CC BY
28Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 5 (2017 10) 612-640
УДК 72.035(571)
Gateway to Siberia:
the Architectural Heritage
of Verkhoturye and Ekaterinburg
William C. Brumfield*
Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Received 22.01.2017, received in revised form 14.03.2017, accepted 19.04.2017
The article consists of an analytical survey of the architectural monuments of Ekaterinburg, together with the historic towns of Verkhoturye and Nevyansk. In Vekhoturye the article focuses on the first half of the 18th century and the Trinity Cathedral in particular, but attention is also devoted to the Monastery of St. Nicholas and its Cathedral of the Elevation of the Cross, a major work of early 20th-century Russian church architecture. The main part of the article focuses primarily on the architecture of Ekaterinburg from the mid-18th century to the late Soviet period, with particular attention to the city's important Constructivist buildings. A special feature of the article is its photographic documentation, done largely in 1999 before the building boom that has transformed much of the urban milieu.
Keywords: Ekaterinburg, Verkhoturye, Nevyansk, Solikamsk, Tobolsk, Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, Boris Godunov, Aleksei Mikhailovich, Peter I, Catherine II, Nicholas II, Ipatyev House, Jonah the Poshekhonets, Blessed Simeon of Verkhoturye, Tura River, Iset River, Siberian Office, Naryshkin baroque, Alexander Turchevich, Nikita Demidov, Georg Wilhelm de Hennin, Moscow Highway, Lev Rastorguev, Mikhail Malakhov, Neoclassicism, style moderne, Constructivism, Yakov Sverdlov, NKVD, Konsantin Babykin, Uralmash, Moisei Ginzburg, Uraloblsovet, Gorodok Chekistov, Sigismund Dombrovskii.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0071. Research area: art history.
After the defeat of the Siberian khanate by Russian forces at the end of the sixteenth century, the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains was transformed from a distant border region - the "end of Russia" - to the beginning of a territorial expansion that ultimately led to the Pacific Ocean. The immediate goal for the Muscovite court was to establish a gateway that would guide and control the process of expansion.
In October 1597 tsar Fedor Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible and the last member of the Riurikovich dynasty, commanded authorities in the administrative center of Cherdyn to found a fortified post on a cliff above the upper reaches of the Tura River. The death of tsar Fedor soon thereafter did not materially affect the project, for it was certainly undertaken with the support of the tsar's main adviser, Boris Godunov, who
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
himself became tsar at the beginning of 1598 in a complex intrigue that would ultimately lead to interregnum in Russia.
Godunov was an active founder of border settlements in Russia, and the post of Verkhoturye ("the upper reaches of the Tura") would acquire great strategic significance during the seventeenth century. Although the first commander of the post was the voivode of Cherdyn, Vasilii Golovin, Verkhoturye soon proved to be one of the primary reasons for the rapid diminution of Cherdyn's importance. The new settlement served as the terminus of the recently blazed Babinov Road that originated not in Cherdyn but in Solikamsk. This route significantly shortened the distance over the Ural Mountains for early Russian colonists, who could continue down the Tura River and eventually reach Tobolsk, on the Irtysh River. Indeed, from 1598 to 1763 this was the one officially sanctioned route into Siberia, and Verkhoturye served as a major customs post. Verkhoturye thus played a major part in the colonization of Siberia along a path that extended back to Solikamsk, Cherdyn, and Solvychegodsk in the far north.
During the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth centuries, Verkhoturye was administratively subordinate to Tobol'sk, but in fact it ruled a large area of the Urals as the "gateway to Siberia."1 By 1600 Verkhoturye already had its Merhants' Court (space for seasonal or itinerant trade), and merchants from Solikamsk and Cherdyn, as well as more distant trading centers such as Viatka, began to appear in Verkhoturye on a regular basis. In 1643 the nearby Irbit Fair received official status from tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and became the second most active annual fair for Russia's rapidly expanding Eurasian trade.2 (First place belonged to the Makaryev Fair, near Nizhnii Novgorod.)
Within those first decades Verkhoturye acquired a small group of churches - built of
logs, like all other structures in the settlement. The earliest church, first mentioned in 1601 but apparently completed in 1599, was dedicated to the Trinity, the central element of Christian belief and a frequent choice in areas where the indigenous, non-Russian population had not yet been converted to Christianity.3 In 1602 the monk Jonah Poshekhonets, from the Perm region, asked permission to establish a monastery, but was initially refused by the local voivode. Undeterred, Jonah sought and gained the approval of tsar Boris Godunov, who not only approved of the establishment of the Monastery of Saint Nicholas, but in 1605 gave the new monastery considerable material support. The monastery's first Church of Saint Nicholas was dedicated in 1604.4 And in 1621 Kiprian, first metropolitan of Siberia, founded the Convent of the Intercession, which soon provided refuge for elderly women without other means of support in the harsh environment of this frontier town.5
Verkhoturye also experienced the turbulence that afflicted the Russian Orthodox Church in the middle of the seventeenth century when a large body of the faithful rejected liturgical reforms promulgated by Patriarch Nikon in Moscow. Many adherents of the Old Belief fled to Siberia in order to escape oppressive state imposition of the reforms, particularly after 1682 when archpriest Avvakum, spiritual leader of the Old Believers, was condemned to death by burning at Pustozersk in the far Russian north.6 In the 1680s and 1690s the territory surrounding Verkhoturye witnessed a number of mass self-immolations in response to punitive expeditions sent from the Siberian capital of Tobolsk.7 This unarmed Old Believer opposition to the reforms and to the government that imposed them was countered with increasingly severe repression that would culminate in the infamous "Tara uprising".
