburg's close colleague) in whose department Suetin and Chashnik worked. When both these
efforts fell through, around 1930, Malevich unsuccessfully went on to solicit a position in
Maliarstroi. Finally, as the last attempt to save Suprematism through wallpainting, in 1931,
without an official connection to an architecture organization, Malevich prepared dozens of
watercolor sketches illustrating his color scheme for the interior of the Red Theater in
Leningrad.356

354

A letter from Chashnik to Ts. Iu. Gorodneva, 28 August 1927. Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche,
vol.2,

316-317. Quoted after Khan-Magomedov, Aleksandr Nikol'skii, 51-52. Russian original: <3TO, KOHeqHO, XUa HaC He
aBTOpHTCT, H IoToMy MM &KAeM Ka3HmHpa CeBepHHoBHwa, KOTOPLIr, HaBepHoe, 6yzeT Hac pyraT).

A letter from Malevich to Suetin, August 1927. Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche, vol.1, 194. See also
Khan-Magomedov, Aleksandr Nikol'skii, 51.
3

In August of 1931, the Red Theater received 87 sketches, which illustrated the schemes
of wallpainting for the
auditorium, the lobby, the staircase and the cupola. The wallpainting works were finished by 1932. Malevich's
197
356

Malevich's repeated efforts either personally or through his students to "infiltrate"
Stroikom in the late 1920s reflected his understanding of the crisis of individual and
individualistic art. Malevich's idealism, mysticism and perhaps personal megalomania precluded
him from succeeding in establishing collaboration with Stroikom. However, a Suprematist
conviction in an absolute supremacy of painting over architecture was only part of what caused
the painter, in spite of his fame and reputation, to be rejected repeatedly by architects. More
important was his insistence on the existence of an impassable abyss separating the two arts, and
on his interpretation of painting, in a contrast to architecture, as an inspirational and a-rational
process.3 5 7

Rather than following Malevich, Soviet wallpainting, developed under the auspices of
Stroikom, was elaborated by another group of people, who espoused more materialistic,
positivist, and pragmatic attitudes-attitudes that gestated within the Dessau Bauhaus. The head
of the Bauhaus Wallpainting workshop, Hinnerk Scheper, was invited to the USSR to introduce
the pioneering German approach to the discipline. During the academic year 1930/1931, he
succeeded in obtaining a teaching position at Moscow VKhUTEIN, where color was still
interpreted as a means of painterly expression. 358 Such an approach seemed unbelievably
interiors, however, were destroyed in a later fire. See: L. A. (Larisa) Zhadova, "Iz istorii sovetskoi polikhromii"
["From the history of Soviet polychromy], Tekhnicheskaia estetika [Technicalaesthetics] No.7 (1975): 3-5.
357 In his article "Form, Color, and Perception" published by Sovremennaia arkhitektura, Malevich wrote: "Thus, all

the laws established by optics and grounded in the physical perception of phenomena by the eye system, can, of
course, be introduced into the knowledge of a painter, but he will not have a chance to use them in his creative work;
this knowledge will be abstract for him. But if a painter decides to use it, one can be certain that his works will
resemble artistically worthless paintings of the great scientist of color Ostwald." Kazimir Malevich, "Forma, Tsvet i
Oshchushchenie" ["Form, Color, and Perception"], Sovremennaia arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No.5
(1928): 157-159 (157).
Renate Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt: Hinnerk Scheper: Farbgestalter, Fotograph, DenkmalpfLieger
(Bramsche: Rasch, 2007) 93.
358

198

backward and traditionalist to Scheper, who in an open letter to VKhUTEIN students, which was
published in German-language Moscow newspaper Moskauer Rundschau in early 1930, accused
them in sticking to old, doomed forms of artistic production. The majolica inscription with the
name of the institute, placed above the entrance to VKhUTEIN, was for Scheper not a
coincidence but rather an exemple of the backwardness of the place, in which students and
teachers still could not rid themselves of the notion of art as an individual, craft production.
Modem times, however, required a new art that was practical, rational, and technological.
... New necessities will create the new art. Your simple, direct connection with facts,
with the direct tasks of the day, is the natural soil for a new design of form
[Formgestaltung].Of course, there are also good paintings, painters who search for form,
and artists who independently pose problems among you. However, at this moment it is
not essential if you paint somewhat better or worse, but it is essential if painting can at all
remain your central school and life task.
Because this is what your construction needs: architects, wallpainters, furniture designers,
weavers, that is, constructors, material workers, designers of form, makers of objects
[Gegenstdndler], the virtuosos of form [Formspieler], but virtuosos of function-related
forms. You should not acknowledge your art as the root of your creative work, confusing
your outdated forms of expression (educational principles found for outdated people),
that is, a part of a concept, with the whole concept. Above all, you should not cultivate a
dualism of work: here free, there applied art (that is, arts and crafts once again instead of
a technical form!). You cannot paint academic nudes and construct the chair for the
house, for the mass at the same time. You cannot allow your formal education, which
you consider to be the foundation of your education in new painting, to be impacted by
old traditional principles, while you think on the satisfaction of new, nontraditional
demands. Your formal education must be organized according to new methods that
familiarize you with the elements of your work: materials, functions, the laws of color.3s
H. und L. Scheper, ,,Offener Brief an die Schiler des ,,WCHUTEIN"." "Moskauer Rundschau, 1930
(2. Jg.), No
4, 30.1.1930. Scheper's emphases. Translation by the author. German original: ,...Neue Notwendigkeiten werden
eine neue Kunst schaffen. Eure einfache, direkte Verbundenheit mit den Tatsachen, den direkten Aufgaben des
Tages, ist der natfirliche Nihrboden flir neue Formgestaltung. Sicherlich: es gibt auch gute Bilder, formsuchende
Maler, sich selbst Probleme stellende Kfinstler unter Euch. Aber es kommt im Moment nicht darauf an, ob Ihr etwas
besser oder schlechter malt, sondern es kommt darauf an, ob inberhaupt Bildmalerei fUr Euch zentrale Schul- und
Lebensaufgabe sein kann.
Denn, was braucht Euer Aufbau: Architekten, Wandmaler, M6belbauer, Weber, also Konstrukteure,
Materialarbeiter, Formgestalter, Gegenstindler, Formspieler, aber Spieler mit funktionsbedingten Formen. Ihr solltet
nicht, da Ihr Kunst als Wurzel Eures Schaffens anerkennt, eine ihre verflossenen Ausdrucksformen
199
3

Scheper's intolerance of crafts and individual art is reminiscent of the battles that had
only recently broke out at the Bauhaus. Between 1919 and 1928, the initial interest in
anthroposophy and idealism characteristic of the thinking of Itten and Kandinsky was replaced at
the Bauhaus with attempts at inscribing art and architecture into the system of modem
technology. Though the first motto of the Bauhaus, developed by Gropius in 1919, read "Kunst
und Handwerk - eine neue Einheit" ("Art and Craft: a New Unity"), in 1923 Gropius rejected
craftsmanship and individual handwork in favor of modem, technologized production, and
changed the motto to "Kunst und Technik - Eine Neue Einheit" ("Art and Technology: a New
Unity"). Similarly, the Workshop of Decorative Painting [die WerkstattfarDekorationsmalerei],
which existed at the Bauhaus since its establishment in 1919 in Weimar, was by 1921 renamed
into die Werkstattfur Wandmalerei, the Workshop of Wallpainting. 3 60 Finally, art followed the
fate of craft when in 1928 Meyer redesigned the educational program of the Bauhaustechnology alone was to reign the curriculum from then on. Architecture became the priority of

(Erziehungsprinzipien, ftir verflossene Menschen gefunden) also einen Teilbegriff mit ihrem ganzen Begriff
verwechseln. Ihr solltet vor allem nicht einen Dualismus der Arbeit heranzichten: hier freie, hier angewandte Kunst
(also doch wieder Kunstgewerbe, statt technischer Form!) Ihr k6nnt nicht gleichzeitig akademische Akte malen und
den Stuhl flir das Haus, ffir die Masse konstruieren. Ihr k6nnt nicht Eure formale Ausbildung, die Ihr ffir die
Grundlage Eurer Erziehung zu neuen Bildnern haltet, von alten gewohnten Prinzipien beeinflussen lassen, wdhrend
Ihr an die Befriedigung neuer, ungewohnter Forderungen denkt. Eure formale Ausbildung muss nach neuen
Methoden gehandhabt werden, die Euch die Elemente Eurer Arbeit: Materialen, Funktionen, Farbgesetze,
Formgesetze geldufig machen."
Nevertheless, during his stay in the USSR, Scheper seemed to have acquired interest in visual perception, and after
the return to the Bauhaus restructured the work of the workshop according to his Moscow experience. Now, his
class on the "theory of color," resembling classes taught by psychologists at VKhUTEIN, included a study of the
emotional and sentimental value of color in the works of scientists from Newton to Goethe and experiments with
afterimages (successive and simultaneous contrast). Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 37, 42.
360

Die Werkstattfir Dekorationsmalereiwas among the first Bauhaus workshops, opened by Henry van de Velde.
On the history of the workshop, see Renate Scheper, "The History of Wall-Painting Workshop at the Bauhaus,"
Farbenfroh! Colourful! Die Werkstattf[r Wandmalerei am Bauhaus. The Wallpainting Workshop at the Bauhaus
(Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, 2005) 6-41.
200

the school, being understood not as one of the fine arts, but simply as "building," that is as,
"organization: social, technical, economic and physical organization." 3 61
Meyer's arrival did not initiate but rather solidified the shift in attitude toward technology
at the Bauhaus: Scheper, for one, cherished the beliefs he expressed in Moskauer Rundschau
already in the mid-1920s. When he became the director of the Wallpainting Workshop in 1925,
he reoriented its approach from painterly to the scientific, restructuring the workshop as a site of
experiments in the science and technology of wallpainting. In June 1927, Wilhelm Ostwald gave
a talk on his color theory at the Bauhaus. At the same time Scheper and his students studied the
chemical properties of dyes, techniques of mixing and application, and different spraying
machines. Working in collaboration with the Reichsforschungsgesellschaftfir Wirtschaftlichkeit
im Bau- und Wohnungswesen (the National Research Association for Efficiency in Construction
and Housing), the Wallpainting workshop experimented with new paints (distemper, casein
paint, turpentine paint, lithogen, mineral-based paints, and enamels) and manual and mechanized
methods of their application. 3 62 By the late 1920s, the Workshop had three areas of
concentration: poster painting, interior color schemes, and the practical application of new
techniques developed in experimental workshops.3 63 When in 1927 the joinery, metalwork and
wallpainting workshops were united into a department of Interior Design [Innenausbau], the

361 Hannes Meyer, "Bauen," Bauhaus, No. 2 (1928): 12-13. English translation as "Building"
by D.Q. Stephenson

from Hannes Meyer: Bauten, Projekte Und Schriften: Buildings, Projects, and Writings, ed. Claude Schnaidt
(Teufen, Schweiz: A. Niggli, 1965).
The researchers found out that "75% of labor costs and 30% of the costs
of materials could be saved when
painting radiators" and "25% of labor costs and 30% of the costs on materials could be saved by painting walls and
ceilings with spray guns, provided the areas are large enough and the same color is used." Scheper, Vom Bauhaus
geprdgt, 148 (Footnote 11). See also Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 24-25.
362

363

Scheper, Vom Bauhausgeprdgt, 31-32.
201

Wallpainting workshop focused on the latter two areas, developing color schemes for internal
spaces and experimental testing of various grounds, dies, and techniques, toning pure colors with
black and white, as well as psychological research on the mutual influence of colors.3 64 Scheper,
who was replaced by Hans Arndt during his stay in Moscow, resumed teaching the course on
color after his return from the Soviet Union, in the winter semester of 1931-1932, and even
received a "an excellent color laboratory" that was not connected to production but was
exclusively "teaching and experimental" venue. 3 65
Scheper's experimentation concentrated on the physical properties of dyes, although he
also paid some attention to the psychology of perception. In 1925 at the university hospital in
Minster Scheper painted the operating room into an off-white hue in order to avoid blinding the
surgeon, and gave the X-Ray room a dark-red color, which facilitated an adaptation of the eye to
darkness once the light was turned off. 3 66 Scheper's student Erich Borchert demonstrated a much
stronger interest in applying the physiology of color perception to architecture. Signed by
Hannes Meyer on 28 January 1930, Borchert's graduation certificate praised the successful
results of his "experiments in all spheres of research of paint and light on the basis of the
psychology of their perception." 367 Indeed while studying at the Bauhaus Borchert conducted his
own psychological research in a Berlin psychiatric hospital: as was believed at the time, mentally
ill people, particularly those suffering from nervous diseases ("neurotics" and "hysterical

36 Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 39.
365

Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 41.

366

Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 22-23.

367 Astrid Volpert, "Bez vozmozhnosti vozvrata" [,,Without an opportunity to return"], Erich Borchert v
Rossii

[Erich Borchert in Russia] (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo im. Sabashnikovykh, 2008) 8-11 (11).
202

women"), possessed a more receptive sensory system and thus presented a purer material for
psychological research. Moreover, external irritants such as color affected them more easily and
deepely than other people, and color therapy [German Farbtherapie;Russian tsvetoterapia] was
considered especially effective in the treatment of nervous disorders. Based on the outcomes of
his research, Borchert suggested that in hospitals grey hues, which provoked depression, be
replaced with light chromatic colors (light ochre, marble-pink, yellow or yellowish-green); the
walls of patient rooms in most of the departments should to be painted in calm tones (though not
white, which white was too bright, nor blue, which was a depressant). Only in the
neuropathological department, was color (usually bright red) used therapeutically-there, its
dose was to be regulated by a system of special screens.368
The results of Borchert's medical research were published in Moscow. It was there, under
the umbrella of Maliarstroi, on the basis of several psychological and social theories, that the two
German expatriates, Scheper and Borchert, together with Soviet colleagues developed a concept
of subjectivity that they then hoped to see replicated throughout the country. Maliarstroi, or the
State Trust for Wallpainting Works [Gosudarstvennyi trest po proizvodstvu maliarnykh rabot]
under the Supreme Council of the People's Economy of the USSR, was formed in October of
1928 in order to execute "wallpainting works using contemporary technical achievements,

369

and was led by a Party official Efim Stokolov. 370 The trust's ambitions extended to the design of
368 Borchert,

"Okraska bol'nits i sanatorii" ["Wallpainting of hospitals and sanatoria"],
Maliarnoe Delo
[Wallpainting],No. 4 1931: 25-27 (25).
Statutes of Maliarstroi. Approved by the Supreme Council of People's Economy
of the USSR October 9 1928.
Published in Igor A. Kazus', Sovetskaja architektura 1920-kh godov: Organizatsia proektirovaniia [Soviet
Architecture of the 1920s: OrganizationofDesign] (Moskva: Progress-Traditsia, 2009) 244.
369

370

Efim Evdeevich Stokolov (1890-1974), was a Party bureaucrat, a member of the
Communist Party since 1917.
203

"all sorts of wallpainting works, the interior and exterior design of residential, industrial, office,
cultural and farm construction, color design of clubs, theaters, palaces of labor and culture, city
architectural complexes, streets and squares." 371 Wallpainting was introduced by Stokolov as a
progressive Western technology, necessary for the optimization of social and work processes
within a building. Explaining the goals and methods of the new organization, Stokolov firmly
inscribed wallpainting into the context of the USSR's striving for a modernized economy:
Wallpainting as such has previously presented a branch of building [industry] that was
not considered beyond inviting one or another contractor.
This circumstance fully underscored our backwardness [in relationship to] the
contemporary achievements of Europe and America, where wallpainting is subjected to
study, improvement and rationalization alongside the other processes of building.
Put into the context of scientific research, studied from all points of view, wallpainting
abroad is no longer primitive but is, as any other branch of building, subjected to the
processes of projection in economic calculation and of scientific substantiation in the
application of necessary combinations of colors.
It is therefore natural that in our effort to "catch up and overtake"372 we cannot leave in a
primitive state this important part of construction.

E[fim] Stokolov, "Ot redaktsii" ["From the editors"], Maliarnoe Delo [Wallpainting] No.1-2 1930: 1-2; Kazus',
Sovetskaja architektura1920-kh godov, 244.
3

The phrase "to catch up and overtake" (Western countries) was a popular quotation from Lenin's "Groziashchaia
katastrofa i kak s nei borot'sia" ["Imminent catastrophe and how to struggle with it"] (September 1917).
372

Stokolov, "Ot redaktsii," 1. Translation by the author. Russian original: <tManslpHoe Aeao, KaK TaKOBoe, AO 3TOrO
MOMeHTa 51BJISJIO co6oi oTpacJI cTpoHTeihbcTBa, BHHMaHHe K KOTOpOH He paCilpocTpaHmlocb Aiaee npmrnameHH
TOrO HH HHOrO HO)IPAAqHKa XMJI BMIIOJIHeHH MaJIpmHX pa6oT.
3To o6cToTeimcTBo KaK HeJIL3A 6oiee noAxiepKHBaiio Hamy OTCTaJIOCTh OT COBpeMeHHiX AocTHweHHA EBpOnM H
37

AMepHKH, rxe MaJSIpHOe Aejio noABepraeTcx H3yqeHHiO, yCOBepieHCTBOBaHHio H paIxHOHJIH3aUHH HapaBHe C
ApyrHMH rpOIeCCaMH cTpoirreJncTBa.
IocTaBJIeHHoe B paMKH HayHIX HcCJIeOBaHHA, H3yaemoe BO BCeX pa3pe3aX, MaJIPHOe AeJIO 3a rpaHHIgie He
ABmeTcq 6oamme KycTapHMM, HO, KaK H BCAKa5S Apyras oTpacJIa cTpowreibcTBa, HOAqHH5leTCA yxe 3JIeMeHTaM
ripOeKTHpOBaHHJ 3KOHOMHieCKOrO pacqeTa H Hay'qHOrO o60CHOBaHHA B ipiHMeHCHHH Heo6xOAHMMx coieTaHHA
IXBeTOB.
rIO3TOMy eCTecTBeHHO, 'TO B HaIeM CTpeMJIeHHH (<AOTHaTi H neperHaT> MM He MOweM OCTaBHTh B KyCTapHOM
COCTOAHHH 3TOT Ba)HIHN

yaCTOK CTpoHTeIicTBa)).
204

Maliarstroi belonged to a group of institutions created in the late 1920s for the purpose of
rapidly modernizing the USSR through the import of Western technology. The slogan of
modernization, "to catch up and overtake," which had been on the banner of the Bolshevik Party
since its very first days, acquired a new meaning and significance after the announcement of the
First Five-Year Plan in 1928. The centralized and planned economy based on large heavyindustry enterprises, which the Five-Year Plan intended to bring to life, required modern
technological production in all spheres. In order to achieve the technological breakthrough, the
government created a vast and diverse chain of research centers and offices, which collaborated
and sometimes conflicted with each other. Maliarstroi, for instance, was paired with
Vsekhimprom (Vsesoiuznoe ob'edinenie khimicheskoipromyshlennosti,All-Union Association of
Chemical Industry), which united variuos enterprises from chemical industry; and their shared
periodical, Maliarnoe Delo [Wallpainting], in fact served both organizations.374 Indeed, some
architects associated wallpainting exclusively with the invention and application of chemical
dyes.375 Others had a broader view of the technology that Maliarstroi was to further, a vision that
included psychological, town-planning and even artistic questions.3 76 The trust was in fact
conceived as an analog to the Bund zur Fdrderung der Farbe im Stadtbild [The Union for
Furthering Color in the City Landscape] that had existed in Hamburg since 1926 and published a

Vsekhimprom, or Vsesoiuznoe ob'edinenie khimicheskoi promyshlennosti (All-Union Association of Chemical
Industry), existed under the Supreme Council of People's Economy of the USSR in 1929-1931.
34

See, for instance, A[leksei] V. Shchusev, "Stroitel'stvo novykh gorodov i massovaia okraska zdanii" ["Building
of new cities and mass painting of buildings"], MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting]No.1-2 (1930): 8-9.
37

See, for instance, Igor Grabar', "Soiuz iskusstva i remesla" ["A union of
art and craft"], Maliarnoe Delo
[Wallpainting] No.1-2 (1930): 8.
376

205

monthly journal Die Farbige Stadt.37 The Hamburg union, which included artists, town
planners, bureaucrats, architects, and chemists 378 aimed at coordinating the related subjects of
art, town-planning, the craft and technology of wallpainting, and the psychology of color
perception, 379 and declared a synthesis of art and science to be its goal: "It has to become the
task of a separate technical craft, which is entrusted with the basic chemical principles of
pigments and binding agents, to build a bridge between science, which produces new research
findings, and the possibility of their implementation, the proof of which is, on the other hand, the
task of a painter." 3 80

Radically distinguishing it from its German model, however, was the fact that Maliarstroi
was created to support an unprecedented project for the standardization of construction. This was
due to the unique social system that was being created in the USSR. The logics of the Five-Year

37 Die Farbige Stadt, eine Monatsschrift hrsg. vom Bund zur Firderungder Farbe im Stadtbild (Hamburg, 19261937). The organization was mentioned during the discussion on the repainting of Moscow. Among other
publications that served as models for MaliarnoeDelo were: Farbenzeitung (Berlin: 1903/04 - 1943); Farbe und
Lack: Organ der Fachgruppe "Lackchemie" der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, der Schweizerischen
Vereinigung der Lack- und Farbenchemiker(SVLFC), des Verbandes der Ingenieure des Lack- und Farbenfaches
(VILF) (Hannover, 1893 - 1947); Form und Farbe : Fachblattfr das Malerhandwerk/ Reichsinnungsverbanddes
Malerhandwerks / Fachblattfur Maler: Fachzeitschriftfar Berufsausbildung, Berufserziehung und Schulung im

Malerhandwerk (Berlin, 1925-1943); Die Farbe : Sammelschrift fr alle Zweige der Farbkunde (Leipzig: 19211926).
Among the members of the Union were architects Ernst May and Paul Schultze-Naumburg; director of the Zurich
Museum of Arts and Crafts Alfred Altherr, head of the Chemical Research Office of the German Union of
Wallpainting Dr. Amsel (Kiel); professor at the Technical Institute of Hannover Friedrich Fischer; director of
Munich School of Crafts Prof. Otto Rickert, and many others.
378

See ,,Aus dem Arbeitsbereich des Bundes zur F6rderung der Farbe im Stadtbild e. V. Sitz Hamburg," Die
FarbigeStadt, eine Monatsschrifthrsg. vom Bund zur Fdrderungder Farbe im StadtbildNo.2 (September1926): 30.
379

Hans Schmid, ,,Technische M6glichkeiten des farbigen Hausschmuckes," Die FarbigeStadt No. 1 (1926): 5-9
(6). Translation by the author. German original: ,,Es mu Aufgabe einzelner technischer Krifte sein, die ebenfalls
mit den chemischen Grundprinzipien in bezug auf Farbe und Bindemittel vertraut sind, eine Braicke zu schlagen
zwischen der Wissenschaft, die neue Forschungsergebnisse hervorbringt, und der Ausfiihrungsm6glichkeit, welche
wiederum zu prfifen Sache des Malers ist."
380

206

Plan dictated an elimination of private and small businesses from all spheres of the economy and
replaced them with large enterprises that could easily be subjected to state planning and
regulation. This standardization allowed for the rationalization of plans and projects, and for the
full control by the state of the domain of architecture. Accordingly, Maliarstroi was designed to
create standardized schemes for interior decoration, which could be replicated throughout the
country, excluding any risk of a spontaneous initiative from below.
On the pages of MaliarnoeDelo, V. Sestroretskii (who quickly replaced Stokolov as the
head of the trust) and N. Nishenko presented the task of the newly created organization as a
battle against the individual handicraftsman [kustar'],whose existence endangered the morale of
the workers and thus the success of Soviet power itself: "...The question of the [interior] design
of homes, civil and industrial buildings etc. cannot be excluded from the front of the cultural
revolution, cannot be left in the hands of an unorganized initiative-the product of preRevolutionary bourgeois tastes and needs." 38 1 Here the German experience in industrial design
was indispensable, and it was this experience that Scheper was to bring to Moscow. Describing
his approach to wall-painting in 1935, Scheper's colleague Boris Ender wrote: "my work on the
art of wallpainting possesses two particular qualities: on one hand, I ground my work on color
scientifically (something that even the Germans, for instance Scheper, do not do); on the other

381

V. Sestroretskii and N. Nishenko, "Puti pazvitiia maliarnogo dela v SSSR," Maliarnoe
delo [Wallpainting]No.1-

2 1930: 2-4 (2). Translation by the author. Russian original: <MexAy TeM BOUPOC O@OPMJiCHHIH )KHnHIa,
o6HmecTBeHHbWX 3AaHHA, ipOMbIHiuJIeHHbX IOCTpOK H HP. HCflb3 BbIKJUOqaTh H3 4)poHTa KynbTypHOi peBOJIIOIHH,
HeJ~b3 oCTaBHTh B pyKaX HeOpraHH30BaHHOrl HHHIHaTHB-npo~yTa AOpeBOjiOIHOHHEIX 6ypxcya3mX BKyCOB H
noTpe6HocTeri)>.

207

hand, I put the gradations of color (color tones) directly into production (this I have learned from
Scheper)." 382
Maliarstroi worked in a close collaboration with another newly created organization,
responsible for furthering standardized building types and techniques in the USSR. This
organization was Stroikom, which Malevich unsuccessfully tried to "infiltrate." Stroikom, or the
Construction Commission of the Economic Council of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist
Republic (RSFSR), was created in January 1928 with the purpose of "general regulation and
rationalization of construction in the territory of the RSFSR." It was expected, among other
things, to propose legal regulation for construction in the republic, develop standardized types of
buildings for the purposes of various organizations, to create and administer general rules of
design, and to make calculations for construction works. Moisei Ginzburg became the head of
the Section of Typification [Sektsia Tipizatsii], responsible for developing building types,
including their construction methods and standards, for experimental construction, and for the
training of technical staff.383 There he collaborated with El Lissitzky and former Constructivist
students Mikhail Barshch and Vladimir Vladimirov, among others. 3 84

Larisa Zhadova, B. V. Ender o tsvete i tsvetovoi srede," Tekhnicheskaia Estetika [Technical Aesthetics]
No.11
(1974): 5-8 (6). Translation by the author. Russian original: ((B Moefi pa6oTe no MaCTepCKoH- KOJlepOB ABe
oco6eHHOCTH: C OHOfi CTOpOHIm, HayHO o6oCHOBIIBalo CBOIO pa6oTy HaA UxBeTOM (MerO He AeaIaioT Raxe HeMIxm,
npHep-mIfenep); c apyrofi cTOpoHm, A Aamo B lPOH3BOACTBO xonepa H3 CBOHX pyK (3ToMy illenep HayqHJI)M. For a
German translation see Larisa Shadowa, ,,Hinnerk Scheper und Boris Ender im Maljarstroj. 'Ober Verbindungen von
Mitarbeitern des Bauhauses und sowijetischen Kfinstlern," Wissentschaftliche Zeitschrift der Hochschule far
Architektur und Bauwesen Weimar No. 4/5 (1979): 323-327 (325).
382

383

Kazus', Sovetskaja architektura1920-kh godov, 293.

Tipovye proekty i konstrukts'ii zhilishchnogo stroitel'stva, rekomenduemye na 1930 g. [Standardized
projects and
construction solutions of residential building recommendedfor the year 1930], ed. Vladimir I. Vel'man (Moskva:
Gos. tekhn. izd-vo, 1930) 7.
384

208

There was just one way to overcome "our outstanding technical backwardness,"

385

and

"catch up and overtake" the West-to learn from Western technologies. This was, however,
problematic, as shortly after the Revolution of 1917 Soviet power expelled the majority of the
old-regime intelligentsia as potential counter-revolutionaries and sympathizers with the
bourgeoisie. However, the new, working-class intelligentsia, that the Soviets expected to emerge,
did not immediately manifest, and the state had to encourage and invite the same class of people
that it had recently persecuted, restoring some of the old privileges and hierarchies erased by the
Revolution. As the remnants of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia class were not enough to feed
the needs of the fast-growing industry, the state initiated a vast- program of sending Soviet
specialists abroad (for instance, in 1927 Ginzburg travelled to Germany, where he visited the
Bauhaus) and most importantly, of inviting Western, in particular, German and American,
engineers and other specialists, most of whom eagerly accepted this opportunity as the Great
Depression hit their native countries. These technical specialists (the so-called "spetsy"), whether
of Russian or Western origin, in spite of their alien class interests enjoyed all the privileges that
the Soviet society could offer: high salaries (in foreign currency for the non-citizens), special
food distribution centers, and better living conditions. 3 86 The Soviet power, it was maintained,
would use them to teach a growing generation of working-class intelligentsia, and, independently
of their private ideology, the benefit that spetsy brought to the state far outweighed the harm that
they could cause.
385 V[ladimir] Vel'man, "Predislovie" ["Introduction"], Tipovyeproekty i konstruktfii,
5-10. Russian original: <Harny
Spe3Bbma:RHyIO TeXHHqecKyio oTcTaJIocTb>.
386 In spite of the badly-concealed hatred of the lower party officials and politically active workers towards spetsy,
spetseedstvo (spetsy-eating) was discouraged throughout the late-1920s-early 1930s. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, "The
Soft Line on Culture and Its Enemies" (1973), The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia
(Cornell University Press, 1992) 91-114.

209

In March of 1929, a special delegation of Stroikom arrived in Germany to recruit
specialists for the Soviet building and construction industry. The Committee's head, engineer
Boris Barskii,387 turned for advice to the Hungarian architect Fred Forbat, who taught at the
Weimar Bauhaus in 1920-1922 and who, from 1925 to 1928, acted as the head of the planning
department the concern of Berlin developer Adolf Sommerfeld.3 88 Forbart pointed at Scheper,
who had studied at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1919 to 1922, was one of the several Bauhaus
graduates who were invited by Gropius to head the newly founded Bauhaus workshops in 1925,
and who had executed numerous wallpainting commissions for buildings in Germany, including
the Bauhaus building itself. 389 Scheper moved to Moscow as early as July 1929 to occupy the
position at Maliarstroi and remained there until 1931. "The whole initiative, which Scheper
started here, seems to me so important that I sincerely cannot understand how because of 800
rubles [Scheper's Soviet salary], and only for a few months, a quarrel could have happened at all.
[...]

I personally observed how Scheper trained every working group, and I believe that the profit

of the saved material alone significantly overweights the costs of Scheper"-so Barskii defended
his hire from the attacks of Stokolov, the head of Maliarstroi, at the end of the same year,

Boris Evseevich Barskii (1890-1937) was a Soviet engineer; he was subjected to repression and shot in 1937.
Kazus', Sovetskaja architektura1920-kh godov, 431.
387

Alfred (Fred) Forbdt (1897-1972) was a Hungarian-born architect who worked primarily in Germany
and
Sweden. In 1933, Forbdt moved to the USSR, where he joined "brigade" of Ernst May. See also, Scheper, Vom
Bauhausgeprdgt, 92 (footnote 2).
388

Hinnerk is a Low German version of Heinrich, which Scheper accepted as his name. The young Bauhaus
masters, called junior masters, apart from Scheper, were Herbert Bayer (Typography), Marcel Breuer (Furniture),
Gunta St6lzl (Textile), and Joost Schmidt (Plastische Werkstatt-Volume).

389

210

emphasizing the purely practical benefit that the German specialist gave to the Soviet
economy. 390
Scheper became the head of the Production and Technical Sector of Maliarstroi, which
housed the scientific-experimental laboratory and the Office of Design [Proektnoe Biuro], in
which the design work was concentrated.3 9 1 Only several of twenty seven people who worked in
the Production-Technical Sector under Scheper were connected with the Office of Design. But in
spite of its relatively small size, the Office undertook multiple commissions-over 300 in 1931
alone. 392 The work in Moscow, as Scheper's wife Lou (herself a Bauhaus graduate) characterized
it, "provided a tremendous field for experimentation." 393 And indeed, among the projects
prepared in Maliarstroi were clubs, theaters, factory dining halls, and collective farm buildings,
all of which were to become prototype models for later complete or partial reproduction.3 9 4
Moreover, in order to ensure the correct reproduction of the architectural decisions, Scheper and
Ender worked on a catalog of standardized colors. 39 5

Scheper, Vom Bauhaus geprdgt, 56.

390

391 Kazus,, Sovetskaja architektura 1920-kh godov,
244.

Kazus', Sovetskaja architektura 1920-kh godov, 244.

39

393 Lou Scheper, ,,Retrospective," Bauhaus and Bauhaus People. PersonalOpinions and Recollections of Former
Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries,ed. Eckhard Neumann, transl. Eva Richter and Alba Lorman (New
York: Von Nostrand Reinhold, 1993) 120-125 (125).
394 Among the projects prepared by the Design Office were the Club of Railroad Workers at Liublino station (today

within the city of Moscow) (Borchert), the Club of Factory No.12 at Elektrostal' station (near Moscow), the movie
theater of the residential complex the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on Bersenevskaia Embankment in
Moscow, the dining hall of the Moscow Union of Consumption Associations (Borchert), several buildings of the
grain state farm on Verbliud station (near Rostov-on-Don).
39 5

MaliarnoeDelo, No. 5-6 (1931); Kazus', Sovetskaja architektura1920-kh godov, 244.
211

Although wallpainting was technologized and standardizied in the Office of Design, it
remained within the domain of art. Already at the Dessau Bauhaus, wall-painting was the only
way painting was admitted to the radically anti-subjectivist program of the school. Likewise,
Maliarstroi brought science and art together in order to de-subjectivize art, to insert it within the
program of economic construction, to make it valuable, useful, and available to all. The Office
was staffed by people professionally trained as artists. One of the oldest members was Leiba
Antokol'skii, who started working in Maliarstroi before Scheper's arrival and was the deputy
editor of MaliarnoeDelo.39 6 A graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, he
studied decorative art in Hamburg and afterwards worked as a portraitist and monumental painter
in Moscow. Another key member was Matiushin's student Ender, who worked with Nikol'skii in
Leningrad, and joined Maliarstroi after he moved to Moscow in 1930. In February 1930,
Scheper's Bauhaus student, Expressionist painter Erich Borchert joined Scheper as an assistant
immediately after graduating from the Bauhaus. Perhaps, it was Borchert's political
engagement-unlike Scheper, he was a member of the Bauhaus Communist party cell, which he
joined in 1928-that made him turn his attention to the possibilities that color offered for social
engineering and subsequently to move and stay in the USSR. After Scheper's return to Germany,
Borchert occupied his position as the head of the Department of Design. 397 Finally in 1929 and

Leiba Movshevich (Lev Moiseevich) Antokol'skii (1872-1942) came from a Lithuanian Jewish family.
He grew
up and received initial art education in Vil'nus, Lithuania (then a part of the Russian Empire) where he practiced and
taught art with the exception of the period of his study at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in 18931900. In 1912, Antokol'skii studied decorative art in Hamburg. After coming back from Germany the same year,
Antokol'skii settled in Moscow, where he worked as a portraitist and a monumental painter, and painted topics
connected to Jewish religion, everyday life and history. He was the deputy chief editor and the painter in Maliarnoe
Delo.
396

397 In 1931, Borchert married Sof'ia Matveeva, a graduate of the Monumental Painting Department of VKhUTEIN,

a former intern, who came to work in Maliarstroi in 1930 and remained there until 1938.

212

Fig. 3.10. Maliarstroi Office of Design in 1931. Bottom row, left to right: Boris Ender, Sophia Matveeva, Hinnerk
Scheper, Mrs. Ender (?), Erich Borchert; upper row, left to right: Leiba Antokol'skii, Igor Budkevich, Vladimir
Zhuravlev.

1930, almost all VKhUTEIN students who graduated in monumental painting were required to
take an internship at Maliarstroi.

Describing his contribution to Soviet economy in 1937, when applying for Soviet citizenship, Borchert wrote: ,,As a
result of my work in practically all construction decoration organizations of Moscow new, much more sophisticated
methods of work began to be applied; moreover, today, these new methods have so firmly entered construction
practice that are perceived as something that goes without saying. Furthermore, due to my persistent work many
construction mechanisms have become widely used. I was the first in the USSR to introduce the system of design of
construction decorative works. Today, such design became a part of architectural-construction design." Among
Borchert's color designs were Liublino Club of Moscow Railroad Workers; "The Government House" in Moscow;
the Institute of Electric Energy; one of the workshops of Central Aviation and Hydrodynamics Institute; a workshop
of a projector factory in Moscow; pavilions of All-Union Agricultural Exposition (together with another Bauhaus
graduate Max Krajewski); a project for painting the city of Gorky (today, Nizhnii Novgorod). "Erich Willi Borchert.
Biografia" [,,Erich Willi Borchert. Biography"], Erich Borchert v Rossii [Erich Borchert in Russia] (Moskva:
Izdatel'stvo im. Sabashnikovykh, 2008) 18-19.
In 1939 Borchert, after much trouble, was finally able to receive Soviet citizenship. In 1941, after the entrance of
the USSR into the Second World War, he was drafted, but sent, as a German, not to the war front, but to a
construction of an aluminum plant in Kamensk-Ural'skii in the Ural mountains. In 1942, he was arrested and
accused in preparing a diversion on a heat station and in planning to shift on the side of the German troops. In 1944,
he was sentenced to twenty years in a labor camp; the same year he died in Karaganda transit camp at the age of 37.

213

Considering Maliarstroi as a point of introduction of Western technology into the
backward USSR, it seems to be more than a coincidence that all the key members of the Design
Office were either ethnic Germans or had a perfect knowledge of the German language. Ender
came from a German family. 39 8 Antokol'skii was of a Lithanian Jewish background. In 19361937 Maliarstroi also employed a German sculptor Will Lambert. Finally, although not an
official member of the trust, Moisei Ginzburg (who was born into a Jewish family in Minsk and
knew Yiddish) collaborated closely with Maliarstroi as the head of the Section of Typification of
Stroikom and as a personal friend of Scheper, whom he first met during his 1927 visit to the
Bauhaus.399
The functionalist German interpretation of the tasks and goals of wallpainting and art in
general, which for a moment seemed the most rational, economic and therefore best suited to
respond to the condition of the forced modernization that the Soviet Union was undergoing,
became the official position of Maliarstroi. For Scheper and Borchert-as it was for Ginzburg,
Meyer, Stokolov and Sestroretskii-art and architecture lost their autonomy and had to be
reconfigured within the framework of technical and organizational activity. Psychologized, art
could no longer be governed by its laws and principles, and could not address an autonomous,
coherent and individual subject. Artistic choices were now to be motivated by considerations of
function and rationality alone. Moreover, wallpainting in Maliarstroi differed from traditional
mural painting in that it was indefinitely reproducible and performed with the help of technical
Boris Ender was a great-grandson of a German glass designer from Saxony who settled in St. Petersburg and
whose family carefully kept their knowledge of German language and traditions. Like all the members of the Ender
family, Boris Ender was educated in the German Petersschule in St. Petersburg.
398

399 Among the other members of Scheper's circle in Moscow alongside Alexei Gan and Esfir' Schub, El Lissitzky

and Sophie Kpers, and Kazimir Malevich. Scheper, Vom Bauhausgeprdgt, 93 (footnote 34).
214

PW

A

'Ninstruments,

such as a machine for

the pneumatic spraying of paint,
which

Maliarstroi

intern

P.

F.

9 Katichev in 1930 described as one of
Maliarstroi's major achievements.

400

The economic benefit of such a
Fig. 3.11. Machine for a pneumatic spraying of paint.

mechanization

was,

for Katichev,

Maliarstroi, 1930.

obvious: "only five people will be
needed with this painting method where previously, for example, fifty people worked."

401

In

other words, just as their subjects were, wallpainters themselves were dehumanized, bereaved of
their individuality and autonomy, of the illusion of creativity, and transformed into technological
specialists operating with knowledge rather than intuition.
This program left many discontented among the graduates of VKhUTEIN, particularly,
from its rather more traditionalist Painting Department, who refused to abandon the individualist
concept of artistic work even though it was cost- and labor-intensive. The same Katichev, who
graduated from the Painting Department of VKhUTEIN in 1930 and immediately started
working in Maliarstroi (publishing his enthusiastic article about its technical achievements in
September of the same year) was quickly disenchanted in Maliarstroi's technicalism. In January
of 1931, he initiated a public attack on Maliarstroi on the pages of journal Za proletarskoe

400

P. Katichev, "Khudozhnik-stroitel"' ["Artist-builder"], Iskusstvo v massy [Art to the masses], 1930, No. 9 (17),

14.
401 P. Katichev, "Khudozhnik-stroitel' ["Artist-builder"], Iskusstvo v massy [Art to the masses], 1930, No. 9(17),

14.
215

iskusstvo [For a proletarian art] in an article titled "Funktsionalistskoezasil'e" ["A Functionalist
Sway"]. The technologization of wallpainting, Katichev argued, had to consist not in abandoning
the individual work of the artist, but rather in rationalizing, and promoting this work by technical
means. Soviet muralists, according to Katichev, had to become something akin to today's graffiti
artists, who spray rather than brush-paint propaganda images on walls. Borchert responded to his
former intern on the pages of Maliarnoedelo, accusing him of technological incompetence and a
dangerous idealism that concealed from him the real tasks of the day. Only a lack of knowledge,
Borchert believed, could have led Katichev to conclusions that were both erroneous and
dangerous for the Soviet economy. What the economy needed were scientists rather than artists:
"...We need people that, first of all, think rationally, economically and, of course, 'functionally.'
Those whose working field is limited by a low horizon, dreamers-romantics that fuss over their
petty 'I' (the price of which we know all too well), cannot be of any use to us."402 The
functionalist ideology of Maliarstroi, based on a preoccupations with economy and rationality,
had no place for subjectivity, whether of the designer or of the user of architecture:
What is the ideology of Maliarstroi? The design office of Maliarstroi develops its color
schemes on the basis of scientifically studied conclusions of lighting engineering,
physiology and psychology. Starting from the data of technical devices, the design office
researches the basic demands of the human in the colored environment and follows them
in its design work. The projects are executed with those methods that are most
understandable for the builder, give the best general color impression, and are executed
rationally, with the least expenditure of resources and time. It is not an "abstract play of
colored planes"... but quite a real work, based on real prerequisites, because the rule of

Erich Borchert, "Funktsionalistskoe zasil'e (v poriadke polemiki)" ["Functionalist sway (by way of polemics)"],
Maliarnoe Delo [Wallpainting]No.3 (1931): 32-38 (38). Translation by the author. Russian original: ((H Ai 3TOTO
HaM HyKHM JIOAH, KOTOPbIe Hpexcge Bcero MEICJMT peanmHo, 3KOHOMHHO H KOHeRHO (EYHICIXHOHaJIHCTHIHO&). HaM
HHKaKOA HOfb3bI
He CMOryT IpHHeCTH Te, y KOTOpHiX pa6o'ee none orpaHHeHO HH3KHM rOpH30HTOM, MewTaTenHpOMaHTHKH, KOTOpme HOCrTC[ Co CBOHM MaJ1eHLKHM <61 , LxeHy KOTOpOrO MM XOPOIfO 3HaeM
.

402

216

every design and color setting, in particular, are the needs of a human organism taking
into account the given means.
Developed by Scheper with the first directors Stokolov and Sestroretskii and described by
Borchert, the functinalist ideology of Maliarstroi nevertheless did not discard the question of
subjectivity altogether. On the contrary, it placed the perceiving subject at the center of its
program. The subject, however, was as dehumanized as the artist that created him. Reduced to
the bearer of "basic demands of a human in color," this subject was not an individual with his
private memories, associations, and tastes, but an object of scientific analysis, a sum total of a
minimal number of key properties of perception, a standardized and homogenous biological
being. In order to operate with this being, psychophysiology, psychotechnics, and other
contemporary empiricist approaches in psychology were to be utilized.
The polemics around wallpainting continued, attracting more and more attention as its
object widened to the status of art in general. In February 1931, Vladimir Kostin4 04 submitted in

Borchert, "Funktsionalistskoe zasil'e," 34. Translation by the author. Russian original:
<MTo Taxoe HgeoniorHi
ManapCTpOl? poeiKTHoe 61opo MaWspCTpOs npopa6aTmBaeT CBOH Kpacomie nnaHm Ha OCHOBaHHH HayHOnpopa6oTaHHblX BbIBOAOB CBeTOTeXHHKH, 4)H3HOJIOrHH H ncHxonorHH. HcxoA H3 AaHHX TeXHHNCKHX cpecTB,
npoeiKT6IOpO HccIeAyeT OCHOBHme Tpe60BaHH qenBeKa B oTHoIJfeHHH KpacOqHoro OKPyKeHHI H nPOBOAHT HX B
CBOCM IpoeKTHpoBaHHH. HpoecKTm BLIHOJIHIOTCI TeMH H3o6pa3HTeJm6HIMH MeTORaMH, KOTOpme HaH6oJIee JierKo
HOHATm CTpoHTeJHO, AaIOT HaHJny'Iee of6uee KpacO'IHoe BneqaTJIeHHe, BLIIIOJIHIOTC paJHoHaJ~bHo, C
HaHMeHIueIi 3aTpaToi cpeACTB H BpeMeHH. 3TO He eCTb <6ecnpezAmeTHaA Hrpa IBeTHBiX roocKocTeH-)), KaK AyMaeT
aBTOp ((CDyHKIJHoHaJIHcTKOro 3acHnbA))... HO BnOJIHe peaJ~MHa
pa6oTa, 6a3HpyiouxaACc Ha HMeIoIHXCA B
403

AeACTBHTeJaLHocTH ripeAnocmKax,

H60 3aKOHOMepHOCTh1O

,aCTHOCTH ABJIHOTCA noTpe6HoCTH 'eIoBeqecKoro

BCAKoro IpOCKTHpOBaHHA

opraHH3ma C yeToM

HMIOJIflHXC

H KpacOHoro

04)opMJICHHI B

B HaIHMHH CpeACTBm.

