“We don’t care about the Parthenon!”: Passion for the Government House in Tashkent in the 1940s

On 28 May 1946, members of the Union of Soviet Architects of Uzbekistan came together to discuss projects submitted to a closed competition. The meeting focused on the designs for the Government House in Tashkent, a new building to be erected on Tashkent's Red Square (after 1956 Lenin Square, since 1992 Independence Square) and house key state institutions such as the Supreme Soviet, the Council of People’s Commissars, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the UzSSR. A task of such responsibility attracted a great deal of attention from architects. With seven projects submitted, the discussion gained competitive momentum and involved tough debates, harsh criticism, wounded egos, attempts to come to a consensus, a struggle for victory, a desire to understand what was expected… The minutes of these meetings are a veritable treasure trove for the historian of Soviet architecture in Uzbekistan as they show the inner process of architectural decision-making in the professional community as well as the explanatory framework that made it possible. It is a research fortune: I have the direct speech of the architects who proposed the projects, the direct speech of jury members, who evaluated them, and the words of all the other members of the Union who were willing to talk.

This text, to be sure, is just a small glimpse into the professional life of architects in Soviet Uzbekistan. A close look at this single project, however, can show much more than just the project itself. My aim is to move between the Scylla of ignoring the creative self-sufficiency of artists and projects produced within the Soviet cultural management system and the Charybdis of forgetting the political, social, and institutional conditions of such cultural production including embedded mechanisms of (self)censorship.[1] Overall, I’d like to shake the dust off the debates over “national in form and socialist in content” architecture of the mature Stalinist period, to show that this tiresome and devastated by numerous almost ritual utterances concept actually left a lot of room for personal interpretations especially when it came to a “national form”, and to remind the reader that final architectural structures were often formatted and simplified through many levels of revisions. It is in the archives where we can see the full spectrum of what Soviet architecture actually was. A few dozens more cases like this one, in fact, can narrate the architectural history of the 1920s-1950s in the republic, and I hope to make sense out of them in my upcoming dissertation.

The First Government House in Tashkent: Stephan Polupanov’s project

The site chosen for the new administrative building was already occupied; moreover, it was of great symbolic and town-planning significance. This square formed the heart of Russian Tashkent with the Governor-General’s residence, known as the White house in the middle. Then, the first Soviet project for the main administrative building replaced the residence soon after the transfer of the capital from Samarkand to Tashkent in 1930. It was designed in 1931 by Stephan Polupanov. Born and bred in the Kharkiv region, Polupanov moved in 1928 to Uzbekistan, which became his home for the rest of his life. He actively studied the traditional architecture of Uzbekistan, took part in expeditions, worked as an architect and made a successful career. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Polupanov absorbed the ideas and aesthetics of constructivist architecture, and he built the Government House in this spirit. The large functionally planned building consisted of a three-storey horizontal main volume and two smaller four-storey perpendicular volumes with clear rows of windows.

However, the first constructivist Soviet Governmental house did not occupy the square for long. As early as 1937, with the change in Soviet cultural policy and the purges against the local elite, dark clouds were gathering over Polupanov’s head as well. His creative career hung in the balance as he was seriously accused of following “formalism” in his architectural practice. His colleagues’ critique targeted his creative views though of course extended also into other domains. The minutes of the meeting of the Union of Soviet Architects tell us that “since 1931 architect Polupanov has been engaged in kvartirnichestvo, i.e. taken private orders in addition to his work in the state project organizations, and applied clearly formalist aesthetical views in his previous works (the Government House). Architect Polupanov has not yet completely abandoned the elements of formalism in his latest works (the Sukok resthouse). He completely ignores the opinion of the architectural community”.[2] More ominous were the accusations about his connections with Fayzulla Xo’jayev. Xo’jayev was a Jadid, Bukharan politician and at that moment Chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek SSR, who had just been arrested and denounced as an “enemy of people”. Polupanov’s opponents claimed that Polupanov had allegedly received the commission for the Government House thanks to Xo’jayev’s patronage: “The Government House was built despite opposition from the architectural community of Tashkent. If you take the multi-volume protocols, you will see that all public organizations protested against it. Polupanov relied on Xo’jayev and did not listen to criticism. He had a slippery contract with [only] one day for a sketch and 15 days for a technical project”.[3] Polupanov was fortunate to avoid expulsion and arrest; he even regained his membership of the Union. But it was clear that from now on he and his Government House had to change.