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Peter the Great was enmeshed in a desperate war
with Sweden that would consume his attention and much of the Russia's resources until 1721. Nonetheless, it is a measure of his interest in Siberia that he supported significant building projects even at critical moments in his western campaigns. One of the most extraordinary of these projects took shape in Verkhoturye: the reconstruction, in brick, of the Trinity Cathedral, together with flanking buildings used for the local administration. Indeed, work on the Trinity Cathedral began in the spring of 1703, at the very time that Peter founded his new capital of Saint Petersburg on the Neva River.
The choice of this location proved remarkably effective. The Trinity Cathedral (Fig. 1), with its soaring bell tower and white-walled "kremlin" on the large cliff known as Trinity Rock, came to symbolize Verkhoturye's pivotal role in extending Russian authority to the east. What makes the cathedral so distinctive is not only its spectacular perch above the Tura
Fig. 1. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, south view. All photographs by William Brumfield. (27/8/1999)
River, but also the rich combination of elements from the Italian renaissance, medieval Muscovy, Ukrainian baroque, and a local flair for ornament evident in the green ceramic work on the facade. This church summarizes the many strands of seventeenth-century Russian architecture at the same time that Peter had begun to import a very different, Western architectural language to Russia.
The cathedral was built on the site of a log Trinity Cathedral, erected in 1683 to replace the original Trinity church, destroyed by fire. Because of the number of fires that had damaged the kremlin, the Siberian Office in Moscow commanded in 1698 that the kremlin and its church be rebuilt in brick and stone. Work on the kremlin walls and flanking buildings began immediately, while construction of the cathedral followed four years later under the direct supervision of the Siberian Office. Experienced masons were brought from Solikamsk, and the level of their work stands comparison with the best examples of Solikamsk's own church architecture during that period, particularly the Trinity Cathedral and the Epiphany Church.8
As in most seventeenth-century Russian churches, the Verkhoturye Trinity Cathedral has a tripartite plan, yet the vestibule (or refectory) is truncated and the bell tower exceeds the height of the main church. The result is an unusually complex and imposing vertical dominant, with radiant gold crosses above the cupolas and the bell tower. The octagon above the main cube is typical of late seventeenth-century tiered churches,9 but instead of continuing with another set of octagonal tiers, the builders took the unusual step of placing the four secondary cupolas, with their octagonal drums, above high dormers with windows and triangular pediments (Fig. 2). This curious western detail illustrates the fluidity of Russian architectural practice of the time, especially in the eastern provinces, where
Fig. 2. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, dormer detail. (27/8/1999)
little is known about the process of transferring architectural motifs. The presence of the four dormers and their placement at the points of the compass - rather than the more typical placement at the corners, served to increase the natural light admitted to the interior of the main structure.
If the structural resolution of the Trinity Cathedral combines familiar elements in unusual ways, the decorative detail of the exterior is extravagant. The ornamental window surrounds, with their scrolled pediments and carved columns (Fig. 3), suggest contemporary work in Solikamsk,
Fig. 3. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, south facade. (27/8/1999)
Fig. 4. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, cornice detail. (27/8/1999)
which itself borrowed from late seventeenth-century "Moscow baroque" ornamentation. But the surfeit of decorative devices arrayed in bands beneath the cornice line, as well as the curious petals that form "capitals" for the attached columns on the corner, are unprecedented in their assembly (Fig. 4). Furthermore, it should be noted that these details were originally emphasized with a bright palette of colors on the background of the white church walls.10
As for the profusion of ceramic ornament, the octagonal lucarnes on the north and south facades are typical in "Naryshkin baroque" churches of the Moscow area, but the solar rays in bright polychrome tile that emanate from these windows are unique (Fig. 5). The seventeenth
Fig. 5. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, south facade window details. (27/8/1999)
century was in general the apogee of Russian architectural ceramics. With the active support of the head of the church, Patriarch Nikon, Russian ceramic works produced an array of decorative tiles whose display was particularly rich for churches in the Moscow and Yaroslavl regions.11 The ceramics at the Verkhtorye cathedral lack nothing in a comparison with those created in more centrally located areas. Regrettably, there is no documentary evidence as to who produced the tiles used at Verkhoturye. There is a reference to an order from the Siberian Office for twenty-two workers from the Potters' Precinct (Goncharnaia sloboda) in Moscow to proceed to Verkhoturye for work at the cathedral and kremlin, but it is improbable that they would have produced the tiles on site.12 A more likely source is that same Goncharnaia sloboda in Moscow, although Yaroslavl cannot be definitively excluded.