404 Vladimir Ivanovich Kostin (1905-1991) was a Soviet painter, who studied in the studio of Ivan Mashkov and the
Central Courses of Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhR) in Moscow between 1923 and 1928, and
subsequently worked as an art critic for newspaper Komsomol'skaia Pravda [Komsomol Truth] (from 1930), the

editor of the Poster Workshop of publishing house Izogiz (1930-1931), and the deputy head of Moscow IZOMRAM
(1931-1932). For his short autobiography see V. I. Kostin, Sredi khudozhnikov: khudozhniki iproizvedenia. Stat'i ob
iskusstve 20-kh i 30-kh godov. Stat'i po voprosam sovremennogo iskusstva. [Among Artists: Artists and [Their]
Works. Articles on the Art of the 1920s and the 1930s. Articles on Contemporary Art] (Moskva: Sovetskii

khudozhnik, 1986) 166-167.
217

to the editors of Za proletarskoe iskusstvo an article entitled "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis"
("Architecture and Coloring"), which he wrote with a prominent Soviet aesthetic thinker and art
critic of the 1930s, a supporter of empiriocriticism and psychophysiological aesthetics, the
Hungarian-born Ivan Matsa. 405 The article meant to defend the project of wallpainting, curing its
functionalism and reconciling it with the more familiar humanist notion of art and with orthodox
Marxist aesthetics, but instead only aggravated the situation by making the anti-humanist bias of
wallpainting as a technique of subject formation all too visible. First, Kostin smuggled back the
notion of art, which Maliarstroi and Ginzburg rejected: "If one takes painting as the art of color,
in a room we will have perhaps the most 'pure,' abstract kind of painting. It would be best to call
this kind of painting tsvetopis' ["a depiction of color," from tsvet, color, and the root -pis', from
pisat', to write or paint, such as in the word zhivopis' (painting), which etymologically means
"depicting life"]."406 For Kostin, a painter, due to his artistic experience rather than an abstract
theoretical knowledge, knew the mechanism of a human psyche better than a scientist, and was
better suited for the task of producing subjectivity. But although he worked intuitively, a painter
had to achieve the same results as a scientist.

Ivan Liudvigovich Matsa (Hungarian, JAnos Mdcza, 1893-1974) was a member of Hungarian avant-garde
(collaborating in journals Tett and Ma), who in 1923 moved to Soviet Russia, where he actively taught (since 1930,
a professor at Moscow State University) and published on aesthetics and the history of art and architecture; in 19281932 he participated in the "October" art movement.
405

Although already in July 1931, Kostin asked the editors to withdraw his article, they still published it as "a
characteristic document of mechanistic views in art criticism, right opportunism in left clothing, theoretical
substantiation of the replacement of art with technology," against which one had to lead a "firm and relentless
struggle." "Ot redaktsii" ["From the editors"], Za proletarskoeiskusstvo [Fora ProletarianArt], No.8 (1931): 4.
V[ladimir] Kostin, "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis' [,,Architecture and coloring"], Za proletarskoe iskusstvo
[For a
ProletarianArt], No.8 (1931): 4-6 (4). Translation by the author. Russian original: ((EclH paccmaTpHBaT KHBOrIHC
KaK HcKyccTBo IJBeTa, TO B KOMHaTC MM 6yAeM HMeTh caMii <(qHcThib , a6cTpaKTHIi BHA KHBOrHCH. JIynIe
406

Bcero 3TOT BHA )KHBOrIHCH Ha3BaTh IlBeTOrIHcMo).

218

It is clear that an artist, who every day deals with color and paints, has to know the force
of the impact of these or those color harmonies, combinations and contrasts better than
anyone else. He knows more closely than anyone the methods of treating a surface with
color and the impact of color upon human psyche. An easel artist, who performs a large,
serious laboratory work with pieces of canvas in his workshop, can apply this richest
experience to "colorful screens," that is, the walls of rooms. 407
Moreover, Kostin attempted to reconcile the biologism of Maliarstroi with Marxist sociological
aesthetics. Each social group, according to him, had its own psychological response to color,
based on its ethical values and ideological associations: "A pink petty-bourgeois room and an
orange lamp shade arouse in a philistine a certain feeling of satisfaction, coziness and repose,
whereas in a person with a stronger ideological mindset the same room provokes only a feeling
of contempt-not to mention that the color of the red flag agitates the fascist like a lash of whip,
whereas in a proletarian it arouses the feeling of class solidarity and might.",408 To add to the

complexity of social responses to color, even within the same group a color could evoke
conflicting connotations: "the same fascist, for example, could very much like the red wallpaper
of a female boudoir or the red blouse of his mistress." 409 While the fascist suffered from an
internal conflict of emotional responses, affected by both individual memories (his mistress) and
407 Kostin, "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis,"' 5. Translation by the author. Russian
original: 6ICHO, TO XyAOXHHKy,
HmemouieMy KaAmEi AeHe Aeno c IBeTOM H KpaCKaMH, nyInue Bcero AOJDKHa 6M6 H3BeCTHa cHna Bo3ACecTBHx Tex
HJIH HHbIX KpacoqHmx rapMoHHA, Co'eTaHHji H KOHTpaCTOB. BjEnHe Bcero eMy 3HaKOMm cnoco6E I BeTOBOA
o6pa6oTKH IrOCKOCTH H Bo3AeicTBHe IBCTa Ha iCHXHKY qenOBeKa. 3ToT 6oraTemHIH o0mT xyIme BCCro MO)KeT
ipiDHeHHTh K <IABeTHLIM 3KpaHaMM, T.e. CTeHaM KOMHaT, XyZO)KHHK CTaHKOBHCT, pOACelIBawIOqHH 6onImIIyo,
cepbe3HyIo, ia6opaTopHyIo pa6oTy HaA KyCKaMH XOjiCT y ce6z B MacTepcKOA>. "Colorful screens" is a quotation
from Moisei Ginzburg's article "Tsvet v arkhitekture" ["Color in architecture"], Sovremennaia Arkhitektura

[Contemporary architecture],No.2 (1929): 74-77.
Kostin, "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis,"' 5. Translation by the author. Russian original:
(PO3oBas MeigaHcKus KOMHaTa
H OpaHxeBbEIA a6aXyp BM3bMIOT y o6bBaTea H3BCCTHOC yBCTBO yAOBjieTBOpCHH, yioTa H riOKOr, TorAa KaK 3Ta
ce KOMHaTa y qenOBKa c 6onee KpenKog HAeojiorHqecKoA yCTaHOBKOH BbI3bIBaCT TOJIBKO qyBCTBO npe3peHHz, He
rOBOpA yKe o TOM, TO IBeT KpaCHOrO @nara 6yAopaxcHT 4amHcTa KSK yAap KHyra, TorA KaK y npojieTapHA
BO36yxcAaeT MyBcTBo KjiacCOBOI conHAapHOCTH HMOIJH
.

408

Kostin, "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis,"' 5. Translation by the author.
Russian original: <TOMy we 4)aImHCTy,
HarlpHMep, MOryT O'IHb HpaBHTbc KpacHe o6oH KeHCioro 6yAyapa HIH KpaCHRa KO4)TO1Ka erO Bo3jIo6JIeHHOIR

.

409

219

social associations (red as a symbol of sexual promiscuity), the proletarian was organized more
rationally, not burdened by individual memories, affections and associations and thus more
suitable for a psychophysiological analysis. For Kostin, biologism was, in a way, the identity of
the proletariat.
Bringing in chance and unpredictability, and thus precluding a possibility of total
planning, individualism was the nightmare of the Soviet culture of the First Five-Year Plan. In
spite of the fact that both Scheper and Borchert, while in Germany, allowed a much wider space
for individuality, the fear of individualism became pertinent to their work in the USSR. Thus,
writing in Moscow in 1931, Borchert conceived of wallpainting as a technique of overcoming
the troubling differences in individual tastes and associations. A color scheme for him had to
appeal to all and, being one and the same for everyone, was to work against rather construct
individuality. Every wallpainting scheme should contain contrasting colors with the expectation
that everyone would find those that appeal to him or her among them. Suitable for everyone, the
solution was to be accepted by all-thus the individual was acknowledged but subjugated to
collective.
Since people are not normative beings, it is impossible to develop precise norms for the
color design of a human dwelling. Every person can be completely individual in this
respect, and at the same time the tendency of behavior of every single person and his
sphere of activity can be viewed and evaluated on the basis of collectivism.
People differ in that everyone demonstrates a different degree of internal elasticity and,
consequently, every person can and will seek after completely unique color possibilities,
as these differences in color and taste are manifested in the choice of clothing. The color
needs of a person change as much as the balance of [his or her] internal elasticity. The
need for color sensations is basic to all humans, but this need is not permanent and is
individually expressed.

220

This is why color design has to be based on the laws of "polarity," that is, every color has
to be counterbalanced with a maximum of compensation and contrast.41
This animosity towards individualized design was new for Scheper and Borchert. For
example, in Germany both designers were actively engaged in the production of the so-called
Bauhaus-Tapeten, a cheap and quick method of interior decoration utilized during the
construction of the Siedlung T6rten in Dessau in 1926-1928, but they never expressed any
suggestions for the use of wallpaper in the Soviet Union.

1

Of course, the mass production of

wallpaper might have required resources and technologies that the USSR did not then possess, or
possessed but required for other, more strategically important, purposes. Nevertheless, the work
of Ginzburg, Scheper, Borchert, as well as many other Soviet architects and designers in the late
1920, was in general experimental and "laboratory," and one might wonder why the
development of a prototype for a cheap, easy to use, and long-lasting wallpaper did not become
Erich Borchert, "Krasochnoe oformlenie zhilishch" ["Color design of
dwellings"], Maliarnoe Delo
[Wallpainting], No.1 (1931): 8-9. Translation by the author. Russian original: ((fOCKOJMKy MOAH OTHIOA1b He

410

IBMEUOTCI HOPMHpOBaHHIMH cy1eCTBaMH, HeT BO3MO2KHOCTH Bbipa6oTaT TOIHM HOPMbi zJm KpacOqHoro
qejiOBeqeCKoro KHIHIIa. Kaxwiril qeiOBeK MOxeT 6bIT
B 3TOM OTHOmeHHH COBepmeHHO
HHAHBHAyaIhHMM, H B TO )Ke BpeMM JIHHHA HOBeAeHHA KaxCAOro oTAeJIHOrO tiejOBeKa H pOA erO 3aHRTHA MOryT
paCCuaTpHBaTaCi HpaCieHHBaTLC1 Ha KoJIeKTHBHcTH'ecKoM OCHOBaHHH.
.hOAH oTjiHqaIOTC MexcAy co6oi TeM, qTO KaxAmr o6HapyxmBaeT pa3mHmHyIo cTenem, BHyTpeHHeik 3JIacTH'HOCTH

o@OpmneHHA

H cneAOBaTeJIbHO Ka)Awbfi qeJiOBeK MO)KeT H 6yAeT CTpeMHTCI K COBepmeHHO CBOeo6pa3HM IXBeTHLM
B03MO)KHOCTIM, ioAo6HO6
TOMy KaK cKa3bBaiOTcq 3TH uBCTOBKyCOBLie pa3IHHS y pa3HmX moAeii HPH BM6ope
oAexAKi. HaCKOn6KO y KRaxAoro oTAejImHoro qenoBeKa BpeMA OT BpeMeHH MeHIOTcI cOOTHOmeHHA ero

Ke moryr MeHAThCZ ero iABeTOBe HIoTpe6HOCTH. HoTpe6HOcT MBeTOBMX
oiJyeHHri rIpHcya BCeM JlOAM, HO noTpe6HOCTh 3Ta He rIOCTOAHHa H npOABMImTCA HHAHBHAyaIbHO.
Ha 3TOM OCHOBaHHH KpacO'IHoe o4 opMneHHe AoKHo 6a3HpOBaTCA Ha 3aKOHaX «HOJISpHOcTH)), T.e. KaNCAOMy
gBeTy AOJDKHO 6mmIpOTHBOnOCTaBJIeHbi MaKcHMaJIIHOe KOMHHCHPOBaHHe H KoHTpacT).
BHyTpeHHeii 3JIaCTHqHOCTH, HacToJIbKo

411 As Renate Scheper suggests, the Bauhaus-Tapeten originated, in part, from the general
Bauhaus impetus towards

the integration into industrial production (the production of wallpaper allowed artists to work together with
industry), and, in part, from a practical need to provide cheap and fast means of interior decoration during the
construction of the Siedlung T6rten in Dessau, which included as many as 314 houses, in 1926-1928. Scheper, who
studied together with Maria Rasch, the sister of Emil Rasch, the chef of Hannoverschen Tapetenfabrik Gebriider
Rasch & Co, brought the idea to life through his personal input and the connection; until his move to Moscow, he
was in charge of the production of the wallpaper. During his leave, Borchert, then still a student, successfully took
over this work. Scheper, Vom Bauhausgeprdgt, 51-52.
221

one of their priorities. The answer comes from the consideration of another major modernist
architect and painter, who actively developed the potential of color for architecture, but who in
comparison with the Soviet and the Bauhaus designers retained a great deal of aestheticism and
individualism in his approach to architecture-Le Corbusier. In 1931, around the same time the
Maliarstroi's wallpainting program was being developed, Le Corbusier introduced Salubra, his
personal wallpaper line. Presaging the tactics and strategies of consumer society, which equated
market selection with personal freedom, Corbusier marketed Salubra as an outlet for owners'
individual tastes and and an area for their creative input into the design of their houses. 41 2
'There is no accounting for tastes...', a popular adage expressing the multiplicity of
sensorial and psychic outcomes provided by the innumerable combinations of a few
fundamental elements.
It is, in this imperative verdict of 'personal taste', the proof of the impossibility to pretend
to bend men under a single rule. This imperative verdict on personal taste is the forceful,
organic and deep-rooted confirmation of everyone's right to individual freedom.
Countless harmonies are therefore possible, are licit, are exact, equivalent of fundamental
values of human existence. At the wallpaper merchant, this instinctive awareness with its
own law drives each individual towards a choice which, at a certain point, asserts itself, is
imperative. Here, the destiny of the customer manifests itself: 'I am like that!' 41 1
Wallpaper, indeed, left the question of the psychological effect of an

environment to the

accidental and individualist tastes and preferences of the tenant. It was, moreover, easily
replaceable and thus produced a psychological effect of in the environment that was outside of

412

On the Salubra, sees De Heer, The Architectonic Color, 142-164.

Le Corbusier, "Polychromie architecturale," Polychromie architecturale:Le Corbusiers Farbenklaviaturenvon
1931 und 1959, 94, or De Heer, The Architectonic Colour, 219. Translation by De Heer.
4

222

the architect's control. Finally, since it was universally applicable and replaceable, it did not
satisfy the aim of supporting concrete functional processes within a given room or a building.4 14
Unlike wallpaper, paint was permanent and remained under the control of the architect. It
allowed for a much deeper level of standardization-not of colors, design patterns and the
techniques of their production, but of the very process of perception and accordingly of the
sensory impressions that a subject received. Since according to psychophysiological aesthetics,
the subject was a product of its own sensory experience, by insisting that everyone receives the
same color impression, wallpainting aspired to nothing less than a standardization of the subject
itself.
However, Le Corbusier's words should not simplybe taken at face value. Although in
general Le Corbusier is representative of canonical "individualist" modernism, Salubra in fact
offered few opportunities for self-expression: the style, design, and tone of the wallpaper was
tightly controlled by the architect. Thus this example undermines rather than affirms the
dichotomy between humanist and posthumanist modernism. The politics of standardization and
planning within the general framework of the industrial economy did not emerge in isolation.
Rather the standardized subject that emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s is tied to and
partially inherits aspects of the subject of early industrial capitalism that preceded it in the West,
as well as the subject of the contemporary consumer society that evolved in parallelwith it.

Le Corbusier's project consisted in finding a balance between a desire for personal self-expression
that wallpaper
offered and the limitation of this desire for the sake of obeisance to the laws of perception, which remained within
the professional domain of an architect. See De Heer, The Architectonic Colour, 217-218. These laws, for Corbusier,
consisted in the limitation of color with tone (the saturation of color with white or black), which remained the job of
a painter or architect.
414

223

The Economy of Working Energy
According to the ideology of Maliarstroi, because they were susceptible to its influence,
workers could be transformed by standardized art, acquiring a better and more economical
psychological and bodily organization. In this respect, Maliarstroi functioned in the context of
the sciences of labor and social engineering, which flourished in the USSR under a patronage of
the government throughout the 1920s, and aspired to turn Soviet workers into clusters of energy
that would contribute to a better, smoother and more efficient Soviet economy. Writing about the
color plan for the city of Moscow in 1931, Moskauer Rundschau outlined the creation of an
energetic, active, cheerful, enthusiastic, diligent, and collectivist person as the goal of re-painting
the city:
It follows from the essence of socialist society that not only material factors-the
location of production, transportation etc.-become the matter of concern, but also the
questions of mass psychology. A socialist city is the place of living and working for
people who work physically and intellectually for their own and everyone's benefit, who
are not shriveled by capitalist profit and capitalist oppression, who gather together for a
social goal, who seek internal contemplation and spiritual stimulation in artistic pleasure
and [who seek in] sports exercise and a balance of energy. ... A city has to become not
only a place where social energies function, but also where they are aroused.

Julian, ,,Moskauer Farbenlehre," Moskauer Rundschau Vol. 46 (1931). Translation by the author.
German
original: ,,Aus dem Wesen der sozialistischen Gesellschaft ergibt sich, dass bei der Entscheidung dardber nicht nur
materielle Faktoren-Standortsfragen der Produktion, Verkehrsbedingungen etc.-in Frage kommen, sondern auch
massenpsychische Momente. Die sozialistische Stadt ist Wohn- und Titigkeitsort von Menschen, die zu ihrem und
zum allgemeinen, durch keinen kapitalistischen Profit und durch keine kapitalistische Unterdrickung verkiinmmerten
Nutzen physisch und geistig arbeiten, sich zu sozialem Zweck versammeln, in kiinstlerischen Genfissen innere
Sammlung und seelische Antriebe, im Sport Uebung und Ausgleich der Krafte suchen. ... In der Stadt wirken sich
nicht nur die gesellschaftlichen Energien aus, sondern sie soll auch neue wecken."
415

224

Soviet psychologists
of

labor

enthusiastically

cited an example of the
American shoe factories of
Doherty and Donovan and
of a rubber and tobacco
factories

in

Hamburg,

where bright colors used in
Fig. 3.12. Industrial Painting Company, Montreal. Advertisement
reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo in 1931.

the interiors were said to

arouse

the

workers'

enthusiasm and even their tidiness.4 16 Another example was the Industrial Painting Company in
Montreal, which publicized its successful campaign for an introduction of color in factories with
a poster depicting spoilage, fatigue, depression, and accidents flying out of the factory with the
arrival of wallpainters, who carried in their paint buckets visibility, energy, accuracy and other
prerequisites for an efficient and healthy working environment.4 17
The diverse psychophysiological research conducted in Soviet Russia in the 1920s
established that color exerted a direct physiological effect upon a human subject: red, yellow and
orange intensified the activity of the circulatory system, made the chest breath stronger than the
abdomen one and made the pulse-more frequent and distinctive. Blue and violet, on the

See "Vliianie okraski fabriki na proizvoditel'nost' truda rabochikh" ["Impact of factory coloration on the
productivity of workers' labor"], MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting] No.2 (1931): 69.
416

B. Shn., ,,Tsvetovoe oformlenie fabrichnogo oborudovaniia" ["Color design of factory machinery"], Maliarnoe
Delo [ Wallpainting],No. 4 (1931): 58-60.
417

225

contrary, depressed the circulation processes, slowing and weakening the pulse. 418 Soviet
psychologist Sophia Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia, who lectured in the Higher Institute of
Architecture and Construction (VASI, that inherited VKhUTEIN in 1930) explained on the
pages of MaliarnoeDelo that colors could produce two kinds of fatigue: general (manifested in a
reduction of sensitivity, photophobia, soreness), and local (general tiredness that influenced the
work of a person). According to Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia, fatigue was most easily provoked by
violet, followed by red, while the least tiring color was green. 419 The results of research on the
influence of color upon physiological processes allowed psychologists to give practical
suggestions on the use of color as a background for work spaces, on the noticeability of colors
and on the use of colored light. 420 But most importantly in the USSR, the study of the physiology
of color perception was merged with the results of ergography, a science that analyzed the
patterns of physical fatigue.
In 1884, Turin physiologist Angelo Mosso invented "ergograph" (literally, register of
work) that measured the bodily manifestations of fatigue in the forearms after lifting a weight.42
Ergography, the first official name of the science of fatigue, which it received in the 1900s after
Mosso's instrument, explored the wearing influence of external and internal physiological factors
F. Stefdnescu-Goanga, ,,Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Gefiihlsbetonung der Farben,"
Psychologische
Studien, Vol. VII, No.t 2 (1911).
418

S[ofia] Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia, "K voprosu o vybore tsvetov dlia okraski rabochikh pomeshchenii"
[,,To the
question of selecting colors for working spaces"], MaliarnoeDelo [Wallpainting],No. 5-6 (1932): 8-11 (9).

419

420

Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia, "K voprosu o vybore tsvetov dlia okraski rabochikh pomeshchenii,"
10-11.

For a description of Mosso's ergograph, see A[ngelo] Mosso, Fatigue, transl. Margaret Drummond
and William
B. Drummond (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904) 82-88, and Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy,
Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1990) 134. Among the first ergographers were
Ernest Solvay, Josefa Ioteyko and Charles Henry in Belgium, Jules Amar and Armand Imbert in France, Hugo
Kronecker in Germany. More on ergography, see Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 133-142.
421

226

(temperature, rhythm, blood chemistry, etc.) upon a body. Especially well-known in Soviet
Russia was the work of Mosso's follower, French physiologist Charles Fer6. In Sensation et
movement (1900), Fer6 described the "dynamogenity" of colors as a row-red, orange, green,
yellow, blue-which he established by measuring with a dynamometer the muscle strength of the
arm of a subject facing a glass or a colored plate. The results were confirmed by experiments that
used a different apparatus, the plethysmograph, which measured the volume of blood flowing
into the limbs, under the influence of the same irritants. In Travail et plaisir (1904), a study
specifically devoted to working energy, Fer6 described his ergograph, a modification of Mosso's,
which registered working energy by marking the height at which a weight could be lifted; the
results were then considered to exemplify any type of muscular work. Conducting ergographic
experiments under the light of various colors, Soviet psychologists established that green was the
best color for stimulating work, whereas red, increasing the energy initially, soon induced
fatigue, while blue and violet exerted a depressing effect. 422
In the Architecture Department of VKhUTEIN, the research on the effect of color upon
the energy balance of a person was conducted by both the Rationalists and the Constructivists. In
1929, with the help of the Institute for Mass Psychology, Ladovskii's Psychotechnical
Laboratory planned to start an "experimental investigation of the role of color in interior
architecture," focusing, in particular, on the "psychophysiological impact of color" and color's
"spatial role." The task was subdivided into several steps, which involved the investigation of:
Similar experiments were conducted in Leningrad in the reflexological laboratory
of the Medical Institute and by
prof. Vasil'ev, an assistant of Bekhterev, in 1920. See A. M. Lukina, "Vospitanie sochetatel'nogo refleksa na
slozhnyi tsvetovoi razdrazhitel'" ["Education of combinative reflex for a complex color irritant"], Novoe v
refleksologii i fiziologii nervnoi sistemy [New in Reflexology and Physiology of the Nervous System], ed. V. M.
Bekhterev (Moskva: Gosizdat, 1925). Cited by Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskia, "K voprosu o vybore tsvetov dlia okraski
rabochikh pomeshchenii," 9.
422

227

1. The impact of color upon the process of muscle labor (the method of ergographic
curves.
2. The impact of color upon brain work (the method of constant tests under variable
irritants, fixation of the speed of associations, etc.).
3. A verification of the dependence of acquired results on the combinations of color in
qualitative and quantitative sense.
4. An investigation of the relationship of color and form. A measurement of spatial
properties of form with the help of various coloration of its surfaces (a method of
multiple introspective observation on a specially constructed apparatus). 423
This experimental study of interior color and its effects upon subjectivity was probably the
sphere of architecture in which the interests and methods of the Rationalists and the
Constructivists came closest: Ladovskii's characteristic focus on experimental investigation and
scientific testing of physiological responses followed the Constructivists's work on spatial
properties of color and, likely, benefited from the work of Mikhail Barshch-a Constructivist
who became Ladovskii's doctoral student at VKhUTEIN. Barshch's dissertation aimed to
develop "such a [working] environment and such methods of work that would ensure the
maximum productivity of labor without jeopardizing the health of the worker." 424 Barshch
defined the scope of his research as a study of the psychophysiological impact of color upon the
productivity of a worker (through the central nervous system), which he saw happening on
several levels: associative (order, disorder, neatness, dirt, isolation, unification, reflective
connection of the environment with the sensation of fatigue), acoustic (silence, noise, rhythm),
optical (the form and size of the room, its lighting, the color and facture of walls).4 25

G[eorgii] Krutikov, "Arkhitekturnaia nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri arkhitekturnom fakul'tete
VKhUTEIN," Arkhitektura i VKhUTEIN [Architectureand VKhUTEIN] No.1 (1929): 2-4 (4).
423

Mikhail Barshch, "Viiianie zritel'nykh vpechatlenii na trudovye protsessy" ["Impact of visual impressions on
working processes"], Sovremennaia Arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No. 2 (1928) 72. Russian original:
raKyIO o6cTaHOBKy H TaKHe MeToAm pa6omT, ITo6]6h IlpOH3BOgHTeJIbHOcTh TpyAa 6Mna MaKcHMaih6HOr4 H qTO6bI
3Ta npOH3BOAHTeJIbHOCTh HOr1Aep)KHBaaCL Ha BbCOKOM ypOBHe 6e3 BpeAa AJIA 3AOPOBEA TpyAHIAHXCsD).
424

425

Barshch, "Vliianie zritel'nykh vpechatlenii na trudovye protsessy."

228

Fig. 3.13. Fere's ergograph. Drawing from S. S. Alekseev, B. M. Teplov, P. A. Shevarev. Tsvet v arkhitekture

(1934).

Particularly interested in the ergograph, Barshch carefully described the results of Fer6's
experiments, which allowed him to offer Soviet architects a system of dynamogenic properties of
colors and a consideration of the variability of these properties.42 6 Red was described as the most
dynamogenic at the beginning, but then quickly lost its power; orange and yellow had a constant
and permanent effect; green gave a moderate stimulation at the beginning and preserved a steady
positive effect afterwards; blue and violet initially exerted a depressing effect but could defer
fatigue if used for a long period of time. In a second group of experiments examined by Barshch,
Fer6 intertwined the effect of colored light with that of white light and discovered that all colors
but violet increased their dynamogenic effect following white, while the work measured in the
white light following a colored light (apart from blue or violet), substantially decreased. In the
third series of experiments, Fer6 alternated various colors and discovered that a more
dynamogenic light taken after a less dynamogenic (red after blue) demonstrated an increased
working energy. Moreover, Fer6 discovered that the effect of colors depended on the time of day
and the state of the subject: colors that depressed in the morning (blue and violet) became
stimulants during the daytime, and vice versa.

426

Barshch, "Tsvet i ego rabora."

229

Exploring the effects of temporal sequences of color, Barshch made ergography relevant
for architects and artists, who looked at colors in terms of their combinations and harmonies.
Indeed, the mutual effect of colors had been the subject of study of Soviet artists and color
theorists before the late 1920s. Matiushin, for instance, developed his system of color harmonies
on the basis of his research on the afterimage effect. Psychologist Sergei Kravkov, one of
VKhUTEIN Color course teachers, studied the effect of color fatigue (that occurred when an eye
became used to the color to which it was exposed for a period of time) and the processes of color
adaptation, suggesting practical ways to avoid fatigue by carefully designing the transitions
between colors.42 Finally Lushin's "Practicum of Color," contained an exercise on observing,
measuring, and comparing the effects of color fatigue.428 To these studies of the relationships of
colors and their harmonic combinations (studies that were predominantly performed by painters)
the research of Barshch added the topic of working productivity, which was thus introduced into
the sphere of an architect's competence.

Kravkov, "Ob adaptatsii glaza k tsvetnym razdrazhiteliam" ["On the adaptation of the eye to color
irritants"], Zhurnal prikladnoifiziki [The Journal of Applied Physics] Vol. V, No. 2 (1928). See 'also: BeliaevaEkzempliarskaia, "K voprosu o vybore tsvetov dlia okraski rabochikh pomeshchenii."

427 S. V.

Exercise 21, "Observing the phenomena of color fatigue" stipulated: "Given are two pieces of paper, one
of a
chromatic tone (red for the first example and blue for the second), the other of an achromatic one (black). With the
black paper, one covers a half (up to the marked dot) [of the chromatic paper] and looks at the dot for 5 seconds;
after taking the black paper away one sees that the part of the [chromatic] paper that was covered seems brighter and
more saturated in comparison with the one that was not.
Observing this difference, we notice that after a certain period of time it disappears and both parts become equal in
brightness. The same [we] repeat for 10 seconds, etc., until the period of a disappearance of the difference does not
become the same.
Therefore, if a color irritant affects our eye for a certain period of time, the sensitivity of the eye to this irritant
begins to diminish. It seems that the colors became dull, similar to each other. This is why, before a long
assignment, it is so important to paint quick sketches to fix the impression of the tone and color specifics of nature."
Aleksandr Liushin, "Practicum of color theory." Unpublished manuscript. Getty Research Library.
230
428

Although

focusing

on

ergography,

Barshch outlined a program for a much broader
usage of the physiology of color perception in
architecture. The discoveries of Fer6, according
to Barshch, had to be applied to various kinds of
labor: receptor (based on the work of perceiving
organs, such as the labor of an accountant or a
Fig. 3.14. Aleksandr Lushin. "Practicum of color
theory." Student exercise book (VKhUTEIN,

typesetter), effector (physical work) and cerebral

1928-30). Exercise 21: Observing the effects of

(intellectual

work),

and of various

different

color fatigue.

factors of the environment: the dimensions and
the shape of the room, its proportions and parts, the shape and location of light openings, and of
the color and facture of walls, ceilings and floors. This program listed all the major
psychological and architectural interpretations of the role of color, offering an open
interpretation of the notions of energy, work, and fatigue. As every physiological and mental
activity was, in a sense, a kind of work, it was the task of the architect to ensure the optimal
functioning of all bodily, mental, and perceptive processes in order to economize the energy that
would otherwise have to be spent. Moreover, just like work, fatigue could belong to different
domains of experience: not being confined to physical and mental, it could, for example, be
aesthetic, connected with the feeling of boredom and the loss of acuteness of perception.
By the late 1920s, ergography as a narrowly defined interpretation of energy as physical
labor power was already put aside by other psychological theories. In particular, in the late 1920s
Soviet psychologists developed a concept of "activity" [deiatel'nost'] as any conscious effort of
a person, everything that strives towards a goal. In the works of the circle of Lev Vygotskii
231

(especially those of his student Aleksei Leontiev) activity was seen as consisting of several
hierarchical levels: as the most general and conscious level, activity was subdivided into actions;
these consisted of operations, which in turn were divided into unconscious psychophysiological
functions. A perfect exemple of the modernist totalizing tendency, which aspired to connect all
physical and mental phenomena into a unified system oriented towards a final and unique goal,
activity theory mirrored the emerging Soviet planned economy, in which the central planning
office rationally managed and coordinated the relationships between different production centers:
the hierarchy of consciousness was reflected by the hierarchy of decision-making power within
the Soviet system.
Such an expanded understanding of work as activity was pertinent to Maliarstroi, which
aspired to optimize every aspect of people's daily and productive lives. For example, in a lecture
that Boris Ender gave to a group of wallpainters as late as 1936, he highlighted the connection
between the unconscious, physiological process of color perception and higher, conscious and
socially meaningful activity:
My task in front of you, specialists dealing with color, is to help you eliminate the
colorful chaos, with which our life is still littered. We are turning away from an
unprincipled, goal-less, content-less [bessoderzhatel'nyi] and ignorant, unorganized,
taste-based, primitive, sensual beauty. We are turning away from fragmented, torn,
centimeter coloration. We have to direct painting in kilometers into our life. Let color
also become a building material in our construction of socialism.
Imagine that in a factory, walls, machines, and production clothes are not only given a
special color, but that these colors are combined in a way that increases working
productivity. Imagine that in hospitals walls, curtains, blankets, and furniture are
harmonized in such a way that the patient heals sooner and better. That in a theater, the
impression increases due to the color design in a way that is not yet practiced. The same

232

in a book, in a First-of-May parade, on a railway station, in the metro. I argue that you
must organize color. 429
Ender put an emphasis not on separate various processes, but on bringing them together, on
putting them in a harmonic relationship, on organizing them; a wallpainter, for Ender, operated
with physiological functions in order to stimulate operations and that would become actions,
which, in turn, would contribute to the great common activity. As everything was intertwined,
even physiological perception could be included into the economic plan.
The parallel to activity theory explains what might have otherwise seemed paradoxical:
Maliarstroi concentrated not on preparing color schemes for factories, but on producing the
designs for the spaces of workers' leisure, such as homes, clubs, canteens, theaters and cinemas.
Indeed, in the orthodox Marxist theory leisure was defined as regaining the working energy that
could only be spent in a factory; 43 0 now, this task was valorized as being productive in its own
right. If in a classical capitalist society as Marx described it, leisure served to restore the labor
power of the "human motor" in order to continue providing it to a capitalist in return for wages
(and thus remained within the domain of responsibility of the worker himself), the purpose of
Soviet workers was very different-contributing to the great common endeavor. Whereas active
Boris Ender, unpublished manuscript of a lecture on wallpainting,
1936. RGALI, Boris Ender collection.
Translation by the author. Russian original: <MOq 3aAaqa nepeA BaMH, cneHajiHcTaMH, HMeIouHMH Aieio CIlBeTOM,
429

HOMOIb

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CTaBHIijerl 3aAlaH, 6eccoAepaTeJr6Hoi
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qyBcTBeHHoN necTpoTm. MM YXOAHM OT pa3mejih'IeHHoi, pa3OpBaHHOii caHTHMeTpOBOii pacxBeTKH.
HaM HyKHo
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OpraHH30BbLIBaTh iBeT>.

HpeAcTaBiTe,

43

On the Marxist concept of leisure, see Chapter Three of this dissertation.

233

IpoH3BoAHTeJMhHoCTh

leisure, which included physical training, education, and political propaganda, intended to
elucidate to people the meaning and purpose of their work (thus increasing their enthusiasm and
productivity), passive leisure had provided them with a maximum recharge of physical energy.
This program was realized, for instance, in Konstantin Mel'nikov's Green City (1930), a
vacation town near Moscow, which he interpreted as a "sleeping sonata," a factory that would
physically and mentally transform people through sleep. "No such thing as absolute rest exists,"
explained a Constructivist architect Kuz'min in 1930 on the pages of Sovremennaia
Arkhitektura, "A person is constantly working (even when he is asleep)."4 3 1

The Narkmofin Residential Block and Unconscious Perception
Designed by young factory painters under the general supervision of the building's
architect Konstantin Mel'nikov in 1930, the chromatic solution for the workers' club of Dulevo
porcelain factory near Moscow guided visitors through the space, determining their physiological
responses and nervous activity. Located at the entrance to the club was the transitory zone of the
cloakroom, which discouraged lingering and stimulated the visitors to move forward quickly: its
coloration avoided bright and light hues and was dominated by blue and brown. The visitors then
moved to a foyer, a bright and spacious room, painted in orange and white, which instilled in
them a mood of festivity. A second adjacent foyer in a grey-white scheme provided a rest for the
eyes tired by this brightness. A staircase then led upwards, facilitating physical movement with a
bright lemon-yellow. Upstairs, the library, reading rooms, and rooms for children were painted
Arkhitektor Kuz'min [Architect Kuz'min], "Problema nauchnoi organizatsii byta" ["The problem of organization
of everyday life"], SovremennaiaArkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No. 3 (1930): 14-17 (14).
431

234

grey, green, and blue. Red and grey squares defined the Party Committee room downstairs; next
to it, a smoking room was designed to divert rather than to attract people: the ochre and black
squares of its walls meant to provoke sickness and disgust, providing a contrast to a fresh and
hygienic gym, painted in orange, lemon, and white. Relying on cultural associations rather than
medicinal research, here, color prescribed the visitors an activity and determined both its
effectiveness and emotional assessment. Facilitating the flow of people within-as if the visitors
were parts on a conveyor belt-the club aspired to transform morality and personality at an every
step of the process.4 3 2
A different approach, rooted in a much more thorough body of physiological research,
was offered by Stroikom and Maliarstroi, whose work focused on the analysis of physiological
reactions to color and its combinations. Seemingly less ambitious than Dulevo club-not
aspiring to transform the visitors' personalities-Maliarstroi's projects were concerned with
improving the effectiveness of color perception and, through it, with economizing the energy of
subjects. "From the colored discs of Fere [we have to move to] color screens (i.e. large surfaces
of color) and from color screens-to their spatial combinations, enclosing [zamykaiushchie] the
perceiving subject" wrote Ginzburg to explain his vision of wallpainting when discussing color
schemes for the residential block of the Narkomfin, the Soviet ministry of finance, on Novinskii
boulevard in Moscow.

433

The color schemes for the building were prepared by him together with

and under the general supervision of Scheper shortly after the latter's arrival to the USSR.
Famous among architectural historians today as "the social condenser," the Narkomfin was
intended as a prototype building testing Stroikom's standardized solutions for residential
432 Kostin, "Arkhitektura i tsvetopis',"
6.
433

Ginburg, "Tsvet v arkhitekture," 74.

235

architecture.4 34 Experimenting with both the schemes of Stroikom and with the "perceiving
subject" inhabiting them, the Narkomfin was, in a way, a double laboratory, in which
psychological and engineering experiments existed on different, but interpenetrating planes.
Because daily activities in the Narkomfin housing project were functionally segregated,
the purpose of residential cells was reduced to passive rest, during which the energy of a dweller
had to be economized and restored. 435 Two opposite gamuts of color-the warm and the coldwere tested by Ginzburg and Scheper in the Narkomfin. 43 6 An axonometric drawing of an
apartment of type K (a larger apartment for families with children), showed a large surface of a
bright blue color on the ceiling and a light blue-grayish color on the internal partitioning walls.
The columns and the external wall of the apartment were to be painted white, while the pendent
stripes of the ceiling along the walls were to be black.4 3 7 A more traditional central perspective
drawing illustrated the warm palette that was applied to a small, studio-like F unit (an apartment
for singles and childless couples).43 8 The ceiling was painted in a dark yellow; the external wall
was given a pale lemon-yellow color above the window and a white color below. The other walls
434 The expression "social condenser" was introduced by Ginzburg to describe the mission of socialist housing. See
Redaktsia [Editors], "Desiatiletiiu Oktiabria" ["To the Ten-Year [Anniversary of] the October], Sovremennaia
Arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No. 4-5 (1927): 111.
43s Moisei Ginzburg, Zhilishche. Opyt piatiletnei raboty nad problemoi zhilishcha [Residential Construction. An
Experience of Five Years of Work on the Problem of Residential Construction] (Moskva: Gosstroiizdat, 1934) 8296.
Both were published in the Maliarstroi journal MaliarnoeDelo [House-painting] ("Color supplement" to No.
3-4,
1930), while the original drawing is preserved at the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin (NachlaB Scheper).

436

43 In a typical manner of the Bauhaus House-Painting Workshop representation style, the drawing omits the floor as
the least important of area of the application of color. More on the conventions of house-painting axonometry see:
Erich Borchert, "Metody proektirovania maliarnykh rabot" ["Methods of the design of wallpainting works"],
Maliarnoedelo [Wallpainting]No. 2, 1931: 48-51.
The apartments of types F and K were elaborated by Ginzburg within a collective of Stroikom. See: Tipovye
proekty i konstrukts'izhilishchnogo stroitel'stva.
438

236

were also painted subtle warm hues. In contrast, the screens enclosing the staircases leading up
and down were given various shades of grey, which emphasized their position as planes in space.
These schemes presented a stark contrast with the palette of Ginzburg's earlier color
plans, such as the MVTU laboratory or the Government Building in Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan),
which was painted in bright yellow, blue, and red under the influence of Leger. 439 Indeed, the
MVTU experiment was declared unsatisfactory, since although the colors did succeed in
correcting the light and spatial conditions, it was noticed that their brightness exercised a tiring
effect upon perceivers and destroyed the three-dimensionality of space. Now Ginzburg appeared
to have learned from ergography and the theory of surface and film colors he publicized in
Sovremennaia Arkhitektura. The light tones used in the Narkomfin building prevented nervous
agitation and were thus more suitable for quiet rest. Moreover, the use of surface (light and matt)
colors allowed Ginzburg to retain a Constructivist concern with faktura when covering the
surface of the wall with a layer of paint to convey the spatial, properly architectural, properties of
the wall-its distance from the viewer, size, and relationships with other planes-thus allowing
the viewer to economize the energy of perception.

439

See, Sovremennaia Arkhitektura [ContemporaryArchitecture] No.2 (1929): 59.
237

Figs. 3.15-3.16. Hinnerk Scheper. Color Schemes for the Narkomfin House, 1929.

Generally avoided in the interiors, bright colors could nevertheless be found in one
area-on the ceilings. This was because, according to Ginzburg, the surface of ceilings
"penetrated into the consciousness only in partial, intermittent [otdel'nye, prepyvistye] visual
images." 440 Color, which otherwise would provoke a strong nervous agitation, should enter
perception in small doses, similar to those prescribed by Borchert to nervous patients. The brief
glances that one threw on a ceiling, in other words, were too short for the color to enter the
cognitive sphere and thus make one tired. Unlike the bright ceilings, the walls, which constantly
remained in one's field of vision, were given an "invisible coloration" [nevidimaia rastsvetka],
which was nevertheless perceived by the subject without her consciously registering it: this was
achieved by means of "extremely little-noticeable spatial-color shades of the same, almost
monochrome, gamut." In an example suggested by Ginzburg-and indeed followed in the
Narkomfin house- a room with a light-blue ceiling could have the walls of cold-white, palegray, or pale-yellow hues, while a greenish ceiling could be accompanied with mostly white,

440

Ginzburg, Zhilishche, 94
238

slightly greenish walls with a subtle shade of warm brown or cold-white tones. If a room painted
according to one of these schemes were visited for a short period of time, Ginzburg continued,
the color of the walls would remain almost unnoticeable and the room would seem white.
However, if someone remained subject to the effect of the walls for a longer period of time, the
color began "deeply, almost half-consciously and without noticeable visual irritations to
penetrate into the sensation [oshchushchenie] of the living [subject], becoming not so much a
factor of color as such, but a sort of purely spatial sensation."

441

Ginzburg used the word "half-consciously" [polusoznatel'no] to describe the "nonvisible... but sensible" [nevidimaia, no oshchushchaemaia] coloration that entered the mind of
the subject that was unregistered by consciousness, betraying the architect's interest in the
tradition of studying the basic, pre-cognitive strata of mind and attempting to communicate with
these strata directly. It reflects the similar conviction of Borchert, who believed that every
perception of color was unconscious and identical for humans and animals:
People, animals, plants all experience the impact of color and light. This impact is usually
manifested in this or that primitive reaction on a certain color environment, be it a green
spring, a yellow-golden fall or a moon-bluish light. People mostly unconsciously
perceive the impact of color light in a room, such as a lamp with a green shade in an
office or a pink lamp in a bedroom; this is the same as the unconscious agitation of a bull
or a turkey cock, when they see a red cloth in front of them. The impact of color upon a
human body happens not only under the color influence of surrounding nature, but also
under the influence of the color design of an internal space. 442

441

Ginzburg, Zhilishche, 94-95.