The new contest for the new Government House

The idea to open a new competition for projects for the main administrative complex in Tashkent to replace the aesthetically inappropriate constructivist building dates back to the late 1930s. As early as November 1937, it was discussed by the Union of Soviet Architects council: “The Government House is one of the most important [architectural] objects of the capital of Uzbekistan, and it requires a high-quality project. The Union considers it necessary to announce a competition for the design of the building, involving the best creative teams and design workshops in Tashkent”.[4] Probably postponed and then interrupted by the war, the idea was not revived until 1945 when the competition was finally announced.

The Soviet of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on the construction of the Government and considered it to be the biggest event in the socialist reconstruction of the capital of Uzbekistan, which would ultimately define the basis of the architectural image of the city of Tashkent. The resolution stated that “the complex must be an architectural monument worthy of the majestic era of its construction and reflect the rapid flowering of the national culture of the Uzbek people in the fraternal family of the peoples of the USSR, which victoriously ended the Great Patriotic War and moved on to peaceful construction”.[5]

Compared to other competitions of the 1930s and 1940s, the program does not really provide much guidance in terms of artistic specifications but rather offered general provisions such as cubature, required height, the building materials to be used, etc. [6] The house was to be a complex of buildings located around the square with the Supreme Soviet building to the east, the Council of People’s Commissars building to the south and the Central Committee of the Communist Party building to the north. The Lenin monument was to be preserved in its old location. The old Government House built by Polupanov in 1931 had to be partly demolished to free up the space, but partly reconstructed for the new complex. Overall, the architects had to solve at least two main interconnected problems, compositional and formal: firstly, how to place the complex on the square and, secondly, what architectural form each building should take. The latter traditionally meant yet another attempt to find out what a “national form” in architecture was.  This notion was as central to the architects of Uzbekistan and other national republics as the official explanation of it was rather vague. In turn, the lack of a clear definition offered a room for diverse interpretations made by architects on the basis of their own backgrounds. A general common sense to address the problem was to refer to the architectural traditions of the region and “to creatively process them”. As we will see, “procession” meant very different things in all the projects.

Projects for the Competition

Originally there were six projects that were to take part in the completion but apparently there were at least seven individuals and group projects made by 1) Abdulla Babakhanov (Tashkent), 2) Stephan Polupanov (Tashkent), 3) V. Arkhangelsky, A. Sidorov, and A. Petelin (Tashkent) 4) Viktor Volchek and Zhukov (Tashkent), 5) Viktor Kokorin (Moscow), 6) I. Kolbin (Tashkent), and 7) E. Katonin (Leningrad).[7] The discussion session opened with the architect Konstantin Babievsky's lecture on the history of the use of traditional forms in the architecture of Soviet Uzbekistan. He characterized the current stage (war and post-war years) as the period when all features of local architecture, from patterns, materials, and architectural forms to planning decisions, constructions, and types of overlapping fully entered the Soviet architectural language and architecture gained monumentality. The competition for the Government House was described as a key moment in defining the language of the period.[8]

Let me briefly go through all the projects and analyze what readings of the socialist Uzbek architecture they proposed. First of all, Stephan Polupanov had the opportunity to revise his 1931 project. His new interpretation of the Government House in 1945 relied heavily on classical architecture: monotonous colonnades flanked all three huge buildings on three sides of the square. His colleagues noted that the whole composition of the facades was based on “the classical sourdough” (“на классической закваске”, implying that classical Greek and Roman architectural school is a ferment that defined the project) and gave an impression of severity and monumentality.[9] Others rightfully argued that Polupanov relied too obviously on the classical order. They stated that one hardly could create an Uzbek style by concentrating only on porticos and desirably columns should be in harmony with the Uzbek national architecture. His most radical critics went so far as to say “We don't care about the Parthenon”! [10] Polupanov insisted that he had slightly decorated the classical columns with Uzbek ornamental motifs, which was a step towards reworking a classical basis into a new national form. Nonetheless, Polupanov’s project was the most classically-centered.