The most elaborate component of the Trinity Cathedral ceramics is a frieze that encompasses the upper part of the structure, among the brick ornamental bands, with a proclamation of the construction dates of the basic structure (16031605), as well as the patrons of the church: tsar Peter, his son Aleksii, and church prelates, including Filofei, metropolitan of Siberia.13 As in Islamic architectural ceramics, the ornate lettering of the inscription becomes a part of the design. The polychrome ceramic work continues with decorative columns and strips attached to the dormers, and culminates in similar ceramic columns and strips on the drums beneath the cupolas. The limed walls of the cathedral and the gilded metal of the domes provide an effective frame for this display of colored tile.
The Trinity Cathedral was consecrated only in 1709, and work continued until 1712 on the interior as well as on the large Chapel of Saint Kharlampii, attached to the north facade (Fig. 6). A fire in 1738 destroyed the cathedral's wooden roof, as well as much else in the kremlin, and
the building was reconsecrated in 1739. Various repairs and modifications in the nineteenth century did not fundamentally alter the structure, although in 1887 the interior walls were painted by the Moscow master Vasilii Zvezdin.14 After a ransacking of the interior during the Soviet period, virtually nothing remains of the furnishings and the iconostasis, originally painted in the eighteenth century by the monk Ioann from Tobolsk. Nonetheless, the newly cleaned and whitewashed walls show to monumental effect the spacious interior, illuminated by the facade windows and the four sources of light beneath the cupolas.
A final detail of the Trinity Cathedral design is the crenellated walls extending from the southwest and northwest corners of the building. The walls not only provide imposing entry gates to the kremlin courtyard but also integrate the cathedral into the general design of the kremlin compound. The walls were not designed to withstand serious attack, but the obvious resemblance to the Moscow Kremlin, with ghibelline ("swallowtail") crenellation, provided further visual emphasis
Fig. 6. Verkhoturye. Church of the Trinity, northeast view with Chapel of St. Kharlampii. (27/8/1999)
for the Verkhoturye kremlin as a symbol of Moscow's authority at the gateway to Siberia. With the development of the Moscow Road in the 1760s, the main Siberian route shifted southward through the new town of Ekaterinburg, and the importance of Verkhoturye as a transportation and customs center waned. Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did the town revive as a renowned pilgrimage site.
Indeed, apart from the kremlin, the centers of monumental construction in Verkhoturye were two monastic institutions: the Saint Nicholas Monastery and the Convent of the Intercession. Although the monastery was founded earlier, the convent has the earlier surviving structures. First among them is the brick Church of the Intercession (Fig. 7), built in 1744-1753 on a plot near the confluence of the small Derneika River with the Tura. The church represents an adaptation of late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Muscovite parish architecture, with a simple cube and octagon surmounted by a low octagonal lantern and small cupola. It is, however, unusual to see this parish form in monastic architecture. The extended apse of the church is almost as long as the vestibule, thus deviating from the progression of structural forms typical in Russian church architecture. The restrained facade decoration could be explained by the limited
Fig. 7. Verkhoturye. Intercession Convent. Church of the Intercession, south facade. (27/8/1999)
means of the convent, whose functions included that of almshouse.
Nonetheless, the existence of a brick structure of this size, however awkward its proportions, signified the presence of a major donor. As the first Russian convent east of the Urals, it benefitted from the lavish donation of Maksim Pokhodiashin, who held the state liquor monopoly (in return for which he ensured that the state received its percentage) and subsequently acquired two metalworking plants.15 By virtue of his gift the modest first Church of the Intercession was overshadowed in the next decade by the magnificent Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist, built in 1753-1776. In its original form the main structure of the church matched such monuments of the "Siberian baroque" as the Church of Saints Zacharias and Elizabeth in Tobolsk. In addition the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist had the tallest, and purest, example of an eighteenth-century baroque bell tower in all Siberia.16
In 1782, only a few years after the completion of the John the Baptist Church, the convent was closed as part of an extensive secularization of monastic property during the reign of Catherine the Great. Nonetheless, the buildings, with church supervision, continued to serve as a refuge for elderly women throughout the nineteenth century. A reconsecration of the convent in 1907 provided only a brief flourishing. During the Soviet era, the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist, like many of Siberia's best examples of religious architecture, was almost destroyed. Everything was dismantled but the walls of the ground floor, which were converted into a shed (Fig. 8). The few remnants suggest the grim nature of Stalinist repression in this area.