Borchert, "Krasochnoe oformlenie zhilishch," 8. Translation by the author. Russian original: JIIOAH, XHBOTHbe,
paCTeHHA HCflMThBa1OT Ha ce6e BmuSHHe CBeTa H iBeTa. BHmHHe 3To CKa3MBaeTCA o6MqHO B TOM HJIH HHOM
HPHMHTHBHOM pear"pOBaHHH Ha pa3JIHqHOe IBeTOBOe oKpyxeHHe, 6yAb 3TO 3eJieHas BeCHa, )KeiJITO-30iOTHCTaJ
oceHL HJiH roJy6oBaTo-yHHmA CBeT. JIIOAH 6oJimeIk 'acTmio 60CCO3HaTefmHo OIyIaOT BJIHAHHe ilBeTHOrO
OCBeLLeHHA B KOMHaTe, KaK HarHpHMep iaMna C 3eiieHMm a6axcypOM B pa6o0eM Ka6HHeTe HRH pO30BU4 (OHapb B
cnanbHe; TaKOBO TaKxe 6eCCO3HaTenbHoe Bo36yKAeHHe 6MKa HJIH HHAIOKa, KorAa OHH BHAAT nepeA co6oi
239
442

By referencing the psychological theory of the unconscious, Ginzburg (as well as
Borchert) rooted their aesthetic choices in an objective scientific foundation, substantiating them
in presumed evolutionary necessity, which regulated the deepest, biological responses of people
to their environment. Conducted unconsciously inside the Narkomfin apartments was the activity
of spatial perception. Having displaced the perception of wallpainting into the domain of the
unconscious, the Maliarstroi program culminated in the dissolution of art that the Constructivists
started several years earlier. Similarly to Productivist non-art (useful objects of everyday life), it
rejected art and denied its subjects an experience of aesthetic or intellectual gratification in order
to fulfill the imperative of usefulness: wallpainting hoped to help the dwellers to overcome a
possible discomfort and save energy by unnoticeably affecting them through the psychological
stimuli of colors.
The unnoticeable quality of the light, slightly off-white hues that Ginzburg and Scheper
preferred emphasized the utter subordination of color to architecture, which used color to express
its own spatial qualities. Asserting the status of architecture as a production of form and space,
unlike the purely functionalist projects of Bauhaus architects, the house of the Narkomfin
masked the making of this art. Indeed, the schemes of Scheper and Ginzburg strove to remain
unseen and unappreciated by the viewer, who was to respond to them by understanding the
spatial form and by having the accompanying physiological reaction of relaxation. The subject,
not the building, was the real object of their architectural work. In a truly posthumanist gesture,
Scheper and Ginzburg redefined their creative subjectivity as radically disjointed from that of the

KpacHyio MaTepHIO. Bo3Ae]cTBHe IiBT Ha OpraHH3M qeJIOBeKa HMeeT MeCTO He TOjRhKO

oKpyKaoigieR HPHPOAM,

HO TaIGK H

HOA BJIHJHHeM KpacOqHoro pa3pemeHH

240

nOA

IxBCTOBMm BaHRHHeM

TOrO HRH HHOrO nOMeHIeHH>>.

users, who were reduced to a conglomeration of psychophysiological sensations; as a result, they
claimed a kind of power that they idealized as a scientific machine of effectiveness.
If the research of color fatigue informed the design of the Narkomfin's residential cells,
schemes for its common spaces-corridors and staircases-were based on another branch of
applied psychology: a study of signaling systems, which was also rooted in the imperative of
economizing perceptual energy. Initially elaborated by Avenarius, the notion of the unconscious
as an energy-saving alternative to an employment of intellect was later developed by the
philosophical heirs of empiriocriticism, the members of the Viennese "Verein Ernst Mach,"
remembered in the history of philosophy as "third positivists." Aspiring to make empiricism and
positivism the basis of a new, strictly non-metaphisical philosophy, the Viennese logical
positivists Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath elaborated Avenarius's program of creating an
economic language of philosophy. The program of a scientific, anti-metaphysical, and rational
philosophy developed by the logical positivists paralleled to anti-humanist notion of architecture
as organization then current at the Bauhaus, and both Carnap and Neurath, were among the guest
lecturers on sociology, physics, and philosophy, whom Meyer invited to the Bauhaus during his
directorship. Moreover, lectured on sociology and psychology of architecture in Moscow,
applying their ideas to architectural theory. 4 It was also in Moscow that Meyer collaborated
with Neurath, who expressed an interest in architecture and urban planning and who from 1931
In a letter to Margareth Mengel from 28 October 1930, Meyer wrote: "heute ist meine ernennung zum professor
vollzogen worden (schriftlich ich iibernehme die sogenannte aspirantengruppe (20 mann), welche das studium
vollendet hat und fertige architekten sind. Ausserdem trage ich vor fber soziologie und psychologie in der
architektur. das sind vortriige ffir das ganze haus. es sind mehr als 2000 studierende da" (,,Today I was appointed a
professor (according to papers, I take the so-called group of doctoral students (20 people), who have already
completed their studies and are trained architects. Moreover, I lecture on sociology and psychology in architecture.
These are lectures for everyone. There are more than two thousand students there"). Unpublished manuscript. Getty
Research Institute.
4

241

to 1934, working together with a graphic designer Gerd Arntz, participated in the creation of
Moscow institute of statistics Izostat, which was to develop clear and efficient propaganda
materials.4 44 From 1928, Neurath had been developing his system of orientation, which later
became known as ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education) as a new
international language. 445 Easily perceivable and not requiring any specific knowledge,
Neurath's signs operated not on a conscious, but on an automatic level, conveying information in
a simple and less energy-consuming way than required by a verbal sign. Drawing on Avenarius's
vision of philosophy as classification, Neurath suggested presenting natural language as a
hierarchy of general notions, which were moreover represented as visual images that reduced
each notion to its several key features.
Yet Neurath's method of replacing words with simple images could be simplified even
further. "Here is a golden rule: use colored pencils. With color, you accentuate, you classify, you
clarify, you disentangle" argued Le Corbusier in 1938, speaking not about the creative design
process, but the technical process of producing easily readable drafts and schemes.446 Color
coding allowed classifying, grouping objects together as if under a general notion or symbol,
thereby saving intellectual energy. Moreover, color could be just as well applied to architecture

444 In 1923, Otto Neurath founded Siedlungsmuseum in Vienna, a new museum for housing and city planning.
During the Austrian Civil War of 1934, Neurath had been working in Moscow, where he collaborated with with
Meyer. See a letter from Hannes Meyer to Lotta Beese from 29 November 1931. Unpublished manuscript. Getty
Research Institute.
445 On ISOTYPE, see: Otto Neurath, Internationalpicture language (Reading: University of Reading, 1980); Otto

Neurath, From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography (London: Hyphen Press, 2010); Nader Vossoughian,
Facts and Artifacts: Otto Neurath and the Social Science of Socialization. Diss., Columbia University, 2004;
Benjamin Benus, Figurative Constructivism, PictorialStatistics, and the Group of Progressive Artists, c. 19201939. Diss.,University of Maryland, 2010.
446

Wigley, White Walls, DesignerDresses, 205.
242

itself, making its users read the surface of architecture just as they would read a diagram or a
map. In Germany, this approach led to an emergence of the so-called Signaletik, a system of
architectural prompts that facilitated the orientation of people within a building. Developed in
parallel to and in a dialog with pictographic representation, often by artists simultaneously
engaged with typography, Signaletik relied on painting walls into contrasting colors in order to
make them immediately distinguishable. Like a pictogram, it operated on an instinctive,
physiological, automatic level, allowing for quick orientation in within complex spatial systems,
such as the areas of circulation in public and educational buildings. Its earliest and most vocal
proponent was the typographer, graphic designer and artist Max Burchartz, who in 1927 applied
it in the Hans Sachs Haus in Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia-a large, multi-purpose
structure that included offices, a concert hall, a hotel, and various stores-in order to facilitate
the orientation of the visitors within this otherwise difficult-to-navigate environment. The same
principles were also employed by Meyer in 1928-1930 the Federal School of the General
German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in Bernau (where the flow of people in the concourse
was regulated by a system of signals reminiscent of those on a railway)," by Scheper in the
Bauhaus building in Dessau (1925-1926), and, on a smaller scale, by Heinrich Koch in Oskar
Schlemmer's house in Dessau (1925-1926), where doors of adjacent rooms were painted in
contrasting colors.

44

More on Meyer's ADGB project, see: Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanistsubject: the Architecture

ofHannesMeyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) 135-143.

243

Ginzburg, who had seen the buildings of the Bauhaus during his visit to Germany in
1927, admitted the importance of the precedent upon his interest in house-painting. 448 When the
construction of the Narkomfin residential block was began in 1928, he used the methods of
Signaletik to diversify otherwise identical modernist environment and facilitate the orientation
within it. In the color plan of the Narkomfin house that was developed under Scheper's direction
the following year, in the areas of communal circulation-corridors and stairwells-color
allowed for a quick grasp of the organization of space and an easy orientation among otherwise
identical objects. Doors were painted either black or white to prevent the residents from
confusing their apartments with those of their neighbors'; similarly the application of black to the
horizontal and white to the vertical surfaces of steps prevented the residents from stumbling. Just
as in the Bauhaus in Dessau, each level of the building received a distinctive color: orange, light
blue, green, cobalt, vermillion (red), and Veronese green (emerald).44 9 However, unlike the
German examples, where Signaletik was used in large public buildings, in the Narkomfin it was
applied to a residential block. Its use highlighted the functionalist redefinition of the house as a
zone of rest, sleep, eating and circulation, de-individualizing the dwelling according to the lateConstructivist architectural principles.

The date of Ginzburg's visit is given after Scheper, Vom Bauhaus gepigt, 58. For Ginzburg's account of the
Bauhaus visit, see Ginzburg, "Tsvet v arkhitekture," 75-76.
448

449 Ginzburg, "Tsvet v arkhitekture," 75.

244

Despite its promotion by Ginzburg, however,
Signaletik in general was received with relatively little
0

interest in Soviet Russia, and its application in Narkomfin

remained an exception. Alongside ISOTYPE, whose
method of concise visual representation of information
was found unsatisfactory for propaganda, Signaletik was
rejected as too logical and too mechanistic.

0

This lack of

appreciation by Soviet architects and officials elucidated
the difference between the German socialist and the

Soviet projects of modernist architecture. The former

Fig.3.17. Hinnerk Scheper. The
Narkomfin House. Circulation scheme

1929.

'

following the model of an automobile moving within a
complex system of lanes, junctions, and intersections, the

latter,

as exemplified in the Dulevo workers' club-followed that of an object of mass

production moving along a conveyor belt, passive and devoid of agency. Nevertheless, the
aspiration of architects and designers to apply the principles of color coding in the USSR
demonstrated the porousness of the boundaries between the two versions of the modern subject.
Just as today's highways do, color coding helped to prevent subjects from looking around and
exploring the possibilities of a given situation, making them take the single, prescribed route
towards a goal that was always known in advance.

It is absent, for instance, from Alekseev's books (such as Alekseev, Teplov, Shevarev,
Tsvet v arkhitekture),
which summarize all other approaches.
450

245

The Architecture of Attention
The house of the Narkomfin, the residential block where people spent their hours of rest,
exploited the possibilities of unconscious perception in order to allow people to economize and
recharge their perceptive energy. A seeming opposite of this program was the task of designing
theaters, cinemas, lecture halls and auditoria-spaces, where people's attention had to be
augmented and maximized. There, color served not to save, but to direct attention along the right
route, to exclude unnecessary stimuli and guarantee the full psychological effect of a
performance-an effect that had an ideological significance. Attention therefore bordered with
the unconscious, a border that was most clearly manifested in the phenomenon of hypnosis. As
Jonathan Crary has argued, "hypnosis also made clear that attentive states could be delineated in
terms of absorption, dissociation, and suggestibility."45 1 But as educational theorists during the
1920s debated the values of semi-hypnotic memorization as opposed to understanding in
pedagogical process, so different and conflicting approaches to wallpainting and its goals
determined auditoriums design in the USSR.45 2
A project for a theater interior designed by Georgii Kliunkov was based on a
psychological law that postulated that chromatic intensification directed the gaze towards more
saturated areas. An employee of the State Institute of Structures [Gosudarstvennyi institut
sooruzhenii], where he studied the effects of light and color in architecture, in particular, in the
architecture of clubs, theaters, and cinemas, Kliunkov was a former student of Ladovskii and the
Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception. Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 2000) 67.
451

In the 1920s, progressive education, which prioritized understanding over memorization, conflicted with a
educational culture based on memorization and (consequently) attention, which was as a clue to its success. This socalled associationism was supported by major American psychologists and educational theorists, such as, for
instance, Edward Thorndike of Teachers' College at Columbia University.
452

246

son of one of the pedagogues of the VKhUTEMAS "Color" course Suprematist painter Ivan
Kliun. In his standardized painting schemes for theaters and cinemas, which he publicized on the
pages of Maliarnoe Delo in 1932, the younger Kliunkov expanded on Antokol'skii's physical
direction of the subject to the ideological center of the city with an imaginary transplantation into
another time and place. Color alone-without recurring to mimetic representation-transformed
the theater into a heterotopia, a space of magic transformation of both reality and the subject.
Kliunkov's first entry into the problem of the design of auditoriums was a scheme of a
standardized cinema hall. Here, the architect argued for the creation of a completely black
room--"the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and, if possible, the furniture have to be all black" as
this would create an "absolutely pure visual environment" that resembled a "visual tube that is
covered from inside with a matted black color that neutralizes outside light beams and guarantees
visual precision." 45 3 Kliunkov's cinema hall was both the ultimate literalization of Ginzburg's
comparison between a polychromatic architectural environment and a psychological laboratory,
and a replica of Ladovskii's real psychological laboratory at VKhUTEIN. Concentrating their
attention on the gleaming white square of the screen, the spectators were cut off from all other
sensations, forgetting their surroundings-the events of the day, the street they came from, the
people sitting next to them-and submitting to the mesmerizing effect of the film. As a
conceptual scheme, Kliunkov's black box established a standardized, identical, laboratory
condition for perception by all, guaranteeing the repeatability of the experiment and eliminating
the same possibility of chance and arbitrariness that was abhorred by Scheper and Le Corbusier.

G[eorgii] Kliunkov, "Tsvetovoe oformlenie kinozala" ["Color design of a cinema hall"], Maliarnoe Delo
[Wallpainting]No.3 (1932): 9.

45

247

The architecture of the hall plunged them into a state of dreaming, which, as the psychological
research of the time had demonstrated, improved one's ability to follow and remember.4'"
In fact, Kliunkov's project destroyed the cinema hall in the same way as Scheper's
"invisible" color scheme for the Narkomfin destroyed the aesthetic experience of the domestic
interior, using architectural color as a psychological instrument rather than an artistic medium.
But where the Narkomfin used color in order to create a spatial sensation, Kliunkov's cinema
hall, just as Ginzburg's and Scheper's Narkomfin project, denied the viewer spatial experience,
not only dematerializing architecture and transforming it into a psychological sensation, but
eliminating any architectural perception and interpreting the hall as a machine of disjunction that
separated the subject from all material or psychological (that is, for the positivist, all existent)
phenomena and thus transplanting her into the imaginary reality of the film.
The phantasmagorical experience offered by Kliunkov's project denies the seeming
contraction between it and Benjamin's conviction that cinema is a form of art perceived in a state
of distraction. Painting, according to Benjamin, absorbes the viewer, who concentrates fully on
his personal associations-in other words, it invites a cognitive reception; a constant change of
scenes in cinema, on the other hand, prevents concentration,
impossible.45

making contemplation

This unconscious mode of reception of cinema noticed by Benjamin is, in fact,

similar to the state of absolute concentration that Kliunkov aspired to create; in the words of

Sleep-learning, or hypnopwdia, was explored by Soviet (as well as Western) psychologists during the first half of
the twentieth century. See, in particular Abram M. Sviadoshch, Vospriiatie rechi vo vremia estestvennogo sna [A
perception of speech during naturalsleep]. Diss., Leningrad, 1940. See also R. L. Sabsovich, Gipnoz v meditsine,
iurisprudentsii i pedagogike [Hypnosis in Medicine, Law, and Pedagogy] (Rostov-na-Donu, 1910); V. M.
Bekhterev, Vnushenie i vospitanie [Suggestion and Education] (St. Petersburg, 1912, repr. 1923).
454

455

Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 240-242.

248

TemOere (ei4r v
Pus. 1. I0xema *rysjuh siM4
2-1 TUWaA
T04OIL 1-UDTW6Ishs
rva4)uNy iisaueui

asev) no
*$iyiiI

Fig.3.18. Georgii Kliunkov. Scheme of a cinema hall [left].
Fig.3.19. Georgii Kliunkov. Scheme of a condensation of the element of the dark (color and light) according to a
graphic of the crowd's movement. 1. Entrance hall. 2. Staircase. 3. Foyer. 4. Auditorium. [right].

Crary, "attention and distraction cannot be thought outside of a continuum in which the two
ceaselessly flow into one another, as part of a social field in which the same imperatives and
forces incite one and the other." 456 Watching Hollywood movies, Benjamin's distracted viewers
attended exuberantly decorated theaters (think, for instance, of Grauman's 1922 Egyptian
Theatre, or of the Grauman's 1926 Chinese Theatre, both in Hollywood), while Kliunkov's black
box was designed for education and propaganda films. Instead of creating an architecture of
fantasy, it confined the phantasmagorical experience of the visitor to the film itself, creating a
mode of attentive perception no less unconscious than the distraction produced by Hollywood.
However perfect in its sterility Kliunkov's black box was, it became obvious that a rapid
transposition of the viewer from the nervous intensification of the street to laboratory conditions
(and then back to the street) would subject the viewer to a shock and thus provoke fatigue.
Kliunkov therefore concretized and complicated his idea in a new plan for a theater, in which he
incorporated the auditorium into a broader architectural and even urban scheme. In an article
456

Crary, Suspensions ofPerception, 51.

249

devoted to the use of color in theater design,
Kliunkov offered a scheme for directing the
viewers

towards

the

auditorium

while

progressively intensifying their attention. In
this plan, color gradually became more and
more saturated as the viewer moved from the
entrance
Fig.3.20.Herbert Bayer, Design for a cinema, 1924-

towards

the

stage,

while

its

luminosity gradually decreased. This careful

1925.

orchestration of transitions allowed for the avoidance of excessive visual stimuli and thus the
fatigue of the eye, which would have decreased the intensity of attention paid to the
performance. In the entrance lobby, Kliunkov suggested using yellow (absorbing 65% of the
light), as the color most connected with the hues of the street and best suited for a light and
spacious room. Next a staircase or a corridor was painted violet, absorbing 77% of light-the
color connecting yellow to the green tones that dominated in the foyer. The dark green color
there, which absorbed 85% of light in turn mediated between the entrance lobby and the theater
auditorium, which was painted in a dark red-the color complementary to dark green and thus
balanced with it through an afterimage effect. As the auditorium lamps dimmed, the dark red
would slowly turn to black, gradually switching the attention of the viewer towards the stage.457
Designed several years later, Kliunkov's theater project is reminiscent of a design for a
cinema (1924-1925) by Herbert Bayer, a graduate of the Bauhaus Wallpainting Workshop,
where he studied under Kandinsky. A long and narrow hall that was entered directly from the
Kliunkov, "Tsvetovoe oformlenie kinozala," 9; G[eogrii] Kliunkov, "Tsvetovoe oformlenie teatra" ["Color
design of a theater"], Maliarnoe Delo [Wallpainting]No.7 (1932): 4-5.
457

250

street, Bayer's cinema protected its visitors from the shock of spatial transition by dividing the
walls into three color zones: a shorter zone at the entrance was painted yellow, followed by a
zone of mediating orange, and finally, approaching the screen, the longest segment was of bright
red. Parallel to the color division of the walls, the color of the floor moved from light grey near
the entrance to almost black in the red zone. It is likely that Kliunkov was familiar with Bayer's
idea through Scheper or Borchert, and consciously modified it in his theater and cinema projects.
By dissociating the chromatic row from an achromatic one, Kliunkov segregated the transition
from the bustle of the street to the ritual space of the cinema and the process of watching a film,
creating different environments for the physical and the imaginary journeys. Although in Bayer's
project colors helped the eye to adapt to the new environment and to focus attention on the
screen, visitors were unable to forget entirely about the everyday life outside, which remained
present at the back of the hall. Where Bayer's project was a functionalist interpretation of the
Existenzminimum of cinema architecture, Kliunkov's theater design radicalized the psychological
effect at the expense of potential scope and cost.
While Hollywood, Bayer, and Kliunkov all conceived the cinema or theater hall as a
space of ritual, a more mundane interpretation of a stage was offered by Erich Borchert in his
project for the workers' club in Liublino (1930). It was, in fact, an immediate chromatic
reversal-the negative image-of Kliunkov cinema hall. Here the walls of the auditorium were
painted in warm pale colors, which did not distract the viewer from stage while allowing an
appreciation of the architecture of the space. As in Scheper's project for the Narkomfin building,
in Borchert's club, color served primarily to accentuate the spatial properties of the room.
Painted blue, the scene looked further away, emphasizing the hall's horizontality, while the
warm light-brown accents around the stage created an effect of a tunnel. The whiteness of the
251

Figs. 3.21-3.23. Erich Borchert. Project of interior color design for railroad workers'

club in Liublino (1930).

ceiling provided the dominant color theme, conveying the values of transparency and hygiene.
The light tones of the interior guaranteed that even under a dim light the hall never became
completely dark. Although the stage was not as forcefully connected with the audience as it was,
458 it shared the space with the
for instance, in the experimental theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold,

auditorium and appeared as its continuation, not unlike the way in which the choir of a Gothic
cathedral continued the space of the nave.

the
The actors at the experimental theater of Vsevolod Meierkhol'd (Meyergold, 1874-1940) often descended
stage to move between the spectators, directly addressing and engaging them.

458

252

Partially desacralizing theater performance, Borchert's scheme was closer to ideas of the
period about the design of schools and other spaces of learning than to those about the design of
a spectacle. By bringing light into a theater, Borchert connected it with the everyday, helping
people to tie what they learn to their immediate experience. Similarly Ender in 1935 planned to
work with physiologists from the Institute of Experimental Medicine and the Academy of
Architecture on plans for a standardized school construction4 59 : he suggested that schools should
be devoid of ornament, which distracted attention and impeded studies, as well as of white and
bright colors, which were too disturbing. Instead, Ender proposed painting school rooms in warm
hues mixed with grey and ground tones, which would help the pupils concentrate on their work,
while providing a light and hygienic environment. 4 60
In a Marxist society, indeed, education and spectacle were treated as interconnected
elements of leisure: any entertainment for the workers had to be used for the purpose of their
enlightenment. 46 1 By entirely subjugating the visitor to the mystical power of the spectacle,
Kliunkov's designs facilitated learning as hypnotic memorization and thus developed the
intentions of both Borchert's and Bayer's projects. Driving the idea of economizing energy to its
extreme by making learning unconscious, these designs completely freed the subjects from
thinking operations, transforming them into perceptive machines.

Larisa Zhadova, "B. V. Ender o tsvete i tsvetovoi srede" ["B. V. Ender on color and color environment"],
Tekhnicheskaia Estetika [TechnicalAesthetics] No. 11 (1974): 6.
459

Ender wrote: "Ornaments on the walls and bright colors in front of eyes impede studies. White also impedes: it
blinds and exhausts a person. Superfluous light can be dimmed with color toning, while moving somewhat stronger
colors to the ceiling. It is recommended to use warm hues, but not pure ones, but rather mixed with grey, mostly
earth-toned." Boris Ender, "Printsipy otdelki pomeshchenia" ["Principles of interior design"]. Unpublished
manuscript. RGALI.
460

461

More on the Soviet Marxist notion of leisure, see Chapter Three of this dissertation.
253

Conclusion
Reiterated in the 1950s, an anecdote related to Lisstizky's involvement with the program
of re-painting Moscow, depicted Lissitzky, hungry and desperate, with a wallpainting roller in
his hands, manually painting houses alongside other workers.46 2 Yet as this chapter has argued,
the real tasks of wallpainting were in fact much more ambitious: rather than putting layers of
paint on city facades, wallpainting-alongside other architectural and artistic disciplinesaspired to transform human consciousness and behavior. The new Soviet subject that it aimed to
produce was energetic, motivated, rational, quick to learn, and economical. The subject
envisioned was, moreover, standardized and thus capable of consuming the standardized
production that a large industry could offer. By managing its working energy prudently and
efficiently, it became both an ideal agent and an ideal material for the building of an
industrialized society during the First Five-Year Plan.

The anecdote was recounted by Lissitzky's friend, German avant-garde artist and film-maker Hans Richter. Hans
Richter, Kodpfe Und Hinterkdpfe. Zif rich Verlag der Arche, 1967, 184. See also Peter Nisbet, "El Lissitzky circa
1935: Two propaganda Projects Reconsidered," Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow, ed. Nancy Perloff
and Brian Reed (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2003) 211-234 (211-112).
462

254

255

CHAPTER THREE

EVOKING CREATIVE ENERGY: THE MOSCOW CENTRAL PARK OF
CULTURE AND LEISURE AND OBJECTS-ORGANIZERS (1928-1935)

Mobilization of the creative forces of the working
class for the socialist construction-this is the
main task of the park.463
Betti Glan
"Comrades, we have long had to oppose harmful and alien petty theories that proclaim
that one can simply stroll-stroll in general. We finally have to ponder over this strollingcreative process, which some vulgarizers debase under the word 'stroll.', 4 4 Thus, on a beautiful
summer day in 1932, started yet another speech at one of the numerous lengthy and ardent
meetings that took place in the Moscow Park of Culture and Leisure, in a small cardboard
pavilion with tightly closed windows, full of people and cigarette smog. The speech, as well as
the meeting, was imaginary: it appeared in a short story "Recreating Unit" [Veseliashchaiasia
463 ParkKul'tury i

Otdykha [Park of Culture and Leisure], No.1, 12 August 1931. Slogan on page 3.

Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, "Veseliashchaiasia edinitsa" ["Recreating Unit"], Pravda [The Truth], No. 312, 12
November 1932. Reprinted in: Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, Sobranie sochnenii v chetyrekh tomakh [Collection of
works in four volumes].
Vol.
3.
Moskva:
Sovetskii
pisatel',
1939.
Web.
2.5.2014.
<http://journ.elsu.ru/read008.html>. Translation by the author. Russian original: «TOBapHMIH, AaBHO yxce nopa Aamf
46

OTllOp BpeAHIM H qyXCAMM TeOpHlKaM o TOM, qTO
3TOT ry1IATeJI1HO-CO3HAraTeflbHbiir

npoixecc,

rymTh MOKHO [IPOCTO TaK, BOO611e.

KOTOpHEJ

HeKOTOPMMH

.

nporynKH

256

HaAo HaKOHeix OCMIHCjiHTh

ByjrapH3aTopaMH

OlOljISeTCA Ha3BHHeM

edinitsa] published by the stars of Soviet satire Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov in the major Soviet
newspaper Pravda. Parroting the style of minutes of Soviet official meetings, which were
frequently intercepted with audiences' guffaws, Il'f and Petrov made their audience laugh at the
idea of a "simple," purposeless stroll: "Simply strolling are cows (laugh), dogs (loud laugh), cats
(the entire hall laughs)."4 65 Indeed, as prols in Orwells's 1984, only non-thinking animals could
enjoy the freedom of purposeless strolling. Humans, on the contrary, could not afford such a
waste of time and energy-they had to give their stroll a productive purpose. "And this [human]
unit must, comrades, not just stroll, but, comrades, it must conduct a giant strolling work. (A
voice from the audience: 'Correct!').466 To do so one of the discussants, comrade Burnilla, 4 67

suggested that they "load the back of every human-walking with an artistically produced poster
on a theme of current importance-such as a friendsofchildren or stateinsurance." 468 The
speaker, however, critiqued the idea's impracticality: "But, comrades, how does one insure that
human-units are always focused on the posters and that the posters' effect is, so to speak,
continuous and hundred-percent? Comrade Burnilla did not consider this, he did not notice the

If

and Petrov. Translation by the author. Russian original:
co6aKH (rpoMmHi CMex), KOLIKH (cMeX Bcero 3aIa)>).
465

IpOCTO TaK, Boo6Ige, rynnOT KOPOBbI (cMex),

466 If

and Petrov. Translation by the author. Russian original: H4 3Ta eAHHHxa goJDKHa,
TOBapHIH, He ryJmI, a,
TOBapHIH, AOJDKHa HpOBOAHTb OrpOMHyIO nporyJIolHyio pa6oTy. (Fonoc C MecTa: "HpaBHJiHO!") >>.
467

Russian, Gorillo: a pun on words gorilla(gorilla) and
goret'(to burn).

,1fand Petrov. Translation by the author. Russian original: <HaBeCHTh Ha
CllHHy Kaxcoro 'ejiOBeKO-ryJIMioigero
XyaOmceCTBeHHO BbIHOJIHeHHEA1 nJiaKaT Ha KaKyIO-HH6yAEb aKTyaSjiHyio TeMy ApyrAHTeBCKyio HJIH
roCCTpaXOBCKyo>>.
468

257

Fig.4. 1. "And so the entire day long." Caricature mocking staff meetings at the Park of
Culture and Leisure, 1929.

elephant. (Laugh)." 469 To fix this problem, the speaker suggested that the strolling units move in
a single file, facing each others' backs-"then some poster will necessarily be in front of each
walker's eyes." For the entire duration of the stroll, the worker would be absorbing an important
truth, such as "While you are strolling here your apartment might be burning. Hurry up,
insure
your mobile property in Gosstrakh"470
The park ridiculed by Il'f and Petrov, the Moscow Central Park of Culture and Leisure
[Tsentral'nyi Park Kul'tury i Otdykha, TsPKiO], was opened in Moscow in August
of 1928. In

1931, it was named after Maxim Gorky, and has since then been frequently referred to as
Gorky
Park. The first projects allocated for it an enormous territory that stretched on both sides
of the
Moscow river. On the low Khamovniki bank and on the other, the high bank of Vorob'evy Hills
where the Stalinist sky-scraper of Moscow State University now stands, and where foundational
469

l'f and Petrov. Translation by the author. Russian original:
((Ho,

TOBapHIH, KaK cgeniaTi TaK, MTO6bI MeJIOBeKOyMyCKaJIH H3 BHAy rJIaKaTOB H tITO6bI ACeCTBHC TaKOBbIX
6bIJIo, TaK CKa3aTh,
HeHpepbIBHbIM H CTOHpOueHTHMM. 3TOrO TOBapHm FopHJIJIO He yMeI,
CJIOHa-TO OH H He npHMeTHJI. (CMex)
HH Ha MHHyTy He

.

egHHHUbI

Il'f and Petrov. Translation by the author. Russian original:
'-IoKa TbI 3gecb ryJIsemb, y Te6s, MOwe)T
TOPHT KBapTHpa. CKopeA 3acTpaxyri CBoe ABH)KHMOe HMyiueCTBO B
FoccTpaxe>. Gosstrakh [from gosudarstvennoe
,

470

strakhovanie, state insurance], the name of Soviet state insurance company.

258

stones had previously been laid for two major symbolic projects of their times: Christ the Savior
Cathedral by Karl Magnus (Aleksandr) Vitberg (1817) and the International Red Stadium by
Nikolai Ladovskii (1926)-neither of which were completed. Never developed on the proposed
scale, the park, especially during its early years, parasitized on the remains of the 1923 AllRussian Agricultural Exposition in Khamovniki, whose territory was incorporated as its core.
And yet Gorky Park was to play an important role in Soviet culture-if not as an architectural
attraction, then as a center of conceptual thought and theorization. Employing multiple
architects, theater directors, and cultural and education specialists, it functioned as a research
institute devoted to developing modem methods of landscape design, which were later replicated
throughout the country.
Most remarkable about Il'f and Petrov feuilleton was not even the sarcasm with which
they condemned the methods of the park's organization, but the truthfulness of their satire: the
fear of a vainly lost moment, of an unproductive waste of resources, the desire to capitalize on
every aspect of a subject's existence that were characteristic of a modernist state were, indeed,
vividly present in the park, and especially in architectural and conceptual projects for its design,
most of which eventually proved to be too ambitious even for the Stalinist state. Moreover, Il'f
and Petrov aptly pointed to the vexing problem faced by the directorship and other contributors
to the park's concept: "how does one insure that human-units are always focused on the posters
and that the posters' effect is, so to speak, continuous and hundred-percent?" In other words,
simply imposing state ideology on its subjects was not enough to make them interiorize this
ideology. First of all, the subjects had to notice it. Thus, the problem faced by the park as a
model propaganda endeavor was not one of disobedience or sabotage-it was the one of
attention.
259

Jonathan Crary has observed that since the late nineteenth century "perception functions
in a way that ensures a subject is productive, manageable, and predictable, and is able to be
socially integrated and adaptive," since it was realized precisely at this moment that "attention
had limits beyond and below which productivity and social cohesion were threatened." 471 The
importance of attention as an adaptative mechanism was noticed by Charles Darwin, who
believed that "hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual progress of man than the
power of attention. Animals clearly manifest this power, as when a cat watches a hole and
prepares to spring on its prey. Wild animals sometimes become so absorbed when thus engaged,
that they may be easily approached."

47 2

For Darwin, as well as for many nineteenth-century

thinkers, attention was "a reflex process, part of a mechanical adaption of an organism to
environmental stimuli. Important here is the evolutionary legacy of attention, and its origins in
involuntary and instinctive perceptual processes." 473 Crary distinguished another major paradigm
of thinking that at this time implied that attention is "determined by the operations of various
automatic or unconscious processes or forces, a position articulated in many ways, beginning
with Schopenhauer, Janet, Freud, and numerous others." 474 Attention and will were, as Crary
demonstrates, far from synonymous, and attention was frequently thought of as subjected to
external manipulation that remained unregistered by consciousness.

Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1999) 4. Crary's emphasis.
471

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex [1871] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1981) 44. Quoted in Crary, Suspensions ofPerception, 40-41.

472

4

Crary, Suspensions ofPerception, 42.

4

Crary, Suspensions ofPerception, 42.
260

As this chapter will demonstrate, the paramount significance of attention for ideology and
the potential for its tacit manipulation by psychological and physiological means were wellknown and exploited in Gorky Park. In what follows, I will explore how TsPKiO as an
experimental prototype form of ideological urban space inconspicuously worked with the
visitors' attention, searching for ways of compelling people to choose certain routes and
directions, find their ways to different areas of the park, enter certain pavilions, attend
performances, scrutinize the content of exhibitions, and-most importantly-receive a charge of
enthusiasm, energy and excitement about their work and its significance for the commonly built
society. Since this chapter focuses on the unconscious and the non-verbal, it will avoid a critique
of ideological messages conveyed by the park: the content of performances and exhibitions, for
instance, will remain bracketed in the analysis. Instead, I will focus on the techniques and
methods used in the park to control the unconscious, emotional and bodily attitudes towards
these messages. Devised by artists, architects, psychologists and cultural thinkers (Konstantin
Mel'nikov, El Lissitzky, and the Stenberg brothers, to name just a few avant-garde luminaries
who occupied key positions in the Park) who often acted from radically left artistic and political
platforms, these techniques were far from the simple "return to Classicism" or "return to
realism" that are often associated with the cultural politics of the First Five-Year Plan. On the
contrary, as this chapter will demonstrate, they continued the line of "avant-garde" aesthetic
thought-the line that stemmed from Anatolii Lunacharskii's fascination with empiriocriticism,
his idea of economy of energy, his revolutionary romanticism and his ideal of active and creative
personality.
Praising the variety theater, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti once remarked that its crucial
achievement for modernist culture lay in the creation of a new-engaged, active, singing along
261

and otherwise participating in the performance-type of spectator, who stood in stark contrast to
the "static" "stupid-voyeur" of a traditional theater. 47 5 The goal of activating the spectator (or, in
this case, the visitor) likewise became the priority of the Park of Culture and Leisure, whose
theoreticians believed that only fully engaged visitors could sincerely participate in the park's
ideological program. Furthermore, initiated by Aleksandr Bogdanov, the discourse of
organization as a rationalization of activity had become ubiquitous in Soviet modernist culture,
penetrating into the discussions about the park's program. Visitors' activity in Gorky Park had to
be organized, that is, given a correct direction and coordinated with the activities of the others.
The problem of attention was thus reformulated as an organization of the activity of the masses,
and as such formed the core of TsPKiO's artistic and architectural program, expressed in such
concepts as "organized masses" [organizovannye massy], "activation of visitors" [aktivatsia
posetitelei], and "organized mass-ness" [organizovannaiamassovost1.
At the same time, this organization of perception had to happen unnoticeably for the
subjects, who were left to believe in their own willful choice of objects of their interest. This
allowed for the economization their perceptual energy in a double way. First, by replacing
thought with the automatic, the subject achieved the desired result free of its energetic charge (as
described in detail in Chapter One). 476 Second, as will be discussed in this chapter, non-logical,
visual means of persuasion were thought to be more effective for a mass audience, and therefore
similarly contributed to saving its intellectual energy. Making this organization of attention
475 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Variety Theater 1913," FuturistManifestos, ed. Umbro Apollonio (New York:

Viking Press, 1973) 127. Quoted in Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde," Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (London: B.F.I., 1990) 66.
See Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, "Vvedenie v nenapisannuiu knigu po psikhologii umstvennogo tvorchestva
(nauchno-filosofskogo i khudozhestvennogo)." Published in: N. V. Os'makov, Psikhologicheskoe napravleneie v
russkom literaturovedenii(Moskva: Prosveschenie, 1981) 109-121.
476

262

unnoticeable was largely achieved through the manipulation of the environment and through
material objects that circulated or were located in the park. Objects became major agents of the
park's work and the major preoccupation of its theoreticians. Activators and organizers, these
objects overcame the passivity and alienation of their producers, which, according to Marxist
theorists, was an avoidable consequence of capitalism, and acted as comrades and co-workers, as
true participants in the country's social life. Moreover, unlike people, objects could remain on
the fringes of one's consciousness, acquiring the power to shape actively visitors' psychic and
emotional attitudes without being noticed. It is this great yet underestimated transformative
power of objects in an expanded sense that is the focus of this chapter.

Collectivism
Unlike the visitor of a capitalist park, who sought individual entertainment, the subject of
a park of culture and leisure-as well as the that of Soviet culture of the 1920s-early 1930s in
general-was a collective. While its conceptual elaboration in the works of Bogdanov,
Lunacharskii, and Gorky proved to be especially important for Soviet culture, collective
subjectivity was a result of a longer development in historical and social thought. During the
nineteenth century, the Romantic concept of history, the driving force of which was a powerful,
heroic individual-typically

a general,

monarch,

or other leader-gradually

receded,

surrendering to an idealist notion of impersonal historic forces. A follower of Hegel's dialectic,
Marx based his social theory on a conception of history as having an inevitable course that was
guaranteed by historical laws, an agent of which was the progressive class of each social
formation. No outstanding qualities could turn a person into history's agent: only social reality,
263

to which people were subordinated people, could unite them in a mass that collectively realized
historic progress.477 Unleashed during the French revolution, the Paris Commune, and later the
Russian October Revolution, this new collective force, the masses, acting as one and becoming
stronger than any individual, frightened, intrigued, and fascinated nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century thinkers. Sociology became one the of the most dynamic and promising
sciences of the age, but the other young sciences of human personality, psychology and
anthropology, also made attempts to understand the phenomenon of the power of the masses.
Sociologist Emile Durkheim developed the notion of collective consciousness,

social

psychologist Gustave Le Bon-that of "collective soul," anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl that
of "collective representation," and Carl Gustav Jung explored the "collective unconscious."
Most early European studies of collective behavior shared an underlying fear of a crowd,
which was understood as a criminal mass prone to aggression and pointless destruction. Indeed,
the beginnings of social psychology can be dated back to the work of Italian criminologist Scipio
Sighele, who in 1891 published La folla delinquente: studio di psicologia collettiva [Delinquent
Crowd: a Study of Collective Psychology]-a book that summarized his research on crimes
committed by the crowd (in such instances as panics, riots, and demonstrations). For Sighele, the
most vicious quality of the crowd, was its utter uncontrollability: not only was the state unable to
restrict its actions, but even the members of the crowd themselves lost the capacity for selfcontrol. Sighele argued that these crimes should be classified as those of affect, that is, irrational
and uncontrollable by individual consciousness or morals. Since the criminologist believed that

Lev Tolstoy's merciless portrait of the epitome of a Romantic hero, Napoleon, and his juxtaposition to the
Russian marshal Kutuzov, who renounces his ego and follows the will of people and history, on the pages of War
and Peace serves a vivid example of a dismantlement of a Romantic idea of a historic hero.
477

264

participating individuals acted unconsciously, they could not be held accountable for their
actions. Introducing the concept that would later be called "irresistible impulse" in Englishlanguage criminal law, Sighele succeeded in creating the first precedent of its legal usage by
introducing it into the laws of Italy. The book immediately acquired international popularity.
Translated into French as La Foule criminelle, it exerted a particular effect on sociologists
Gustav Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde.478
If for Sighele, a crowd consisted of declass6, marginalized individuals, rejected by
society and possessing natural propensity for crime, Le Bon offered another explanation of
crowd crimes: it was the state of crowd-ness itself, rather than the moral defects of people that
constituted the crowd, that made its behavior irrational. Le Bon suggested that the human psyche
consisted of two layers: the upper, conscious one, represented by the intellect and morals, and the
lower, unconscious layer, represented by instincts, habits, beliefs, and sympathies. The first
explained individual differences between people; the second-reminding of Hartmann's
identification of the unconsiocus with a biological species-was responsible for what they had in
common, producing the foundation of various collective identities (whether raceal, religious or
political). When people assembled in groups, the conscious, individual parts of psyche were
driven away by the lower collective, irrational side. Having lost its consciousness, the crowd,
although consisting mostly of males, exhibited psychological qualities that Le Bon classified as
feminine: exaggerated emotionality, thinking in images (as opposed to conceptual reasoning), the
polarity of feelings (ascribing to all phenomena either a positive or negative value), credulity,
and collective hallucinations (illusions and fantasies). As a result, the crowd could not be
A Russian translation of the book appeared in 1896 (S. Sigele [Sighele], Prestupnaiatolpa. Opyt kollektivnoi
psikhologii [DelinquentCrowd: a Study of Collective Psychology] (Sankt-Peterburg: Izd-vo F. Pavlenkova, 1896).
478

265

persuaded by logical reasoning, but rather by vivid images and other psychological stimuli. It
needed its heroes (leaders) and enemies, as well as its sacral centers. As if drunk on the sensation
of almightiness that the crowd gave, an individual consumed by the crowd lost his usual
prudence and sense of responsibility and could commit both heroic and criminal deeds that he
never would have performed in another situation. Moreover, in a crowd, a person was subject to
psychic "contagion": extreme suggestivity explained by a semi-hypnotic state induced by the
presence of other people. This hypnotic effect, for Le Bon, was immediate but lasting, provoking
a person to behave in a certain way long after he had left the crowd.479
Unlike Le Bon, Tarde suggested drawing a distinction between natural and artificial
crowds (la foule naturelle and la foule artificielle). The former, for Tarde, were formed
spontaneously and dissolved just as easily but the latter-such as religious sects or political
parties-were characterized by discipline and organization. An artificial crowd was held together
by a high degree of imitative instinct that its members exhibited by constantly imitating each
other and their leader. Due to this law of imitation, artificial masses could remain organized even
if they were physically dispersed, manipulated not through suggestion or contagion, but through
conformism.

480

The works of both Le Bon and Tarde were translated into Russian shortly after their
original publication.48 ' Tarde's work on analyzing the psyche of a crowd impressed the Russian

479 Gustav Le Bon, Psychologie des Foules (Paris: Alcan, 1895), translated into English as The Crowd: A Study of

the PopularMind (1896).
480 Gabriel Tarde, Les lois de l'imitation (Paris: Kim6

Editeur, 1890).

Le Bon's La Psychologie des Foules (1895) was translated in 1896, reaching the peak of its popularity in the
1920s; his Les Lois Psychologiques de l'Avolution des Peuples (1894)-in 1906; Psychologie du Socialisme
(1898)-in 1899; Psychologie de l'dducation (1902)-in 1910, L'#volution de la Matiere (1905)-in 1909.

