Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two

Canadian Journal of History, August, 2005 by Scott W. Palmer

Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, by Vladimir Papernyi. Translated by John Hill and Roann Barris. Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. xxviii, 371 pp. $95.00 US (cloth).

As a history of Soviet architecture during the 1920s and 1930s and as a historical document in its own right, Vladimir Papernyi's Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two is a consistently fascinating and occasionally frustrating work. It challenges contemporary scholars of Russian culture to pursue new conceptual approaches, while at times it challenges credulity through excessive theory and insufficient fidelity to historical methodology.

Written in the late 1970s during the "Period of Stagnation" that marked the rule of the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev, and first published in its original Russian under its original title Kul'tura dva by Ann Arbor's Ardis Press in 1985, the work has been known for quite some time to historians of Soviet culture and architecture. (A second edition of the book was published in Moscow in 1996.) Appearing at a time when Soviet scholarship was hamstrung by official ideology and politics, Kul'tura dva was a remarkable work: theoretically innovative and free of the ideological boilerplate that required attentive Western audiences to read between the lines for a Soviet author's real meaning.

Given the significance of Paperuyi's Kul'tura dva, it is rather surprising that it took so long for the book to appear in an English translation. In one sense, however, the wait appears worth it. John Hill and Roann Barris have done a fine job of transforming Paperyni's sometimes dense Russian into accessible English. Likewise, in terms of its production quality, the amply illustrated book (a contribution to the highly regarded series "Studies in New Art History and Criticism" from Cambridge University Press) achieves high marks.

At the heart of Architecture in the Age of Stalin is Paperuyi's contention that the Soviet built environment was defined by two conflicting trends which alternatively prevailed in the course of the twentieth century. The first of these, "Culture One," is identified with the 1920s, a period of social and cultural experimentation and relative political liberalization. "Culture Two," meanwhile, is associated with the 1930s; the period during which the Stalinization of Soviet arts and culture culminated in the proclamation of socialist realism as the officially sanctioned style. Papernyi theorizes that the tensions inherent in these two contrasting, but not entirely antipodal, "cultures" enable him to trace a "unifying principle throughout [Soviet] history" (p. xxiii).

For cultural specialists familiar with the pioneering work of semioticians Iurii Lotman and Boris Upsenskii, Papernyi's invocation of a binary model to explain the dynamics of Russian cultural development will have a familiar ring. Likewise, scholars familiar with Richard Stites's influential 1989 monograph, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford, 1989), will recognize Papernyi's juxtaposition of the 1920s with the 1930s as an earlier version of an interpretive approach that prevailed in the 1990s among Western historians of the Soviet Union. In marked contrast to Stites, however, Papernyi does not envision the passing from Culture One to Culture Two as the final victory of consciousness over spontaneity (or, Stalinism over Bolshevism) but, rather, as one movement within a cyclical process that continues, later, with the re-ascendancy of Culture One followed, again, by its demise and so on. Thus, properly understood, Architecture in the Age of Stalin is less a monograph devoted to Soviet architectural history than it is a treatise concerning a particular philosophy of Soviet history using architecture.

While Architecture in the Age of Stalin contains insightful anecdotes and information regarding the Soviet built environment that one will find nowhere else, Papernyi's insistence on constantly advancing his binary formula produces occasions in which the author's immense knowledge and creativity simply outstrip evidence and common sense. Perhaps the most memorable instance occurs in chapter six when Papernyi juxtaposes the tensions that distinguished Culture One's "mechanical" emphasis on "technology," "logic," and "abstraction" with the "living" Culture Two's impetus toward "humanity," "vigor," and "joy." Noting that discussions of architectural construction in Culture Two were often conducted in anthropomorphic terms, Papernyi claims that the "flesh-colored rosy ceramic tiles" used as cladding on buildings during the 1950s were an "unconscious imitation of the human skin" (p. 120). Unfortunately for Soviet architects and designers, many of these tiles began to come loose during the 1960s, necessitating the construction of special protective screens to save passersby from injury or death. From this Papernyi extrapolates proof of the impending demise of Culture Two, noting that "it became clear that this was the end of the culture; skin ailments often attest to a failing of the central nervous system." While such an interpretation is certainly creative, it is hardly sustainable, even as metaphor. Papernyi's decision to ignore the Soviet reality of shoddy building materials and slapdash construction methods in favor of wordplay and mental associations on this and other occasions is the book's chief weakness.