The third church of the Intercession Convent was, like the first, dedicated to the Intercession of the Virgin (Fig. 9). Completed in 1902 after the former convent was reestablished as a religious
Fig. 8. Verkhoturye. Intercession Convent. Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist, south facade. (27/8/1999)
Fig. 9. Verkhoturye. Intercession Convent. New Church of the Intercession, southeast view. (27/8/1999)
community in 1896, the second Church of the Intercession is an example of late nineteenth-century church design, modest in scale and of limited decoration. When the convent was elevated to full monastic status in 1907, the new church became the primary place of worship, a role that it once again served with the restoration of the convent in the 1990s.17
The main Orthodox institution in Verkhoturye was the Monastery of Saint Nicholas, founded at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Just as the Intercession Convent was the first such institution east of the Ural divide, so the Saint Nicholas Monastery was the first monastic foundation for men in Russian Asia. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the monastery had three log churches: Saint Nicholas, the Dormition, and the Church of the Intercession. The turning point for the monastery was the transfer to the Intercession Church in 1704 of the relics of the locally venerated Saint Simeon the Righteous from the village of Merkushino, where he died in 1642. In time the presence of the relics would lead to a great expansion of the monastery.18 For the first part of the eighteenth century, however, only one modest brick church (Saint Nicholas) was begun in 1712 and abandoned in 1714, as Peter the Great forbade Russian masonry construction except in Saint Petersburg and brought all available masons to his new capital. The Saint Nicholas Church was thus dedicated only in 1738 and frequently modified in the nineteenth century, including a substantial rebuilding in 1864. It was destroyed in 1936.19
The earliest extant church in the Saint Nicholas Monastery is the Cathedral (sobor) of the Transfiguration of the Savior (Fig. 10), begun in 1821 and dedicated in 1834. Built to a typical late neoclassical design by Petr Vasilyev, the official architect of Perm Province, the structure has a large dome over the main cube of the church, a rusticated vestibule, and a bell tower that was dismantled in the 1930s and has been rebuilt. The interior wall paintings, dating from 1888, were done by Vasilli Zvezdin, who also painted the interior of the Trinity Cathedral. And while the latter paintings were destroyed, the others survived and have been restored with the return of the church to active use.20 Shortly after
Fig.10. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. Cathedral of the Transfiguration, south view. (27/8/1999)
Fig. 11. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. Gate Church of Saints Simeon and Anna, south view. (27/8/1999)
the completion of the Transfiguration Cathedral, plans for a new gate church, dedicated to Saints Simeon and Anna, were proposed and finally implemented in 1855-1856. The fanciful, eclectic form of the gate church (Fig. 11) combines nineteenth-century historicism with elements of seventeenth-century architecture in the design of the gate entrance itself.21
By far the grandest structure in the Saint Nicholas Monastery, and one of the largest churches built in Russia during the early twentieth century, is the Cathedral of Elevation of the Cross (Fig. 12), begun in response to the steadily growing stream of pilgrims attracted by the relics of Saint Simeon the Righteous, the Verkhoturye Miracle-Worker. As noted previously, the transfer of these relics to the monastery's Church of Saint Nicholas had greatly enhanced the significance of the institution in the eighteenth century. Even the enlarging of the Church of Saint Nicholas in 1864 proved inadequate to accommodate the numbers of pilgrims, particularly after Nicholas II and his family took an active interest in the saint's cult. Having decided to erect a grand new cathedral dedicated to the Elevation of the Cross in order to contain the relics and receive the pilgrims, monastery authorities began an extensive search for an appropriate architectural model.22
Fig. 12. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. Cathedral of Elevation of the Cross, south view. (26/8/1999)
The design ultimately accepted, by the Perm architect A. B. Turchevich, combined Byzantine with romanesque elements not only in ornamental and structural details, but also on the broadest level of planning. The eastern part of the structure conforms to the typically Orthodox centralized, inscribed-cross plan, while the western part is an elongated, basilical extension of aisles in the west, typical of Western church architecture. Enormous in size and almost seventy meters in length, the cathedral structure was begun in 1905 and completed only in 1913, although interior work continued thereafter until 1917. Turchevich did not live to see the completion of this massive temple. After his death in December 1909, the construction was supervised by the regional eparchal architect I. P. Kuroedov, whose initial
Fig. 13. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. Cathedral of Elevation of the Cross, interior, view east. (27/8/1999)
project for the cathedral had been rejected by the provincial government.
Although based on various components of historical church design (eastern and western), the cathedral represented decidedly modern construction methods, from the zinc covering of the roof, to the ventilation system, to the extensive use of concrete within the brick structure.23 The highly professional engineering of the cathedral allowed an interior that was brightly illuminated and capable of holding as many as 4,000 worshippers (Fig. 13). The design of the vast interior also created a remarkable acoustical space, extended on the north and south of the main crossing by two semicircular projections equal to the height of the main structure.