481

266

imperial court so much that it honored the scholar with the prestigious order of St. Vladimir.
Although Tarde, Le Bon and other social psychologists were rarely cited by social-democratic
authors (such as Lenin, Stalin or Lunacharskii), they were most likely familiar to these political
and cultural leaders who focused their program on enhancing and exploiting the power of
crowds. The philosophy of collectivism, developed by Lunacharskii alongside Aleksandr
Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky, was particularly informed by the scholarship of the French
psychologists of the crowd. However, returning to Hartmann's Darwinism, the left Russian
thinkers reversed the French school's ethical assessment of the crowd. As will be shown below,
for them, the crowd's irrationality was not a source of illusions and irresponsible behavior, but a
mechanism that could allow people to overcome narrow individualism and elevate their spirits to
contribute to the common good-the good of the human species.
Three close friends and collaborators who shared similarly radical Bolshevik platform,
Lunacharskii; his brother-in-law, the founder of powerful Proletarian Culture [Russian,
Proletkul't] movement of the early 1920s Aleksandr Bogdanov; and writer Maxim Gorky, were
frequently referred to by contemporaries as "Millenarian Bolsheviks" and "Nietzschean
Marxists."482 The latter sobriquet elucidated those aspects of the group's platform that were

Preceding its English translation by more than ten years, Tard's Les lois de l'imitation (1890) was published in
Russian in 1892; his L 'artet la logique (189 1)-in 1895; the Russian edition of his La logique sociale (1895) came
out in 1901; L'opinion et lafoule (1901) followed in 1903; and Les lois sociales. Esquisse d'une sociologie (1898)in 1906; this list of Russian translations of Le Bon and Tarde is far from complete. For their reception in Russia, see
Part 1 of N. I. Semechkin, Sotsial'naia psikhologia na rubezhe vekov: istoria, teoria, issledovania [Social
psychology at the turn of the century: history, theory, research] (Vladivostok: Izdatel'stvo Dal'nevostochnogo
Universiteta, 2001) 5.
George L. Kline, "'Nietzschean Marxism' in Russia," Demythologizing Marxism: A Series of Studies on
Marxism, ed. by Frederick J. Adelmann (Chestnut Hill: Boston College, 1969) 166-83; Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer,
New Myth, New World: from Nietzsche to Stalinism (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2002).
4

267

especially important for the young Soviet culture, yet ignored by more orthodox Marxists: the
extolling of power, will and creativity, and the attention to ethical and aesthetic issues.
Hartmann connected Schopenhauer's individual will with a collective unconscious, and the left
Bolsheviks sublated Nietzsche's extreme individualism into its dialectical opposite, which they
termed "collectivism." Collectivism's programmatic publication, a collection Ocherki filosofii
kollektivizma [Essays in the Philosophy of Collectivism] appeared in 1909.
In 1900, Bogdanov and Lunacharkii were exiled to Vologda, in the north of central
Russia. There, the intellectual atmosphere among the exiled leftist intelligentsia was more
philosophical than practical. In Vologda, they met Lunacharskii's old Kiev schoolmate,
philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), who was also involved with Marxism and exiled.
The meeting was crucial for the newcomers. By that time, Berdyaev had abandoned Marxism
and started elaborating his idealistic, proto-existentialist philosophy of freedom, having gathered
a significant group of followers. Although Bogdanov and Lunacharskii quickly established
themselves as the leaders of an alternative, anti-idealist circle, the framework of the discourse
was already set up. In the words of a contemporary historian, "Though they supplied different
answers, the two Marxists accepted as valid the questions that the idealists asked." 483 In an
article "What is Idealism?" (1901) Bogdanov went as far as defending the value of idealism as
such, distinguishing within it between the progressive "evolutionism" and the fallacy of
"idolism."

484

The notion of idealism, for him, was used "where the feelings, aspirations and

actions of people are directed more socially, where the psychic activity is developed towards
Dawid G. Rowley, Millinarian Bolshevism: Empiriomonism, God-Building, Proletarian Culture. Diss.
University of Michigan, 1982, 38.
484 Aleksandr Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?" ["What is idealism?"],
Obrazovanie [Education] No.12 (1901).
Reprinted in: Aleksandr Bogdanov, Iz psikhologii obschestva [From the psychology of society] (Sankt-Peterbug:
Pallada, 1906) 10-37.
268
483

greater socialization."485 It was based on notions of progress ("the increase in fullness and
harmony of conscious human life") and the ideal ("the reflection of socially progressive
tendency in an idealistic psyche").486 A truly progressive society never ceased its development:
Bogdanov abhorred Edward Bellamy's society "frozen in satisfaction and self-satisfaction,
quietly resting on the laurels of previous generations' victories over social and external
nature." 487 Therefore, the best, most progressive ideal was the one that became a springboard for
the next developmental move.488 Bogdanov's evolutionism became the method for evaluating the
attainability of these ideals-as opposed to idolism, which refused to pose this question.489
Evolutionism became the principle behind Lunachskii's Osnovy pozitivnoi estetiki
[Foundations of positive aesthetics, 1903], a declared attempt to build a system of
empiriocriticist aesthetics. 490 Applying Avenarius's Prinzipdes kleinsten Kraftma3es to aesthetic
thought, Lunacharskii argued that everything that increases the amount of energy ("affectional"
[affektsional]) in an organism was aesthetic, while everything that decreased it was "antiaesthetic." Moreover, while Avenarius referred to cognitive energy expended during the
perceptive process, Lunacharskii radicalized the hidden evolutionism of energetist discourse,

Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?", 17-18. Translation by the author. Russian original: <oXapaicrepHcTHKa
"HAeajImw", npHMeHeTCI TaM, rge 'IyBCTBa, cTpeMneHHX, AeHCTBH JoAeH HaIaBIJSIIOTCI 6oniee coHaJIhHO, rAe
nCHXHWeCKaI aKTHBHOCTh pa3BHBaeTCq B CTOPOHy 6oJbrme coHaiH3aUHH>>.
486 Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?", 35. Translation by the author. Russian original:
<flporpecc 03Ha'aeT
BO3paCTaHHe HOIHOTI H rapMoHHH Co3HaTejihHO MejiOBCeeCKor KH3HH,... nporpeCCHBH6IH Hrean ecT oTpaxceHHe
485

o6IecTBeHHo-nporpeCCHBHOIR

TeHAeHIHH B HAeJIHCTHqeCKOri IICHXHKe>>.

Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?", 22. Translation by the author. Russian original: o3aCThIBIlee B AOBOJ~bCTBe H
caMoAoBoJIbcTBe, 6e3mATe)KHo ioqHBaioIee Ha naBpax nocne oAepxcaHHux IpeATlAygHMH riOKOfeHHSMH no6eA
487

HaA IpHpOrOA coIxHaJMHOIR H BHeMHeHN ).
488 Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?", 23.
489 Bogdanov, "Chto takoe idealism?",
36.
490 Anatolii Lunacharskii, "Osnovy positivnoi

estetiki"

["Foundations

of positive

aesthetics"],

Ocherki
realisticheskogo mirovozzrenia [Essays in realist worldview] (St. Peterburg: Izdatel'stvo S. Dorovatovskogo i A.
Charushnikova, 1903) 114-182. Reprinted as a book in 1923.

269

speaking about "vital energy." Lunacharskii's work continued the tradition of a highly influential
nineteenth-century Russian radical aesthetic thinker Nikolai Chernyshevskii (1828-1889), whose
1855 dissertation, written from a standpoint of Compte's first positivism, "Esteticheskie
otnosheniia iskusstva k deistvitel'nosti" ["Aesthetic relations of art to reality"], argued that "the
beautiful is life." 491 Similarly, life became the ultimate category of Lunacharskii's aesthetic
system and the only aesthetic criterion: beauty was, ultimately, the "mighty and free life"
itself.4 92 Pleasure experienced in the process of multiplication of vital energy, for Lunacharsky,

was the criterion not only for aesthetic, but also for ethic judgments: the only objective basis
upon which an animal identified something as good or bad was its personal sensation of
agreeable or disagreeable, that is, pleasant or unpleasant. 493 For Lunacharsky, ethics, aesthetics
and epistemology ultimately coincided, as the good, beautiful and true were defined in the same
term, as that which furthered life.494
Lunacharskii's exaltation of energy, force and mightiness, Bogdanov's crypto-idealism,
and Berdiaev's philosophy of freedom and creativity all betrayed an indebtedness to philosopher
who at first glance might seem an exact opposite to collectivist communist project-Friedrich
Nietzsche. At the turn of the twentieth century, the influence of Nietzsche on Russian cultureespecially in the realms of aesthetics and religious philosophy-was profound, and is wellexplored in contemporary scholarship. 495 In "Meschanstvo i individualizm" ["Philistinism and

Russian original: <fIpeKpacHoe ecT

Nikolai Chernyshevskii, "Esteticheskie otnosheniia iskusstva k
deistvitel'nosti" ["Aesthetic relationships of art to reality"], Chernyshevskii, Sochinenia v 2kh tt. [Works in two
vols.]. Vol.1 (Moskva: Mysl', 1986) 76.
492 Lunacharskii, "Osnovy positivnoi estetiki," 51.
491

KH3Hb&.

Rowley, 68.
494 Lunacharskii, "Osnovy positivnoi estetiki," 38-39.
495 See: Ann M. Lane, "Nietzsche in Russian Thought, 1890-1917." Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1976;
493

Nietzsche in Russia, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), especially

270

individualism"] (his contribution to Ocherkifilosofli kollektivizma [Essays in the Philosophy of
Collectivism]) Lunacharskii went as far as to substitute the Marxist category of bourgeoisie with
the Nietzschean notion of Pdbel, philistines (Russian meschanstvo), which he defined as a
combination of individual greediness and collective cowardice. It was this ethical and aesthetic
category of philistinism that, for Lunacharkii, entailed individualism. In the same collection,
Gorky elaborated on this idea by introducing the notion ofposhlost' as a quintessential feature of
the philistines. Untranslatable, yet highly important for Russian culture, this word is aesthetically
charged, referring to all forms of bad taste, from pornography to insufficiently or ostentatiously
sophisticated poetry. 4 9 6 Although it already existed in the Russian language in the early
nineteenth century signifying the pettiness of everyday life, it was only after the breakthrough of
Nietzsche into Russian culture that poshlost' was reinterpreted as the opposite of spiritual
aristocratism and connected with the category of matter-and it is clearly in this sense it is used
by Gorky.
Philistinism is the damnation of the world; it devours personality from within, as worm
empties a fruit; philistinism is a thistle; its evil and ceaseless quiet rustling dies in the
ringing of mighty bells of beauty and the vivacious truth of life. Philistinism is a
articles: Mary Louise Loe, "Gorky and Nietzsche: The Quest for a Russian Superman" (pp. 251-274), A, L. Tait,
"Lunacharsky: 'A Nietzschean Marxist?' (pp. 275-292), and Zenovia Sochor, "A. A. Bogdanov: In Search of
Cultural Liberation" (pp. 293-314); Clowes, Edith W., The Revolution of Moral Consciousness : Nietzsche in
Russian literature, 1890-1914 (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988); Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal,
ed., Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: from Nietzsche to Stalinism (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2002); Vladimir Solov'ev und Friedrich Nietzsche: eine deutsch-russische kulturelle
Jahrhundertbilanz(Frankfurt am Main and New York: Lang, 2003); Nel Grillaert, What the God-Seekers Found in
Nietzsche: the Reception of Nietzsche's Obermensch by the philosophers of the Russian Religious Renaissance
(Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008).
Svetlana Boym defines poshlost' as "the Russian version of banality, with a characteristic
national flavoring of
metaphysics and high morality, and a peculiar conjunction of the sexual and the spiritual. This one word
encompasses triviality, vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, and a lack of spirituality." Svetlana Boym, Common Places:
Mythologies ofEveryday Life in Russia (Harvard University Press, 1994) 41.
496

271

bottomless, greedy mire of filth, which sucks

TosaptiI Y
wwwtoxveninru

genius, love, poetry, thought, science and art
into its sticky depths. Philistinism is the vile
revenge of dead matter on the living creative
spirit of man. 4 97
The alternative to a philistine that
Gorky suggested to the world was nicknamed

3TO 3BY

by

-

CRFPYUFflAI~FV

T FOPtO

Fig. 4.2. "Cbermensch-this [word] sounds proudly!"
A commentary by contemporary Russian artist
Tovarisech U on Gorky's famous phrase "Cheloveketo zvuchit gordo!" ("'Man'-this [word] sounds
proudly!").

the

critics

of

the

[Uberbosiak]

day

Oberhobo

Obertramp

or

[9berbrodiaga].4

Like

Nietzschean uncle,

Iberhobo was creative

his

aristocratic

and independent, strong and healthy both

physically and morally. He possessed a superhuman willpower and a great spiritual energy that
allowed him to achieve any of the ambitious goals he set. This energy empowered him to
transcend the physical boundaries established by nature: in fact, a constant overcoming of these
boundaries was the most characteristic feature of Uberhobo.
However, unlike the Nietzschean Obermensch, the Oberhobo of Gorky, Lunacharskii and
Bogdanov was not egoistic or ready to sacrifice others for his own pleasure and power. On the

497

Maxim Gorky, "Razruschenie lichnosti" ["The destruction of personality"], Ocherki po filosofli kollektivizma,

353-403 (402). Translation by the author. Russian original: <(MeigaHCTBo-npoKJIATHe MHpa; OHO riO)KHpaeT
JIHMHOCTh H3HyTpH, KaK qepBb OIIyCTOmaeT riLIOA; MelaHCTBO--1epTOHOJIOX; B LUeJIeCTe ero, 3JIOM H HenpepbIBHOM,
HeCJIbIIHHO yracaeT 3BOH MOIIAHbX KOJIOKOJIOB KpaCOTbI H 6 opoA

HpaBAiI )KH3HH. OHO 6e3AoHHo-xcaHaI TPACHHa
3aCaCbIBaeT B JIHHKyio rJIy6HHy CBoio reHHA, J.o6oBb, H033HIO, MbICJI], HayKy H HCKyCCTBO.
MeiiaHCTBO-rHyCHaA MeCTb MepTBOii MaTepHH KHBOMy TBopMeCKOMy gyXy eJIOBeKa
.

Pp'l3H, KOTOpaS

N. M. Minsky, "Filosophia toski i zhazhda voli" ["Philosophy of anguish and the thirst for
freedom"],
Kriticheskie stat'i o proizvedeniakh Maksima Gor'kogo [Critical articles on the works of Maxim Gorky], S.
Grinberg, ed. (St. Petersburg, 1901) 21. See also Mary Louise Loe, "Gorky and Nietzsche: The Quest for a Russian
Superman," Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed., Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)
251-274.
498

272

contrary,

Uberhobo was

governed by altruism, or "species' instincts" [vidovye instinkty].499 Not

unlike as Le Bon, who divided psyche into a "conscious" and a "collective" layer, Gorky
believed that, higher than always-egoistic reason, such biological instincts as patriotism,
maternal instinct and other "gregarious instincts" [stadnye instinkty] allowed for the regulation of
communal life on a superhuman level, promoting the interests of the community and, ultimately,
of human species. 500 For the Collectivists, the ultimate biological agent of the struggle for life
was not an individual or even a group, but the whole of humanity. To emphasize this biological
universality of his notion of the collective, Lunacharskii suggested speaking about "the human
species," repeating the Spenserian/Machist idea of culture and intellect as a form of evolutionary
adaptation and Hartmann's idea of the unconscious (here, subconscious) as the "biological
truth":
The human, having developed especially high individual forms of adaptation (the organs
of thought) and having created a culture that, in the end, acquired this extremely
individualistic character (philistinism, private property), to a large degree eclipsed in his
own consciousness and distorted in his life practice that which in the biological world, in
the world of "big reason" ["bolshogo razuma"] has the primary significance: the life of
the species as the main phenomenon, the life of an individual as an accident, as an
expression of the particular. The growth of species self-consciousness is a great process
of a return of reason to biological subconscious truth. Of course, here we are dealing not
with a self-rejection of individuality, not with its return to the slavery of species instincts,
but with a harmonic union, with high vitalist aesthetics, which will teach individuality to
appreciate the development of might, beauty and happiness of species as a whole above
all else, and which will at the same time teach the truth that precisely this mighty,
beautiful and happy species, which develops in constant struggle for a new might, is
expressed in its most beautiful individuals.5
499 Lunacharskii, Osnovypozitivnoi estetiki, 25.
500

Lunacharskii,Osnovypozitivnoi estetiki, 25.

501 Anatolii Lunacharsky, "Meschanstvo i individualizm" ["Philistinism
and individualism"], Ocherki filosofli

kollektivizma [Essays in the philosophy of collectivism] (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdanie tovarischestva "Znanie," 1909)

219-350 (335). Lunacharskii's emphasis. Translation by the author. Russian original: <MeanOBeK,
BMCOKHe

4 OpMbi

pHcriOcO6neHHI

HHxHBH~yaJMHoro

273

Xapaxrepa

(opram

MmCJIH)

H

pa3BHB

oco6eHHO

CO3;IaB KyJIhTypy,

In Bogdanov's novel Krasnaia zvezda [The Red Star, 1908], which describes a
communist society built on Mars, the Martians continued to expand their numbers despite being
conscious that they all but exhausted the natural resources of their planet. When an earthly visitor
wonders whether a policy of birth-control would be reasonable to implement, the Martians retort
that limiting their fertility would mean surrending to the blind forces of nature. Instead, the
Martians embark into an exploration and conquest of other planets.
Reduce fertility rates? But this would give the victory to the elements. This would mean
the repudiation of the unlimited growth of life, its inevitable stop at one of the nearest
steps. We win when we attack. If we put an end to the increase of our army, this would
mean that we are besieged by the elements. Then faith will start withering, the faith in our
collective force, in our great communal life. And with this faith, the meaning of every
individual life will be lost, because in each of us-small cells of the great organismlives the whole, and each of us lives through this whole. No, decreasing fertility would be
our last option; and when this happens beyond our will, this will be the beginning of
end.5 0 2

The ultimate physical boundary that the move from an individual to a collective
biological subject transgressed was human mortality-and eschatological questions, indeed,
played a major role in the works of the Russian Nietzscheans. This was true both for the
Collectivists and for their opponent Berdyaev, who claimed that true creativity can evolve only

IpHHSHBHIyIO,

B

co6cTBeHHOCT),

KOHLxe

KOHIJOB,

TaKOi

KparHe

HHHBHgyaJIHCTHqeCKHA

xapaKTep

(MeuaHcTBo,

qacTHaA

3aTMHJI B 3HatHTeJbHOA CTeIIHH H B CO6CTBeHHOM CO3HaHHH HCKa3HJI B CBOerl XH3HeHHOA

TO, TO B MHpe 6HoJiorHeCKOM, B MHpe "6oiImoro pa3yMa," HMeeT rIaBHir CMCJI. )KH3Hb BHAa, KaK
OCHOBHO sIBjieHHe, XCH3HL oco6H, KaK aKgHAkeH9IH, KaK qacTHoe BbIpaxeHHe. POCT BHAOBOrO CaMOCO3HBHHm eCTL

fpaiKTHKe

npoilecc B03BpaIMeHHR CO3HaHHA K 6HOJIOTHteCKOA nOACO3HaTeJIbHOir HCTHHe. KOHe'HO, AeJIO 3geCL
HOHAeT He o CaMooTpeCeHHH JIHMHOCTH, He o BO3Bpame4HHH K pa6cTBy ee 11o OTHOmeHHIO K BHAOBbIM HHCTHHKTraM,
HO 0 rapmoHHweCKOM CJIHKHHH, 0 BWCOKOA 3CTeTHKe )KH3HH, KOTOPaA HayHT JIH"HOCTh BiuIe Bcero ixeHHTb
BeJIHKHA

BHAa, KaK iienoro H HayqHT BMeCTe C TeM TON HCTHHe, TO HMeHHO TaKOA
MOLgHEAI, KpaCHBE H c'aCTJIHBblri, B rOCTOSHHOfi 6opb6e 3a HOByIO MOIJL pa3BepTBaiOIMHCA BHA H BbIBKBcTCM
pa3BHTHe MOI9H, KpaCOTLI H CGaCT6

B CaMmX ripexpacHix oco6x>. Lunacharskii's emphasis.
502

Aleksandr Bogdanov, "Red Star," Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, Loren R. Graham, Richard
Stites, and

Charles Rougle, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984).

274

at the face of imminent death since only the products of spirit could withstand it.sO3 When
removed from the Proletkul't politics and subsequently from university teaching in 1926,
Bogdanov founded the Blood Transfusion Institute in Moscow, where he planned to find a
remedy that would save people from aging and death.504 Although according to Bogdanov's
wife, several experiments with blood transfusion to which he subjected himself made him look
and feel much younger, the research came to a tragic end when Bogdanov died after exchanging
blood with a student who had suffered from both malaria and tuberculosis.
Having overcome death, the (berhobo became the God. By the time of Gorky and
Lunacharsky, the concept of a deified human was not a new idea in Russia: the term
chelovekobog [man-god] had already been introduced in 1847 by a left radical Nikolai
Speshnev. 505 Playing with term bogochelovek [god-man], a traditional Orthodox designation of
Jesus

Christ,

anthropotheism.

Speshnev
506

suggested

replacing

Christianity

with

a

new

religion

of

But it was Fedor Dostoevsky, a member of the same radical Petrashevskii

circle as Speshnev, who popularized the concept among a much broader audience in Besy [The
Demons, 1872] and Brat'ia Karamazovy [The Brothers Karamazov, 1880] before Nietzsche's
Also sprach Zarathustra [Thus Spoke Zarathustra],which was written in 1883-1885. Kirillov,
Likewise, Russian philosophy of "cosmism" paid much attention to the question of death and afterlife: Nikolai F.
Fedorov (1829-1903) developed a theory of physical resuscitation of the death, while the inventor and forerunner of
cosmonautics Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii (1857-1935) believed that the humanity is destined to conquer the
universe, spreading life on other planets.
503

504

The institute still exists today as the Hematologic Research Center of the Russian Ministry of Health.

See Nel Grillaert, What the God-seekers found in Nietzsche: the reception of Neitzche's Obermensch by the
philosophersof the Russian religious renaissance(Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2008) 109-112.
505

506

Speshnev, Nikolai Aleksandrovich [1847], "Pis'ma k K. E. Khoetskomu" ["Letters to K. E. Khoetskii"],

Filosofskie i obschestvenno-politicheskie proizvedeniia Petrashevtsev [Philosophic and social-political works of

petrashevtsy], V. E. Evgrafov, ed. (Moskva: Gospolitizdat, 1953) 477-502.

275

the protagonist of The Demons, wanted to show that the way to become a god is to overcome the
fear of death:
Then there will be a new life, a new human, everything will be new... then they will
divide history into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the
annihilation of God... to the transformation of the earth and of man physically. The
human will be god, and will be physically transformed. And the world will be
transformed, and things will be transformed, and thoughts and all feelings.5
Drawing on Dostoevsky, Russian religious philosophers of the "Silver age" (at the turn of
the twentieth century) developed their notion of bogoiskatel'stvo [god-seeking]. As Berdyaev
argued in "Russkie bogoiskateli" ["Russian God-Seekers," 1907], god-seeking went through the
most of the nineteenth-century Russian philosophy and literature, reflecting the irrationality and
transcendentalism of the Russian soul and its tragic spirit, which was "rebellious and hostile to
everything philistine."5 08 If more Orthodox god-seekers (Florenskii, Bulgakov) were building
their theories upon the teachings of the Church Fathers, the modernizers (Merezhkovskii,
Berdyaev, Rozanov, Shestov) attempted to enrich Christianity with the ideas of Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. For Merezhkovskii, all previous Christian tradition had been
predicated on the dualism of flesh and spirit, whereas Dostoevsky's god-man, chelovekobog, and
Nietzsche's Obermensch (Merezhkovskii openly identified the two) showed the way to a new
synthesis.
Attracted as they were to the ideas of overcoming the dualism of flesh and spirit and of
deifying the human, socially oriented Collectivists such as Gorky and Lunacharskii found the
Fedor Dostoevskii, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 30ti tt. [Full collection of writings in 30 vols.], Vol. 10
(Leningrad: Nauka, 1972) 94; Quoted in Grillaert, 121.
507

Nikolai Berdiaev, "Russkie bogoiskateli" [,,Russian god-seekers"], Dukhovnyi krizis intelligentsii. Stat'i po
obschestvennoi i religioznoi psikhologii (1907-1909) [Spritual crisis of intelligentsia. Articles on social and
religiouspsychology] (St. Peterburg: Tipografiia tovarischestva "Obschestvennaia pol'za," 1910) 27-3 8 (29).
508

276

individualism

of

god-seekers

problematic.

In

their

philosophy

of

god-building

[bogostroitel'stvo], they enriched god-seeking with Marxism, socializing the former and
spiritualizing the latter. God cannot be found, claimed the God-builders, but can rather be built
by a collective effort of people. As only the collective subject can gain immortality and thus
become a true subject of history, not the individual, but the collective is the locus of divine spirit
and energy. Distancing themselves from narodniki (literally, peopleists; the socialist movement
that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, exalted the virtues of the peasant population of
Russia), the God-builders deified humanity biologically. "Yes, of the whole working people of
the earth, of all its strength-the one and eternal source of the creation of God. Soon the will of
the people will awake, and that great force, divided, will unite. Many are already seeking the
means by which all the powers of the earth shall be harmonized into one, and from which shall
be created the holy and beautiful all-embracing God of the earth," 5 09 writes Gorky through the
mouth of an old holy-fool Juna, who teaches Matvei, the protagonist of his novel Ispoved'
(Confession, 1908) the path from God-seeking to God-building. The novel ends with a mystical
scene of healing a paralyzed girl by the collective power of the people, united in the spiritual
ecstasy of their religious procession.
There was great excitement. They pushed the wagon, and the head of the young girl
rocked to and fro, helpless and without strength. Her large eyes gazed out with fear. Tens
of eyes poured their rays out upon her; hundreds of force streams crossed themselves
over her weak body, calling her to life with an imperious desire to see her rise from her
bed. ...
"Rise, dear one, rise. Lift your arms. Be not afraid. Arise, arise without fear. Sick one,
arise; dear one, lift your arms."
Hundreds of stars arose in her soul and a pink shadow lit up her death-like face, and her
surprised and happy eyes opened still wider. Her shoulders moved slowly and humbly
509

Maxim Gorky, The Confession. Trans. Rose Strunsky (New York: Frederick
A. Stokes Company, 1916) 210.
277

she raised her trembling arms and obediently held them up. Her mouth was open like a
fledgling's about to leave its nest for the first time. A deep sigh rose around her. As
though the earth were a copper bell, struck upon by a giant Sviatogor with all his
strength, the people trembled, and laughing cried...
"Walk!" the people cried. "Walk!" ...

The recovered girl walked quietl among us. Confidently she pressed her revived body
against the body of the people...
The deification of the collective by the God-builders not only elevated the collective to
the status of a transcendental, all-mighty, and super-human entity-a phenomenon described by
Le Bon yet condemned as illusory-but also reduced God to a function of evolution, making
Him parallel to Hartmann's das Uberbewusste and Freud's

Uber-ich.

Bogdanov and

Lunacharskii's reading of evolutionarism explains their transition from empiriocriticism with its
ideals of scientific rigor to a quasi-religious concept of God-building. Evolution was the truly
dynamic, transcendental and fundamental principle behind all human being, while science,
philosophy, art and religion were but some of the possible mechanisms of the human species'
evolutionary adaptation. Forming the subject of evolutionary process, it was the collective that
created the symbolic forms and that they ultimately had to address. The collective's life,
propagation, and expansion was, in the end, their sole purpose.

Organized Masses
The revolution brought not only a promise of new social order, but also a hope that the
new subject-the collective as man-god-would soon appear. However, unlike the one portrayed
in Gorky's Confession, the new Soviet collective subject did not emerge spontaneously, and

50

Gorky, The Confession, 288-290.
278

according to the former God-builders, especially to Lunacharskii, its birth required help and
mediation. In Tarde's terms, natural crowd needed to be organized in order to transform into an
artificial one. The latter received a new name-the collective-and a new, positive, ethical
assessment. As the agent of socialist society, only the collective had the power to resist the
remnants of the old order and to fight successfully for its survival against the dangers that
emerged both from within and from without.
While notion of the "collective" had been present in Russian political and cultural
discourse since the nineteenth century, the expression "organized masses" gained a primary
importance in Soviet discourse of art, architecture and politics towards the end of the 1920s,
when it became evident that the socialist revolution was not a consequence but rather the reason
for the emergence of the new subjectivity, without which its achievements could not last long.
The notions of organization and masses were already important in collectivism, which was based
on the idea of conscious and responsible organization of collective work and life. Thus,
Aleksandr Bogdanov's tectology, or "universal organization science"--the social theory based
on the principle of organization-claimed to operate with ideas and other products of the human
mind, which, in distinction to the disinterested philosophy, it used as a tool for the planning and
structuring of practical activity.51 ' First of all, organizational laws were to be applied to human
collectives-society and its various groups. Distinguishing a collective from a crowd or mass,
organization, according to Bogdanov, gave the collective power over the forces of history and
nature, allowing for a more economical and efficient distribution of energy and time:

511 Aleksandr Bogdanov,

seobshchaia organizatsionnaia nauka (tektologia) [General organizationalscience
(tectology)].Vol. 1 (Sankt-Peterburg: M. I. Semenov, 1913), Vol. 2 (Moskva: Kn-vo pisatelei v Moskve, 1917). Web.
2.6.2014. <http://www.litmir.net/br/?b=89656>.

279

Let the muscle strength of each worker be allowed to lift and move a rock that weighs no
more than 5 poods. Two can, of course, cope with a rock that weighs less than 10 poods,
because forces cannot be combined without loss, that is, without hindering each other:
this sum will always be less than a result of simple addition; for instance, it equals 9
poods. But in this case, for one worker a rock of 8 poods would be either an obstacle that
is absolutely impossible [to overcome], one that forces him to change the method of
work, that is, to spend a significant excessive amount of energy and to waste time, for
example by cutting the rock with a hammer or creating a lever to move it. A coordination
of the force of the two workers eliminates the unavoidability and necessity of changing
methods.5 12

According to Bogdanov, organization was for a collective the way of economy: the
economy of energy, resources and time. This idea was, of course, not new for Marxism and
actively used by other social-democrats from Chernyshevskii onwards,5 13 receiving a new
importance with the announcement of the First Five-Year Plan. It was, for instance, at the center
of Stalin's 1930 article "Organization of the Masses" ["Organizatsia mass"], in which he equated
the "organization" of the masses with their mobilization for the construction of an industrial
economy.514 The Stalinist collectivization of agricultural activity in 1930-1933 took place under
similar banners. In 1934, Nikolai Berdiaev, by then a Russian emigre in France, argued that the
masses entered the historical arena in times of crisis; these masses were "obsessed with
organization," which explained their propensity for dictatorship. Although dangerous, their
512

Bogdanov, Tektologia. Pood [pud] is an old Russian measure of weight that equals 16.38 kilograms (36.11

pounds). Translation by the author. Russian original: IHycTE MyCKyJ~bHS cHna Kaxzoro pa6oTHHKa BOTgeJI1HOCTH
HO3BOjiSCT eMy nOAHHTh H riepeTrauwm KaMeHL BeCOM B 5 nyAoB, HO He 6ojmme. Boe moryr CripaBHThCI C
KaMHeM, KoHe tIHo, He B 10 HyAOB, a MeHbIue, IOTOMy qTo KOM6HHHpOBaTh yCHHI He3Th3A 6e3 riOTepH, T. e. 6e3
HeKOTOpOA B3aHMHOik IOMeXH:

3Ta cyMMa

onycTHMv, oHa paBHa 9 Iy~aRM. B

OKaxeTCA MeHbune, mM pe3yJThTT npocToro CjiOKceHHA;
KaMCHe B 8 IyAOB AJIA OAHoro pa6oTHHKa npeACTBeT
JIH60 BIHyxAaioiiee K H3MeHCHHIO MeTOAa pa6oTI, 3Ha'HT, BO

BcerAa

TaKOM Cnyae

conpoTHBjieHHe nH60 Boo6II~e HenpeoAoJIHMoe,

BCAKOM cnyiae K 3HaqHTeJhHOii JIHMHeH 3aTpaTe 3HeprHH H noTepe BpeMeHH, HaHpM~ep Ha paCKaJhIBaHHe KaMHA
MOROTOM HIH Ha yCTpOECTBO pLIlara AnA ero nepeABHKeHHA. KoOpAHHaIIA cHn AByX pa6oTHHKoB ycTpaHeT
HenpeOAOnHMOCT

HRH Halo6HOCTL B H3MeHeHHH MeToAOB)>.

513 See Chernyshevskii, Chto delat'? [What is to be done?] (1867), multiple editions.
514 losif Stalin, "Organizatsia mass" ["The organization of the masses"], Pravda [The Truth], 1 July
1930. Web.
2.6.2014. <http://rt-online.ru/archiveold/279/10079212>.

280

organizations were unavoidable as they confronted the "segregated, individualistic, isolated life
of capitalist societies, in which homo homini lupus est, in which everyone thinks only about
himself.""'
According to the former collectivists who gathered around Lunacharskii and the
Narkompros, as a means of converting a crowd into a collective, organization was the
evolutionary mission and social task of a true proletarian art. As early as 1920, Lunacharkii
defined "organized masses" as the collective subject of the new art. Speaking of the mass
processions that were to become the major genre of revolutionary art, a genre whose ultimate
product was the new transindividual subject that emerged in the act of a collective participation
in an activity, Lunacharskii's revived the logics of Gorky's Confession:
In order for the masses to make themselves felt, they must outwardly manifest
themselves, and this is possible only when, to use Robespierre's phrase, they are their
own spectacle. If organized masses march to music, sing in unison or perform some
extensive gymnastic manoeuvres or dances, in other words, organize a kind of parade,
then those other, unorganized masses clustering round on all sides of the streets and
squares where the festival takes place, will merge with the organized masses, and thus,
one can say: the whole people manifests its soul to itself. 516
Out of separate individuals, there emerged one supra-human subject, the people [narod]. This
transindividual subject was far from being a heterogeneous crowd: on the contrary, in it,
individuals, acting in a full concordance with each other, were transformed into organs of the

Nikolai Berdiaev, Sud'ba cheloveka v sovremennom mire. K ponimaniiu nashei epokhi.
Paris: YMCA-Press,
1934 [The Fate of a Human in Contemporary World. To an Understanding of Our Epoque]. Web. 2.5.2014.
<http://krotov.info/library/02_b/berdyaev/1934_32_01.html>.
515

516 Aleksandr Lunacharskii, "0 narodnykh prazdnenstvakh" ["On popular celebrations"], Vestnik teatra [Theater
courier] No.62 (1920). Reprinted at Lunacharskiio massovykh prazdenstvakh, estrade, tsirke [Lunacharskiion mass
celebrations, variety, circus] (Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1981) 84-89 (85). Partial English translation: "On popular
festivals," Street Art of the Revolution. Festivals and Celebrations in Russia, 1918-1933. Eds. Vladimir Tolstoy,
Irina Bibikova, Catherine Cooke (The Vendome Press, 1990) 124. Lunacharskii's emphasis.
281

same collective body. Moreover, the new subject possessed its own soul (the festival, according
to Lunacharskii, allowed the entire people to "manifest its soul to itself' [ves' narod
demonstriruet sam pered soboi svoiu dushu]). This soul, like the unconscious species logic of
Hartmann and other Darwinist aesthetic thinkers, manifested itself through an instinctive
obedience to the same logic of collective interest.
The concept of the mass festival, which Lunacharskii and his associates developed
around 1920, became a technology of awakening the collective consciousness in individuals, of
making them realize their belonging to each other and through that-of creating the collective
super-individual subject. Alongside the transformation of a crowd into a collective, this
organization transformed celebration into an art form:
Many believe that collective creativity presupposes a certain spontaneous, independent
expression of the will of the masses; however, until social life teaches people a certain
instinctive obedience to a higher order and rhythm, one cannot expect that a crowd would
produce anything but a merry noise and the colorful vibration of people in holiday dress.
A true holiday has to be organized, as everything else that has a tendency to produce a
highly aesthetic impression. 517
By participating in the same collective performance-a performance that had to be both beautiful
and captivating-the masses were forced to fathom the enormous potential that losing oneself in
a collective body entailed. This body, according to Lunacharsky, possessed such an attractive

Aleksandr Lunacharskii, "0 narodnykh prazdnenstvakh" ["On popular celebrations"] (Reprinted at Lunacharskii
o massovykh prazdenstvakh, estrade, tsirke), 85. Translation by the author. Russian original: (MHorHM KaxeTCi,
qTO KOxieKTHBHOe TBoptecTBo pa3ymeeT HeKOTOpOe CHOHTaHHOe, CaMOCTORTebHOe BSBieHHe BOJIH MaCC, MeK(Ay
TeM 9O Tex HOp, nOKa COIAHJlhbHaA )KH3H He IpHyIrT MaCCL K KaKOMy-TO CBoeo6pa3HOMy HHCTHHKTHBHOMY
517

co6moAeHMO iBHacIaero nhOpAKa H pHTma, HHKaK HeJm3q xaT, -To6u Tojnna caMa no ce6e morna co3Amib 'TOHH6yAb, KpoMe Becenoro myma H necTporo Konie6aHHA npa3AHHHO pa33AoTix moAei.
HacTosuwii

npa3AHHK AOn;KeH 6Mmi

OpraHH3OBaH, KaK Bce Ha cBeTe, ITO HMeeT TeHAeHIIHIO hpOH3BeCTH BLCOKO-

3cTeTH'IecKoe Ble'IaTieHHe>>.

282

power that, having seen it, an individual could no longer remain in isolation and was happy to
surrender his or her independent existence to melt in this beautiful superhuman entity. A mass
festival taught people to admire the collective body and its superhuman power and beauty, and to
be proud of their new, limited, cell-like function within it while realizing its importance for the
wellbeing of the collective.
518
In 1920, Lunacharskii himself devised a general design for Soviet mass celebrations.

According to this project, these celebrations were to be divided into two parts. The first, mass
procession, presupposed "the movement of the masses from suburbs to a common center, or-if
there are too many [people]-to two or three centers, in which a central action, such as a lofty
symbolic ceremony, takes place." This ceremony could take a form of a "performance,
grandiose, decorative, with fireworks, satirical or solemn; this can be some burning of enemy's
emblems etc., accompanied by choral singing, concerted and extremely polyphonic music,
bearing a character of a celebration in the true meaning of this word." During these processions,
both urban decorations (such as specially constructed arches) and moving masses had to present
a spectacle. After enjoying the performance at a city square, as Lunacharskii specified in 1925,
the mass collectively performed a specifically composed cantata or "The International," which
would "allow the mass to feel its might and unity." 5 19 The second part was a more intimate
festivity in smaller groups engaged in revolutionary speeches, political caricatures and satire, in
which everyone could take an active part, as well as collective singing and dancing in city
squares and streets. The festive spirit during this second part of the celebration was to be fostered

518

Lunacharskii, "On popular festivals," 124.

519

Lunacharskii, "On popular festivals," 124. Lunacharskii's emphasis.

283

by professional and amateur actors dissipated throughout the city.520 Lunacharskii juxtaposed the
"segregated" [razdroblennyi] character of the second part to the "mass organized" character of
the first, comparing the celebration to a "large wave of people, which will flow from the
faubourgs to the heart [of the city], then break into many bigger and smaller whirlpools."521 if
the first part of the celebration made the participants feel (that is, experience unconsciously) their
belonging to the collective with its might and power, the second part allowed them to improve
their personalities as elements of the collective body, fostering their understanding (conscious
knowledge) of this body's anatomy and their personal function within it.
Immediately preceding the publication of Lunacharskii's article, the Section of Mass
Performances and Spectacles of the Theatrical Department of Narkompros, obviously following
the ideas of the commissariat, developed a proposal for the organization of May Day festivities
in Moscow. The Section suggested "to work out a magnificent drama in which the whole city
would be the stage and the entire proletarian masses of Moscow-the performers." 522 Rejecting
initial proposals to base the festival on the myth of Prometheus or another topic "alien to the
proletarian culture," it adopted the proposal of Aleksei Gan, one of the future leaders of
520

Lunacharskii, "0 narodnykh prazdnenstvakh," Lunacharskiio massovykh prazdenstvakh, estrade, tsirke, 86.

Lunacharskii, "0 narodnykh prazdnenstvakh," Lunacharskii o massovykh prazdenstvakh, estrade, tsirke, 86.
Translation by the author. Russian original: "orpOMHA HapOAa BOJIHa, KOTOpaA c ripeAmecTi ipHXJIMHeT
CHatiajia K cepAgy, HOTOM pa3o6becs Ha MHO)KecTBo 6ojiee KpyIIHEX H MeJIKHX KpyroBOpOToB
.

521

522 Sektsia teatral'nykh predstavlenii i zrelishch teatral'nogo otdela Narkomprosa [Section of
Theater Performances

and Spectacles of Theater Department of Narkompros], "Plan organizatsii pervomaiskikh torzhestv na ulitsakh
Moskvy" ["Plan of Organization of First of May Celebrations on the Streets of Moscow"], Vestnik Teatra [Theater

Review] No. 51 (February 1920): 5-8. Reprinted in I. M. Bibikova, Vladimir P. Tolstoi, and N I. Levchenko,
Agitat 1onno-massovoe iskusstvo, oformlenie prazdnestv [Mass-AgitationalArt and the Decoration of Celebrations]
(Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1984) 101-103. English translation: "A proposal for the organization of the May Day festivities
on the streets of Moscow, drawn up by the Section of Mass Performances and Spectacles of the Theatrical
Department of the Commissariat for Education, Narkompros, published in the journal Theater Courier," Street Art
of the Revolution, 124-126.

284

Constructivism, to stage the history of the three Internationals.523 The decoration of the city had
to "imagine the Communist city of the future." Early in the morning, a loud siren was to sound
from Vorob'ovy Hills (the space subsequently designated for the upper bank-part of the Central
Park of Culture and Leisure), echoed by factory horns all around the city. The siren signaled to
cavalry, motor-cycles, and vehicles to leave their seventeen outposts and move toward district
squares, calling people into the streets. On the district squares, they were met by "agitation
collectives" who "drew them into active participation in the festival." The act of the First
International followed. Upon its completion, the masses started their movement towards the
center of Moscow, passing through streets and squares renamed and symbolically decorated after
sciences and arts: Geography Square with a huge globe painted in red to symbolize the world
revolution, Astronomy Square, the Square of Political Economy. The Second International was
to be celebrated in the center of the city. Finally, the masses moved towards the field of the
International, where the collapse of the Second and the emergence of the Third International
were staged.
For Gan, "the essence of the productive [deistvennoi] activity of the masses lays not in
play, but in the serious striving of the class for action in the dynamic medium of a giant
collective, reacting to the current political moment emotionally."

24 However,

his suggestion that

The Theatrical Department of the Commissariat for Education, Narkompros, "A proposal for the organization of
the May Day festivities," 125.
523

Aleksei Gan, "Chto takoe konstruktivizm?" ["What is Constructivism?"], Sovremennaia arkhitektura
[Contemporary Architecture] No.3 (1928): 79. Translation by the author. Russian original: VCyIHOCTh 3TOH
AercTBeHHoH aKTHBHOCTH MaCc 3aKJomqaJICb He B uzpe, a B CepLe3HOi yCTaHOBKe Knacca Ha defCmeo KaK Ha
524

aKTHBHoe

CpeACTBo

OrpOMHoro

KojmeKTHBa,

pearHpyioumero

Ha

TeKyIAHA

riojiHTHteCKHf

MoMeHT-

In her recent thourough formal analysis of the festival proposal and Gan's other work on street
celebrations, Kristin Romberg, rightly pointing at many important notions used by Gan (for example, in her analysis
of Gan's usage of the collective pronoun "we" or the concept of creativity), stopped short of identifying their
collectivist roots (See, Kristin Romberg, "Critical Masses: Mass Action and the Origins of Russian Constructivism,"
3Mo4HoHaJ1bHo)).

285

a festival offered the means for an emotional
unification

of the

people

did

not

exclude

consciousness from this unifying act. On the
contrary, his project offered ways of establishing a
dialectics of the unconscious and the conscious, a
dialectics

in

which

unconscious

physical

movements served asa the means of awakening
consciousness of one's moving body and political
attitudes. Such techniques placing obstacles on the
way of the procession, arranging the crowd into
Fig.4.3. Moscow workers carrying a
prototype model of workers' housing during a

demonstration, between 1927 and 1931.

organized columns, and ascending steps and slopes
prompted the masses "involuntarily"to

overcome

their passivity. Reminiscent of Viktor Shklovskii's concept of estrangement, which postulated
that the perception of true art was difficult, defying easy gratification and requiring an
overcoming of the resistance of the object, the demonstrating columns had to pause on their way
to pay attention to obstacles. Their consciousness was unconsciously awakened, and from the
state of "passive contemplation" they moved to that of "active participation," transforming
themselves from "spectators" to "performers."

chapter in Aleksei Gan's Constructivism, 1917-1928. Diss. Columbia University, 2010, 9-94, in particular, section
"May Day, 1920: A Formal Analysis," 52-79). What the passage in fact declared was Gan's adherence to the
collectivists' version of Darwinism: it asserted the festival as a serious and active work (a work that is, in a Marxist
sense, was opposed to idleness), in which the collective subject was born unconsciously, following the instinctive
mechanisms of the species' logic.
286

It remains unclear from Gan's proposal whether or not he envisioned the second,
"segregated," part of the celebration proposed by Lunacharskii. Perhaps, since it was less
organized and more spontaneous, the second part remained outside the Section's artistic control.
Nevertheless, it is significant that the Section's proposal did not mention this part, which
would-in spite of Lunacharskii's reiteration of its importance in 1925-disappear from the
scenarios of mass celebrations towards the end of the 1920s.5 25 In fact, the emergence of the Park
of Culture and Leisure as a novel type of urban space-a space designed to absorb and host the
entire population of the city-marked precisely the moment of disillusionment in the idea of
"segregated," spontaneous and non-censored celebrations and discussions. Moreover, this
disillusion was paralleled by a simultaneous disappearance of other architectural types that
enabled group gatherings: in the early 1930s, for example, the famous avant-garde workers'
clubs, with their small spaces for debates and discussions, were replaced with "palaces of
culture" with large halls that seated thousands of spectators. If in Lunacharskii's project the
whole city was to be transformed and activated by celebration, which lacked a single center and
which both started and finished in residential neighborhoods, shortly afterwards the situation
dramatically changed and the festivity became focused around a central point. It was this role of
the celebration's focal point that the Park of Culture and Leisure was to play.
The park's program was developed with the active participation of both Lunacharskii and
Gorky, who ensured that it bore a strong impact of their collectivist ideas, most importantly, the
of notion of the collective subject. In 1929, the park received a new director, Lunacharskii's

Lunacharskii, "K uchastiiu v prazdnike privlech' massy" ["To attract the masses to the participation in the
celebration"], Sputnik agitatorNo.18 (1925): 37-39. Reprinted at: Lunacharskiio massovykh prazdnenstvakh, 122125.
525

287

proteg6 Betti Nikolaevna Glan (1904-1992), a twenty-five-year-old woman who already had the
experience of leading one of the largest Moscow workers' clubs and participating in the
executive committee of the Young Communist International.