In contrast, the project by V. Arkhangelsky, A. Sidorov, and A. Petelin is an example of another extreme in finding a balance between “classical” and “traditional” architecture and obvious inclination towards Uzbek heritage. Their building combined many elements taken from the history of Central Asian architecture, such as a large cupola resembling the dome of the Gur-i Mir, guldastas on the corners and traditional patterns, and it included many sculptures. Although some architects noted its monumentality and solemnity, which was in keeping with the overall spirit of the square, most agreed that it felt museum-like, which made the project feel anti-modern. The Orientalist nature of the project was aptly captured by Babievsky:“It's just like something out of the tale ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, this project feels fantastic, it does not fit our days”.[11] Arkhangelsky tried to defend his team’s choice: “The dome is the main theme of this project. Our brigade did a lot of work before we decided to use a dome. There was a time when the use of a pointed arch in [Soviet] Central Asian architecture was considered to be defamatory [as it was considered as too direct borrowing]. Now as you can see, the pointed arch has acquired the rights of citizenship [in our country] and is used by our architects. The same will happen with the dome”.[12] The expectations of Arkhangelsky did not come true: just like the Parthenon, another Gur-i Mir was not welcomed on the main square.

               All other projects lie somewhere in between these two extremes. In the same vein as Arkhangelsky’s work, the project by Abdulla Babakhanov was criticized for what people regarded as irrelevant references.  An artificial use of historical forms as if they were “the rich clothes worn by the building”, a dubious choice of high tall towers (“Are we in Leningrad?!”), which the author chose to enrich the urban landscape in a similar fashion as achieved by the by the minarets in Samarkand and Bukhara, an unbalanced composition of the main building with a dome – these were the main points of discussion.[13]

The project by Viktor Volchek and Zhukov was criticized for the use of a spire, which in turn was interpreted again as a direct supposedly culturally irrelevant reference to the Admiralty building in Leningrad.[14] The project by the Tashkent architect I. Kolbin was questioned for its architectural form and planning that reminded a stadium. To justify his choice, the author argued in his speech that the Gur-i Mir's dome and other historical forms could not enrich Soviet architecture, and that he had therefore chosen to avoid them and instead use more modern references.[15] The project by Moscow architect Viktor Kokorin was not even mentioned in the main discussion. It featured a building with a monumental arch, columns and an obelisk in the square, which together evoked the triumphal spirit of Roman architecture, albeit decorated with a muqarnas-like cornice and mihrabs. Perhaps, due to its fantasy combination of different architectural schools, this chimerical project was too unexpected to be placed in the center of the city.

The project by the Leningrad architect Evgeniy Katonin, who worked in the Art Deco style in the 1930s, is probably the most free in its use of the square planning and architectural forms. Katonin’s stronger planning idea and modernist form-making made his project distinct, though even he did not escape the puzzle of proper use of history.  Katonin combined all three buildings into one connecting their parts with passageways. A squat and massive building with an octagonal tower decorated with multiple panels, openings, hexagonal windows taken from the vocabulary of Post-Constructivist architecture, borrowed from the Post-Constructivist project of the Chirchikstroy Hotel in Chirchik near Tashkent (mid 1930s), stood out from all the other projects. The originality of the project was recognized by all, as was the impossibility of realizing it, for it required the reconstruction of that entire part of the city. In Babievsky’s words, the building was made up of fortress walls, gloomy medieval halls and too overworked pointed arches, which meant that “this kind of architectural character doesn't really suit us”.[16]