Fig. 14. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. Cathedral of Elevation of the Cross, iconostasis. (27/8/1999)
Among the treasures of the interior was a luminous ceramic icon screen made by the renowned M. S. Kuznetsov Ceramics Company in Moscow. The iconostasis, reinforced by an iron frame, spanned the entire eastern part of the cathedral, including the main altar (Fig. 14) as well as the two side altars. The left, or north, altar was dedicated in 1914 to Saint Simeon, and the right was dedicated in 1916 to the Dormition. The icons themselves were painted on zinc sheets by the Moscow workshop of S. K. Shvarov. Wall paintings were limited to the area behind the main altar. Further work was halted in 1917, in large part because of political and economic uncertainty accompanying the abdication of Nicholas II, who had been a major patron of the monastery.
During the Soviet period, the Saint Nicholas monastery was closed, the Saint Nicholas church and the Transfiguration bell tower were destroyed, and the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Cross was ransacked. In a savage act of vandalism, the iconostasis was smashed, and the interior of the cathedral, like the other monastic buildings, was converted to use as a juvenile incarceration facility administered by the NKVD. In a miracle of the restorer's art, the icon screen, with its Art Nouveau glazing, was recreated in the late 1990s on the basis of archival photographs and a few surviving fragments of the original iconostasis.24
The Saint Nicholas Monastery (Fig. 15) has administrative and residential buildings, most of which were built in the nineteenth century. One of the last components to be built by the monastery was the House for Honored Guests, built in 1914 near a cemetery just beyond the monastery walls. The house exemplifies traditional vernacular log architecture interpreted in a modern style characteristic of the early twentieth century.25 The steep roofline of the large central structure, and the sloping planes of the various porches, stairways, and balconies create a picturesque, romantic form with a view of the river.
A similarly picturesque quality characterizes much of the architecture, secular as well as sacred, at the center of Verkhoturye. The decorative brickwork of various schools, offices, stores, and warehouse s built at the turn of the twentieth century creates a pleasant ensemble, modest in scale, that is typical of many formerly-prosperous towns in the Ural Mountains. The center of this small-town ensemble is the Church of the Resurrection of the Savior (Fig. 16), shorn of its cupolas and bell tower, but still elegant in the details and proportions of its provincial neoclassicism. In time this church, too, will be restored to its rightful place at the center of Verkhoturye.
During the Stalinist period, the economy of Verkhoturye depended in large measure on
Fig. 15. Verkhoturye. Monastery of Saint Nicholas. General view from southwest. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 16. Verkhoturye. Church of the Resurrection, southeast view. Background: Women's Highschool (gimnaziia). (27/8/1999)
the timber cut by slave labor in GULag logging camps. With the demise of that brutal system, Verkhoturye drifted further into poverty and isolation, only to be brought back through a combination of local initiative and support provided by the Sverdlovsk state administration. The revival of the Saint Nicholas Monastery and the restoration of Cathedral of the Elevation of the Cross, together with the reopening of the Intercession Convent, are parts of a development inconceivable before 1991. Verkhoturye is once again reinventing itself as a pilgrimage center.
Neviansk
While Verkhoturye formed the initial center of Russian power on the Asian flank of the Ural Mountains, settlements to the south of Verkhoturye assumed greater importance with the development of mining and metalworking in the eighteenth century. The greatest of these is Ekaterinburg, yet there are other towns, such as Nizhnii Tagil and Neviansk that exemplify significant stages in the development of Russia's industrial towns.26 Indeed, Neviansk (current population ca. 29,000) has one of the most curious architectural monuments in eighteenth-century Russia. Established in 1700 to produce cannon for Peter the Great's armies, the Neviansk works were transferred by Peter in 1702 to Nikita Demidov (Nikita Demidovich Antufyev;1656-1725), the founder of a dynasty of Russian industrialists.27 His sons, Nikita and Akinfii, oversaw the development of the Neviansk works into Russia's major producer of iron by the middle of the eighteenth century.
Shortly before his death, Nikita Demidov commissioned for the center of his factory a great free-standing bell tower (Fig. 17) with a chiming clock. Construction was completed in 1724-1725, but because of unforeseen problems with the ground rock, the brick tower began to lean. Prompt measures were taken to stabilize
the structure in the eighteenth century, and it has since stood solidly, a massive white column sixty meters in height.28 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the large neoclassical Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior (not extant) was built on the factory territory in proximity to the tower, yet Demidov supported the Old Belief and preferred Old Believer workers as more stable and reliable.29 Although they were forbidden to build churches of their own, one might see the tower as Demidov's answer to the official church within a state that had rewarded him so handsomely. Indeed, the visual role of the tower with the enclosed factory compound reminds of the organizing principle of Orthodox monasteries: the vertical dominant of a bell tower surrounded by an asymmetrical grouping of structures.30
The discovery of better sources of raw materials at more distant sites led during the nineteenth century to the waning importance of the Demidov works as a major producer of iron. The factory and its iron furnaces were transformed into finishing workshops that produced pipes and machine parts. Orders from
Г
Fig. 17. Nevyansk. Demidov Tower, surrounded by Nevyansk factory buildings. (26/8/1999)
the military-industrial complex during the Soviet era have largely disappeared, and the complex of the factory grounds has an abandoned appearance. Nonetheless, Demidov's bell tower has become a tourist site, and the factory perimeter contains a museum of local culture. Despite the area's economic depression (or perhaps because of it), the town itself is relatively well preserved, with many log houses, including some to standardized design for factory workers.
Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk)
If Perm now stands watch over the European part of the Urals, Ekaterinburg serves as the main passage to Asia. The Perm region is associated with the Stroganovs, while Ekaterinburg was linked to the Demidovs. Each at some point during the past two and a half centuries has served as capital of the industrial resources of the central Urals. Ekaterinburg that can currently claim the advantage: its population of 1,400,000 is larger than that of Perm, and many of the main affiliates of such national institutions as the Academy of Sciences are located here. Ekaterinburg is also the site of foreign missions, including a United States consulate that represents American interests in much of the territory between Moscow and eastern Siberia. The city's modest Iset River was transformed after the Second World War into a series of ponds that bisect the central city from north to south. What were originally used as factory pools now serve as parklands in the center of the city.
Ekaterinburg (known as Sverdlovsk between 1924 and 1991) is a relatively recent creation, brought forth by the need to develop heavy industry and armaments during the reign of Peter the Great.31 The town was founded in 1721 by Vasilii Tatishchev, who also played a pivotal role in the development of Perm. The expansion of Russian metal-working capabilities was a major part of Peter the Great's industrial
strategy, and the mineral resources of the Urals let to the creation of numerous factory settlements and towns. Under Tatishchev's direction and with the technical assistance of Johann Blier, Ekaterinburg was established as a center of factory development.32
Work proceeded on the settlement at an intensive pace, both for the factory buildings and for a large dam, built by Leontii Zlobin, that would contain the town's reservoir and channel the waters of the Iset River to provide the energy for the factory works. The entire factory complex was enclosed within a large rectangular earthen rampart measuring 758 by 654 meters. Construction labor for this massive fortification was provided by 2,000 peasants and 1,000 soldiers.33 Tatishchev was removed from supervision of these state factories at the end of 1722 because of a feud with the Demidovs, who had held a near monopoly on supplies to the state.34 Nonetheless, work continued unabated on the Ekaterinburg factory complex under the management of Wilhelm Gennin. Production at the first State Metals Factory on the Iset River began in 1723, and three years later the settlement was named in honor of Empress Catherine I, Peter the Great's second wife, who after his death reigned briefly between 1725 and 1727.
In addition to the production and working of iron, other industrial enterprises led to the rapid growth of Ekaterinburg: in 1735 a branch of the State Mint began production, and subsequently in the eighteenth century the city gained renown as a center for the fashioning of ornamental objects from semi-precious stones excavated in the Urals (for example, jasper, porphyry, malachite). Some of the most impressive of these objects can be seen in Saint Petersburg at the Hermitage State Museum. With the extension of the Moscow Road through Ekaterinburg in 1763, the factory town began to flourish as a transportation center, despite its considerable distance from a large river.
A further stimulus to growth was the discovery of gold in the nearby village of Beriozovskoe in 1745, an event that launched large-scale gold extraction in Russia.35
For all of its significance as a mining, industrial, and transportation center, Ekaterinburg did not receive the status of town until 1781, when it also became the center of the newly-formed Ekaterinburg oblast', part of a larger territory administered from Perm. During this period the town consisted primarily of log structures around the fortified quadrilateral factory center, although a few significant masonry buildings were constructed in the neoclassical style during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Not until 1804 was the first general plan of the town given official approval, although the process of drafting one had begun in the 1780s.36
The latter part of the eighteenth century also witnessed the construction of several churches, most of which were razed during the Soviet era. One of the oldest surviving monuments in Ekaterinburg is the Church of the Ascension (Fig. 18), which combines elements of the baroque and neoclassical styles. Begun in 1792, the lower part of the church, with an altar to the Nativity of Christ, was dedicated in 1801, while work continued on the upper, main, church until 1818.37 Subsequent additions included a large parish school, completed in 1888. The main part of the large cuboid structure culminates in a mansardlike roof and a single cupola, whose form is repeated on the bell tower attached to the west. The design of the structure is typical of much provincial church architecture at the beginning of the nineteenth century, without the more elaborate decorative and compositional elements characteristic of architecture in Siberian towns such as Tobolsk and Irkutsk.