26

Young, energetic and

enthusiastic, "a person of a Komsomol stuff, who could inspire people and raise them for a large
work," Glan herself seemed to embody Lunacharskii's ideal of a new person.52 7 Her particular
task was developing the concept of the Park as the major venue for mass festivities and
celebrations in Moscow. The art of mass celebrations, the importance of which somewhat
diminished during the NEP years, was again remembered with the announcement of the First
Born and educated in Kiev (now Ukraine)-the native city of Lunacharskii-Glan was a daughter a food
company director who came from a working background. Her parents put a great emphasis on their children's
education, including music and arts. In 1918-19 she started a theater studio in her high school, visiting and staging
performances and inviting actors to meetings. In 1920, at the age of sixteen, she was noticed by Lunacharskii, who
invited her to join his team in Narkompros due to her excellent knowledge of French and German. Having moved to
Moscow in the fall of 1920, Glan was made the executive secretary of the Chief Committee of Arts [glavnyi
khudozhestvennyi komitet] and continued her studies at the French Department of the Higher Courses of Foreign
Languages. Lunacharskii occupied a paternal position in relationship to her, frequently inquiring about her progress
and life. Since 1921, Glan headed the workers' club at Factory No. 1 (later renamed into Znamia Truda, "The
Banner of Labor") and subsequently the youth club of Krasnopresnenkii district committee of the Communist Youth
International. She graduated from the International Department of Moscow State University in 1925. In March 1929,
unexpectedly for her, Glan was "sent" to the Park. In the position of the park's director, the twenty-five-year-old
performed the function of Lunacharskii's agent, responsible for furthering his ideas and implementing them within
the park. When in May 1929 Lunacharskii contacted Glan about the Park of culture and leisure, he was no longer a
mentor, "under whose influence crystallized my worldview and my life principles," but rather a "theoretical and
practical instructor in an endeavor for which, as it seemed to me, I had been internally preparing [myself] for years."
(Betti Glan, Prazdnikvsegda s nami [Festivity is always with us] (Moskva: Soiuz teatral'nykh deiatelei, 1988) 26).
526

5 Mikhail Korzhev, "Doklad o tvorcheskom puti parkovogo arkhitektora, chlena SSA i chlena sektsii ozelenenia
goroda Moskvy Prokhorovoi Militsy Ivanovny" ["Report on the professional path of a landscape architect, member
of Soviet Union of Architects and a member of the Section of Greening of the city of Moscow Militsa Ivanovna
Prokhorova"] March 1960, page 8. Unpublished manuscript. Archive of A.V. Shchusev State Museum of
Architecture, Moscow. Glan's cheerfulness underwent a hard test of life: in 1932, her brother Iakov Il'in, a
prominent Soviet writer and the chief editor of Komsomol newspaper Komsomol'skaia Pravda, died of tuberculosis
at the age of twenty seven; in the early 1930s, her two children died of a sun-stroke received on a Sochi beach; in
1937 Glan's husband Milan Gorkid, the head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
between 1932 and 1937, was executed, while she herself was subjected to repression. Rehabilitated after the death of
Stalin, in 1955 she returned to work at the Union of Composers of the USSR, All-Russian Theatrical Society, and
the Union of Theatrical Workers of the RSFSR. In 1988 Glan published her memoirs, Festivity is always with us
[Prazdnikvsegda s nami].

288

Five-Year Plan, which both economically and symbolically revived the spirit of the War
Communism. 528 According to one of its proponents, the mass celebrations possessed a potential
for becoming "the most grandiose, synthetic, monumental of arts; the most powerful weapon of
political education of the masses, [of] charging them with the enthusiasm of construction, a
means of overcoming individual psychology" that allowed for the "involved enthusiasm" of
people. 529 The first principle of this synthetic art of the future was its monumentality: the
sensation of power, might, and grandiosity manifested in increased size, number, and volume.
Mass celebrations were to bring together artists of various specializations: decorators of streets
and squares, designers of costumes and banners, makers of movable platforms, installations, and
dolls, directors of performances and pantomimes, music directors, musicians and theater and
circus actors.
If in the early 1920s the artistic organization of revolutionary processions and festivities
focused on static decorations of streets and squares, now the emphasis shifted to performance:
banners, costumes, and movable objects (such as puppet figures and theatrical installations) were
paraded through the streets of the city.530 A number of art collectives and institutions took the
War Communism [voennyi kommunism], a period in early-Soviet history that coincided with the Civil War
(1918-1921) and was characterized by the nationalization of significant part of production, reduction of monetary
exchange, forced expropriation of agricultural products from peasantry, limitations on private trade. With the end of
the Civil War, the radical politics of the War Communism was replaced with a relatively liberal New Economic
Policy (1921-1928).
528

L. Roshchin, "Iskusstvo massovykh prazdnenstv. Revoliutsionnoe v iskusstve" [,,Art of mass celebrations.
Revolutionary in art"], Iskusstvo v massy [Art to the masses] No. 5-6 (1929): 25-30 (26, 28). Translation by the
author. Russian original: ... qTo6M CTaT CaMMM rpaHgHo3HUM, CHHTeTHqeCKHM, MoHyMeHTJhHMm H3 HcKyccTB;
caMmM MoUiHMM OpyAHeM UoaHTH'iecKoro BOCrHTaHHA MaCC, 3apIKH HX 3HTy3Ha3MOM CTpOHTereACTBa, CpeACTBOM
rpeooneHHA HHAHBHAyaHCTieCKOiR ncHxoJiorHH.
129

5

B. Zemenkov, Oformlenie sovetskikh karnavalov i demonstratsii. Metodicheskoe posobie dlia izo-kruzhkov

goroda i derevni [Design of Soviet carnivals and demonstrations. Workbook for art-groups of town and village].
(Moskva: Khudozhestvennoe izdatel'skoe akts.

o-vo AKhR, 1930) 8.
289

responsibility for developing the principles of these objects' design and constructing their first
examples. At VKhUTEIN, the Theater-Decoration Sector [teatral'no-dekorativnoeotdelenie] of
Painting Department, headed by artist Isaak Rabinovich, was by the late-1920s renamed as the
Decoration Sector to reflect its new task, which now went beyond the design of stage-sets and
included the entirety of work on the organization of mass spectacles and parades."' Another
major center of festival design was Izofabrika [art factory] at the Central Park of Culture and
Leisure, which employed many graduates of VKhUTEIN's Decoration Sector and designed not
only festival decorations, but also large- and small-scale puppets and sculptural groups for the
Park; in order to help other artists to learn about the subject, Izofabrika opened a museum (which
remained, however, small and underfinanced) devoted to the design of mass processions and
festivals.

32

The Art Sector of APU (Arkhitekturno-planirovochnoe upravlenie, Architectural-

Planning Office [of the city of Moscow]) was another organization involved into the work on the
design of parades and celebrations. Finally, in Leningrad, similar functions were performed by

531

Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov,

Vkhutemas: 1920-1930: Tekstil', Skul'ptura, Zhivopis' Grafika, Keramika, Metall,

Derevo, Arkhitektura [ VKhUTEMAS: 1920-1930: Textile, Sculpture, Painting, GraphicArt, Ceramics, Metal, Wood,
Architecture]. In 2 vols. Vol. 2 (Moskva: Lad'ia, 1995) 266. Among his students were important festival designers
Ariadna (Ada) Solomonovna Magidson (1906-1981), Nadezhda Solomonovna Starodub (1902-?), and Flora
Tigranovna Sevortian (1904-1978).
A. Kuznetsova, A. Magidson, Iu. Shchukin, Oformlenie goroda v dni revoliutsionnykh prazdenstv [Decorationof
a city during revolutionary holidays] (Moskva-Leningrad: OGIZ-Izogiz, 1932) 118-119.
532

290

Figs.4.4-4.5. Nazi and Nepmen, Izofabrika of Central Park of Culture and Leisure (TsPKiO). TsPKiO, c.1931 (?).
Photographs by Branson DeCou.

the artists of Izoram [Izo rabochei molodezhi, Art of Working Youth], an amateur art
organization of Komsomol (Communist Youth).53 3 The first chief artist of the park was the
Hungarian Bela Uitz, who substantiated mass carnivals and celebrations as a socialist alternative
to the capitalist program of a Luna-park.
The core of the mass procession was formed by moving platforms with installations and
theatrical pantomimes. According to one of the new art's theoreticians, the performances had to
be "a short, quick grotesque-with eccentrics, clownery, dances, topical song. A kaleidoscope of
mummies of social-democratic opportunism, the degenerates of capitalism and the wastes of our
everyday life-this is what a demonstration needs."5 35 The procession celebrating the opening of
the Central Park of Culture and Rest in 1929, for instance, featured 54 trucks with theatrical
platforms that moved through Red Square and other parts of Moscow. Staged by a group of

53

See Ivan Matsa, LeningradskiiIzoram [Leningrad Izoram] (Moskva-Leningrad: OGIZ-Izogiz, 1932).

534 A. Antonov, "Pochemy Bela Uitz proletarskii khudozhnik" ["Why Bela Uitz is a proletarian artist"], Iskusstvo v
massy [Art to the Masses] No. 6 (1930): 5-9.
535

K., "My vyzyvaem!" ["We challenge!"], Iskusstvo v massy [Art to the Masses] No. 5-6 (1929): 22-24 (23).

291

theater directors under the guidance of
Sergei Radlov,536 all the pantomimes
illustrated the motto "The Soviet Union
is the stronghold of world revolution."

An
caricature,
installations
comically
Fig. 4.6. Colonized India. Installation by E. I. Kheifetz
paraded through the streets of Moscow, 1929.

of

analog
the
and

newspaper
of

these

pantomimes

were

figures

distorted

in

form

and

possessed exaggerated, stylized features,

always painted in bright and contrasting colors. If represented by actors, the latter had to be "on
stilts, with an unnaturally enlarged figure, with a characteristic mask on the face, with a thunderlike voice."5 37 The message of these pantomimes and installations had to be simple and
immediately accessible to audience, which often had only a few minutes to appreciate them and
frequently viewed them from a distance. Reductionism, abstraction and simplicity-justified by
the laws and conditions of perception in the same way as they were by proponents of abstract
art-became the principles of the mass celebrations art of the late 1920s, whose products,
indeed, often resembled Cubist sculpture of the previous decade. Allegorical figures and dolls,
depicting an easily recognizable, usually negative character-a drunkard, an American capitalist,
Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek or Polish marshal J6zef Pilsudski-had to provoke an
unequivocal emotional reaction. Even when mocking up a real person, figures and masks
536

Sergei Ernestovich Radlov (1892-1958) worked at the Petrograd section of Narkompros in 1918-1919, afterwards

headed several experimental theaters.
537

K., "My vyzyvaem!", 22.
292

avoided details and attempts at portrait resemblance. Instead, they offered a symbolic
representation of the vice associated with the person, which was presented as a social type. 538
The exaggerated, caricature-like puppets precluded the possibility of uncannyness, which
German turn-of-the-century psychologist Ernst Jentsch and, to a certain extent Freud, connected
with animated automations and wax figures, which made the viewer doubt whether they were in
fact animate or lifeless.539 Presenting no enigma, the figures paraded during Soviet
demonstrations were unambiguous about their origin and meaning.

Figs. 4.7-4.8. American Pork King and Bureacrat,VKhUTEIN, c.1929.

538

Zemenkov, 68.

See Ernst Jentsch, Zur Psychologie Des Unheimlichen, Halle a.S, 1906; Sigmund Freud, ,,Das Unheimliche,"
Imago. ZeitschriftfirAnwendung der Psychoanalyse auf die Geisteswissenschaften V (1919), 297-324, translated
into English as "The Uncanny," The StandardEdition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
XVII. Ed. and transl. James Strachey et al. (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1955)
218-252.
539

293

In an almost Constructivist spirit, the materials used for these figures were often exposed:
plaster or wood for heads, tin, metal and veneer for bodies and clothing, bast for hair. Take, for
instance, "American Pork King," created by VKhUTEIN students of the Decorative Sector under
the direction of Rabinovich for a carnival in the Park of Culture and Leisure in 1929: composed
of plaster (head), veneer (cylinder), fabric (frock), bronzed rope (watch chain), it had a pig's
snout instead of a nose, pig's-like ears, and a moustache resembling a hog's canines. Often, not
only unexpected materials but ready-made objects were used for the figures, augmenting the
comical effect. A "Bureaucrat," also prepared by Rabinovich's students at the same time, was
assembled of real and stylized "tools" of his work: folders made up his hair, a pen symbolized
the nose, and inkwells served as eyes. Resembling costumes made for the Bauhaus costume
parties, such as the "Metallic Party" in Dessau in 1928, where the guests came "dressed" in
various metallic objects, VKhUTEIN figures and their costumes-as well as carnival costumes
made by the participants of Soviet carnival factory and club parties-mixed the aesthetics of
Dadaism with that of lubok (Russian popular prints).540 Moreover, often the figures and
installations depicted not people, but allegories (France as a pretty woman dancing on the backs
of slaves), abstract notions (bureaucracy) or objects, such as the primus stove paraded through
Moscow in 1925 when the primus stove factory Krasnogvardeets presented a giant model of its
product topped with a frying pan, on which a Polish nobleman sat, and as soon as the worker at
'

the bottom pumped air, the doll "in panic, made most humorous jumps." 54

More on the "Metallic Party" see Juliet Koss, "Bauhaus Theater of Human Dolls," The Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No.
4 (Dec., 2003): 724-745 (739).
540

541

Zemenkov, 75.
294

For all their modernism, these figures appealed to,
or even encouraged and stimulated, the "feminine" qualities
of crowd psychology as

distinguished by Le Bon:

exaggerated emotionality, thinking in images rather than
concepts, the polarity of feelings, and a propensity for
illusions and fantasies. They, too, reflected collectivism's
reversal of crowd psychology assessment. Indeed, for Glan,
a celebration had to convince one of the advantages of
socialism not by logical reasoning, but by a "cheerful and
Fig.4.9.VKhUTEIN, Worker. Tin

joyful organization of pastime"

installation, before 1932.

a collective emotional

experience.542 Lunacharskii, as well, listed these "feminine" qualities as the methods of a true
art-an art that affects its viewers through vivid, exciting images:
But art impacts the behavior of a person precisely when it speaks with images, and it
seems that you are affected by an extremely bright piece of real life. At the same time,
the language of images has a powerful effect only if it is not torn away from reality. The
more evident the subjective, the individualistic, the lesser is the value of artwork. ...
Originality must lie in that, in an artwork, objective images drawn from life become
overgrown with lyrics and [start to] dictate to the person a particular behavior,
emotionally exciting him [or her]. ... [Satire] charges, makes [one] act, but not by means
of persuasion, through logics, but rather by immediately affecting feelings.
Betti Glan, "Za sotsialisticheskii park" ["For a socialist park"], Za Sotsialisticheskii Park: Obzor Proektov
General'nogo Plana Tsentral'nogoParka Kul'tury I Otdykha Mossoveta [For a socialistpark: a review ofprojects
for the general layout of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure of Mossovet], ed. Betti Glan (Moskva: Izd-vo
Mosoblispolkoma, 1932): 7-20 (14).
542

Anatolii Lunacharskii, Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogo povedenia [Art as a type of human behavior]
(Leningrad-Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe meditsinskoe izdatel'stvo, 1930) 26. Translation by the author. Russian
eOBeAeHHe qeJIOBeKa HMeHHO TOTga, Korga OHO TOBOPHT o6pa3aMH, H
original: H4o HCKYCCTBO ACNCTByeT Ha
KaKeTCA, HTO Ha BaC BO3eCcTByeT HeoftMaHHO ApKHH KYCOK peaJlbHOH )KH3HH. fIpH 3TOM o6pa3HbIH A3MK
BO3geACTByCT MO1IHO JIUlIb B TOM CJIy-ae, eCJIH He OTpbIBaeTCA OT gerCTBHTeJIbHOCTH. '-kM BHAHee cy6'beKTHBHoe,
5

HH9HBHAyaJIHCTaPeCKOe, TeM MeHblIe IIeHHOCTb HpOH3BeAeHHI. ... OpHrHHaJIbHOCTh AOJIWHa 3aKJlO'aTbCA B TOM,

'qTO6M

B XygO2KeCTBeHHOM

HPOH3BejeHHH o61'eKTHBHme o6pa3M, noqepHHyTMe

295

H3

XCH3HH, o6pOCJIH

JIHpHKOH H

Easy to dismiss as kitsch, these
figures

installations

and

nevertheless

possessed an important function in the
program of building a modernist society in
the

USSR.

Operating

as

analogs

of

contemporary mass media, they educated the
working population in recent political events
and taught them the basics of healthy lifestyle

Fig. 4.10. Sculptural group "Hooligans" and its

audience at TsPKiO, 1931-1932.

and work attitudes. Even if this education and

this information served as propaganda intended to produce loyal and obedient subjects, it
allowed to "activate" people, making them feel engaged in the life of the country and enabling
them to understand the strategic purpose and significance of their work. It allowed the workers to
overcome the alienation from the results of their labor-even if that overcoming could be called
a mere illusion. 4 4 The activated worker could feel him- or herself a master in the country,
experiencing a sense of collectivity and comradeship with those who were on the same side of
the "barricade" erected by the festival's designers. The unorganized masses, in other words, were
transformed into the organized.

AHKTOBaJIH meJloBeKy onpegeaeHHoe HOBeAeHHe,

BOJIHyA

geHCTBOBaTb, HO ToJIbKO He y6exiaiouxee, tiepe3 norHKy,

ero

3MOIUHOHaiibHo.

CaTHpa...

3apDKaeT, 3acTaBJIieT

a HenoCpe)cTBeHHbIM Bo3ger4cTBHeM Ha iyBcTBa ).

544 Indeed, equally illusive (in other words, abstract) is the very concept of alienation, which is based on the idea of
psychological satisfaction of the worker who possesses the results of his or her labor.

296

Mass processions, festivals and exhibitions of allegoric figures in the Park of Culture and
Leisure were soon supplemented with another type of spectacle-a grandiose performance
viewed by tens of thousands of spectators-whose concept was developed by Betti Glan in the
course of discussions with Maxim Gorky and other members of the former collectivists' circle.
One of these discussions took place during a dinner at Gorky's house in 1934, where the guests,
apart from Glan, included writer Aleksei Tolstoi and theater actor Boris Livanov. The
conversation at the table moved to the necessity of developing a method for the emerging genre
of mass theater, destined to replace traditional theater in the socialist society. Tolstoi suggested
that the new Soviet mass theater should be based on the genre of magic extravaganza, fderie
[Russian, feeria]. Emerged in the court theaters of seventeenth-century France and Italy, fderie
was an expensive, richly decorated spectacle based on a magical, fairy-tale subject (hence its
name, which stems from the French word for fairy, fde). Magical transformations of people into
things and things into people, sorcery and witchcraft were indispensable for fderies' plots. The
most expensive of "low," entertaining genres, fderie boasted lavish decorations, costumes and
complicated technological props, machinery and mechanical automata, which often performed
alongside human actors depicting animated objects and other supernatural beings. In the
nineteenth century, fierie was democratized, and after the 1860s the genre attracted many
luminaries of nineteenth-century culture-Charles Nodier, Victor Hugo, George Sand and
Gustave Flaubert in France, and Lesia Ukrainka in Ukraine-who reinterpreted it in a late
Romantic mode as a manifestation of folk spirit; at the same time, it was merged with such
newly popular genres as operetta and circus. In Moscow, the "Fantastic Theater" of director
Mikhail Leontovskii and stage set designer Karl Valts (Walz), was opened in 1882, enjoying

297

great popularity due to its expensive performances and stage sets, sophisticated special effects,
and the grand scale of its mass scenes.
Magic transformations that defined fieries' subject related it to another nineteenthcentury favorite, phantasmagoria, which Walter Benjamin eloquently located at the origins of
modernity pointing to world fairs as a framework, in which the intrinsic value of things was
eclipsed by their exchange value as commodities. 545 Likewise, Tolstoi's fderies were to eclipse
things' "intrinsic value," replacing it with their symbolic value in the emerging mythology of
Stalinist culture. Tolstoi called for "dramatic 'actions"' that would outdo the opulence of
eighteenth-century court performances and nineteenth-century spectacles,

utilizing "all

achievements of theater technology," and employing "hundreds of actors or perhaps entire
military units, with an airplane above the stage." Moreover, unlike a traditionalfderie, the Soviet
one, according to Tolstoi, had to be "heroic," that is had "to demonstrate the people's heroic
struggle as well as its creative [sozidatel'nyi] labor."5 46 Erasing the boundary between spectacle
and reality, between theater and life, Aleksei Tolstoi's heroic fderie created a magic, fairy-tale
effect through the exaggerated realism of the stage-set and the performance. It valorized
dreaming by emphasizing the transparency of the boundary between fantasy and reality, by
promising the possibility of the impossible and by charging mundane, even if novel and
advanced, objects with aura, symbolic significance and magic.
Articulating his concept, Tolstoi could already refer to the experience of giant
performances, staged by Glan at the Park of Culture and Leisure since 1930. As full of magic
Walter Benjamin, "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century," The Arcades Project(Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1999) 17-18.
545

546

Glan, Prazdnik vsegda s nami, 104.
298

and miracles as afderie, these performances, nevertheless depicted not the world of a fairy tale,
but the "real" world of the future, which was to be created by the power of the spectators
themselves. Making the viewers believe in the possibility of magic transformations and in their
superhuman power, Glan's shows made them proud of their collective achievements and
persuaded them of the necessity of further heroic, selfless work. One of these spectacles, a show
devoted to the Sixteenth Congress of the Party on 11 July 1930, staged on the water at a warm
and dark summer night, created a magic atmosphere that revived thefderie spirit. 547
The river gleams in the rays of projectors. On the banks-dozens of thousands of people.
On the water, a violent fight of imperialists with revolutionary proletariat [and] the Red
Army unravels. A huge barge is decorated as a dreadnought. On it, a huge white figure of
the Pope. Hundreds of boats with representatives of oppressed colonial peoples (Indians,
Chinese, negroes) dash into attack. Dozens of swimmers from the "Soviet" bank help
them to overthrow the Pope. On the contrary bank, gleaming in the silver light of the
projectors, flies the Red cavalry. Volley-and the huge figure under a thunderstorm of
applause crawls down the bank. 548

5
The atmosphere of a night celebration created by Glan revived Lunacharskii's suggestion from ten years earlier:
"It would be good if... an evening procession would be organized under a torch or another artificial light, which, for
example, created several wonderfully sonorous accords during Petrograd celebrations: the procession of united firefighters of the entire Petrograd in bright copper helmets and with flaming torches in hands" (Lunacharskii o
massovykh prazdnenstvakh, 86. Translation by the author. Russian original: «Xopoiuo, ecim 6b1 B MeHmIuei cTeneHH
H HeCKOJihKO MeHbIHMH rpynnaMH OpraHH3OBaHO 6Mno mecTBHe BeiepoM llpH 4aKeamHOM HaH ApyroM KaKOM-

HH6ygb HCKyCCTBeHHOM OCBeIueHHH,

TO, HanpHMep, Co3AaJIO HeCKOJE6KO yAHBHTeJbHMX 3ByIHMX aKKOpAOB BO

meCTBHe o6'eAHHeHHMX
UJIieMaX H C rbI1aIOLUHMH 4aKenaMH B pyKax ).
BpeMSi neTporpaAcKHx Upa3AHecTB:

noxapHmx Bcero

HUeTporpaAa

B APKHX

MegHMX

548 Betti Glan, Park kul'tury i otdykha [Park of culture and leisure] (Moskva: s.l.: 1934) 69. Quoted
in: Katarina
Kucher, Park Gor'kogo. Kul'tura dosuga v stalinskuiu epokhu 1928-1941 [Gorky Park: A Culture of Leisure during
Stalin's Time. 1928-1941]. (Moskva: Rospen, 2012) 163. Translation by the author. Russian original: <PeKa
CBepKaeT B JIyqax npoxeKTOpoB. Ha 6eperax-geATKH TmIcAq juoAeii. Ha BoAe HAeT wecToKAI
6orl
HMIepHaJIHCTOB c peBOJOIXHOHHMMH IpOJITapHMH, C KpaCHoA ApmHek. OpOMHaa 6apxca AeKopHpOBaHa noA
ApeAHOyT. Ha He--60himaA 6enai 4Hypa narm pHMCKOrO. COTHH JIOZOK C npeACTaBHTeJAiMH yTHeTCHHMX
KOJIOHHaJIbHMX HapAOOB (HHAycaMH, KHTaHgaMH, HerpaMH) ycTpemJsIoTCx B aTaKy. AecTKH rmOBixOB C
KCOBeTCKoro 6epera nomoraiOT HM HH3BeprHyn nany. Ha npOTHBOnOJiOxeHHOM 6epery, o3apeHHa cepe6pHcThM
CBeTOM npoKeICropoB, HeceTCA KpacHaA KOHHHIxa. 3anm-H OrpOMHaR 4)Hrypa noA rpOM arIIOAHcMeHTOB C 6eperoB

HOji3eT BHH3)).
299

Celebrating the victory, lights flashed up on the contrary bank of the river. A dam topped
by a sign "Dneprostroi" poured fireworks of splashes and sparkling gleaming waterfalls,
celebrating the construction of a giant hydroelectric plant that provided power for the heavy
industry in Ukraine. Before they could dim, the next proud sign--"Traktorstroi" [tractor
construction]-emerged from the darkness. The first USSR-produced tractors proudly drove
from the gleaming gates of the factory. Commemorating the construction of a railroad across
southern Kazakhstan, the appearance of a "fiery" train "Turksib" crowned the spectacle.
Glan claimed credit for inventing a novel type of mass spectacle, the one in which objects
and machines participated alongside human actors as the heroes of the battle for socialist
construction. 549 This was, of course, a modem adaptation of afderie; it reflected, however, not
only an attempt to build upon a historic precedent of a breathtaking spectacle, but the new Soviet
discourse, in which objects were frequently presented as people's co-workers. A tractor, for
instance, was widely celebrated and mythologized in the course of the First Five-Year Plan. It
was introduced into the pantheon of Soviet worthies not only as a symbol of modernity and
industrialization, but as an animated hero that possessed a power to transform human psyche.
Describing his experience of visiting an agricultural commune in Ukraine in an article eloquently
titled "The Life of a Tractor" Lunacharskii's proteg6 artist Amshey Nurenberg5 5 0 not only
exalted the tremendous economical significance of the tractor in rural life, but highlighted its
significance for casting the new Soviet subjectivity:

49 Betti Glan, "Tri goda raboty parka" ["Three years of the park's work"], Parkkul'tury i otdykha No.1 (12 August

1931): 1.
Amshei Markovich Niurenberg (1887-1979)-Russian and Soviet painter, in the 1920s was an art correspondent
of Pravda; worked together with Vladimir Mayakovski on the "ROST Windows"; taught the history of Western
painting at VKhUTEMAS. In 1927-1929 Niurenberg was sent by Lunacharskii to Paris to lecture on Soviet art.
550

300

Traktor-tse kommunist, til'ko na kolesakh [A tractor is a communist, only on wheels
(Ukranian)]. Tractor replaced an "old" peasant by a plough with a modem mechanic. Our
Soviet soil is tailored by a man smelling of petroleum and kerosene. Tractor switched
village life from low to high speed. It is awkward to work on the sly in the presence of
this wide-pelvis, puffing machine. Embarrassing and stupid.'
Moreover, a tractor not only transformed the psyche of peasants, but possessed its own
personality and character, its rhythm and lifestyle that had to be "felt" and "loved": "He came
back after the stars lighted up and the cattle lapsed into silence. Tired, covered with dust and
greasy sweat, he resembled a big grey ox. ... How much richer is his world than that of a horse!
What a sleepy provincial does she look like in comparison to him!" 5 5 2
The concept of active socialist objects as agents of culture and modernity had been
articulated in the "avant-garde" circles several years earlier. Unlike capitalist commodities,
socialist objects, which were theorized by Constructivist aesthetic thinker Boris Arvatov in 1925
in an article "Byt i kul'tura veshchi" ["Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing"], acted as
"agents of socialist culture" transforming the mindset and even the bodily habits of people: "The
new world of things, which gave rise to a new image of a person as a psycho-physiological
individual, dictated forms of gesticulation, movement, and activity. It created a particular
regimen of physical culture. The psyche also evolved, becoming more and more thinglike in its

A. [Amshei] Niurenberg, "Zhizn' traktora," Iskusstvo v massy [Art to the Masses] No. 5-6 (1929): 12-14 (14).
Translation by the author. Russian original: <Tpaicrop-ije KOMMyHHCT, THn16KO Ha KoJIeCaX. TpaKrop HOCTaBHfl y
nayra, BMeCTO OCTapHHHOMO KpeCTSIHHHa, COBpeMeHHOrO MexaHHKa. Hamy COBTCKyO 3eMRIO o6pa6aTmiBaeT
'lejiOBeK, OT KOTOPOrO IaXHCT He4)ThIO H KepOCHHOM. Tpaicrop nepeBen )KH3Hb AepeBHH C MaIOH CKOPOCTH Ha
6onbmyIo. CTaHOBHTCA HeiJ0BKO B HpHCYTCTBHH 3TO ImHpOKo3agoii, nMxTsrneiR H nOTeIOIIer MaiHHHm pa6oTaTh
51

noA CypAHHKy. COBeCTHO H rnyo>.
552

Niurenberg, "Zhizn' traktora," 14. Translation by the author. Russian original: (OH
BO3BpantaiCSi

KaK 3aXCHraJIHCb

3Be3AWb

H yMOIKaJI

CKOT.

YCTanhwi, riOKpIThEiR llbJhlO H

(HpHbM HOTOM, OH

nocaie Toro,
6wn 1OXOK Ha

6onbmuoro ceporo Bona. Ero yCTpaHBaJIH riOA HaBeCOM H OH MrHOBeHHO 3aCbmaJI MepTBMM CHOM. ... HacKOjmKo
ero MHp 6orate MHpa JIomaAH! KaKoi COHJIHBOA IHpOBHHIHaJIKOr OHa KaxeTCA 3AeCb Ha ero 4OHe!& The gendering
of the tractor and the horse in the translation follows their grammatical genders in Russian language.

301

associative structure." 5 5 3 The parallel between the theoretician of radical Constructivism and the
techniques of proto-totalitarian manipulation in the Park of Culture and Leisure becomes more
convincing if one considers their mutual indebtedness to collectivist discourse-indebtedness
that has remained largely unrecognized by contemporary scholars of Constructivism. Indeed,
although it demonstrated Arvatov's departure from orthodox Marxim, Christina Kiaer's analysis
of his concept of "comradely objects" avoids connecting it with Bogdanov's "organization
science" and his theories of "proletarian culture" in spite of the fact that, published in
Proletkul't's Almanac [Al'manakh proletkul'ta], Arvatov's text abounds with references to
Bogdanovite ideas, in particular, to the notion of organization as the mechanism of forging a
socialist subject. 5 The goal of Arvatov's active socialist objects was to provide society "with a
maximum economizing of its energy, and maximum organizing possibilities."

55

Similarly, the

notion of organization was at the forefront of the concept of park of culture and leisure, which
aspired to organize the masses in order to facilitate their collaborative work. Moreover,
Arvatov's interpretation of things as "forms, that is, as detached skeletal formations," and his
anti-functionalist belief that it was not the content or construction, but the form of things that was
the secret of their progressive or regressive psychological role, detach his text from the received
reading of Constructivist and Productivist programs, pointing to the omnipresence of collectivist
discourse in Soviet culture of the mid and late 1920s.5 56

Boris Arvatov, "Byt i kul'tura veshchi," translated from the Russian by Christina Kiaer as "Everyday Life and
the Culture of the Thing" in October Vol. 81 (Summer 1997): 119-128 (126).
553

The article was published in a periodical of Proletkul't and abounds with notions introduced and heavily
discussed by Bogdanov (such as organization, economy of energy).
554

555

Arvatov, 128.

556

Arvatov, 121.
302

It was not the person, but the object that became the true agent of social and economic
change and the creator of the new socialist subjectivity. The creator and the created reversed
their roles, the boundary between them becoming more and more transparent. The person
happily and passively submitted to the impact of the product of his or her labor. Glan reflected
this process in her fderies, which, she believed, destroyed the boundary between people and
objects, between actors and spectators, albeit in a way very different from that offered ten years
earlier by Gan. If the latter intentionally reminded the demonstrators of their temporal and spatial
location by erecting obstacles along their path, the viewers of Glan's shows succumbed to the
mesmerizing effect of the spectacle that transformed them into powerful agents of socialist
construction. Excited and overwhelmed by being a part a crowd of many thousands, they
plunged into a state of collective hypnosis, in which they forgot their individuality, experiencing
an intense sense of belonging to the Soviet people, the organized mass, the single great collective
subject.

Architectures of Organization
While Glan, conceiving the park as an activity of visitors, attempted to activate the
masses through an organization of large-scale theatralized performances and spectacles, the
development of the park's architectural program was left to designers. In September 1930,
Moscow authorities agreed on the necessity of organizing a competition for the park's general
layout. The winning project was to transform the Park of Culture and Leisure into "a powerful
cultural [production] complex [kul'turnyi kombinat] combining mass political, scientific-popular,
art-spectacle, and physical-culture and health work, intended to attract tens and hundreds of
303

thousands workers throughout the year." 557 After preparations that lasted one year, in the fall of
1931 the administration of the park announced the competition, which was then conducted by
several organizations (Communist Academy, All-Union Council of Physical Culture, and
others). A total of ten projects were submitted by major architectural organizations."' The brief
asked to design a park that could host 150 thousand people daily and to specify "the principle of
organizing the masses on its territory."5 59
Moreover, a team of architects worked at the Park of Culture and Leisure on a permanent
basis. The so-called Office of Design and Planning [Proektno-planirovochnyiotdel]-the park's
architectural department-existed in the park from its earliest days, employing a group of
architects even when no financial resources were available for construction work. The purpose of
the Office was theoretical rather than practical: it functioned not (or not only) to satisfy the
immediate needs of the park in elaborating a plan for its development, but, most importantly, as
the center for conceiving design principles and solutions for all Soviet parks of culture of leisure,
for which the one in Moscow served as a model. Employing mostly young VKhUTEIN
557 "Vypiska iz protokola No.132 Zasedania prezidiuma Mosoblispolkoma i Moskovskogo
Soveta R.K. i K.D. ot 14
sentiabria 1930." Quoted in Glan, Za sotsialisticheskiipark, 3. Translation by the author. Russian original:
(<lpeBpaieHHe

H1apiKa

HOHyJlMpHyIO,

xygo)KecTBeHHo-3peHiHyIo

B MOIIJHbI

KoM6HHaT, coqeTaiOMIHr MacCOByo rIoJIHTH'ecKyio, HayqHo(npo( eCCHoHaJubHy1o H caMoAesrTeJIbHyIo)
H
( H3KyJIbTypHo-

KyJ1TTypHbari

03AOpOBHTeJIbHyIO pa6oTy, pacciHTaHHyIo

Ha

oXBaT

B

t
Te eHHe

KpyrIoro roAa AeCCTKoB

H

COTeH

ThICRM

TpyAAUIHXCsD>.
558

The projects were submitted by: Scientific-Technical Society of Construction
Workers (NTO Stroitelei): L. E.

Biriukov, L. B. Velikovskii, N. S. Zarubin); ARU: V. P. Kalmykov, V. I. Fidman; The Brigade of Central Park of
Culture and Leisure: L. S. Zalesskaia, I. P. Kychakov, M.

I. Prokhorova; ASNOVA: T. N. Varentsov, S. A.

Gel'dfel'd, A. I. Repkin, S. B. Bekker; VOPRA: P. I. Gol'denberg and V. I. Dolganov; ASI: A. V. Natal'chenko, P.
P. Reviakin, K. Ia. Rogov; SASS (Sector of Architects of Socialist Construction, Sektor Arkhitektorov
Sotsialisticheskogo Stroitel'stva, as OSA was renamed in 1930): I. U. Bronshtein; Moisei Ginzburg; Konstantin
Mel'nikov; I. I. Klang and A. S. Korobov.

cooTBeTCTBHH C YCTaHOBKaMH

pa6oTbi

lapKa

.

559 Glan, Za sotsialisticheskiipark, 4. Russian original: <HrPHHIIHH opraHH3aiLHH macC

304

Ha TeppHTOpHH iapKa B

graduates, between 1928 and 1929 the Office was directed by Konstantin Mel'nikov, the
renowned architect of the Soviet pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exhibition; Mel'nikov was then
replaced by El Lissitzky, who remained the park's chief architect until 1932.560 The choice of the
two luminaries of Soviet avant-garde for the position of the head of the park's architectural
office demonstrated the project's utter ideological importance and betrayed its claims to
architectural novelty and left radicalism. However, as both Mel'nikov and Lissitzky were
simultaneously engaged with other commissions and were not able to devote themselves fully to
the work at the TsPKiO, the elaboration of the practical solutions for the park was left to their
subordinates at the Office. Both Mel'nikov and Lissitzky had been previously affiliated with
ASNOVA, 561 and the majority of VKhUTEIN graduates whom they employed were also
connected with the Rationalist movement: Mikhail Korzhev, Vitalii Dolganov, Liubov'
Zalesskaia, Militsa Prokhorova, Innokentii Kychakov, Mikhail Cherkasov were all among
Ladovskii's former students who formed the core of the Office of Design and Planning in the late
1920s-early 1930s.

562

At the time when architecture, landscape design, and urbanism were not yet differentiated
in Russia, Ladovskii not only saw the three fields as belonging to the same discipline, defined as
an arrangement of space, but believed that landscape architecture and urbanism, working with
space rather than solid mass, presented architecture par excellance. Thus, founded in 1928,
In 1932, Goszelenstroi from gosudarstvennoezelenoe stroitel'stvo, "state green building," was created
under the
Russian commissariat of infrastructure as the republican center for developing the methodology for landscape
architecture (which included not only parks of culture and leisure, but also city squares, boulevards, and all other
forms of landscaping), and most of the members of Office of Design and Planning moved to the new organization.
560

ASNOVA (Association of New Architects)-architectural organization created by Nikolai Ladovskii, the
center
of architectural Rationalism. More on it, see Chapter One.
561

562

Some, as Militsa Prokhorova, studied with both Mel'nikov and Ladovskii.
305

Ladovskii's
(Ob'edinenie

second

organization,

ARU

arkhitektorov-urbanistov,

Association of Architects-Urbanists), was
exclusively concerned with urban planning.
The task of ARU urbanism was to unite
separate

buildings

into

a unified

and

coherent whole: "Architecture, understood
as a unified spatial whole, not only has to
solve the problem of design of separate

Fig. 4.11. Stills from the film documenting
Kalmykov's model. VKhUTEIN, 1929.

structures, but also has to connect a group of

structures into a unified spatial system, in which separate structures are only parts of the general
architectural unity," its declaration claimed.

63

Applying this approach to architectural practice,

Ladovskii, as his contemporaries recalled, walked along the streets of Moscow, usually at night
or just before sunrise, when traffic and the flow of people did not prevent him from observing the
picturesque changes of spatial perspectives, and analyzed what made the urban landscape appear
to a walking subject a coherent spatial whole.

564

Developing the methods of organizing perception of a coherent environment, of suturing
separate impressions into a single perceptual continuum, Ladovskii and his group turned towards
latest technological developments, first of all, cinema. Cinema, indeed, presented just what
Ladovskii hoped architecture to become-a psychological illusion of a spatial and temporal
563

"Ob'edinenie arkhtitektorov-urbanistov"

[Association of architects-urbanists], Arkhitektura i VKhUTEIN

[Architecture and VKhIUTEIN], No. 1 (January 1929), 8.
564

Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm: Ratsio-arkhitektura: 'formalizm" [Rationalism: Ratio-architecture-

Formalism](Moskva: Arkhitektura-S, 2007) 385.

306

continuum constructed by artistic means. In one of the earliest film theory studies, The Photoplay
(1916), Hugo Minsterberg (whose work on psychotechnics Ladovskii both studied and
advocated) explored psychological mechanisms of cinematographic techniques, interpreting
cinema as an art that operated with spectators' minds. In 1926 Lissitzky published an obituary of
Swedish avant-garde film director Viking Eggeling in ASNOVA's newspaper Izvestia ASNOVA,
(co-edited with Ladovskii), in which he underscored the importance of film, as an art operating
with space and movement, for architectural theory. Three years later, Ladovskii introduced film
as a new method of architectural representation into his pedagogical practice at VKhUTEIN.
When his student Viktor Kalmykov created a clay model of the new socialist town Avtostoi that
was to be built near Nizhniy Novgorod, the model was filmed and the film was then cut and
reassembled to appear as if it had been perceived through the eyes of a moving subject.
Describing his work with Kalmykov, Ladovskii explained the role of film projection in
architecture:
While I advised a project for a new planning of Avtostroj in Vkhutein in 1929/30, I
developed and employed the principle of a new, more up-to-date method of project
representation, a method that takes into account the coordinate of time-film projection.
This method is especially important for an urban planner, who has to convey to others
(and, first of all, to test himself) the organization of space in time. In this respect, none
of... contemporary representation methods can compete with film projection. 56

Nikolai Ladovskii, "Planirovka Avtostroia i Magnitogorska" ["The Planning of Avtostroi and
Magnitogorsk"],
Sovetskaia arkhitektura[Soviet architecture]No. 1-2 (1931): 21-28 (21).
565

307

Moreover, Ladovskii seemed to be well
aware

of contemporary

theory

of montage,

employing its key premises in his architectural
projects of the late 1920s. 56 6 The contrast of planes,
the framing of scenes, and rhythm were used by
Ladovskii, for example, in a verbal description of
his suburban "socialist town" of Kostino as a
sequence of carefully framed and assembled
Fig. 4.12.Nikolai Ladovskii, Model of Kostino

picturesque

shots.

567

kii suggested that

Village, 1929.

readers imagine themselves walking through the
town in order to obtain a faithful representation of landscape as it unfolded in time. The walk
started at the train station, exiting which one looked upon a broad green parterre, flanked by
small farmers' houses on the left and high-rise buildings of workers on the right, and leading
towards a stadium, which was placed obliquely to facilitate the observation of its form. Reaching
the stadium, one could choose to turn right to a small alley leading to the factory's main
entrance, or left, to down a path that offered a variety of shifting views of the agricultural
landscape. The composition was based on the principle of contrast between right and left, while
Soviet montage theory was developed, first of all, by Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. For its early
elaborations, see Eisenstein's "Montazh attraktsionov: k postanovke 'Na vsiakogo mudretsa dovol'no prostoty' A.
N. Ostrovskogo v moskovskom Proletkul'te" ["Montage of attractions: on the staging of 'Enough Stupidity in Every
Wise Man' of A. N. Ostrovksii at Moscow Proletkul't"], LEF No.3 (1923): 70-75, and Pudovkin's Kino-rezhisser i
kino-material [Film Director and Film Material] (Moskva: Kinopechat', 1926). On the connections between
cinematographic montage and architecture, see Sergei Eisenstein, "Montage in Architecture (1937-1940), translated
from the Russian by Michael Glenny, introduction by Yve-Alain Bois, Assemblage, No. 10 (Dec., 1989): 110-131.
See also Anthony Vidler, "The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary," Assemblage, No. 21
566

(Aug., 1993): 44-59.
567

Nikolai Ladovskii, "Proekt planirovki trudkommuny 'Kostino"' ["Project of replanning of labor-commune

'Kostino"'], Stroitel'stvo Moskvy No. 7 (1929): 14-17.