Even this rather small competition in terms of the number of entries reveals a splendid diversity of views on Soviet Uzbek architecture within the architectural community. Architects from radically different professional and cultural backgrounds, with very different understandings of the local context, tried to imagine the square and to solve the eternal theoretical problem of Soviet architecture between form and content. Of course, there was no “right” answer but rather a process of searching. As the head of the Union Djahongirov said in the conclusion, “We have been discussing this question since the foundation of our Union, but we have still not found the right way to create it. There have been some attempts to use monumental and folk forms, but all this has not yet yielded positive results because we are approaching it mechanically”, by which he meant rather an artificial juxtaposition of various forms, taken from historical architecture and glued together. [17] But we can still read these documents and analyse the works of these architects with respect to encompass this inner diversity.

The Government House had a long history in the years that followed: Polupanov eventually renovated his own building, adding an outside colonnade and decorating the exterior and interior, but the project was much more modest than he had initially proposed. The square’s subsequent afterlife was  was no less vibrant. A new competition for the administrative complex took place in 1964 with another shift in Soviet architectural life: a winning modernist project by B. Mezentsev, B. Zaritsky, E. Rozanov, and V. Shestopalov reshaped Tashkent’s main square by adding new enormous concrete structures. [18] The iconoclastic renovations initiated by Islam Karimov in the 2000s changed the face of the square once again.

To think outside the capsule of Soviet architecture and its Orientalist background, the multi-layered history of the main square in Tashkent made me think of the instrumentalisation of architecture. Architecture in the service of nation-building and/or empires is a popular as much as sickeningly familiar theme in historical studies. However, the mechanism that makes such a use possible and straightforward still requires understanding. The case of the Red Square in Tashkent tells us that the constructed distinction between “classical” and “traditional” architectural systems was at least one of the cornerstones that made a way to instrumentalise the architectural projects. Though this mechanism might have functioned differently in other post-colonial contexts, from Morocco to Hong Kong. Ultimately, how could we explain the ways in which Soviet architects have repeatedly gestured at the notion of tradition? Was the use of “traditional architecture” in a project an excuse for overcoming it? Was it an indispensable duty of the times? Was it a supposedly unavoidable consequence of geographical and cultural conditions of the site? Was it a price to pay for creative freedom? An eternal source of inspiration? A nod at a socio-cultural context that could not be ignored? A political statement? All of these?

[1] For the latter, see, Alexandra Selivanova. Postkonstruktivism. Vlast’ i Arkhitektura v 1930-e gody (Moscow: BuksMArt, 2019), Danilo Udovicki-Selb,  Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes: Architecture and Stalin's Revolution from Above, 1928–1938 (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020).

[2] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 1, l. 15.

[3] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 3, l. 38.

[4] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 1, l. 1.

[5] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 52, l. 28.

[6] Ibid., l. 29-31.

[7] Although in the publication by S. Polutanov, Yu. Yaralov, Arkhitektura Gorodov SSSR, Tashkent (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii Arkhitektury, 1949) this architect is named as “V. Katonin”, I take the liberty of assuming that we are talking about the Leningrad architect Evgeniy Katonin. In the minutes of the discussion he is described as “one of the best theoreticians and designers of Leningrad” and there was only one architect with this surname in the 1940s who could fit this description.

[8] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 55, l. 3-4.

[9] Ibid., l. 6.

[10] Ibid., l. 33.

[11] Ibid., l. 46.

[12] Ibid., l. 8-9.

[13] Ibid., l. 20-23.

[14] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 55,  l. 40.

[15] Ibid. l. 27-28.

[16] Ibid., l. 7, l. 29.

[17] O `zRMA, f. R-2531, op. 1, d. 55, l. 64.

[18] See Boris Chukhovich, “Administrativny kompleks na Ploschadi Lenina,” accessed June 20, 2024, https://archalert.net/objects/getObject/13/#text