As for secular architecture, work was well underway by the beginning of the nineteenth century on what would become the most
distinguished monument of neoclassical architecture in Ekaterinburg: the mansion of the merchant, factory owner, and gold miner Lev Ivanovich Rastorguev. Begun in 1794, the house was expanded through various attached wings, whose construction continued until 1824, the year Tsar Alexander I visited Ekaterinburg and stayed at the palatial edifice. Subsequently, the mansion was inherited by Rastorguev's son-in-law, Petr Kharitonov; but each owner lived under a cloud of controversy, and the mansion eventually passed to the state for lack of agreement among the heirs.38
Although there is no documentary evidence on the authorship of so imposing a structure (Fig. 19), some sources attribute the main structure to the prominent local architect Mikhail Malakhov.39 The Rostorguev-Kharitonov
Fig. 18. Ekaterinburg. Church of the Ascension, southeast view. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 19. Ekaterinburg. Rastorguev-Kharitonov mansion, main façade. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 20. Ekaterinburg. Rastorguev-Kharitonov estate and mansion, view from south. Background: rebuilt television tower. (1/4/2017)
Fig. 21. Ekaterinburg. Apothecary of the Ekaterinburg Mining Department. (26/8/1999)
mansion, located on the hill that supports the Church of the Ascension, is one of the most visible buildings in the city. Its main facade, with a hexastyle Corinthian portico, overlooks Ascension Square, which extends from the tall bell tower at the west front of the Ascension Church. Even more visible, particularly across the great pond of the Iset River, is the side facade of the mansion (Fig. 20), which follows a gently sloping incline down the hill at the edge of Ascension Square. The architect (or architects) of this side elevation brilliantly conceived a series of forms - including the side facade of the mansion (with its own portico), a temple-like Corinthian portico and pediment masking a wing attached to the main house, and a large, framed gateway - to create a sense of a classically-inspired ensemble, an "Acropolis," along the brow of the hill. In 1937 the complex was converted into a Palace of Young Pioneers, a function that it maintained even after the demise of Soviet power.
Other neoclassical monuments in Ekaterinburg include the Apothecary of the Ekaterinburg Mining Department (Fig. 21), an elegant two-story building with a Corinthian loggia completed in 1821; the Riazanov house (Fig. 22), built between 1835 and 1840; and two porticoed houses dating from the early 1830s on Gymnasium Quay (the west bank) of the City Pond, formed by damming the Iset River in 1723. The larger of these two houses was built for the Chief Mining Director of the Ural State Factories and had a main facade marked by not one, but two ionic porticoes (Fig. 23).40 All of the above buildings have been attributed to Mikhail Malakhov, and they bear certain similarities, such as a projecting structure capped by an attic that emerges at the center of the main facade but whose axis is perpendicular to the street line. These attics are typically marked by the semicircular arch of a thermal window, a device that reveals Malakhov's debt to Palladian
Fig. 22. Ekaterinburg. Riazanov house. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 23. Ekaterinburg. Residence of the Chief Mining Director of the Ural State Factories. (28/8/1999)
design. Malakhov's own house (Fig. 24), built in 1817 and completely reconstructed in 1978, shows a variation on this design, with the central projection supporting a two-story Corinthian portico. In a variation on the Palladian theme, Malakhov's house is surmounted by a domed rotunda with paired Doric columns.
Malakhov also participated in the design of churches in the neoclassical manner, including the large Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevskii at the New Convent of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God (Fig. 25). Begun in 1814 as a memorial to Russian sacrifices in the War of 1812, the first phase of the church was completed in 1836, but additions and reconstructions began almost immediately and lasted from 1838 to 1852.41 The main architects are considered to have been
Fig. 24. Ekaterinburg. M. P. Malakhov dacha. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 25. Ekaterinburg. Alexander Nevskii New Tikhvin Convent. Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevskii, southeast view. (1/4/2017)
Ludovic Charlemagne and David Visconti, both experienced builders in Saint Petersburg. The form is one successfully adopted for a number of
late neoclassical churches in the imperial capital: a massive cube with a large central dome and four flanking domes at the corners. The addition of a bell tower to the west front completed the structure.
The earliest structure at the convent, the Church of the Dormition, was built in 1782 as the Church of Saint Catherine at the cemetery. (There were many Saint Catherine cemetery churches built at this time in Russia, usually in commemoration of the victims of a plague epidemic during the reign of Catherine the Great.) An almshouse at the church was converted to an Orthodox refuge for women in 1798, and in 1809 the institution was given official status as the Convent of the Tikhvin Mother of God. The conventual churches, most of which were erected in the early nineteenth century, follow some form of the neoclassical style.42
By the middle of the nineteenth century Ekaterinburg had laid the blueprint for its growth into the twentieth century. In 1845 a general plan for the city, based on the Catherinian plan and modified under the supervision of Malakhov, received official approval.43 The latter half of the century witnessed the proliferation of buildings in ornamental historicist and eclectic styles, such as the Sevastianov house (Fig. 26), built in 18601866 in a gothic revival style by the architect
Fig. 26. Ekaterinburg. Sevastianov house (District Court), Lenin Street façade. (28/8/1999)
A. I. Paduchev. Located on the east bank of the City Pond, the three-story structure offered a commanding view of the center of Ekaterinburg, including Malakhov's two neoclassical houses on the opposite bank of City Pond.44 Later in the nineteenth century, the house was converted for use as the Regional Court. The 1860s also produced other historicist buildings, such as the First Women's High School (Fig. 27; expanded in 1893), designed by the architect Revner with neo-romanesque detailing and a completely rusticated stucco facade.