308

the accelerations and complications of rhythm accentuated its most significant points, the factory
entrance and the stadium.
A similar approach was used by the architect when thinking about the Central Park of
Culture and Leisure-a task he assigned as the topic of diploma (thesis) projects to his students
graduating in 1929: Liubov' Zalesskaia, Vitalii Dolganov, Mikael Mazmonian, Karo Alabian,
Ivan Bolbashevskii, Oganes Bal'ian, and Sergei Matorin. Following the method of her teacher,
Zalesskaia organized the park as a system of routes and perspectives. A 100-meters-wide alley
led demonstrating columns of people toward the Rally Field, the compositional center of the
park; along the way, a carefully planned arrangement of a series of "large spectacular points"
[krupnykh zrelishchnykh punktov], which superseded each other as film stills, directed the
movement of people through landscape. 568 These spectacular points were regulated by a series of
parallel diagonal alleys, which hit the main alley at acute angles: the latter, according to psychophysiological research, was perceived as full in comparison to "empty" obtuse angles and thus
provoked in a visitor an unconscious desire to move forward in order to discover their content. 569
Zalesskaia used the same principle of acute angles to design the area of the main tram route,
which, passing on the fringes of the Children's Village, led from the main entrance into the park.
Located at its north-east corner, near the main entrance (so that the parents, having left their
children in this "live cloakroom," could start their journey through the park57 0), the Children's

568 Vitalii Lavrov, "Park ku'tury i otdykha v Moskve po proektam diplomnikov VKhUTEINa" ["Park
of culture and

leisure in Moscow in the projects of VKhUTEIN graduating students"], Stroitel'stvo Moskvy No.10 (1929): 13-18
(18).
Georgii Chelpanov, "Glazomer i illiuzii zrenia" ["Eye-balling and visual illusions"], Voprosy filosophii
i
psikhologii No. 17 (1893): 45-54 (53), No.18 (1893): 1-13.
569

570

Lavrov, "Park ku'tury i otdykha v Moskve po proektam diplomnikov VKhUTEINa,"18.

309

Figs. 4.13-4.14. Liubov' Zalesskaia, Central Park of Culture and Leisure. Perspective and Children Village,
VKhUTEIN, 1929.

Village itself was structured by a zigzag alley, in which each segment terminated with an
architectural monument. 571 The tram route then passed along a spectacular hilly bank of the
Moscow River, offering a panorama of Moscow and a breathtaking view of the river.
Elaborating this idea for the 1931 competition for the design of the park, Prokhorova,
Zalesskaia,

and Innokentii

Kychakov, working together as

"The TSPKiO Brigade,"

supplemented their entry with a "Scheme of Transportation," which included both the means of
connection between the park and the city and the transportation within the park. Metro, railway,
and water transport were designed to bring visitors to the main entrances in the north-east corner
and the center; trams and buses were to run along the upper bank of the river; and a "hanging
railroad" (another idea borrowed from Zalesskaia's diploma project) united the two banks.
Scenic perspectives offered by buses, trams, and, especially, the hanging railroad, whose sole
purpose seemed to have been sightseeing, made the approach of the TSPKiO Brigade very
different from modernist functionalist attitude to transportation. Rather, the spectacle of nature
that the Brigade hoped to stage with the help of modern means of transport connected it to an old

571

Lavrov, "Park ku'tury i otdykha v Moskve po proektam diplomnikov
VKhUTEINa,"17.

310

tradition of landscape architecture, in which parks were experienced by horse riders.

In other

words, making their design dependent upon transportation, the architects achieved not an
economy of time or movement, but an efficiency of beholding, a faster and easier change of
viewpoints, and ultimately, a deeper and more dramatic emotional effect. Zalesskaia, Prokhorova
and Kychakov reinterpreted the functionalist preoccupation with modem transport within
Ladovskii's theory of a unified spatial field, making trams and buses unite not places, but
impressions.
If these projects explored the park's scenic possibilities, which were to be discovered by
individual viewer with the help of means of transportation, other designs applied the theories of
spatial perception towards the concept of mass subject. They saw in the park not a static
architectural environment, but a framework for the visitors' activity, which constituted its true
architecture. In other words, they designed not a static material environment, but in the
architectural organization of the visitors' movement-an organization which, in the traditions of
the aesthetics of the unconscious, was to remain unnoticed by the visitors. Furthermore, sharing
Ladovskii's vision of inseparability of landscape architecture from urbanism and his interest in
the latter, his students consistently situated their plans for the Park of Culture and Leisure within
their vision of the replanning of Moscow and transforming the whole city into a stage for mass
celebrations.

Originating in the Renaissance, in the nineteenth century this tradition was continued by
an exploration of the
scenic possibilities of a railroad, and later still, a parkway.
572

311

Fig. 4.15. ASNOVA Brigade, Palace of the Soviets. Competition Project, 1931.

In 1931, these ideas formed the core of several projects for the Palace of the Soviets's
competition, in particular, those submitted by the two groups most directly affected by
Ladovskii's teaching, ASNOVA and ARU. 573 The ASNOVA Brigade, which united architects
Militsa Prokhorova, Viktor Balikhin, Mikhail Turkus, P. V. Budo, sculptor Romual'd Iodko, and
a decorator of celebrations Flora Sevortian, proposed "not... a static monument, but... a live,
acting organism, living the same life as the demonstrations and revolutionary-political mass
celebrations." 5 74 The Brigade planned the Palace of the Soviets not as an independent ensemble,
but as a part of a grandiose scheme of transforming Moscow into a space of mass spectacle, in
which the Palace occupied a central place in the processional route between Red Square and the
Park of Culture and Leisure. Thus, rather than a project for a building, the ASNOVA Brigade
presented a scheme for mass processions moving through the city. Coming from Moscow's ten
districts, the columns of demonstrators entered Red Square through a complex system of ramps,
which allowed the flows to bypass each other and go in opposite directions just like the clover
This infamous competition, eventually won by Boris Iofan's art-deco-like project, commemorated the demise of
modernism in Soviet architecture.
53

54

Brigada ASNOVA [Viktor Balikhin, Militsa Prokhorova, Mikhail Turkus, P. V. Budo, Romual'd Iodko, Flora

Sevortian], "ASNOVA. Dvorets Sovetov" [ASNOVA. The Palace of the Soviets], Sovetskaia Arkhitektura No. 4

(1931): 52-55 (52).

312

leaves of today's highways. Exiting Red Square, the demonstration divided into three streams,
one flowing via Il'ich Alley, 575 a broad ceremonial prospect between Red Square and the Palace
of the Soviets, another moving via the Kremlin, while the third occupying both banks of the
Moscow River; all three finally reunited at the Palace of the Soviets. As a sign of a greatest
distinction, awarded for revolutionary achievements and an overfulfillment of working norms,
the columns that went through the Kremlin ascended two wide ramps to the spacious Lenin Hall
of the Palace of the Soviets, then encircled in two flows the amphitheater of the presidium,
greeted the delegates sitting in the Hall, then exited, at the height of 40 meters, to the Bridge of
Shock Workers, and on two gentle ramps descended to the bank of the river to reunite with the
flow of other demonstrating columns, which surrounded the Palace of the Soviets and then
headed, along both banks of the Moscow River, to the TsPKiO, where the celebration
culminated.576

Mass processions were also inscribed into the competition project for the Central Park of
Culture and Leisure prepared by the TsPKiO Brigade, which included "The Scheme of
Demonstrations" and "The Scheme of the Formation of a Mass Action" [Schema postroenia
massovogo deistviia]. Here too, Il'ich Alley-the major ceremonial route of the city envisioned
by Moscow authorities and accepted by architects and planners-connected the Palace with the
park, passing through it as a bi-level parallel avenue that culminated at the Field of Mass

Il'ich, Lenin's patronymic and a more familiar version of referring to the leader, was often used by Soviet
propaganda.
1

5 76

Brigada ASNOVA, "ASNOVA. Drovets Sovetov", 62-65.
313

Figs. 4.16-4.17. The TsPKiO Brigade, "The Scheme of Demonstrations" and "The Scheme of the Formation of a
Mass Action," appended to the competition project of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure (1931).

Actions, described by the authors as "the basis of the design of the TsPKiO."

7

Entering through

side gates, lesser demonstrating columns merged into the major one, which moved through Il'ich
Alley. The spectacle continued on the water: in the Moscow River, in the Water Basin that
stretched parallel to the Field, and on the beach. From the slopes of Vorob'evy Hills, one could
enjoy the entire complexity of the mass action, which stretched across land, water, and air,
578
creating a novel spatial unity that transformed the scale and shape of landscape.

Leonid Lunts, "Opisanie proektov general'nogo plana Tsentral'nogo parka kul'tury i otdykha Mossoveta" ["A
description of projects of the general plan of the Central park of culture and leisure of Mossovet"], Za
sotsialisticheskiipark, 22-31 (24).
177

While these grandiose demonstrations were to happen only on major holidays, smaller performances were to
become a part of the TsPKiO's everyday life. They were to be staged near the entrance to the park, transforming a
flower parterre designed by Mel'nikov into a "living newspaper"--constantly changing tableau vivants, exhibitions
and performances that illustrated issues of international, national, city, district, and, finally, park significance.
Leonid Lunts, Parki kul'tury i otdykha [Parks of Culture and Leisure] (Moskva: Gosstroiizdat, 1934) 215-218.
578

314

The idea of a bi-level parallel
avenue for mass processions reflected
both ASNOVA's design for Red Square
and the competition project of Konstantin
Mel'nikov, in which alleys for mass
demonstrations occupied most of the
upper bank of the Moscow river, leading
Fig. 4.18. Konstantin Mel'nikov, Park of Culture and
Leisure, Competition Project, 1931.

to the central Mass Action field in the
middle of Luzhniki (the territory on the

lower bank of the river). The two major mass procession alleys-the Alley of Technology and
Exhibition Alley-were interwoven with each other to prepare "the flow of visitors for a U-turn
during celebrations and political campaigns." 5 79 At the same time, the projects for bypassing
alleys responded to Lunacharskii's old appeal to organize the masses by making them an object
of their own spectacle-an appeal that was now, almost a decade after it was made, revived and
given a visual shape. One of the 1929 publications, signed by a critic L. Roshchin, suggested to
make the guiding principle of a demonstration that of "counter motion," which allowed engaging
all the spectators into the demonstration:
Let [demonstrating] columns face [demonstrating] columns along the entire length of
streets. Only like this, and not in another way. Let enthusiasm multiply enthusiasm, joy
[multiply] joy, sounds [multiply] sounds, colors [multiply] colors, political slogans
[multiply] political slogans!
If until now everybody participated in a mass spectacle, whose first-row viewer was the
unorganized crowd on the sidewalks, then due to the counter movement of the

579

Lunts, "Opisanie proektov general'nogo plana Tsentral'nogo parka kul'tury i otdykha Mossoveta," 30.

315

Fig. 4.19-4.20. Mikael Mazmonian, MosCOw TsPKiO. General Layout and Entry Ramp-ArCh. Diploma (thesis)
projeCt. VKhUTEIN, 1929.

demonstrators everybody is simultaneously a participant and a viewer of an unseen mass
580
spectacle of an exceptional rousing force.
The most dramatic architectural representation of this concept was the diploma project of
Mikael Mazmonian, another student of Ladovskii. For Mazmonian, the demonstrating mass
itself, participating in a rhythmical play, became an element of the general spatial design of the
park. Its movement began at the future Palace of the Soviets, passed through Il'ich Alley and the
"rapport alley" [allela otchetnosti] with tribunes located alongside it, from which the
representatives of various public organizations reported to the passing organized masses about
the work they completed during the year. The Rapport Alley led towards the entrance to the
park--a triumphal arch designed as a broad ramp, ascending which the masses enjoyed a
panorama of the park's entire territory. As Mazmonian explained, whereas the "triumphal arch of
the past," expressing the concept of absolutism, was a self-sufficient element that dominated

L. RoshChin, "Iskusstvo massovykh prazdnenstv" ["Art of mass celebrations"], Iskusstvo v mussy No. 5-6 (1929):
25-3 0 (28-29). Translation by the author. Russian original: «Hycmb Ha BCeM HpOTTEKHHH yJIMIX KOJIOHHMI HaBC~pe~y
KoJIoHHaM. ToJamKo TaK, H HHKRK HHa'Ie. [IyCTb 3HTy3Ha3M MHO2KHTCSI Ha 3HTy3Ha3M, paROCTb Ha paRocTb, 3ByKH Ha
3ByKH, KpaCKH Ha KpaCKH, IIoJHTHMcCKHe JIO3yHTH Ha IIoJ~IHHeCKHe JIO3yHrH!
ECnIH Ao CHx no0p BCe 6MnJH yEaCTHHKaMH MaCCOBoro AecCTBHM, Ha KOTOpOM 3pHTCJICM nep~bIX McCT 6bIura
580

yLIaCTHHKaMH

IyOJIHKa

H 3pHTeJISIMH

Ha TpoTyapax,

HeBH~aHHOrO,

TO IHpH BCTpCMHOM

ICTBHH

HCKJIIo'IHTeJoI4O nolbIMaouI~leH

316

ACMOHCTpaHTOB

CHJITA MaCCOBoro

Bce

AecCTBHSI

SIBJIMIOTCSI H
.

HeOpl-aHH3OBaHHaSI

over the spectator, the ramp-arch of the Park of Culture and Leisure, on opposite, was an element
that did not have its full architectural completion without the participation of the masses. Upon
entering the park, the demonstration went through the Rally Field, the Red Army House, the
Sports International and Hydro-Aero-Port, finally culminating at the a large "green square" in
front of the Lenin House, the architectural and cultural focus of the park.
Similarly, in the project of El Lissitzky, several arteries led from the city towards the
park, merging at the end into one major thoroughfare that he called "the way to commune." The
alley symbolically narrated the story of the evolution of humanity-in the aspects of society,
labor, and culture-from the most primitive to the most advanced stages, providing the visitors
with a "high charge" [vysokaia zariadka] before entering the park. Lissitzky also used
Mazmonian's idea of the ramp-entrance to the park, suggesting to transform it into a "live
architectural form." All the thoroughfares and alleys of the park were united into a single system,
which-another idea the credit for which Lissitzky gave to Mazmonian-was located on several
levels. Two sketches produced by Lissitzky for the TsPKiO (currently in the collection of the
Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts) illustrate this idea. The first depicts a tall tower
(possibly, the Palace of the Soviets) on the right and a triumphal-arch-shaped structure on the
left, the two connected by a broken line that divides as it approaches the arch, perhaps indicating
a double-level avenue, the upper level boldly rising on top of the arch. The other drawing
illustrates two geometrical shapes, which could refer to the Palace of the Soviets and the park's
entrance or to two park structures, connected by an elevated pathway going from the top of the
tower to the opening in the middle of the cube-like structure on the left. Sophisticated movement
of the visitors continued to organize Lissitzky's program beyond the park's entrance: the park
itself became a "poetic work" whose content unfolded "from page to page" and "from chapter to
317

/

I

'4)

Figs. 4.21-4.22. El Lissitzky, Sketches for Moscow TsPKiO, c.1930.

chapter," reaching its apogee in the "finale." It was full of the play of water, color and light,
which transformed it into a magic fanciful world.5'
If spectacle-the spectacle of landscape and of the very demonstrating mass-and
montage that united its "shots" together formed one key strategy of early-Soviet landscape
design, on the physiological level the perception of a montage sequence was regulated by
another strategy familiar to cinematography, rhythm. Rhythm conveyed the character, the mood
of the scene, signaled of its importance, and psychologically prepared the viewer for the most
dramatic moments. Traditionally, rhythm had been connected with emotional, subjective side of
psyche. For Russian symbolist poet Andrei Bely rhythm was the expression of natural
melodiousness of a poet's soul, art historian Dmitrii Nedovich argued that only rhythm expressed
the talent and individuality of a master.s52 At the same time, rhythm found a more a pragmatic

581

ParkKul'tury i Otdykha No.7 (1930): 3. See also: Kucher, Park Gor'kogo, 216-217.

Andrei Belyi, "Simvolizm" ["Symbolism"], Vesy [The Scales] No.12 (1908): 36-41. Reprinted at Andrei Belyi,
Simvolizm kak miroponimanie [Symbolism as a World-Understanding] (Moskva: Respublika, 1994) 334-338;
Dmitrii Nedovich, Zadachi iskusstvovedenia. Voprosy teorii prostranstvennykh iskusstv [The tasks of art studies.
Questions of the theory of spatialarts] (Moskva: Gosudarstvennaia Akademia Khudozhestvennykh Nauk, 1927) 80582

92 (83).
318

and physiological interpretation, identified as a catalyst of physical strength and the reason for
the success of Taylorist working methods: rhythm thus became "the most universal means of
increasing productivity or, which is the same, for reducing the expenditure of energy," this
working productivity also including the productivity of perception.5 8 3 The notion of rhythm was,
of course, borrowed from the theory of music, where in the 1920s it was elaborated by Boleslav
Iavorskii, the creator of psychologizing theory of stop rhythm (ladovy ritm), for whom rhythm
was a process of intellectual deconstruction, an analysis of physical forces that comprise a
melody.584 This definition came closest to the understanding of rhythm in architectural theory.
There, the notion was elaborated by Moisei Ginzburg in 1922 in a book Ritm v arkhitekture
(Rhythm in Architecture). In spite of his later functionalism, in 1922 Ginzburg was still able to
observe, quite romantically, the rhythms planetary systems, the pulsation of human heart, and the
circulation of blood, distinguishing rhythm as the essence of every architectural creation.585 As
for Iavorskii, for Ginzburg rhythm was an alternation of elements: projecting this definition onto
psychological plane, he defined rhythmical sensation as a correlation between our perception at
the given moment and the perception at the moment before. The aesthetic value of rhythm, for

Reitenberg, "Ritmicheskoe oformlenie reklamy" ["Rhythmical design of advertising"], Sovetskoe iskusstvo
[Soviet art] No.3 (1928) 59-62 (59). Translation by the author. Russian original: "pHTm yHHBepcaJImHeiimee
cpeAcTBO AJIA HOBILUeHHA HpOH3BOAHTeJIbHOCTH HJIH, ITO TO )Ke caMOe, xVIm yMeHimeHHA 3aTpamI 3HeprHH>>.
Speaking of advertisement, the author further remarked: "Rhythm increases productivity. A perception of
advertisement is a work. Therefore, the productivity of this work can be increased, if the advertisement is designed
rhythmically." Reitenberg, 62.
583

Boleslav Iavorkii, ,,Osnovnye elementy muzyki" [,,Main elements of musik"], Iskusstvo. Zhurnal Rossiiskoi
Akademii Khudozhestvennykh Nauk No. 1 (1923): 185-194 (189).
584

585

Moisei Ginzburg, Ritm v arkhitekture [Rhythm in Architecture] (Moskva: Sredi kollektsionerov, 1922)
7-9.

319

him, lied in a regulation of elements and their temporal movement, that is, in the regularity in the
movement of these elements. 586
Ginzburg's Rhythm in architecture opened with an epigraph taken from a Nietzsche's
study of classical music: "Rhythm is a compulsion. It produces an irresistible desire of imitating,
conforming to it; not only feet, but the soul itself (including the souls of gods) follows musical
bar. This is why [ancient Greeks] by means of rhythm attempted to impel gods, acquiring power
over them."5 87 Rhythmical movement, indeed, has always been considered one of the
instruments of hypnosis, and Le Bon saw in it one of the reasons of an extreme suggestivity of a
demonstrating crowd. As other elements of Le Bon's crowd psychology, rhythm became
positively appraised in Soviet Russia, where its regulation turned into a necessary element of
demonstration design: "An introduction of visual spatial rhythms helping and facilitating the
perception of the topic (rise, beat, falling) is necessary" stipulated a guide for the decorators of
mass celebrations. 588
The notions of rhythm and meter were especially important for spatial forms of
architecture, whose major purpose was seen as an organization of movement. Following
Ladovskii's connection of space with movement, the Rationalists became particularly interested
in developing methods of orchestrating rhythm by architectural means. In 1936 Viktor

586 Ginzburg, Ritm v arkhitekture,
10-11.

Friedrich Nietzsche, ,,Simtliche briefe: kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Binden," Friedrich
Nietzsche. Ed. Giorgio
Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Vol. 8 (Mfinchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986) 1975-1984; Ginzburg, Ritm
v arkhitekture, 9.
587

.

588 Kuznetsova et al., Ofonnlenie goroda v dni revoliutsionnykh prazdnenstv,
66. Russian original: HeO6XOAHmO
BBeAeHHe 3pHTeiHMX rpocTpaHcTBeHHImX pHTMOB, cnoco6cTByiouiHx
H o6nemYaioHMX BOcnpHSTHe TeMM
(HOBLImeHHe, ygap, IIOHHxeHHe)
320

Kalmykov, whom we have already seen filming his Avtostroj model, gave a talk on the
"Architectural Problems of Parks" at the Cabinet of Planning of the Academy of Architecture,
attempting to apply the Rationalist theory of composition to the design of parks of culture and
leisure. Presented several years after the major principles of the park were laid out, Kalmykov's
lecture summarized and reinstated them, offering practical solutions for their implementation in
landscapes of various scales. For Kalmykov, as for his predecessors, the park remained first and
foremost a space of mass processions, carnivals and parades. Evidently referring to Glan's
guidelines, he declared the principle of "organized mass-ness" [printsip organizovannoi
massovosti] defining his vision of a Soviet park. The technical means of achieving this goal
Kalmykov saw in the theory of composition, which had been actively developed by ASNOVA
during the previous years.
In the mid 1920s, the first generation of Ladovskii's students (Viktor Balikhin, Mikhail
Turkus, Ivan Lamtsov, among others), by then already young professors of architecture, engaged
in an ambitious project of elaborating a Rationalist theory of composition. The work was
eventually published in 1934 as Elementy arkhitekturno-prostranstvennoikompozitsii [Elements
of architectural-spatialcomposition].589 An Aristotelian system of compositional categories that
the team prepared was based on a distinction between architectural elements (sensations),
compositional means, and compositional types. The first comprised of form, size, location, mass,
material (faktura), color, and chiaroscuro; the second were represented by relations, proportions,
rhythm and meter; and finally, the three compositional types included frontal, volume, and
589 Vladimir Krinskii, Ivan Lamtsov, and Mikhail Turkus, Elementy Arkhitekturno-Prostranstvennoi
Kompozitsii.
(Moskva: Gos. nauchno-tekhnicheskoe izd-vo stroitel'noi industrii i sudostroeniia Gosstroizdat NKTP SSSR, 1934).
Being reprinted in the 1960s, it remained a key text book ori architectural composition for the later generation of
Soviet architecture students.
321

spatial

composition.

If relations

and

proportions

primarily served frontal and volume compositions,
rhythm and meter organized spatial ones. As a sequence
of solids and voids, a rhythm presented an order, or-as
the Rationalists called it-a row. As in the theory of

,

IN

music and poetry, the rows could be rhythmical or
TA

metrical, distinguished by repetition and regularity of
elements and intervals: if rhythm dealt with their

t -71

!Qa
Fig. 4.23. Viktor Kalmykov, Moscow
TsPKiO. Competition Project, 1931. 1.
Main alleymhthicall develto

Main alley rhythmically develops towards

the compositional center. 2. Mass Action
Field. 3. Tribunes and Stadium. 4.

successive change (increase or diminution), meter was
defined by their equality. Metrical rows presented a
canvas, a spatial skeleton of a form, analogous to

musical bars comprising the base of a melody, while

Synthetic Theater. 5. River and landscape.

2-5-Compositional Center.

metncal motives were compared to musical chords.

Combinations of metrical rows expressed force,
serenity, monumentality and scale. Rhythm, on the other hand, as a law of connection of spatial
forms and elements, represented the culminating method of organizing spatial complexes, and
could express lightness and dynamism. Combining various spatial elements (qualities) with the
method of their organization, one could achieve an almost infinite variety of rhythmical rows.
Moreover, a combination of rhythmical or rhythmical and metrical rows produced complex rows
possessing new spatial qualities.

322

Applying these principles to the design of parks of culture and leisure, Kalmykov
suggested to organize major thoroughfares that led from main entrances to the park's center-the
vessels of mass circulation during celebration days-as rhythmical rows proportionally
intensifying towards their endpoint. Rhythm stimulated the growing interest of visitors as they
moved along the way, directed their visual perception, and prepared them for the park's best
perspectives and viewpoints, which could be most fully enjoyed from the compositional center.
A monotonous repetition of the same architectural element, Kalmykov explained, provoked
boredom; moreover, a viewer was psychologically unable to hold in mind more than four or five
metrically organized elements, and further repetitions remained unnoticed. Thus, architectural
"generalizations" and accents on important parts of the composition were vital for the visitor's
comfort and orientation. These rhythmical accents could be created with the help of vegetation,
sculpture or small architectural forms; rhythm could also be conveyed by color (such as that of
flowerbeds) that gradually changed from paler and colder hues in the periphery to brighter and
warmer ones in the center. Smaller alleys, on the other hand, had to avoid an impression of long
straight lines: even if they were topographically long, they could be visually made shorter by a
division into segments that rhythmically intensified towards the center.

323

0

Figs. 4.24-4.25. Viktor Kalmykov, Examples of simple rhythmical groupings of vegetation, 1936.

A giant mass actions field with the "sport nucleus" (one or several stadiums) adjacent to
it was to occupy the park's compositional center-its most important point from both an
ideological and a architectural point of view. "Mass synthetic theater," an open-air amphitheater
for giant-scale theatrical performances, likewise was to be situated nearby. Kalmykov believed
that the architectural function of tribunes in the compositional center was not seating the visitors
but rather organizing their perception. This perception was not limited to performance happening
immediately in front of them; rather, it was to be constructed as a complex, synthetic aesthetic
experience, in which the spectacle merged with the architecture of the park and the surrounding
landscape and atmosphere. Thus, although an enclosed amphitheater could accommodate more
viewers than amphitheaters of other shapes, Kalmykov disapproved of it because many of its
seats offered oblique or otherwise disadvantageous viewpoints. More important than the
considerations of economy was, for Kalmykov, the concern about perception: the tribune had to
be visually connected with the landscape, so that the events on the field of mass actions could be
beheld by everyone from the best possible viewpoint. Thus, Kalmykov argued for a large, wide324

MUMwY

Figs. 4.26-4.27. Kalmykov, Model and Scheme of Tashkent Stadium.
Field.

~

WXW~rJAV

3&

onaayX~

1 Tribune. 2. Sport Nucleus. 3. Mass Actions

open amphitheater facing the stadium, a mass action field behind, and landscape in the
distance.590

In Kalmykov's project for the Central Stadium of Central Asia in Tashkent, the tribune
faced the "sport nucleus," which then merged with the Mass Actions Field with a river and a
large semi-circular water basin; the perspective was enclosed by a picturesque view of Chimgan
mountains in the distance; the spectacle was completed by a view of water channels, cascades,
basins and fountains in the nearby park. Occupying the highest point of the park, the tribune
faced east to allow the spectacle to be lit by gentle rays of the evening sun. To give the majority
of the fifty thousand spectators the best possible perspective, the tribune's height rose towards
the center, where the majority of seats was concentrated. The director orchestrated the
performance from the central, highest point of the tribune, while his or her assistants helped from
the towers of the side pavilions. Apart from having its pragmatic function, the tribune's unusual
shape allowed to "dynamically design the fayade by means of rhythmical organization." To add a
dramatic effect to the composition, the tribune was divided by eight-sided columns that marked
Viktor Kalmykov,

"Arkhitekturnye problemy parkov (Doklad po pervomy etapu raboty
nad temoi)"
["Architectural problems of parks (Report on the first stage of the work on the topic"], 1936, 2. Unpublished
manuscript, Russian State Archive of Science-Technical Documentation, Samara.
590

325

the angles of fluted parts of the fagade and proportionally increased towards the center. In the
park, a similar rhythmic effect was achieved by a contrast of ball-shaped elms and elongated
'

pyramidal poplars. 59

Much like Zalesskaia's preoccupation with scenic effects in her project for Moscow
TsPKiO or like Ladovskii's concern with picturesque perspectives offered in Kostino,
Kalmykov's vision for the stadium in Tashkent and his principle of "organized mass-ness" were
based on the aesthetics of the picturesque. A spectacular, dramatic effect achieved by a careful,
cinematic unfolding of scenes and perspectives reminded of the principles of landscape
gardening and cinematic montage, which also aimed at creating a deep emotional, psychological
experience. With its shamanic, hypnotic power, rhythm helped to structure, direct and intensify
this effect. And if at first sight such projects as ASNOVA's Palace of the Soviets or
Mazmonian's Central Park of Culture and Leisure were much less romantic and contemplative,
maintaining a semi-military tempo of marching demonstrating columns, in fact, their
interpretation of the demonstrating mass as an object of its own spectacle-an interpretation
rooted in Lunacharskii's romantic vision articulated during the War Communism yearsreturned them to the picturesque, asserting that an organization of masses was an organization of
their perception.

591

Kalmykov, "Arkhitekturnye problemy parkov," 7-8.
326

Organizing Individuality
The year 1928 marked not only the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan of economic
development, but also that of a new cultural policy of the Soviet state-the proclaimed return to
revolutionary ideals, which became known as "cultural revolution." The priority of this new
policy was the development of a class-specific proletarian culture that had once been promoted
by Bogdanov's Proletkul't but neglected during the 1920s. The return of revolutionism was
illustrated by giant spectacles of Glan's celebrations, which occupied the park's space at state
holidays and during important political events, but on an everyday basis the organization of
visitors happened on a different, individual, level, organized around the notion of "culture." Like
a mass procession, this individual work in the park served to "activate" the visitors, albeit with
each of them individually. Operating on the collectivist principles of life, creativity, strength, and
beauty, the park was to create the new collectivist subject as an active, conscious and
independent participant of social, economic, and cultural life of the country.
As its name betrays, the "park of culture and leisure" intended to make the working class'
leisure "cultured"-civilized and full of cultural and educational activities. Its initial program
was envisioned by the chairman of the Moscow Soviet (Council) Konstantin Ukhanov as a place
for a "meaningful leisure" of the working class, and elaborated, at Ukhanov's request, by
Lunacharskii and, later, by Glan. 592 As she later recalled, the challenge that she faced lay in the
development of a totally novel-socialist-form of mass recreation:

Konstantin Ukhanov, "V bor'be za kul'turu (K organizatsii v Moskve 'Parka kul'tury i otdykha')"
["In a fight for
culture (On the organization in Moscow of 'Park of culture and leisure')"], PravdaNo. 68 (21 March 1928). The
program was subsequently developed in a resolution of the Moscow Committee of the Party, in a special decree of
Narkompros, and in the materials of the All-Union Meeting on Parks of Culture and Leisure held by the Central
Soviet of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) in 1933.
592

327

"I knew from books that the art of parks and gardens has existed for many years. ... But
these were, as a rule, the parks at royal residences or the estates of bigwigs. Simple
people weren't allowed even to approach them.
As for us, in the difficult circumstances of the 20s-30s we were to create the first in the
country, new in form and content, park for simple Soviet people, their joy and leisure.59 3
According to Ukhanov, "the battle for culture" in the park was a part of the "cultural
revolution" that was to "reconstruct the everyday life of a worker and a peasant, fill it with new
content, adequate for the socialist essence of our construction."5 94 Ukhanov, who first articulated
its program in the Party newspaper Pravda in March of 1928, stipulated that the park had to
include an entertainment complex, where a worker could find everything for a day outside of a
factory: a cinema and a theater, a circus, radio, music, all kinds of sports-football, shooting,
running, athletics, water and rowing sports, bathing, swimming, boating,-playgrounds,
attractions, exhibitions, newspaper kiosks, dining rooms, cafes, milk and grocery stands.595 As
such, the park had to replace old, unorganized outdoor sites of workers' leisure: natural grooves
and parks, where on days off workers and their families "walk or sit on the grass in a narrow
circle of friends; [here] vodka and beer bottles abound, an accordion creaks, tipsy couples dance,

593 Glan, Prazdnik vsegda s nami, 46. Translation by the author. Russian original: <<I

3HaIa H3 KHHr, TO MHo0He
BeKa cyuiecTByeT CaAoBO-napKoBoe HcKyccTBo. ... Ho To 6imH, KaK npaBHJIO, rIapKH HPH IapCKHX pe3HAeHIIH1X
HJIH BJIaeHHAX cHATeJHwx oco6. HpocTori HapoA H 6JIH3Ko K HHM He noIAyCKaJIH.
Ham )Ke npegCTOJIO B CJIOKHTiX yCJoBHRX 20-30x POAOB CO3AaTi, nepBbLI B CTpaHe, HOBIHE 11o 43opMe H

594

napK ARA HpOCTx

COBeTCKHX

jiogek, AM1

HX

paAOCTH

H oTiAXa)

.

COAep)KaHHIO

Ukhanov, "V bor'be za kul'turu."

595 Ukhanov, "V bor'be za kul'turu." The program was subsequently developed in a resolution of the Moscow
Committee of the Party, in a special decree of Narkompros, and in the materials of the All-Union Meeting on Parks
of Culture and Leisure held by the Central Soviet of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) in 1933. See, Resolutions on the Park
of Culture and Leisure of the Board of Narkompros of RSFSR from 6 September 1931, 5 August 1932, and 4
September 1933; resolutions on the Park of Culture and Leisure of the Moscow Committee of All-Soviet
Communist (Bolshevik) Party from 30 October 1930 and 37 April 1931; resolution on the Park of Culture and
Leisure of the Secretariat of the Central Soviet of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) from 4 June 1932 and the proceedings of
the All-Union Meeting on Parks of Culture and Leisure hold by the Central Soviet of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) in
1933 (all unpublished).

328

fortune-tellers move to and fro."5 9 6 At first sight, the program of the park simply merged the

programs of two German nineteenth-century types of workers' recreation spaces: Volkspark and
Lunapark, both developed within a capitalist society. If the first served a moral and hygienic
purpose, allegedly allowing urban proletariat to reunite with nature and thereby to counteract the
corrupting influence of the city, the second-downplaying these achievements-indulged the
city sensibility of the worker providing him with nervous stimulation and easy gratification.
However, despite its capitalist predecessors, the new park was to change the practice of people's
everyday life-to destroy the habits of oppressed, ignorant and uneducated exploited class and
replace them with "culture" that had previously been accessible only to the upper classes. 597
As Lunacharskii's second, "segregated," stage of mass celebrations, the park's daily life
consisted of small-group discussions, debates, singing, and dancing. Moreover, the effect of the
park was lasting because the workers were repeatedly subject to it: the park offered schools,
courses, clubs and opportunities for education and physical and artistic development, which the
visitors could use on a regular basis. In spite of dark and sarcastic pessimism of Il'f and Petrov,
the position of the park's directorship on the role of personality was optimistic: Glan firmly
refuted the accusations of inhumanity, oppression of individuality and utilitarian attitudes to
personality, which were openly voiced by the writers on the pages of Pravda. She admitted that
"one of the most common and most diligently repeated by the bourgeoisie fables about the
596

Ukhanov, "V bor'be za kul'turu."

Volkov, "Kontseptsia kul'turnosti. 1935-1938 gody. Sovetskaia tsivilizatsia i povsednevnost' stalinskogo
vremeni" ["Concept of kul'turnost'. 1935-1938. Soviet civilization and the everyday life of Stalin's time"],
Sotsiologicheskiizhurnal No.1-2 (1996) 194-213; V. V. Volkov, "The Concept of kul'turnost': Notes on Stalinist
Civilising Process," Everyday Stalinism: OrdinaryLife in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Ed.
Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 210-230; Catriona Kelly, V. V. Volkov, "Directed
Desires: Kul'turnost' and Consumption," Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution, 1881-1940. Ed.
Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 291-313.
597 V. V.

329

Soviet Union is the accusation of the Bolsheviks in a neglect of individuality, in a suppression of
the interests of an individual person, in a forced collectivization of people in working, social and
everyday life." 5 98 Instead of denigrating individuality, the park, Glan believed, offered wide
opportunities for its development. Within a variety of clubs, sections and activities, everyone
could find something for themselves and thereby develop their personalities, foster their talents
and interests and stimulate their emotional attitudes, motivation and energy. 599
As Marx was mostly preoccupied with the concept of labor and rarely used the word
"leisure" in his writings, 600 in orthodox Marxism, it was defined simply as a time spent outside
of factory work; its function in a capitalist society was limited to replenishing the proletarians'
working energy, ensuring their biological reproduction, and creating a market for capitalist
production. 601 The interpretation of leisure as rest found its place in the program of the TsPKiO,
reflected in the multiple "zones of quiet rest" and "health zones," where people could sleep in the
open air, stretch with a book, or simply rest at a bench. This practice turned to be quite effective:
according to the Institute of Balneotherapy and the Scientific-Methodological Center of the Park
of Culture and Leisure, a group of visitors to the villages of one-day rest, which was studied
during three months, demonstrated a 10% increase in the productivity of labor. 602

598 Betti Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turnootdykhat' [To work hard-to rest culturally] (Moskva: Mospartizdat,
1933) 12. Translation by the author. Russian original: 0OAHa H3 HaH6o0ee paCmpocTpaHeHHUX H yCepAHO
1OBTOpieMbIX 6ypxya3Hei 6aceH o COBCTCKOM COIO3e-3TO o6BHHeHHe 6onbHmeBHKOB B rlpeHe6pe)KeHHH K
HHAMHBHAyaBHOCTH, B IOiAaBjeHHH HHrepecoB OTAeJIbHOrO qeJiOBeKa, B HaCHjihCTBeHHOA KOJIecKTHBH3aIXHH moAze
KaK B npOH3BoAcTBeHHOA H o6IjeCTBeHHoA KH3HH, TaK H B 6LI'y>>.
599

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turno otdykhat', 12.

600

Chris Rojek, "Did Marx have a theory of leisure?" Leisure Studies Vol. 3, Issue 2 (1984): 163-174 (163).

601

Rojek, "Did Marx have a theory of leisure?",
172.

602

Glan, Udarno rabotat'kul'turno otdykhat',
33.
330

However useful for the improvement of working productivity, this interpretation of
leisure as an antonym of work did not dominate in the park's program, which followed, instead,
a later, more Romantic interpretation of socialist-minded aesthetic thinkers such as William
Morris. Morris's News from Nowhere, for instance, gives the notion of leisure a prominent role.
It was leisure rather than work that determined the dignity and humanity of the person in the
ideal London of the future. Leisure guaranteed happiness, pleasure, self-fulfillment, creativity,
and-most importantly for Morris-beauty.
The art or work-pleasure, as one ought to call it, of which I am now speaking, sprung up
almost spontaneously, it seems, from a kind of instinct amongst people, no longer driven
desperately to painful and terrible overwork, to do the best they could with the work in
hand-to make it excellent of its kind; and when that had gone on for a little, a craving
for beauty seemed to awaken in men's minds, and they began rudely and awkwardly to
ornament the wares which they made; and when they had once set to work at that, it soon
began to grow. All this was much helped by the abolition of the squalor which our
immediate ancestors put up with so coolly; and by the leisurely, but not stupid, countrylife which now grew (as I told you before) to be common amongst us. Thus at last and by
slow degrees we got pleasure into our work; then we became conscious of that pleasure,
and cultivated it, and took care that we had our fill of it; and then all was gained and we
were happy. So may it be for ages and ages! 603
This idea of leisure was employed and developed by Lunacharskii and his co-thinkers,
who believed that creativity, this essence of human-ness, was a fruit of leisure-not a passive
idleness, but an active, meaningful and purposeful use of time spent outside of manual work.
Leisure, for Lunacharskii, was the first condition of true freedom, and as such-of any progress
of intellectual inquiry. Ultimately, it allowed the mind to act in the most economical way, in
accordance with Avenarius's law of the smallest measure of force, described as the principle of
true philosophy in Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemdjf dem Prinzip des kleinsten

603

William

Morris,

News

from

Nowhere

(1890).

Multiple

<http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/ 890/nowhere/nowhere.htm>.

331

editions.

Web.

2.7.2014.

Kraftmaj3es [Philosophyas Thinking About the World According to the Principleof the Smallest
Measure of Force].
loXpi [skhola]-ideleness is the mother of all sciences. With a class that did not have to
struggle constantly for survival, there emerged a new mighty stimulus of human progress.
Idle people could better develop their organs, from muscles to brain, because they could
play: this was their freedom; the [Russian] word "slavery" [rabstvo] stems from the word
"work" [rabota]: art and science were inaccessible for a slave [rab] [or] a worker
[rabochii]. Play gave a tremendous strength to aristocracy, because it not only exercised
the body and brain of the representatives of the upper classes, but gave them an
opportunity to transfer a concrete struggle into the sphere of abstraction: they could
combine, daringly generalize generations' experience, they could pose questions in the
most general, abstract terms. Playing, the brain created itself new life-differences
[zhizneraznosti], it strived for the correct thinking of the world in accordance with the
principle of the smallest measure of force. While the person of a daily life struggled with
thousands of different enemies, the mind of free thinkers, generalizing these different
questions, created itself a phantasmal great enemy, namely an abstract question. In this
form it was a cognitive life-difference, a disbalance of the brain's work, but a solution of
such a question, a victory over it was nothing else but a satisfactory theory whose
practical implementation did not solve all particular difficulties.604

6
Anatolii Lunacharskii, Osnovy pozitivnoi estetiki [Foundations of Positive Aesthetics] (Moskva-Petrograd:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1923) 26-27. Translation by the author. Russian original: oaXpoii -Hpa3AHOCTmeCm rmaTB HayK. C rOSiBjieHHeM Knacca, KOTOPOMy He Heo6xOAHMO 6MnoI HOCTOSIHHO 6opoTci 3a cyecTBoBaHHe,
IBHRIC HOBLIr MOryqHfi cTHmyn qeOBeqiecKorO nporpecca. Hpa3AHme jOmAH MOrJiH npaBHiHee pa3BHBaTh BCe

CBOH

OpraHbi,

HaqHHaS

C MYCKYJIOB H KOH'aA MO3rOM, TaK KaK OHH MOrIH HrpaTb,--B 3TOM 3aKJuOqaJlaC HX

CBo6oAa; CjiOBO <pa6cTBo> IIpOHCXOAfHT OT CJIOBa <pa6oTa>: pa6y, pa6o'eMy HCKyCCTBO H HayKa 6w1AH
HeAoCTynHM. Hrpa Aana cTpamHyio cHny apHCTOKpaTHH, IOTOMy qTO OHa He TOjhKO ynpaxHama TenO H MO3V
ripeAcTaBHTefleri BMCHIHX KmacCOB, HO Aajia HM B03MO)KHOCTh nepeHecTH KOHKpeTHyIO 6opb6y B riOjiA a6cTpaKIH:
OHH MOrJIH KOM6HHHpOBaTb, cMeiio o6o6laTE OIMT flOKOjieHHA, OHH MOriH CTaBHTh BOnpOCM B CaM1X o6ftHX,
a6cTparrHMX TepMHHax. Hrpa, MO3r CTaBHA ce6e HOBbIC KH3Hepa3HOCTH, OH CTpeMHJICJ K rIpaBHJIbHOMy
MbIRJIeHHIO o MHpe COrJaCHO HPHHIHRy HaHMeHbmerl TpaTbi CH1. B TO BpeMA KaK leJIOBeK noBCeAHeBHOIR KH3HH
60pOnCsI C TmCK'IaMH pa3HmX BparOB, yM CBO6OAHMX MlciHTeiier, o6o6ia 3TH MaJICHKHe BOUpOCb, CO3AaBaJI
ce6e ipH3pa-MOT

BeJIHKOrO Bpara, a EMeHHo a6cTpaKTHmiE Bonpoc. B 3TOri 4 opMe OH 6L1fL )KH3Hepa3HOCThiO
nO3HaBarTejiHOr1, HapymeHHeM paBHOBecH pa6oTm
MO3ra, HO pemeHHe TaKOrO Bonpoca, no6e~a HaA HHM
ABMsiCb He qeM HHbIM, KaK yAOBjieTBopHTeJbHOri TeOpHeii, IpaKTH1iCcKoe ipHMeHCHHe KoTopOH pa3pemajio BCe
,qacTme TpyAHOCTH>).

With a change in official discourse in the 1930s, the obvious connection between the words rab and rabota ("slave"
and "work") began to be disputed, for instance, in the work of prominent Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr. See, N. Ia.
Marr, "Marks i problemy iazyka" ["Marx and the Problems of Language"], Izbrannye raboty [Selected writings].

