Disrupting the Monument: The Palace of the Soviets, the Strastnoi Monastery, and Stalinist Urban Reconstruction, 1931-1941

• In Event: Urban Transformations and Cultural Negotiations: Space, Identity, and Power in Interwar Eastern Europe and the USSR

Abstract

Study of Stalinist urban reconstruction in the 1930s usually examines a series of distinct acts: the creation of a plan, the demolition of a building, the construction of another. Yet for those living in Stalinist cities, this reconstruction was a constant, ongoing process. By examining two monumental sites in central Moscow, that of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and that of the Strastnoi Monastery, I will reassess the role of this continual process of urban disruption in the formation of Stalinist power, and the appropriation of existing monumental space. My research makes use of two kinds of images to reconstruct the visual impact of these spaces. First, I use visual media such as posters, newspaper illustrations, paintings, and films to understand how these sites were imagined, their place within the wider Stalinist ‘iconography of power.’ Second, I examine contemporary photographs of these sites in order to reconstruct how the spaces themselves appeared to those who lived and worked around them, and how that appearance was transformed through the period. Doing so reveals the importance of disruption in the creation of Stalinist urban space. The physical disruption of the cityscape reinforced the Stalinist promise of a transformed everyday, with the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour the highly visible first act of the creation of the (never finished) Palace of the Soviets. Through the disruption of the urban landscape, the Stalinist state appropriated existing monumental sites, transforming their political meaning while retaining their visual significance.

Author

• Henry Jennings, U of Sheffield (UK)