Vols.1-5. Vol. 2 (Moskva-Leningrad: GSEI, 1936) 444-459 (557-559).
332

The notion of creativity occupied a central place already in the philosophy of
Collectivism: for the Collectivists, it equaled nothing else than life itself, being its driving force,
principle and ethic ideal. 05 For Lunacharskii, creativity was a higher way of adaptation of
organism to the environment, a way accessible only to humans and thus presenting the essence of
human character.606 It was one of the key values during the first post-revolutionary years,
figuring prominently, for example, in Gan's mass celebration proposal, which asserted a
conscious creative work as one of the priorities of the project, whose scenario had to be written
"by the masses themselves in the process of collective work and collective discussion." The
International, the subject of the central performance, was interpreted as the origin of the
international festival, this "first act of mass creativity on a world scale."607 For Glan, too, the
essence of energy that the park of culture and leisure aspired to evoke lay in creativity, which
ensured the most enthusiastic, ingenious, clever and enjoyable production work. "Mobilization of
the creative forces of the working class for the socialist construction-this is the main task of the
park," was the motto she gave to the park's employees. 608

Maxim Gorky, "Razrushenie lichnosti" ["The destruction of personality"], Ocherkifilosofli kollestivizma
[Essays
in the Philosophy of Collectivism] (St. Petersburg: Tipografia t-va khudozhestvennoi pechati, 1909) 351- 403 (403).
605

606

Lunacharskii, Osnovypozitivnoi estetiki, 7.

The Theatrical Department of the Commissariat for Education, Narkompros, "A proposal for the
organization of
the May Day festivities," 125.
607

60

1 ParkKul'tury i Otdykha No. 1 (1931): 3.

Some authors have differently interpreted the nature of this energy. In his "annotated catalog of garden and park
sculpture of Stalin's time," Russian cultural historian Mikhail Zolotonosov pointed to the allegedly sexual character
of sculptures, which, representing youthful healthy bodies, appeared in Gorky Park in the second half of the 1930s.
These sculptures, according to Zolotonosov, as well as the multiple opportunities for viewing real semi-naked bodies
at numerous sports, exercise, and bathing grounds, served to arouse sexual desire, which was then converted into the
energy of work. Mikhail Zolotonosov, Glyptokratoz: Issledovanie Nemogo Diskursa: AnnotirovannyiKatalog
Sadovo-Parkovoi Skul'ptury Stalinskogo Vremeni [Glypocratoz: A Study of Silent Discourse: Annotated Catalog of
Garden and Park Sculpture of Stalin's Time] (Sankt-Peterburg: Inapress, 1999) 8-19. Similarly, in her doctoral

333

As the essence of socialist leisure, creativity pointed to leisure's active and energetic
character, which contrasted to its degraded quality in a capitalist society. As a playful preparation
to future productive activity, it was inseparable from sport and health improvement. "Mass
involvement of the workers into activities of physical culture with the purpose of restoring
strength and energy spent at production" became an important element of the park's program.609
When in August of 1934 Betti Glan discussed her projected presentation on the International
Congress on Leisure and Recreation in the United States with Maxim Gorky, the writer selected
and enthusiastically developed two of her points. First, "in the land of socialism, where all adult
population capable of working works, leisure possesses special significance, because it is not
only a rest from labor, but also for labor, its essence is in the restoration of working energy and
simultaneously in spiritual [dukhovnyi6 1 0 ] enrichment." Leisure, thus, was a work-a work on
one's personality, a development of one's moral qualities, knowledge and motivation. Second,
"leisure serves to a harmonic development of personality, a detection of creative predispositions
and abilities, not connected to a particular profession, which on a mass scale is possible only in a
socialist country." 61

Unlike a specialized "professional" education, leisure, for Gorky,

dissertation, Tijana Vujosevic argued that Soviet Taylorism contained "a peculiar eroticization of labor - a
celebration of surplus energy invested into work. There is a fascination with the ecstasies in the merger of the
organic and the inorganic in a pan-machinic world" (Tijana Vujosevic, "Architectures of the Everyday in 1920s and
1930s Russia." Ph.D. Dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010, 98-99). A possibility of
conversion of sexual into working energy, however, was not obvious for Soviet authorities. The minister of health
Nikolai Semashko, for example, believed that sexual activity only devoured the energy that could otherwise be used
for productive work. (David L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The CulturalNorms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941
[Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003] 92). For a discussion of this question see Kucher, Park Gor'kogo, 235-246).
609 Putevoditel' po Tsentral'nomu parku kul'tury i otdykha [Guide to the Central Park of Culture
and Leisure]
(Moskva: s. 1., 1930) 48. Russian original: <MaccoBE.I oxBaT TpygAsiHxcA (H3KynIbTypHuMH MepOH5HTHIMH B
rieJsiX BoccTaHOBJIeHH cRJI H 3HeprHH TpyAAMlHXCA, no-rpatIeHHX Ha npOH3BoAcTBe>>.
610

In this context, the word dukhovnyi can also be translated as "moral" or "intellectual."

611

Glan, Prazdnikvsegda s nami, 106.
334

guaranteed the type of development that in the Soviet jargon of the time was called
"polytechnic": it allowed a person to obtain a general understanding of historic, social, political
and economic development of the world in order to understand one's personal role and one's
function in it.612 Dialectically rather than ontologically opposed, leisure and work supplemented
each other and ensured each other's meaningfulness; in other words, in its best manifestations,
leisure was nothing else but work. Glan explained:
We believe that the essence of the park lies precisely in the fact that it is a multi-sided
cultural complex, which gives a possibility to fulfill various cultural needs, which are
especially vividly exposed in the conditions of free leisure. It is unquestionable that the
park must not continue working processes, that it has to be a pause in labor, but the

energy of the visitor to the park must be not switched off, but rather switched to other
kinds of activity, which due to the very fact of voluntary switching are forms of rest from
the previous work. This does not exclude, as one of the moments, one of the various
forms of leisure and leisure-rest (sleep, rest in hammocks etc.). The line for abstract
passive rest cannot comply with the tasks of communist education and the elevation of
cultural level of million masses. The work in parks has to be organized in such a way
that, encompassing with communist influence the working masses in the park, organizing
their struggle for achieving current political tasks, it would simultaneously be leisure for
the worker and would fulfill his cultural needs.6 13
The park itself, termed "the City of Cheerfullness" [gorod bodrosti], was juxtaposed to
the ,,kingdom of boredom"-capitalist entertainment parks such as Coney Island, where, in
Gorky's words, "the person is immediately stupefied, his consciousness squashed by its gleam,
612

Glan, Prazdnik vsegda s nami, 106.

Glan, "Za sotsialisticheskii park," 11. Glan's emphasis. Translation by the author. Russian original:
.(MEJ
rnoaraeM, 'ITO CYUWHOCTh HapKa 3aW1uIaeTCA HMeHHO B TOM, qTO OH ABj1KeTCA MiOeOCmOpOHZM KYJbMypHbIM
KoM6uHamoM, Aa1OHHM BO3MO)KHOCTb yAOBneTBOpHTb pa3HOO6pa3Hue KYJEETypHbie 3aIpOCLI, KOTOpmC
BbIBIIOTCA oco6eHHo APKO B YCJIOBHRX CBo6OAHOrO
ocyra. BeCCHOpHO nOnOKeHHe, 'iTO napK ne oieicn
npOtoAiCamb mpydoebie npoyeccb, 'TO OH AOJDKceH ABAhCA mpydoeo lnay3of, HO 3HeprHA HpHImeAmerO B IapIK
pa6oiero AomH He BMKIO'aThCZ, a nepexvnotambCX na 6pyzue eu~bi de0qmeAbiOCMu, ABmIouHHecA yxe B CHly
camoro acrra go6pOBonbHoro nepeKjio'CHH 4)OpMMH OTAmXa oT UpeAWuyueif pa6oTm. 3TO OTH109b He
HCKJUO'1aT, KaK oAHoro H3 MOMeHTOB, OAHOA H3 pa3Hoo6paHux 4opM OTAuXa H OTAixa-noKOA (COH, iecaRHHe B
ramaKax H T.A.). .iIHHHA Ha 6ecpeAmeTHmI naCCHBHUI OTAUX He MOXCKT COOTBCTCTBOBaTh 3aARaaM
KOMMyHHCTHqCCKOrO BOCHHTaHHR H HOAHATHA KYJ1TYPHOrO YPOBHA MHJUTHOHHIX Macc. Pa6oTa B napxax AOJXHa
6~mn OpraHH3OBaHa TaKHM o6pa3oM, TO6b, OXBaThIBaA KOMMyHHCTH'eCKHM BJIHSHHeM pa6o'rHe MaCCbI B rlapKe,
OpraHH3yx 1X Ha 6opb6y 3a BbIIIOJIHCHHe o'epegHmx noIHTHeCCKHX 3aAaq, OHa BMCCTe C TeM ABmuaC 6M
OTAmXOM AnA pa6oqero H yAOBneTBOpJAia 6M ero KyjmTypHue 3IpOCE.W.
613

335

thought expelled from it and the personality turned into a piece of the crowd." 614 Glan's
language abounded with metaphors of energy and force: the proletariat-the young, rising class,
full of youthful energy, which it eagerly spent for the transformation of the universe-a task with
which only young giants could cope; cheerfulness, excitement, good mood, enthusiasm, perhaps
even a little bit of youthful impatience differed the young, strong and healthy Soviet society from
the sick and old society of the bourgeois West. The socialist park allowed the worker, while
taking a break from work, "to release his good mood, his happy feeling of great victories"61 :
He is the builder of socialism, who within a short time rebuilt the boundless spaces of the
sixth part of the world, who created Dneproges, Magnitogorsk, Uralmash, tractor
factories and dozens of other industrial giants. Who, if not he-the victor-is to live the
truly cultured, merry, cheerful life of a rising class! Where, if not in our country, the first
in history country of the triumph of the best ideas of humanity, is possible such a multisided, full, full-blooded life, in which a happy labor is intercepted with a happy
leisure!6 16

The very appearance of the park had to convey this energizing cheerful atmosphere. Its
creation became the task of brothers Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, who were the chief artists of
TsPKiO between 1928 and 1933. Former Constructivists, they had previously worked as stageset decorators at Aleksandr Tairov's experimental theater, and it was this decoration work that
attracted Glan's attention. Stenbergs' designs avoided propaganda cliches and concentrated,

614

Maxim Gorky, "V Amerike" [In America]," quoted in Glan, Udarno rabotat'--kul'turno
otdykhant', 15.

615

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turnootdykhat', 13.

616

Glan, Udarnorabotat'-kul'turnootdykhat', 13-14. Translation by the author. Russian
original:
AOcyre, xoqeT pa6oqHn AaTL BLIXOA CBOeMy XOpOmeMy HacTpoeHHIO, paAOCTHOMy on~iIeHmo

Ha

no6eA. OH-cTpoKTweJI

dSIMeHHO 3ACCb,
CBOHX BeJIHKHX

KpaTaiuIHi CPOK HeO6o3pHMme npocTpaHcTBa
MHpa, Co3AaBmHA AHenpor3c, MarHHToropCK, YpmMam, TpaKTOpHHm 3aBOAI H ACCITKH ApyrHX
HHAyCTpHaJKHHIX BeJIHKaHOB. KoMy, KaI He eMy-o6egHTejno, KHmT nOAJHHHO KyJILTypHOii, Becenorl, 6oApori
)KH3HEO BOcxoAAsMero iciacca! 1FAe, KaK He B Hamefi cTpaHe, nepBOrI B HCTOpHH cTpaHe TopxcecTBa nynimHx HAger
meCTOW

coIgHaH3Ma, IepeCTpOHBIUHII

3aHOBO B

qaCTH

'qeIOBe'IecTBa, B03MOXHa TaKaS MHOrOCTOpOHH3LH, HaCbieHHas, IIOJIHOKpOBHa2
TpyA CmeHeTCA paAOCTHUM OTXMXOM!>>

336

XH3Hb, B KOTOpOfi p2aOCTHmri

instead, on creating a joyful and cheerful atmosphere. For the opening of 1931 summer season,
for instance, the artists eliminated ubiquitous red banners from the park, replacing them with a
colorful and light decorations: "...[The Park's] theaters, sport pavilions, library, children village,

caf6 painted in light hues-white to light-blue, beige, lemon-yellow (with colorful drawings of
smiling children, running sportsmen, theater masks) now looked taller, lighter and more elegant.
Beautiful wooden Caryatids by Konenkov6 17 on the variety theater became more noticeable and
relief, intricate gazebos and small stages-open and transparent." Everywhere in the park hung
banners of various forms, sizes and colors: "long, vertical, fixed along poles and lamps; wide
horizontal on some of the buildings; and small triangles flying on the wind on the steeples of
shortish structures," they were light- or dark-blue, white, or orange, playfully contrasting the
fresh green color of spring foliage. Particularly festive and magic the park looked at night-time,
when the greenery, fountains, and sculptures where lit by a carefully organized illumination
system.618

Sergei Timofeevich Konenkov (1874-1971)-renowned Russian and Soviet sculptor working in a Rodin-like
style; between 1923 and 1945 lived in the United States.
617

Glan, Prazdnik vsegda s nami, 47-48. Translation by the author. Russian original: <Ero TeaTpm,
CHopTHBHme
HaBHJoHBLI, mHTamHH, AeTCKHA ropOAOK, Ka(e, oKpameHHie CBeTfiMMH TOHaMH-6CnbiM, nepexoAMhIHM B
rony6orl, naJieBbM, RHMOHHO-)KeJThM (c IBCTHiMH pHCyHKaMH ynu6amoiiHxCA AeTe 6eryiHx CropTcMeHOB,
TeaTpaJIHX MacoK), BrTmeiCIH Tenepb Bmue, neiie H H3AIMHee. HpHmCeTmmH H peime4(HIMH CTaiH
npeKpacHhie KOHCHKOBCKHe repeBAHHMe KapHaTHAM Ha 3CTpaAHOM TeaTpe, a)IKypHbIMH H HpO3pa'qHbMH3aTerwHBMi 6eceAKH H mamme 3cTpaAm.
...
6Lma H3o6peTeHa HOBaA CHCTeMa OopMfleHHA H3 ( JarOB pa3HbX 4)OpM H pa3MepoB--iHHHHHx,
618

BepTHKaJ[LHMM, yxpereHHMX BAOJh CTO116OB H 43OHaper, uHpOKHX rOpH3oHTaEJHmX Ha HeKOTOpHaX 3AaHHEX H
He6oHbIUHX TpeyrORbHHKOB, pa3BeBaIOHXCA Ha BeTpy Ha IHHH3HX HCBLiCOKHX coopy)KeHHH.
HCIIOJIh3OBaHbI B

O4)OpMJIeHHH 4(narH ApyrHx

4OHe 3eJIiHH OHH BMJriiAeICH HCO)KHAaHHO H Becejio

.

BnepBae 6LLIIH

337

IBeToB:

roiy6Me,

CHHHe,

6emue, opaHwemaBe. Ha

Fig. 4.28. Central Park of Culture and Leisure, Lilly-of-the-Valley Alley, designed by brothers Stenberg. Early

1930s.

Referring to Lunacharskii's early-1920s ideas, Glan termed her project of transforming
and multiplying workers' energy "the principle of the activation of visitors" [printsip aktivizatsii
posetitele]. As one of the park's defining postulates, this principle stipulated that the visitors to
the park were not passive spectators-on the contrary, they were co-workers who participated in
the park's perpetual creation. 619 The activation of visitors was achieved by engaging them into
conversations, political debates, collective singing, games, and physical exercises. The visitors
were, for instance, invited to take part in the experiments of Timiriazev Biological Museum
within the park and in the demonstrations of numerous machinery exhibited in the park's Village
of Science and Technology. 620 However, its most important implementation the principle of the
activation of visitors found in amateur art and music movement: according to Glan, mass
singing, dance, rhythmic poetry reciting engaged thousands of people every day, providing clubs

619

Glan, "Za sotsialisticheskii park," 10.

620

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turnootdykhat', 57-58.

338

and factories with an example of mass work.621 As a result, a new profession emerged within the
park, soon becoming one of the most important for its functioning: the so-called "mass
organizers" [organizator-massovik] were several hundreds of volunteers who specialized in
activating the masses. Like Glan herself, mass organizators were "young cheerful guys. They
possess a wonderful quality, which gave them a deserved popularity-their special capacity to
organize and lead the masses, to draw it into singing, dance, play, to give it a free and easy merry
disposition." 622 The role of this mass work with the visitors at the Central Park of Culture and
Leisure was such that it became possible for it to exist independently of its architectural form.
Rather than being defined through landscape, the park was reconceived as its employees, mass
organizers-the "touring brigades" [vyezdnye brigady] that reached those workers who avoided
physically coming to the park. Appearing in factories before and after working hours and during
lunch breaks, these brigades organized workers' meetings devoted to current problems of the
factory, ridiculed drunkards, truants and slackers, and directed physical exercises, collective
singing and dancing. 62 3

621

Glan, Udarnorabotat'-kul'turnootdykhat', 57.

622

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turno otdykhat', 5 8.

621 Lunts, L B. ParkiKul'tury i Otdykha [Parksof Culture andLeisure] (Moskva: Gosstroiizdat, 1934) 80.

339

Fig. 4.29. An "agitprop" theater collective "Blue Blouse" performance at the Central Park of Culture and Rest.
Stage-set by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, 1929.

In 1930, Lunacharskii defined and developed the principles of a novel science,
antropagogy [antropagogiia], which would develop the ways of educating adults just as
pedagogy dealt with educating children and youth with the purpose of "guiding human thought
of groups and separate individuals in the direction of their rise, development, in the direction of
giving their behavior a character that corresponds to the ideals of the ruling class, which in this
case represents the interests of the entire humanity." 624 It was the purposes of antropagogy that
art, as a powerful educational means-as "a force of agitation"-served.6 25 The other's soul was
not a thing in itself, Lunacharskii argued: on the contrary, the soul could be conquered and

Lunacharskii, Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogo povedenia, 6. Lunacharskii's emphasis. Translation by the
author. Russian original: «B03MO)KHOCTb pyKOBOgCTBa qeJIOBeqecKoi MbicflblO rpyni HJIH oTenbHbIx
HHAHBHAyanIbHOCTeH B HaiipaBJIeHHH HX nogbeMa, pa3BHTHSI, B HHrpaBJIeHHH fpHgaHHA HX nOBegeHHo TOrO
xapaKTepa, KOTOpbIi COOTBeTCTByeT H~eaJIam rocnogcTByiowiero Knacca, B gaHHOM cJIyqae ABJIsioujeroCA BMeCTe c
TeM BbIpa3HTeJIeM HHTepeCOB BCero
62s

MeJIOBeMecTBa

.

624

Lunacharskii, Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogo povedenia, 8.

340

changed in a consciously determined direction whose final end was "the ultimate and last,
according to Marx, aim of any social movement-that is, an unfolding of all possibilities hidden
in a human." This "primordial" task, the task that encompassed all other, was first and foremost
psychological.626
As an outcome of antropagogy program, the parks of culture and leisure became a magic
space where the ugly duckling of the old order turned into a beautiful socialist swan. The park
gave the worker a chance to become a personality, encouraging, stimulating and supporting his
or her hard work on individual development. "The park is a giant factory of the transformation of
human consciousness, the rebuilding everyday life, a giant agitator, under the most immediate
guidance of the party conducting a huge work of the political and cultural reeducation of
millions," Glan echoed Lunacharskii's ideas. 627 Moreover, she conceived and elaborated the
technology of this personal transformation in the park: "from accordion and guitar-to
sophisticated symphony music; from primitive physical exercises-to ski-jumping from a 40meter springboard and skiing after a motorcycle," "from a simple choral song-to the concert of
the best masters of singing and stage," "from an amateur propaganda brigade-to a giant
performance at the mass theater on the Smychka [Unification] Square." 628 The park had to use
the tiny seeds of talent and interest that any person possessed to nourish them into a truly
magnificent, unique tree. Everyone, independently of their level of culture, was to find

626

Lunacharskii, Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogo povedenia, 29-30.

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turno otdykhat', 13. Translation by the author. Russian original: <dlapK--orpOMHas
4 a6pHKa nepeAenxK
ieAOBCeecoro Co3HaHHZ, nepecTpolH 6wTa, rHraHTcKHfi arHTaTOp, nog CaMMM
HenocpeHpcTBeBHmM pYKOBOCTBOM BIaPTHH BbIHOrJHfIOHiiH OrpOMHyIO pa6oTy no HJoiHTHqCKOMy H
627

K6T
628

dHOMa BOCIIHTa'HO MHdJyaOHOB

',.

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-kul'turno otdykhat'. 13.
341

something for their taste and interests: these interests could then be developed, skills-improved
and knowledge-expanded.
In 1935, Glan's succeeded in inviting professional psychologists to develop and
substantiate her ideas. Headed by a prominent Soviet psychologist, one of the founders of
activity theory Aleksei Leontiev, the Psychological Brigade (that worked in the park alongside
the Psychotechnical, Psychophysiological and Physiological brigades) of the All-Union Institute
of Experimental Medicine conducted a 2.5-month-long research in the Park. 629 Glan's program
of shaping human personality by external, often unconscious stimuli responded perfectly well to
Leontiev's interest in Kurt Lewin's field theory, which postulated a foundational role of social
environment for the formation of human psyche. 630 Leontiev reformulated Glan's program for
the development of the visitors' personality as "the formula 'from-to': from the elementary, the
superficial and the accidental to deeper, more developed and stable." 63 1 He called this type of
personal development a "vertical movement," comparing it to the visitor's physical movement in

The brigade included: A. N. Rosenblium (head of research on the main territory
of the park); L. I. Bozhovich
(head of research of the visitors of Children's Village); N. N. Kaulina (research in the Aviation Laboratory); G. L.
Rosengart (research in the Electrotechnical Laboratory); V. Kh. Kharkevich and N. A. Klevin (research of the flow
of visitors to the Children's Village); A. A. Keldysh (research on the main territory of the park); professor A. N.
Leontiev (the research head of the project).
629

The key principle of field theory was described by Lewin (1890-1947) with a formula
B = f(P, E), in which B
stands for behavior; P-person; and E-environment. One of the first programs in social psychology and a precursor
of behaviorism, Lewin's theory radically rejected the conception of human personality as given (shaped, for
example, by childhood experience or genetic disposition). On Leontiev's interest in Lewin, see A. N. Leontiev, A.
N. Rosenblium, "Psikhologicheskoe issledovanie deiatel'nosti i interesov posetitelei Tsentral'nogo Parka Kul'tury i
Otdykha imeni Gor'kogo (Predvaritel'noe soobshchenie)" ["Psychological investigation of activity and interests of
the visitors of Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure (Initial report)"], Traditsii i perspektivy deiatel'nostnogo
podkhoda v psikhologii. Shkola A. N. Leontieva [Traditions and perspectives of activity theory in psychology.
School ofA. N. Leontiev]. Ed. A. E. Vojskunskii, A. N. Zhdan, 0. K. Tikhomirov (Moskva: Smysl, 1999) 370630

Glan, Udarno rabotat'-ku'turno otdykhat', 13. Leontiev, 373. Russian original:
((OT repBHHorO,
WieMeHTapHOro, HOBepXHOCTHorO H cnyqaiHoro K 6oJIee rIy6oKoMy, pa3BepHyTOMy H yCTOiHHBOMy>>.

631

342

oT

the

park.

Thus

ascending,

for

instance, from a curiosity in regards
to an amusing physical phenomenon
to the discipline
general,

of physics in

or from a jump from

parachute tower" ride to serious
parachute

sport, the visitor was

transformed into "a free and multiFig. 4.30. Moving art exhibition in the
Park of Culture and Leisure,

1934

sided, harmonically developed personality."

632

First and

foremost, the park was for the psychologist "an

institute, which in the condition of leisure unfolds [razvertyvaet] personality." 633
The psychological experiment in the park was not a usual one because the park had too
many visitors for a consistent observation of individual behavior and development. Thus the
psychologists decided that, unlike a laboratory experiment, the research would test not a human,
but the park. "As the subject of our research, we had to take things that reveal themselves in a
moving flow; that is, we had in fact to experiment with a thing that we plunged into the human
flow," explained Leontiev. 634 The thing became the object of Leontiev's experimental research,
whereas the human played the role of a testing machine. The research problem that the
psychologists thus faced was that of "awakening and developing needs, interests and skills
during the process of activity under the specific conditions represented by the Park, first of all, as
632

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 373.

633

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 373.

634

Leontiev and Rosenblium,375.
343

a system of things." 635 It was the matter, the architectural design and the objects located in the
park, which were to transform-without this transformation being registered by the visitor's
consciousness-his or her personality. Therefore, the park's target were not those visitors who
had a preexisting interest (that is, were already developed), but rather those who-reminiscent of
Benjamin's distracted cinema viewer-came to the park without any particular reason, just to
stroll or have rest: the park's centers captured them, attracted, made pause and explore their
content and ultimately leave with a new interest and a decision to be back to explore this new
interest deeper. According to Leontiev,
... A person does not come to the Park to become this or that or to receive such and such
knowledge; he comes not to become a fully-developed member of society, but to have
rest; thus, [our] task is to make him, having come to the Park and having freely
surrendered himself to the Park-that is, being moved by the system of things, or, to be
more precise, by the system of situations that the things create-to perform that program
of development that forms the social-pedagogical task of the Park.63
Coming to the park without any plan or "cultural" purpose-in other words, in a state of
distraction-the visitors tended to avoid walking long distances to reach particular points of
interest, concentrating in the zones adjacent to the entrance and preferring to walk from one zone
to the next. 637 To change this situation and attract them to educational centers, the
psychoengineers developed the program of their "activation." For instance, in the course of an
Leontiev and Rosenblium, 373. Leontiev and Rosenblium's emphasis. Translation
by the author. Russian
original: dlpo6neMa npo6ycgeHH H pa3BHTHSI loTpe6HoCTeA, HHTepeCOB H yMeHHA B npoixecce AeATeLHOCTH B
Tex cneixH4HtecKHx yCJOBHSX, KOTOpMbe pegcTraBaaeT co6oNIHapK, npe)KAe BcerO-KaK CHCTeMa Beumerv.
635

636 Leontiev and Rosenblium,

AJIH

374. Translation by the author. Russian original: <BeAib

Toro, ITO6M CTaTb TaKHM-TO HiH nOXIyqHT

HpHXOAHT

IenOBeK ripHXOAHT B HapK He

AnLI TOrO, ITO6M CTaTh
pa3BHThIM -mCHOM o6uecTBa, a AaA Toro, Tob oTAooxHyTb; ACeO 3aKInoiaeTcA, 3HaqHT, B TOM,
11To6Li, HpHAA B HapK H CBO60AHO OTAaBaICb HapKy, T.e. 6yAyH ABHIKHMEIM CHCTeMOA BenLeHC HJIH, TORHee,
TaKHe-TO 3HaHHA; OH

He

BCeCTOPOHHe

CHCTeCmor CHTyagHfi,

cO3AaBaeMMX BeIuaMH, OH npoACeia
.

o6uecTBeHHO-neAarorHqecKyIo TinJIb HapKa
637

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 390.

344

6M

Ty nporpammy pa3BHTHA, KOTOpa

COCTaBSeIT

experiment at the Aviation Laboratory in the Children Village, the psychologists succeeded in
reducing the percentage of "specialists" (those children who came to the park with the purpose of
improving their knowledge of model-making) from 65% to 9%, whereas the percentage of those
who came to explore this unfamiliar topic and those who came without any particular purpose
increased from 15% to 44% and from 17% to 43% respectively. 63 8 One of the most successful
innovations of psychologists in the work of the Aviation Laboratory was the permission to
engage ("to act" [deistvovat'], in Leontiev's terminology) with exhibition objects directly. 639 A
possibility to engage with objects, Leontiev believed, allowed them to be transformed from
"things-'disorganizers"'

[veshchi-'dezorganizatory'] to the organizers of personality, thus

helping the child to overcome a desire to appropriate, steal the object (thefts, the researchers
admitted, frequently happened in the laboratory):
Things can be liberated [...] only when the entire work of the laboratory is reorganized,
only when a child has a different attitude to a thing, [an attitude] that can only be created
by transforming it into an object of another need (in other words, a thing has to act not as
an object that satisfies a tendency to simply exhibit one's activity, which is frequently
disorganizing, not as an object satisfying tendencies of appropriation, but as an object
satisfying a more significant, more mighty need that is organized in the laboratory
itself. 640

The interactive environment created by psychologists to encourage visitors' active, experimental
exploration of objects pursued a twofold goal: first, to "realize a true vertical movement of the
638

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 406.

639

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 409.

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 410. Translation by the author. Russian original: «MOXHO OCBo6oAHTh BeHIH, TaKHM
o6pa3oM, TOJnKO HPH YCJIOBHH peopraHmaiH3
t BCCH pa6oT na6opaTOpHH, ipH YCjiOBHH HHOA YCTaHOBKH pe6eHKa
K BCeIH, KOTOpaA MO)KeT 6wTi co3aH CAHHCTBCHHO nyTem npeBpJICHHZ ee B npeAmeT HHoA rioTpe6HoCTH (HHaqe
rOBOpA, B=I6b AoJDKHa BMCTYHITh He KaK ripeAMeT, yAOBRTBOpJOIHMI
TAHA
HHH UpOCTO npOZBHTh CBOIO
640

aKTHBHOCTh,

maCTO

rIpHCBOeHHIO, HO

noTpe6HOCTL

Ae3op rHH3aTopC

KTHBHOCTh

He

KaK

npeAMeT,

OHa AOJDKHa BICTyHaTb 1(K rIpeAMeT, yAOBieTBOpIoigHA

opraHHmyemyiO

B CaMOi ia6opaTopHHm>.

345

yAOBJIeTBOpSHOIJHrI

TeHICHHH

6oiee 3Ha'HJreImHyIo, 6onee

K

MoIgHyIo

itary education at the Park of Culture and Leisure, before 1932.

visitors who came without particular intentions to the deepest points," and second, "in these
deepest points we had to demonstrate a possibility of the maximum development of activity and
interests of the visitors." 64 1 The vertical started at the most amusing, entertaining exhibit (the
object that, in Kurt Lewin's terminology, created the strongest Druck) and continued to direct the
child to other objects, which did not possess such an immediate attractive force.64 2
Based on his discoveries, Leontiev suggested that zonal (thematic) principle was optimal
for a design of the park. According to the psychologists, zonal division allowed to create a
system of verticals, which provided a visitor with a choice. The vertical, for Leontiev, was "not a
narrow corridor"; rather, it was a system of horizontal moves: "It is rather a circle of two
dimensions: that of enclosed circles [po kontsentram] and that of circumferences, from the

641

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 402.

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 412. For example, In their experimental project
for an "aviation cycle" (a "vertically"
designed line of challenges intended to evoke children's interest in aviation modeling) the psychologists applied
several techniques of engaging the objects: unable to move parts of the "cycle" topographically, they used large
airplane models situated at a distance from the laboratory to "capture" visitors and prompt them to move to the
laboratory; they also connected the work of the laboratory with the flights of demonstration models; they reversed
the usual principle of the laboratory's work: "not from bending a single twig to assembling a flying model, but from
assembling a primitive model separated into five pieces-to technique, to bending the twig"; and finally, they
"deepened" the work in the laboratory by offering children books to read and model drafts to copy. Leontiev and
Rosenblium, 403.
642

346

attaction of one cycle to the attraction of another, third and fourth cycles, so that the vertical
ascend can be started from any point of the horizontal row."

64 3

By recommending zonal division in 1935, Leontiev, in fact, only legitimized architectural
principle that had already been explored by Glan and suggested for the Park of Culture and
Leisure by the participants of the 1931 competition. Glan, too, welcomed zoning in the Moscow
TsPKiO as a method that helped the visitors to develop their individuality by structuring the park
according to their interests. 644 A technique developed by urban planners in the late 1920s,
functional zoning was immediately acknowledged as a major principle of modem urbanism. In
the words of historian Eric Mumford, it was "the most significant theoretical approach of
CIAM," which dominated its discourse from 1930 on. 645 It was implemented as a principle of the
design of the park at the moment when urban planning (as the example of Ladovskii
demonstrated) captured the minds of architects and became the foremost concern of Soviet
architecture. 646 Never questioned by any of the modernists, functional zoning was equally
accepted by the Constructivists, the Rationalists, and other Soviet architects. After the Soviet
delegate to CIAM Moisei Ginzburg and the first director of the Office of Design and Planning
Mel'nikov made zoning the guiding principle of their entries for the Moscow TsPKiO
643
He

Leontiev and Rosenblium, 424-425. Translation by the author. Russian original: <TaKHM o6pa3oM,
"BepTHKam"
ecT y3KHA KOpHAOp, HO OHa npegnonaraeT H CHCTeMy "ropH3oHTaaIbHbix" X09OB. 3To--CKopee Kpyr, HMeIoIWHA

ABa

H3MepeHH--HO KOHi~eHTpaM H no OKpy2IHOCTAM, OT 3aHHMaTe3ETHOCTH OAHOrO uHKJia K 3aHHMaTeJEbHOCTH

ApyrOrO, TpeTiero H 'eTBepToro

UHKJIa,

TaK TO BepTHKaJI1HOe BOCXOxeHHe noceTHTeJim

MO2KeT Ha'IaTh

OT JIo6ori

TOqKH rOpH30HT3IbHOrO pAa.

44 Glan, "Za sotsialisticheskii park," 18-19.
645

Eric Mumford, The CIAMDiscourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2000) 59.

This was partially explained by the program of constructing new cities that was implemented during
the First
Five-Year Plan. The seminal for modernist town-planning debate between "urbanists" and "dizurbanists" about the
principles of the "city of the future" took place in 1930.
646

347

Fig. 4.32. Moisei Ginzburg. TsPKiO. Competition Project. 1931.

competition, zoning became a recognized principle of planning of Soviet public parks. In
Mel'nikov's project, the center of the park was a stadium located at the low, Luzhniki, bank of
the river, and the territory around it was divided by water channels into sectors, which
corresponded to the functional zones of the park. 647 Ginzburg's project, on the other hand,
divided the park into a series of long narrow stripes that, following the curve of the river and
subdivided perpendicularly, housed the multiplicity of the park's sections.
If in both Ginzburg's and Mel'nikov's projects the zones were clearly separated from
each other, Glan, asserting zoning as the principle of park design, mitigated it, asking architects
to devote special attention to borders and the spaces between the zones to ensure "a correct
transition of the worker from one activity to another"

647

Glan, ,,Za sotsialisticheskii park," 30.

648

Glan, "Za sotsialisticheskii park,"

18.
348

648

Thus, the principle of zoning was

supplemented with-to use a term introduced by El Lissitzky--"the principle of switching."
According to Lissitzky, who started the position of the director of the Department of Design and
Planning of Moscow TsPKiO at the same time as Glan became the director of the park, the
principle of switching presupposed an easy, unnoticeable and almost unconscious-stimulated
by the surrounding environment rather than a conscious decision-movement of visitors between
zones. Tacitly prompting them to explore all of the zones rather than limiting oneself to one of
them, it contributed to the completeness of the park's "ideological effect": starting their
movement at the zone of their particular interest, the visitors then found themselves in a
neighboring area, from which they moved further, being subjected to a "combined effect
[kompleksnoe vozdeistvie] of all forms of the park's work."649 In 1931, collaboratively with his
subordinate Andrei Korobov, Lissitzky designed a project for the park of culture and leisure in
Sverdlovsk (today, Ekaterinburg) in the Ural Mountains, which they signed as the Brigade of
Architects of the Administration of Moscow TsPKiO. 650 The architects declared that the project
was based on the principle of "a gradual switching of the visitor from one activity to another,
which enables a complex impact of all forms of park work." 651 The zones of similar topic or
interest were situated next to each other, lacking a defined boundary: as a result, the visitors
seamlessly flowed in between them, moving from one part of the park to another. 652

649Lunts, Parki kul'tury i otdykha, 265.
Soglashenie [Contract] between Lissitzky and Ivan F. Ivanov, executive secretary of the committee
for
organization a park of culture and leisure in Sverdlovsk, 24 May 1931. Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts
(RGALI), F.2361, Op.1, Ed. khr.55.
650

651

Lunts, Parkikul'tury i otdykha, 265.

Thus, zoo-ethnographic park, which was merged with the botanical garden, was situated near the park's
entrance.
To the south of the botanical garden was located Children Village; to the east of it lay the Popular-scientific and
Exhibition zones. The geometric center of the park was occupied by the Field of Mass Actions and the stadium,
349
652

The principle of switching was quickly adopted by
other employees of the Office of Design and Planning
(and, subsequently, those of Goszelenstroi). Arranging the
zones and providing transitions between them became
Militsa Prokhorova's

main

concern

in her largest

independent project of these years, the TsPKiO in Tula
(1934), an old industrial city to the south of Moscow. 65 3
Prokhorova's scheme significantly enlarged a preexisting
park, which now was to occupy 1.5 square kilometers and,
Fig. 4.33. El Lissitzky and Andrei
Korobov, Sverdlovsk Park of Culture
and Leisure. Project, 1931

to use Prokhorova's expression, could suck in 10% of the
city's population (20-30 thousand people) on weekends

bordered by Spectacles in the north and the Sector of Defense Propaganda on the north-east. Nationalities Village
occupied the space along the alley connecting the center of the park with the pond; bordering the physical education
complex with a water station to the west. Finally, the territory to the east of the main alley was given to objects of
rest: the zone of quiet rest and the houses of one-day and many-day rest. Lunts, Parki kul'tury i otdykha, 265.
The implementation of the project was interrupted by the Second World War and never fulfilled completely;
however, the realized parts (mostly the general layout) can be still seen today.
653

350

and holidays.54 Whereas zoning allowed an
even distribution of the masses through the park,
the circulation of visitors between the zones was
made possible by their carefully

arranged

sequencing and by creating transitional spaces.
The key to the effective functioning of the zonal
system of the Tula TsPKiO was the "switching
zone" [zona perekliuchenia], located at the main
Fig. 4.34. Militsa Prokhorova, Zoning

scheme for Tula TsPKiO, 1934.

entrance to the park. There, the visitors received
initial

information

about

the

park's

zonal

division and could develop their personal program of pastime and their route through the park.
The other zones, each allocated to a specific activity or targeted for a certain group of visitors,
formed segments of a circle around the central square, similarly to Mel'nikov's solution for the
Moscow TsPKiO. Allowing for a fast connection between different zones, external circular
avenue passed through the park's periphery, but the main way of connection between zones
remained direct trespassing. To facilitate this connection,

functionally

similar

zones

were

adjacent to each other, lacking defined boundaries and gradually merging together. 655

Militsa Prokhorova, "Eskiznyi proekt planirovki parka kul'tury i otdykha v gorode Tule, i poiasnitel'naia zapiska
k nemu" ["Preliminary project of planning of the park of culture and leisure in Tula, with an explanatory note"]
April 1934. Unpublished manuscript. Archive of A.V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture.
654

Children's Village, where the youngest could swim and waddle in pools and play at playgrounds while their
mothers rested in the shade of trellises and tents, bordered with the sector for school-age children, a miniature of the
adult park with its own main house, stadium, theater, libraries, sport- and playgrounds. The Children Theater was to
be located on the border with the "adult" zone in order to be accessible to those children who visited the park with
their parents. Teenagers could also use the Popular-Scientific Sector, which hosted demonstration grounds,
exhibition pavilions and "scientific-technical attractions." Continuing the exhibition program by a demonstration of
military technology, the largest of the zones, the Military Sector, occupied the space to the west of the Popular351
655

Architecturalized by Lissitzky and exemplified in Prokhorova's Tula TsPKiO project,
Glan and Leontiev's goal of developing individuality paradoxically contradicted the presumed
oppression of individuality within a mass or a crowd condemned by Le Bon and other
psychologists of masses. For Lunacharskii, Glan, and the architects who expressed their
program, not individuality, but individualism was oppressed within an organized mass. For them,
a true individuality, on the contrary, flourished within the collective, which alone created
opportunities for its full development: individuality had nothing to do with behavior, thinking,
interests or skills that were not beneficial for others-instead, it emerged where personal
development contributed to the cumulative fund of societal adaptational mechanisms. The more
strong, skillful and knowledgeable was its individual member, the stronger was the collective.
Moreover, comradely attitude to each other, an interest in collaboration, and joy that belonging
to a collective gave were also individuality's intrinsic parts-parts that enabled the organization
of the masses. Creativity, enthusiasm, and cheerfulness were both stimulants and fruits of such
personal development. "I sincerely congratulate you. You are the director of the factory of happy
people," wrote Herbert Wells to Glan, impressed by his visit to Gorky park. 656

Scientific Sector and was connected both to it and to the stadium, with which it shared the training agenda. Nearby
stretched a row of military playgrounds, subsequently merging with the grounds of the abutting Sport Zone. An
outdoor swimming pool surrounded by green walls divided the Sport Zone from the Zone of Health with its grounds
for individual exercise. Next to it were a dancing ground and a stage for amateur performances, which bordered with
the area of quiet rest in the western side of the park, where a network of narrow paths united occasional benches,
gazebos and reading huts.
656

Glan, Prazdnik vsegda s nami, 112.
352

Conclusion
In 1924, German designer Max Burchartz offered his concept of a Luna-park as a space
of sensual experience, "an exercise for sensation and body," on the pages of the avant-garde
journal G.657 Similar to his Soviet colleagues, Burchartz actively relied on the techniques of
"unconscious" sensual perception: illusions, contrasts of color or sound that prompted the visitor
to choose this or that direction or pause at certain places. A modernist project that avoids
mimetic representation (building a toboggan slide in the shape of a fake mountain instead of
exposing its "structure and movement," was, for Burchartz, sentimental and lacked "any sense of
vivacity") and celebrated bodily strength, youth and health, it is reminiscent the ethos of early
Soviet projects for parks of culture and leisure. The latter, however, had a much more ambitious
program: not liming their mission to entertainment and exercise of the body, Soviet parks aspired
to build a modernist personality, to charge the visitor with energy, knowledge and optimism
necessary for production of collective feats.
Material objects and environments were central instruments of the park's psychological
impact, but more: they were animated, interpreted as active participants of the production
process. Lunacharskii considered the design of everyday life objects to be one of the most
important arts of his day, an art that possessed a great antropagogical power because it was
capable of maintaining "the hygiene of perception."658 Every object, square, street, house fagade,
room, all clothing had to "give a constant impulse, awaken his spirit, his consciousness, his
657

Max Burchartz, "Luna-Park," G: Materialzur Elementaren Gestaltung No.3 (June 1934): 138-140.

The expression "hygiene of perception" Lunacharskii borrowed from a leader of Constructivism
Aleksandr
Vesnin who used it when explaining the aesthetic program behind his Dneproges project. See: Lunacharskii,
Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogopovedenia, 17-18.
658

353

creative forces, a desire to truly live and fight, develop and move forward." 65 9 In Glan's mass
processions and fderies, objects-tanks, tractors, or primus stoves-acted alongside humans as
equally important parts of the show. The puppets and masks paraded during mass processions
presented people in an unrealistic, comical, object-like guise. In Mazmonian's and Lissitzky
projects for the Central Park of Culture and Leisure, architecture (the arch-ramp) dissolved
during the most dramatic moments of mass procession, transforming the crowds into the true
architecture of the park. Finally, Leontiev's psychological experiment put "things" rather than
people at the center, interpreting the former as active agents of change and the latter-as passive
objects of their work.
The blurring of boundaries between the organic and the inorganic, which Spyros
Papapetros has recently identified at the core of modernist culture and historiography,
exemplified by the animation of inorganic objects and abstract ornamentation, acquired a new
significance in Gorky Park.660 Central to the monistic culture of turn-of-the-century German art
historic and aesthetic thought examined by Papapetros, the category of life likewise informed
and infiltrated the TsPKiO's program: life was the ultimate end and the highest aesthetic and
ethic value. However, if the inorganic forms at the center of Papapetros's discussion, such as
crystals or snake ornaments, merely (although successfully) pretended to be animated, the living,
truly animated objects in Moscow TsPKiO pretended to be lifeless in order not to produce an
uncanny impression, to remain ostensibly unobtrusive, familiar, sometimes funny and always
659 Lunacharskii, Iskusstvo kak vid chelovecheskogo povedenia, 20. Translation by the author. Russian original:
(AaBajiO

6M nocTosHHii

6ygHno 6M ero 6oApocm, 6yAHno 6m ero
H 6opoTcA, pa3BHBaThC H HTTH BrIepeAO.

HMriyjibC,

)KenaHHe AeiCTBHTeJ1hHO xKHTh

Co3HaHHe, TBopeciKHe CHaI,

660 Spyros Papapetros, On the Animation of the Inorganic:Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

354

easily perceived-in other words, in order not to trespass the boundaries of consciousness. By
doing so, the animated objects could share their vital energy with the lifeless bodies of the park's
first-time visitors, awakening their souls and transforming them into humans and individuals.
Whether or not this animation of the organic really happened and whether or not it was
successful and moral are questions that remain beyond the scope of this dissertation. What I hope
to have demonstrated here is, instead, the transformation of evolutionist vitalist ideas, through
the aesthetics of collectivism, into a novel modernist synthetic genre of art, a genre which used
form as its means and the viewers as its material. This vital energy evoked by the objects in the
beholders was nothing else than creativity, which had to enable them for enthusiastic,
productive-and conscious-work, a work that would perpetuate and strengthen the collective,
asserting it as life's ultimate agent.

355

356

CONCLUSION
After a series of scheduled public defences of architecture graduates in May 1928 in the
VKhUTEIN, only one was still pending as the author-Georgii Krutikov, a major collaborator at
Ladovskii's Psychotechnical Laboratory-kept asking for more time to finish his project.
Krutikov's notorious futuristic fantasy of a city suspended above the earth, The City of the
Future (The Evolution of Architectural Principles of City-Planning and the Organisation of
Dwelling), included two parts, a theoretical and a visual. Entitled "A Study of a Moving Form"
[Issledovanie dvizhuschejsia formy], the former consisted of sixteen illustrated tables, which
juxtaposed the formal evolution of human dwellings with the evolution of the means of transport;
the latter offered a graphic representation of "The City of the Future," in which the theoretical
formal discoveries presented in the diagrams were embodied into a vision of a city. The defence
finally occurred in June. As the eyewitnesses later recalled, an uncanny silence filled the room.
The chair of the defence committee suggested posing questions, but nobody was willing to
speak. At last, the representative of the City Infrastructure Department broke the silence: "How
much time did you spend preparing the project, what is it based on, and how does it deal with the
questions of sewer and water-supply?" Krutikov stoutly responded that it took him fifteen years
to think about the problems that are solved in the project, and that the forthcoming progress of
science and technology would definitely allow solving the latter problem. There were no other
questions or commentaries. Relieved, the dean of the Architecture Department hastened to
proclaim Krutikov an "architect-artist."
357

The scandal exploded later, when the newspaper Postrojka [Edifice] published a scoffing
review entitled "Soviet Jules-Vemes. VKhUTEMAS Trains Dreamers instead of Builders; The
Project of the Construction of a 'Flying City,"' in which it accused Krutikov of fruitless
fantasising and losing touch with reality. 661

This quick, biased assessment of Soviet

propagandist Levochskii seems to have had presaged the perception of Krutikov's project
throughout the twentieth century-in Western academia as well as in Soviet criticism. Its echoes
could be heard, for example, when Richard Stites discussed Krutikov alongside the cosmist
philosopher Nikolai Fedorov (who dreamt of reviving the dead and resettling them in other
planets) and science fiction novels of Alexei Tolstoi and Alexander Beliaev in a chapter devoted
to futurology and science fiction, or when Milka Bliznakov connected Krutikov's thesis project
with the expectation of a miraculous technological breakthrough due to an anticipated foreign
technological help.662 This reaction to Krutikov's project is characteristic of the interpretations of
the goals and premises of Soviet modernist architecture by both contemporaries and subsequent
historians.
A very different interpretation of The City of the Future was offered by Krutikov's
VKhUTEIN pedagogues, who immediately intervened to protect the reputation of their student

N. Levochskii, "Sovetskie zhiul'-verny. VKhUTEMAS gotovit ne stroitelej, a fantazerov.
Proekt postrojki
"Letaiuschego goroda"' ["Soviet Jules-Vernes. VKhUTEMAS Trains Dreamers instead of Builders; The Project of
the Construction of a 'Flying City' ] Postrojka [Edifice] 3 July 1928.
661

Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian
Revolution (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 170; Milka Bliznakov, "The Realisation of Utopia: Western Technology and
Soviet Avant-garde Architecture," Reshaping Russian Architecture: Western technology, Utopian Dreams. Ed.
William C. Brumfield (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 145-175.
662

358

and explain the principles and intentions of architectural pedagogy in the institute. 663 In their
response, published in the same newspaper, the Architecture Department claimed that
Levochskii distorted the project's title by mislabelling what in fact was a "project for the solution
of a new city" as a "project for the construction of a new city." Krutikov's defenders argued that
his exploration of the 'future city' was in fact an example of scientific research, which, being
conducted within the Architecture Department, by necessity had to acquire the architectural form
of an urban project. Rather than being dissociated from reality, The City of the Future explored
reality on a deeper level. What the Architecture Department claimed, was that Krutikov's
"Flying City" was a not a science fiction, but a utopia, a word too painful for post-Revolutionary
Soviet culture to be pronounced openly. 664
Two alternative (and conflicting) utopian paradigms can be discerned in The City of the
Future: the Romantic, post-Revolutionary utopia as a hope and the proto-totalitarian utopia as a
rigid social organisation, associated with the economic politics of the First Five-Year Plan. The
latter paradigm-condemned by dystopian novels, Cold-War political criticism, and the
philosophies of freedom and democracy-is more familiar today. Moreover, it is more
specifically connected to architecture, which it treats as a material means of organising and
controlling hierarchical human relationships. Lewis Mumford, for instance, argued that the first
cities appeared around religious centres as materialised utopias, earthly incarnations of divine

Presidium of Architecture Department, professional and student bodies of VKhUTEIN, "My gotovim ne
'sovetskikh zhiul'-vernov.' Arkhitekturnyi fakul'tet na dolzhnoi vysote" ["We do not prepare 'soviet jules-vernes.'
Department of Architecture [is] up to the mark"] Postrojka [Edifice] 12 August 1928.
663

See, for instance, the distinction between 'utopian' and 'scientific' socialism suggested by Engels. Friedrich
Engels, Herrn Eugen Dfihring's Umwdlzung der Wissenschaft (Leipzig, Druck und Verlag der GenossenschaftsBuchdruckerei, 1878).
664

359

order and harmony; the earliest utopias, on the other hand, such as Plato's Republic and
Aristotle's Politics,were modelled after real, material cities of the ancient world.665
For Mumford, both a city and a utopia were defined by their rationality, their order and
regulation-as such, both of them were nothing but social machines, in which the inadequacy of
technological knowledge was replaced with a complex social order:
By royal command, the necessary machine was created: a machine that concentrated
energy in great assemblages of men, each unit shaped, graded, trained, regimented,
articulated, to perform its particular function in a unified working whole. With such a
machine, work could be conceived and executed on a scale that otherwise was impossible
until the steam engine and the dynamo were invented.666
If an interpretation of ancient cities as social machines might be problematic, the identification of
utopia with production and machine-like rationality certainly applies to an idea of a modern city
and modernity in general, as epitomised in the project of Enlightenment as the "Age of Reason"
with its architectural 'revolutionary' utopias. 667 An ideal modern city, such as Ledoux's Salines
de Chaux (1775-1778), was structured to optimise industrial production, organisation and control
of the workers, who were identified with their social function.
Represented by Krutikov, 'The City of the Future' consisted of two parts: the vertical one
(the residential zone) was suspended in the air, while the horizontal one (the production zone)
was sprawled on the surface of the earth. Both parts were immobile and were tightly connected
with each other, betraying the fixation on the relationship between life and production within a
city, which was so characteristic for modernist urbanism. Despite its title, Krutikov's city
665

666

Lewis Mumford, "Utopia, the City and the Machine," DaedalusVol. 94 No.2 Utopia
(Spring 1965): 271-292.
Mumford, 284.

Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullge, Ledoux, and Lequeu (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1952).
6

360

possessed the static, proto-dystopian regularity of a machine. Similarly, most of the projects
examined in this dissertation-such as Maliarstroi's program of increasing working productivity
with the help of color and Glan's concept of activating the masses through material objectsembodied this vision of society as a machine, in which everyone had a fixed place and function,
and whose performance architecture, as a supportive armature, enabled and improved. This
machine's human parts were cast through a work with subjectivity, programmed for
collaborative work leading to a common goal. Soviet designers redefined themselves as social
engineers, who participated in the modernist project of developing a new man, mentally and
physiologically suitable for an integration into the totality of the economic apparatus of the state.
This dehumanising utopia of the First Five-Year Plan was very different from the utopias
that originated during the New Economic Policy. Given that the Party preferred more realistic
solutions to economic problems, these earlier utopias evolved in, and were restricted to, artistic
circles. Unlike the static and rigid utopia-as-social-machine, in which any change would bring
the loss of balance and disjunction of parts, theirs was a dynamic understanding of utopia as
inspiration. Some twenty years later, this definition was made famous in his Principle of Hope
(1938-1947) by Ernst Bloch, who claimed that "[t]he imagination and the thoughts of future
intention ... are utopian, ... not in a narrow sense of the word which only defines what is bad

(emotively reckless picturing, playful form of an abstract kind), but rather in fact in the newly
tenable sense of the forward dream, of anticipation in general." 668 Hope, for Bloch, was the
emotion that allowed people to go forward, that gave them a direction, supported people on the
way and ultimately made the future become a reality.

668

Ernst Bloch, The PrincipleofHope. Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986) 15.

361

Similarly, for Boris Arvatov, the purpose of a valuable, revolutionary-materialised
[oveschestvlennaia],to use Arvatov's own term-utopia was an organisation of creative power.
In a 1923 issue of a Constructivist journal LEF [Levyi Front Iskusstv; Left Front of Arts],
Arvatov suggested a utopia that pointed to the direction which a society had to take, igniting
souls and inspiring minds:
Manilov practiced utopias in his leisure time: [it would be nice to build] a bridge, and on
the bridge... etc. 669 His utopias were born passively. The economist Sismondi created
another sort of utopia-he was fascinated with the past. Fourier was also a utopian, and
his utopia was revolutionary. Breaking into the heart of the historic process, this utopia
becomes a material power that organizes creativity. And then we name it with a capital
U-Utopia. Because everyone knows that Marx would not have been possible without
Fourier and his likes.670
Unlike Engels's "scientific socialism," Constructivist utopia did not have to be or even
look realisable. Another major LEF critic, Osip Brik, argued that it was precisely the manifested
impossibility that made a utopia valuable. In 1923, commenting on a precursor of Krutikov's
utopian project, "A City on Leaf Springs" by a Constructivist Anton Lavinskii, Brik argued that
only the unrealisable can ascend above the mundane, entering the immaterial theoretical realm.
I... assume... that this is unbuildable. The same questions arose with regard to Tatlin's
monument. I assume that both cannot be built, that engineers would smile at these
discussions. Taking this into consideration, I insist that Lavinskii's work possesses an
immense significance precisely because it, first of all, arouses questions. ... And if
Lavinskii did not drive this utopia to the end, then this is a certain error of his, because he
decided to connect somehow the utopia with today. This is his fault. It would have been

669 Manilov is a protagonist of Nikolai Gogol's novel The Dead Souls (1842), who entered Russian culture as a

symbol of fruitless wishful thinking.
Here and throughout the rest of the article the translations from Russian are provided by
the author. (Arvatov
1923: 64)

670

362

'

more utopian if he had driven the idea of the liberation of the human from the immobile
and untransformable city to the end... 67
Ladovskii, too, did not remain indifferent to Lavinskii's idea to supply houses with leaf
springs. However, he found it unsatisfactory-insufficiently utopian. Articulated in the course of
the discussion, Ladovskii's notion of artistic utopia, in the same way as Arvatov's concept of
reified utopia, stimulated movement into the future and pointed to its possible directions. Unlike
the more ambitious Arvatov, however, who was thinking in terms of society as a whole,
Ladovskii confined himself and his disciples to the sphere of designed form. It was the absence
of formal artistic thinking in Lavinskii's project that dissatisfied Ladovskii.
The idea that is clear both from the drawings and from the descriptions, possesses a
utopian character... As for the houses on leaf springs, I don't see anything utopian here in
what deals with the technical realisation. ... Utopia is beauty and an interesting flight of
fantasy-and Lavinskii's project does not possess this interest. Is it interesting to lift a
house? I can invent even better: make a house electromagnetic and it wouldn't need
material support. I will use electromagnets to transport cargoes... All these are inventions
in technology, not in art or architecture... As for technology, I can go even further. I can
imagine my house flying and solve the sewer problem... This is a technologically-based
utopia. But what I am interested to hear is not technological, but other-artisticchallenges. Technology: I can draw whatever I wish. I can take a number of balloons and
suspend a house from them. Everything is moving, every chair... Would my idea be any
worse? Give me an artistic utopia, the principles of which I don't see here... 2
Ladovskii's own architectural theory, his vision of economical and rational architecture
was such an artistic utopia. But this utopia, as well as Matiushin's theory of expanded vision, and
Gan's activated masses, strove for an integration into a great utopia of the Soviet Revolution,
eager to sacrifice its autonomy for an active role in the building of a new society. This sacrifice

Osip Brik, Speech at the discussion of Lavinskii's project in INKhUK, 1923. Quoted in: Selim
KhanMagomedov, Anton Lavinskii (Moskva: Russkii avangard, 2007) 56-59 (56-57).
671

Nikolai Ladovskii, Speech at the discussion of Lavinskii's project in INKhUK, 1923. Quoted in:
KhanMagomedov, Anton Lavinskii, 59-61 (59-60).
672

363

was accepted, and towards the late 1920s, artistic life in the USSR became increasingly
integrated in the system of state bureaucracies.
As well as Krutikov's utopia, the subject-construction utopias of Maliarstroi, the Park of
Culture and Leisure, and all the other utopias of the First Five-Year Plan became obsolete in the
early 1930s, when the transition to Second (1933-1937) Five-Year Plan marked the completion
of the creation of the material base for industrial production. The ensuing cultural turn, known in
Western historiography as "The Great Retreat," was seen by many as a de facto abandoning of
socialist aspirations and a tacit return to tsarist politics.

673 For

art and architectural historians, this

turn signified a violent assassination of the avant-garde by the state. Indeed, what was needed
now was not a social organisation of people that could replace the non-existing machinery, but
people's hard, devoted work on the machinery that had just been acquired. The new totalitarian
utopia was the one of real, productive labour. This new utopia required new aesthetics, new
protagonists, and new bureaucracies.
Alongside other independent architectural groups, ASNOVA and ARU were dissolved
after the infamous

decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party "On the

Reconstruction of Literature and Artistic Organizations" (1932) which replaced them by the
Union of Soviet Architects, fully controllable by the Party. 674 Meanwhile, all research and
academic work (including doctoral programs in architecture) was consolidated within the All673

Nicholas Timasheff, The GreatRetreat (New York, E. P. Dutton & Company,
Inc., 1946).

More on that, see D. S. Khmel'nitskii, [Dmitrij Chmelnizki], Arkhitektura Stalina:
psikhologiia'i stil' [Stalin's
Architecture: Psychology and Style] (Moskva: Progress-Traditsia, 2007). Translated into German as Die Architektur
Stalins (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2007); and Danilo Udovid'ki-Selb, "Between Modernism and Socialist Realism:
Soviet Architectural Culture Under Stalin's Revolution from Above, 1928-1938," Journal of the Society of
ArchitecturalHistorians Vol. 68, No. 4 (2009): 467-495, and his The Evolution of Soviet Architectural Culture in
the FirstDecade of Stalin's 'perestroika'(Trondheim: [s.n.], 2009).
674

364

Union Academy of Architecture, created in 1933. Without its venue, Ladovskii's research
became impossible, and the architect concentrated on his work as the head of the First
Architectural Workshop of the Narkomat (ministry) of Health, supervising planning hospitals
and sanatoria. Although he continued teaching at Moscow Architectural Institute throughout the
1930s, his method was widely condemned as a dangerous formalism:
But the Formalists did not prepare proletarian architects. With their formal and abstract
method, [with their] orientation on eternal laws of biology and physiology they uprooted
the future architect from the social tasks of architecture, from class struggle, from
political and propagandistic tasks of art, they directed him to seek for abstract solutions,
for groundless fantacizing, a separation from real practice etc.675
Ladovskii died, defeated and stigmatized, in 1941-the same year saw the death of Lissitzky,
who abandoned architectural work and spent the 1930s as a designer of Soviet journals,
propaganda posters, and exhibitions.
Likewise, the program of Maliarstroi soon went out of favor with the state officials, who
reoriented the trust from psychological experiments towards the technology of dyes and the
methods of their application. The last (#5-6) issue of Maliarnoe Delo in 1931 opened with an
editorial "Reorganization of the journal 'Maliarnoe Delo'-towards production." The first point
in the list of changes was "to change the program of the journal MaliarnoeDelo, eliminate an
independent section on art, cut the architectural material and, most importantly, strengthen the

A. I. Mikhailov, Gruppirovki Sovietskoi arkhitektury [Factions of Soviet Architecture] (Moskva: Izogiz, 1932)
50. Translation by the author. Russian original: Ho 4opmajHCTEJ H He rOTOBHAH nponeTapcKHx apxHTeKTopOB.
CBOHM 4 opManbHO-a6cTpaTHimM nOAXOAOM, opHeHTmIIHe Ha Be'HwC 3aKOHT 6HOnOrHH H 4H3HOjiOrHH OHH
OTPbIBaiiH 6yAyiero apXHTeKTOpa OT COIHaihHUX 3aAaq apXHTeKTypm, OT KacCOBOii 6opb6m, OT HonHTH 1 ecKHarHTaLVAOHHMX 3aAIa' HCKyCCTBa, OHH HanpaBmsInH erO Ha IOHCKH a6cTpaKmx peiueHHr, 6ecnOMBeHHoe
4aHTa3epCBo, OTPEB OT peaam6HOr IpaKTHKH H T.A.>>.
675

365

role of industrial topics." 676 Indeed, starting with that issue, articles on spatial and aesthetic
properties of color mostly disappeared from the journal. This turn seemed to be an immediate
result of the debate on the role of wallpainting, which the Maliarstroi team effectively lost. In
August 1931, the Stalinist critic Amov closed the debate by condemning not only Kostin's
program of transforming wallpainting in the new abstraction, but the existence of wallpainting as
a discipline, returning it to the old position of unskilled craftsmanship:
The deliberations of this unlucky Sancho Panza "about the strength of the effect of these
or those color harmonies, combinations and contrasts" upon human psyche is completely
scholastic and bourgeois. Paint in and of itself means very little or almost nothing. Paint
has to serve the means of an artistic expression of a concrete idea or, if not-a means of
covering the walls of buildings. But in this last case one does not necessarily have to be
an easel painter-a wallpainter-craftsman is enough. He does not have another vision of
the role of proletarian artist-in fact, he cannot even have it, as he is completely imbued
with the idea that the proletariat is incapable of highly artistic creativity. 677
For several years after, Maliarstroi continued to exist as a purely technical organization.
But although Maliarnoe Delo was reformatted as a technical journal, its publication ceased in
1932. In 1935 Maliarstroi was renamed into Gosotdelstroi (an agglutination referring to State
Decorative Construction)-a direct reversal of the development of the Bauhaus Wallpainting
Workshop from that of Decorative Painting. As wallpainting was returned to the domain of an
"Reorganizatsia zhurnala 'Maliarnoe Delo'-litsom k proizvodstvu" ["Reorganization
of the journal 'Maliarnoe
Delo'-towards production"], Maliarnoe Delo [Wallpainting] No.5-6 (1931): 7-8 (7). Translation by the author.
Russian original: «H3MeHHTh nporpammy .XypHana MaiupHoe 4eno, ynpa3AHHTm CaMOCTOTenJIHbir
676

RpOH3BOACTBeHHb1X TeM
677

apxHTeKTypHoro riopsAa

H, rJIaBHOe, YCHJIHTE B HeM yAeJIbHMH Bec

.

XygOwecTBeHHbIrl OTgefI, COKpaTHT MaTepHaji

I. Amov, "Taktika klassovogo vraga na izofronte" ["The tactics of class
enemy on the art front"], Za proletarskoe

iskusstvo [Fora ProletarianArt] No.8 (1931): 7-10 (9). Translation by the author. Russian original: <PaccyKAeHHA
3TOrO HeyAaMrIHBoro CaHio HaHca o CHJIe BO3AIeiCTBH Tex HJIH HHIX KpacoHmox rapMOHHA, coqeTaHHA H
KOHTpaCTOB0 Ha riCHXHKy qeJIOBeKa-HacKBo3b CXOJIaCTHIHO, 6ypxya3HO. KpacKa cama no ce6e 3HaqHT o'eHL
HeMHOrO HJIH nOqTH HHerO He 3HaqHT. KpaCKa AOJDKHa cnyxHTb cpeAcTBom
xyAoxcecTBeHHorO BipacKeHHm
KOHKpeTHOrO o6pa3a, a eCJIH HeT-peAcTBoM gJIm nOKpmTH CTeH AOMOB. HO B nOCJiegHCM cxiyqae He o6A3aTeJImHO
6
MTb XyAO)KHHKOM-cTaHKOBHCTOM, goCTaTotHO 6mT MapoM-peMecieHHHKom. lpyroro npegCTaBjieHHA o pOjiH
HpOneTapCKHX XyAO)KHHKOB y Hero HeT, Aa H 6MT6 He Moxe'T, H60 OH HaCKBO3b ripomTaH MbICJIMO 0 TOM, qTO
He CUOCO6eH K BLIcOKOxyAoxecTBeHHOMy TBopqecTy

.

npOfleTapHaT

366

unskilled labor, Gosotdelstroi lost commissions and concentrated its work on the development of
synthetic wallpainting dyes."' In 1937 Gosotdelstroi's then-head Vasilii Kotov was subjected to
repression.

679

In 1938, Borchert's wife Sofia Matveeva, who had worked in Maliarstroi since

1930, had to leave the organization because of the lack of commissions. In 1939, Borchert
followed her path only to be incarcerated shortly after and executed as a German spy in 1944.
Subjected to political repression was also Betti Glan, exiled to Siberia in 1937. Criticized
in the Il'f and Petrov satirical story and elsewhere, her vision of the Park of Culture and Leisure
as a giant subject-molding factory was left aside. Instead, Soviet parks now served for
entertainment and for the satisfaction of desires that were previously considered undeveloped
and low. Thus, a subjective map of an ordinary user of Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure in
Khar'kov (a city in the east of contemporary Ukraine) became reduced to an alley connecting the
entrance to the dancing area with kiosks selling drinks and benches alongside this alley.
At that time Gorky Park was very popular with Khar'kov residents, and on weekends and
in the evenings it attracted crowds of the strolling public. It had everything that one could
wish for rest: two dancing grounds, "green theater," summer movie theater, laughing
pavilion (labyrinth of distorting mirrors), concert stages and even a parachute tower.
There was an entrance charge only in the evenings, when the artists were performing on
the concert stages. [ ... ] At the end of the central park alley there was a dancing ground
where the brass band played. Here everybody could dance - they weren't charging
additional fees for it. The second dancing ground was located in the heart of the park:
jazz was played there, and the entrance was not free. It had a nice stage, projectors and
garlands of colored light bulbs. But we would rarely go there - this was the place for elite
youth, which could not only pay for everything, but also dress well. Sometimes, when I
In the 1930s, Gosotdelstroi published Color book (among the authors' collective were Erich Borchert,
artist
Vladimir Favorskii, chemist, head of the color laboratory A. Revo, the new head of the Design Office L.
Zhivotovskii), who from 1500 colors selected 300, which they recommended for use and provided their recopies and
characteristics. See "Na vystavke Gosotdelstroia" ["At the Gosotdelstroi Exhibition"], Arkhitekturnaia Gazeta
[Architecture Newspaper] No. 13 (1937), 4.
678

Vasilii Afanas'evich Kotov (1885-1937) was a Soviet Party functionary, the head of Gosotdelstroi in 1935. He
was arrested in 1936 and executed in 1937.
679

367

happened to be nearby, I enviously watched the gaudy crowd swirling with jazz sounds
and thought: What are these people? Where do they come from? After all, the famine just
ended!",610
For the memoirist, the park was primarily a space for dancing in the company of his friends:
traditional forms of socializing and recreation have reclaimed its space.
In the mid-1930s, complex, scientifically developed forms of integrating human subjects
into a great social machine proved to be uneconomical and abandoned. Organizational utopia
was replaced by an industrial one-a utopia based on direct repression, violence, and forced
labor. However, the echoes of artistic and organizational utopias remained heard throughout the
rest of the Soviet period and beyond. Transmitted through Ladovskii's students and associates
(Vladimir Krinskii, Mikhail Turkus, Liubov' Zalesskaia, Ivan Lamtsov, and others), his vision of
architecture as space remained, and still remains, the dominant pedagogical model at the
Moscow Architectural Institute, where courses on "architectural composition" are still designed
as a program of mastering an expression of formal qualities. Moreover, the idea that reality is
construed psychologically was reflected by the so-called Socialist Realism-an official,
approved, and the only allowed "style" of Soviet art, literature, music, and architecture.
Pavel Andreevich Orlov, Puteshestvie v stranu kotoraia nazyvaettsa 'zhizn',' ili 'Mashina
vremeni' [A Jorney to
the Country Called 'Life, ' or 'Time Machine']. Web. 8.5.2014. <http://samlib.ru/o/orlow_p_a/puti.shtml>.
Translation by the author. Russian original: «B TO BpemA napK HMeHH FopbKoro 6M o0eHb IoInysipeH y
XapLKOBtqaH, H B HCM CKarIJIHBaJIOCb MHOrO rymonxoeik riy6JIHKH B BmXOAHme AHH H no Be'epaM. TaM 6MjiO Bce, HTO
680

TOJI6KO MOKHO 6Mno npHAyMab

AI oTuxa: ABe TaHUHnioiiIAKH, "9eneHMATeaTp", JIeTHHA KHHOTeaTp, iiaBHjhOH
inIomaAKH H Aaxe napamioTHa BmIiKa. BXOA B HipK 6Mn
niiaTHEI TOJbKO no BeqepaM, KorAa Ha KOHL~epTHLIX nJioaIaAKaX BMCTyHaJIH apTHcTh. [...] B KOHixe ixeHTpaJiMHOA
anneH napKa 6wna o60pyAoBaHa TaHIIeBaibHaS nJIoaHAKa, rAe HrpaI AyxOBOri opKecTp. 3Aec MOJIH TaHIIeBaT
Bce wKenawouIHe, - AeHer 3a 3TO He 6paJIH. BTopaA TaHI11JIOIBiAKa 6Mna pacnooKceHa B TJIy6HHe napKa, TaM rnpaI
Axa3, H BXOA Ha Hee 6i nJaTInHi. HrbouiAKa 6Mia o60pyAoBaHa KpacHBorl 3CTpalONi, npO)KeKTOpaMH H
THpJIAHAaMH Pa3HOt1BeTHbIX JIaMaioqeK. Ho, MM peAKo 6uLBaJH TaM, - 3To 6JIo MeCTO c6opa 3mHTHoi MOJIOAeKH,
cnoco6HOR He TOJRLKO 3a BCe IIJaTHT, HO H XOpOIO O.eBaThCSI. HHorA, OKa3aBUIHCb B6JIH3H, A C 3aBHCTBIO
Ha6noAa 3a pac y4aipeHHorl, BepTILeCiicI 1o.A 3ByKH gxwaE
TOJrnOr MOJIOAbIX Juoreii H AyMaJI, qTo xce 3TO 3a
cmexa (na6HpHHT KPHBMX 3epKaJi), KOHilepTHbae

6mIi roJIoA

!

J1OXAH, OTKyAa OHH B3AJIHCL? BeAb HeAaBHO

368

According to Boris Groys, Socialist Realism was not a mimetic representation of reality, but
rather a depiction of the potentially albeit not yet actually present: "Socialist realist mimesis,
then, attempts to focus on the hidden essence of things rather than on phenomena. [...] Socialist
realism is oriented toward that which has not yet come into being but which should be created,
and in this respect it is the heir of the avant-garde, for which aesthetics and politics are also
identical ."681 Like Krinskii's sky-scraper, which rather than being physically high depicted an
idea of height, Socialist Realism operated with artistic images and impressions.
Groys believed that the difference between avant-garde and Stalinist culture lay in the
fact that while the avant-garde, exemplified by Constructivism, exposed the methods of its work
(or, in Shklovskii's terms, layed bare the device), Stalinist culture strove "to shape it
[consciousness] in the desired mold by controlling its environment, its base, its subconscious." 682
As this dissertation strove to demonstrate, "the avant-garde" no less consciously than Stalinism
exploited the subject-making potential of the unconscious: while artistic utopia subjected it to a
scientific analysis, the organizational utopia strove to put it to a productive use. It was left to
industrial utopia to mold consciousness through direct propaganda.

Boris Grois, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1992) 51.
681

682

Grois, The Total Art of Stalinism, 44.

369

370

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Fig. 1.1. Arkadii Shaikhet, Ii'ich's Light Bulb (1925). Botino Village, Moscow region.
Collection of the Moscow House of Photography.
http://fotofond.ria.ru/images/54948/57/549485712.jpg

.

Fig. 2.1. Illustration from Ernst Mach, BeitrageZur Analyse DerEmpfindungen (Jena: G.
Fischer, 1886), p. 14
Figs. 2.2-2.3. Vladimir Krinskii. "Sky-Scraper in Moscow." Reproduced in Izvestia ASNOVA
(1926, No.1), p. 5.

.

Figs. 2.4-2.5. Nikolai Ladovskii, "Construction" and "Composition" (1921). Museum of
Modern Art, Thessaloniki. Reproduced in S. 0. Khan-Magomedov, Ratsionalizm (Ratsioarkhitektura) "Formalizm"(Moskva: Arkhitektura-S, 2007), p. 10 7
Fig. 2.6. V. A. Petrov. "Parallelepiped." Abstract assignment on the exposure of form
(VKhUTEMAS, 1920). Reproduced in Izvestia ASNOVA (1926, No.1), p.5.

.

Fig. 2.7. Nikolai Ladovskii. Geometrical analysis of Petrov's project. Reproduced in Izvestia
ASNOVA (1926, No.1), p. 4
Fig. 2.8. Mikhail Korzhev. "Grain elevator." Industrial assignment on the exposure and
expression of form (VKhUTEMAS, 1922). Reproduced in S. 0. Khan-Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm (Ratsio-arkhitektura)"Formalizm" (Moskva: Arkhitektura-S, 2007), p.165.

.

Fig. 2.9. Arkadii Arkin. Abstract assignment on exposure of physic and mechanical properties of
form (mass and balance) (VKhUTEMAS, 1922). Reproduced in Arkhitektura: raboty
arkhitekturnogofakul'tetaVKhUTEMASa, 1920-1927 (Moskva: Izd-vo Vkhutemasa, 1927), p. 2
Fig. 2.10. Unknown author. "Restaurant above the sea." Industrial assignment on the exposure of
physical and mechanical properties of form (mass and balance) (VKhUTEMAS, 1922/23).
Reproduced in El Lissitzky. Russia: An Architecturefor World Revolution (Cambridge, MA:
M.I.T. Press, 1970), p. 77.
Fig. 2.11. Tatiana Druzhinina. "Expressive Spatial Composition," Abstract spatial assignment
(VKhUTEIN, 1929-1930). Collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture.
PH1998:0014:394 http://svrdam.cca.qc.ca/ZooMI/Default.aspx?obj=PH1998:0014:394
371

Fig. 2.12. Nikolai Ladovskii. Liglazomer. Reproduced in Georgii Krutikov. "Arkhitektumaia
nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo Vysshego
Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta". Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost'(1928,No. 5), p. 372.
Fig. 2.13. Nikolai Ladovskii. Ploglazomer. Reproduced in Georgii Krutikov. "Arkhitekturnaia
nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo Vysshego
Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta". Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost'(1928,No. 5), p. 372.

.

Fig. 2.14. Nikolai Ladovskii. Uglazomer. Reproduced in Georgii Krutikov. "Arkhitekturnaia
nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo Vysshego
Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta". Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost'(1928,No. 5), p. 3 74

.

Fig. 2.15. Nikolai Ladovskii. Oglazomer. Reproduced in Georgii Krutikov. "Arkhitektumaia
nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo Vysshego
Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta". Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost'(1928,No. 5), p. 3 7 3
Fig. 2.16. Nikolai Ladovskii. Prostrometr. Reproduced in Georgii Krutikov. "Arkhitekturnaia
nauchno-issledovatel'skaia laboratoria pri Arkhitekturnom fakul'tete Moskovskogo Vysshego
Khud.-Tekhnich. Instituta". Stroitel'naiapromyshlennost' (1928, No. 5), p.374.

.

Fig. 2.17. El Lissitzky. "Chelovek-mera vsekh portnykh." Reproduced in Izvestia ASNOVA
(1926, No.1), p. 8

.

Fig. 2.18. Nikolai Ladovskii. Student Profile Form (VKhUTEIN, 1929). Reproduced in
Arkhitektura i VKhUTEIN (1929, No.1), p.3
Fig. 2.19. Psychological Laboratory of the N. K. Krupskaia Academy of Communist Education.
Psychological profile of general giftedness. Tests edited by P. A. Rudik. Series A2. [P. Ia. Rudik,
ed. Psikhologicheskiiprofil' obshchei odarennosti. SeriiaA2 (Moskva: Gudok, n.d.)].
Fig.2.20. Psychophysiological Laboratory of the Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University. Forms
for the results of psychotechnical tests. Reproduced in P. A. Rudik. Umstvennaia odarennost'i
ee izmerenie (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskogo Universiteta, 1927), p. 113.
Fig. 3.1. Aleksandr Lushin. "Practicum of color theory." Student exercise book, (VKhUTEIN,
1928-1930.) A sketch of twelve color tones (after Ostwald). The Getty Research Institute,
Special Collections.
Fig.3.2. Aleksandr Lushin. "Practicum of color theory." Student exercise book, (VKhUTEIN,
1928-1930.) A sketch of harmonic triades of chromatic colors. The Getty Research Institute,
Special Collections.
Fig. 3.3. Mikhail Matiushin and Maria Ender. The change of color shape and color background
in time, with the eyes closed (1 930s). State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.
372

Fig.3.4. Mikhail Matiushin, Spravochnikpo tsvety. Zakonomernost' izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh
sochetanii [Color Handbook. Laws of Variability of Color Combinations]. Moskva:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv, 1932. Band 3, Table 17.
Fig.3.5. Nikolai Travin. Khavsko-Shabolovskii residential complex. Plans of exterior coloration,
1928. Reproduced in Von Utopie Zu Utopie: Russische Architektur, 1919-1939: Katalog Zur
Ausstellung Vom 30. April Bis 31. Juli 1996 (Cologne: Galerie Alex Lachmann, 1993), p. 70.
Figs. 3.6-3.8. Antokol'skii's three schemes for the repainting of Moscow. Reconstruction by A.
V. Efimov (1978). Reproduced in A. V. Efimov. "Formirovanie tsvetovoi sredy goroda."
Arkhitektura SSSR (1978, No. 9), p. 7.
Fig. 3.9. Viktor Balikhin. "Color Rows." Museum of the Moscow Institute of Architecture.

.

Fig. 3.10. Employees of the Maliarstroi Office of Design. Photograph (1931). Reproduced in
Erich Borchert v Rossii/ErichBorchert in Russia (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo im. Sabashnikovykh,
2008), p.2 1

.

Fig. 3.11. Machine for a pneumatic spraying of paint (Maliarstroi, 1930). Reproduced in P.
Katichev. "Khudozhnik-stroitel'." Iskusstvo v massy (1930, No. 9 [17]), p. 14

.

Fig. 3.12. Industrial Painting Company, Montreal. Advertisement. Reproduced in Maliarnoe
Delo (1931, No.4), p. 5 9
Fig.3.13. Fere's ergograph. Drawing from S. S. Alekseev, B. M. Teplov, P. A. Shevarev. Tsvet v
arkhitekture (Moskva-Leningrad: Gosstroiizdat, 1934), p. 21.
Fig. 3.14. Aleksandr Liushin. "Practicum of color theory." Student exercise book (VKhUTEIN,
1928-30). Exercise 21: Observing the effects of color fatigue. The Getty Research Institute,
Special Collections.
Fig.3.15. Hinnerk Scheper. Color Scheme for the Narkomfin House, apartment type K. BauhausArchiv Berlin (Nachla3 Scheper). Reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo ("Color supplement" in No. 34, 1930).
Fig. 3.16. Hinnerk Scheper. Color Schemes for the Narkomfin House, apartment type F.
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin (NachlaB Scheper). Reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo ("Color supplement"
in No. 3-4, 1930).
Fig.3.17. Hinnerk Scheper. The Narkomfin House. Circulation scheme. Reproduced in
MaliarnoeDelo ("Color supplement" in No. 3-4, 1930).

.

Fig.3.18. Georgii Kliunkov. Scheme of a cinema hall. Reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo (1932,
No.3), p. 9
373

.

Fig.3.19. Georgii Kliunkov. Scheme of a condensation of the element of the dark (color and
light) according to a graphic of the crowd's movement. Reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo (1932,
No.8-9), p. 5
Fig.3.20. Herbert Bayer, Design for a cinema (1924-1925). Reproduced in Bauhaus. Workshops
for Modernity. 1919-1933. Ed. Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman (New York: The Museum of
Modem Art, 2009), p.175.
Figs. 3.21-3.23. Erich Borchert. Project of interior color design for railroad workers' club in
Liublino (1930). Reproduced in MaliarnoeDelo ("Color supplement" in No. 3-4, 1930).
Fig.4. 1. "And so the entire day long." Caricature mocking the meetings at the Park of Culture
and Leisure. Biulleten' rabochikh i sluzhashchikh Parkakul'tury i otdykha (No.2, 26 November
1929). Archive of the State A. Shchusev Museum of Architecture.
Fig. 4.2. Tovarishch U. "Obermensch-this [word] sounds proudly!"
http://tov.lenin.ru/gallery/desktop/gorkynietzsche.htm

.

Fig. 4.3. Moscow workers carrying a prototype model of workers' housing during a
demonstration, between 1927 and 1931. Reproduced in V. P. Tolstoi, I. M. Bibikova, and
Catherine Cooke. Street Art of the Revolution: Festivals and Celebrationsin Russia 1918-33
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 2 0 6
Fig. 4.4. "Nazi." Izofabrika of Central Park of Culture and Leisure (c.193 1). Photograph by
Branson DeCou.
http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p265 101 coll30/id/3962/rec/8
Fig. 4.5. "Nepmen." Izofabrika of Central Park of Culture and Leisure (c.193 1). Photograph by
Branson DeCou.
http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p265 101coll30/id/3977/rec/14
Fig.4.6. "Colonized India." Installation by E. I. Kheifetz paraded through the streets of Moscow
(1929). Reproduced in V. P. Tolstoi, I. M. Bibikova, and Catherine Cooke. Street Art of the
Revolution: Festivals and Celebrationsin Russia 1918-33 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990),
p.182.

.

Fig. 4.7. "American Pork King." VKhUTEIN, c. 1929. Reproduced in B. Zemenkov. Oformlenie
sovetskikh karnavalov i demonstratsii.Metodicheskoeposobiedlia izo-kruzhkov goroda i
derevni (Moskva: Khudozhestvennoe izdatel'skoe akts. o-vo AKhR, 1930), p. 5 9

.

Fig. 4.8. "Bureacrat." VKhUTEIN, c.1929. Reproduced in B. Zemenkov. Oformlenie sovetskikh
karnavalovi demonstratsii. Metodicheskoeposobiedlia izo-kruzhkov goroda i derevni (Moskva:
Khudozhestvennoe izdatel'skoe akts. o-vo AKhR, 1930), p. 19
Fig.4.9. "Worker." Tin installation. VKhUTEIN, before 1932. Collection of the Museum of the
Moscow Institute of Architecture.
374

.

Fig.4. 10. Sculptural group "Hooligans" and its audience. TsPKiO, 1931-1932. Reproduced in V.
P. Tolstoi, I. M. Bibikova, and Catherine Cooke. Street Art of the Revolution: Festivalsand
Celebrationsin Russia 1918-33 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p.2 2 2

.

Fig. 4.11. Stills from the film documenting Viktor Kalmykov's model of Avtostroi. VKhUTEIN,
1929. Reproduced in Sovetskaia arkhitektura(1931. No. 1-2), p.2 2 -2 3

.

Fig. 4.12.Nikolai Ladovskii, Model of Kostino Village (1929). Reproduced in Stroitel'stvo
Moskvy (1929, No.7), p. 1 5

.

Figs. 4.13. Liubov' Zalesskaia. Central Park of Culture and Leisure. Perspective and
VKhUTEIN, 1929. Reproduced in Stroitel'stvo Moskvy (1929, No.10), p. 16
Fig. 4.14. Liubov' Zalesskaia, Central Park of Culture and Leisure. Children Village,
VKhUTEIN, 1929. Collection of the State A. Shchusev Museum of Architecture.
Fig. 4.15. ASNOVA Brigade, Palace of the Soviets. Competition Project (1931). Reproduced in
Sovetskaia Arkhitektura (1931, No.4), p.53.
Fig. 4.16. The TsPKiO Brigade. "The Scheme of Demonstrations." Part of the competition
project of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure (1931). Reproduced in B. N. Glan, ed. Za
SotsialisticheskiiPark: Obzor Proektov General'nogoPlanaTsentral'nogoParkaKul'tury I
Otdykha Mossoveta (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosoblispolkoma, 1932), n.pag.
Fig. 4.17. The TsPKiO Brigade. "The Scheme of the Formation of a Mass Action." Part of the
competition project of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure (1931). Reproduced in B. N.
Glan, ed. Za SotsialisticheskiiPark: Obzor Proektov General'nogoPlana Tsentral'nogoParka
Kul'tury I Otdykha Mossoveta (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosoblispolkoma, 1932), n.pag.
Fig. 4.18. Konstantin Mel'nikov. Park of Culture and Leisure, Competition Project, 1931.
Reproduced in B. N. Glan, ed. Za SotsialisticheskiiPark: Obzor Proektov General'nogoPlana
Tsentral'nogoParka Kul'tury I Otdykha Mossoveta (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosoblispolkoma, 1932),
n.pag.

.

Fig. 4.19. Mikael Mazmonian. Moscow TsPKiO. General Layout and Entry Ramp-Arch.
Diploma (thesis) project (VKhUTEIN, 1929). Reproduced in S. 0. Khan-Magomedov,
Ratsionalizm (Ratsio-arkhitektura)"Formalizm" (Moskva: Arkhitektura-S, 2007), p. 4 4 3

.

Fig. 4.20. Mikael Mazmonian. Moscow TsPKiO. General Layout and Entry Ramp-Arch.
Diploma (thesis) project (VKhUTEIN, 1929). Reproduced in Stroitel'stvo Moskvy (1929,
No.10), p. 15
Figs. 4.21-4.22. El Lissitzky, Sketches for Moscow TsPKiO, c.1930. Collection of the Russian
State Archive for Literature and Arts, Moscow.
375

Fig. 4.23. Viktor Kalmykov. Moscow TsPKiO. Competition Project, 1931. Collection of the
Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, Samara.
Figs. 4.24-4.25. Viktor Kalmykov. Examples of simple rhythmical groupings of vegetation
(1936). Collection of the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation,
Samara.
Fig. 4.26-4.27. Viktor Kalmykov. Model of Tashkent Stadium. Collection of the Russian State
Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, Samara.
Fig. 4.27. Viktor Kalmykov. Scheme of Tashkent Stadium. Collection of the Russian State
Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, Samara.
Fig. 4.28. Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg. Central Park of Culture and Leisure, Lilly-of-theValley Alley. Early 1930s photograph. Reproduced in Marianna Evstratova and Sergei
Koluzakov. Vremennaid'ArkhitekturaParka Gor'kogo: Ot Mel'nikova Do Bana / Temporary

Structures in Gorky Park : from Melnikov to Ban (Moskva: Tsentr Sovremennoi Kul'tury

"garazh," 2012), p. 119.
Fig. 4.29. "Blue Blouse" performance at the Central Park of Culture and Rest. Stage-set by
Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg (1929). Reproduced in Marianna Evstratova and Sergei
Koluzakov. Vremennaiz'ArkhitekturaParkaGor'kogo: Ot Mel'nikova Do Bana / Temporary

Structures in Gorky Park : from Melnikov to Ban (Moskva: Tsentr Sovremennoi Kul'tury

"garazh," 2012), p. 118.
Fig. 4.30. Moving art exhibition in the TsPKiO (1934). Reproduced in Katharina Kucher. Der
Gorki-Park:FreizeitkulturIm Stalinismus 1928-1941 (Kd'in Bd'hlaM 2007), n.pag.
Fig. 4.31. Military education at the Park of Culture and Leisure (before 1932). Reproduced in B.
N. Glan, ed. Za SotsialisticheskiiPark: Obzor Proektov General'nogoPlana Tsentral'nogo

.

ParkaKul'tury I Otdykha Mossoveta (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosoblispolkoma, 1932), p. 1 4

Fig. 4.32. Moisei Ginzburg. TsPKiO. Competition Project. 1931. Reproduced in B. N. Glan, ed.
Za SotsialisticheskiiPark: Obzor Proektov General'nogoPlanaTsentral'nogo ParkaKul'tury I

Otdykha Mossoveta (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosoblispolkoma, 1932), n.pag.
Fig. 4.33. El Lissitzky and Andrei Korobov. Sverdlovsk Park of Culture and Leisure. Project,
1931. Reproduced in L. B. Lunts. Parki kul'tury i otdykha (Moskva: Gosstroiizdat, 1934), p.267.
Fig. 4.34. Militsa Prokhorova. Zoning scheme for Tula TsPKiO (1934). Collection of the State
A. Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow.

376

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Sources

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Archive of A. V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (MUAR), Moscow, Mikhail Korzhe v
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Archive of A. V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (MUAR), Moscow, Militsa
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Archive of A. V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (MUAR), Moscow, Viktor Balikhin
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A. V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (MUAR), Moscow, Photography Department.
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Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, VKhUTEMAS Collection.
377

Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, VKhUTEMAS Collection.

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