By the end of the nineteenth century Ekaterinburg had become a major rail junction, with the opening of lines westward to Perm (1878), east to Tiumen (1885), and south to Cheliabinsk (1896). The importance of the railroad for the city was proclaimed in1881 with the opening of an elaborately decorated station built by the architect Gubonin. This building, modified in form, still exists on Station Square, although it was replaced in 1910 by the adjacent New Station, which in its turn was rebuilt in 1939. The economic activity generated by a combination of industrial power and transportation in Ekaterinburg led to the construction of the number of commercial and industrial buildings, as well as educational institutions, at the turn of the twentieth century. Although little remains of the nineteenth century
Fig. 27. Ekaterinburg. First Women's High School (gimnaziia). (25/8/1999)
factory complex at the city's core, other large industrial structures, such as flour mills, have survived. Among the most imposing of these is
Fig. 28. Ekaterinburg. Borchaninov-Pervushin Flour Mill (Station Square Mill). (28/8/1999)
Fig. 29. Ekaterinburg. Wooden house, Tolmachev Street No. 24. (27/8/1999)
Fig. 30. Ekaterinburg. Wooden house in style moderne, originally at Tolmachev Street No. 40. (28/8/1999)
the castellated brick form of the five-story Station Square Mill (Fig. 28; so named for its location near the main railway station), completed at the end of the nineteenth century.
At the turn of the twentieth century Ekaterinburg also had a number of wooden houses with fanciful decorative carving, isolated examples of which still survive (Fig. 29). Indeed, a few of these wooden houses displayed a resourceful adaptation of style moderne devices, such as the curved window surrounds of a house built in 1912 by the architect Yankovskii (Fig. 30).45 Although the largest, circular, window clearly derives from the new style, the other curved surrounds also reflect the form of the kokoshnik headdress donned by women on festive occasions in the Russian village.
In general the architecture of Ekaterinburg during the two decades before the First World War was eclectic, but in a conservative manner exemplified by the Opera Theater, completed in 1912. Despite its steady growth (the population by 1910 numbered 70,000), the city did not witness the large-scale application of new architectural styles imported from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, even though there were a few masonry commercial buildings in style moderne. A partially surviving example is the former building of the Provodnik Department Store, built in 1913 by K. T. Babykin and enlarged with an additional two stories in 1928, although the original cornice line was maintained at the top of the taller building (Fig. 31).46 Perhaps the reason for the dearth of moderne architecture lay in the fact that Ekaterinburg remained primarily an industrial city, in contrast to Siberian cities such as Omsk, Tomsk, and the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, all of which expanded rapidly as centers of trade and commerce and thus required new office and retail buildings in a contemporary style. A decade after the revolution, however,
Fig. 31. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Provodnik Department Store, Malyshev Street No. 29. (28/8/1999)
Ekaterinburg would become a center of innovation in Soviet architecture.
No doubt because of the heavy concentration of industry in Ekaterinburg, Soviet power was proclaimed there almost immediately, on the day following the Bolshevik coup of October 25, 1917 (O.S.) in Saint Petersburg. One of the leading Bolshevik activists, Yakov Sverdlov, was from Ekaterinburg, and in 1924 the city was renamed Sverdlovsk. Nonetheless, workers in many of the city's factories opposed the Bolsheviks even before the party's draconian policies of repression became obvious.47 In July 1918 the city was captured by white forces supported by the well-organized Czech Legion, but not before the murder of the deposed Nicholas II and his family on the night of July 17, 1918, by order of the Urals Regional Soviet and with the complicity of Lenin's government in Moscow. The city was retaken by the Red Army in July 1919 and soon thereafter designated a major administrative center for the Urals region. By 1926 the population of Sverdlovsk had reached 140,000.
As in the rest of Siberia, the arduous process of reviving a shattered economy and infrastructure impeded building activity, but Sverdlovsk's industrial significance led to a relatively quick rebound. Certain large buildings whose origins date
from the 1910s were completed or reconstructed in the mid-1920s. These include: the Commodities Exchange, begun in 1916 and completed in 1925 to a design by K. T. Babykin; the State Bank (Fig. 32), built as the Russo-Asiatic Bank in 1913 and reconstructed in 1928, also by K. T. Babykin; and the Business Club (Fig. 33), begun in 1915 as an extension to the Public Assembly Building and completed in 1926. The original design of the latter building has been attributed to K. T. Babykin, although the Business Club was completed by E. N. Korotkov and G. P. Valenkov.48
Other buildings from the NEP (New Economic Policy) years include: the Central Hotel, completed in 1928 by the architect V. Dubrovin (Fig. 34); the Perm-Sverdlovsk
Fig. 32. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). State Bank. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 33. Ekaterinburg. Business Club (Philharmonia). Right: Social Assembly Building. (28/8/1999)
Railroad Administration Building, also completed in 1928, by K. T. Babykin (Fig. 35); and the Industrial Bank, built in 1926-1928 by I. S. Gurye-Guryevich. The style of these early 1920s buildings usually followed some variant
Fig. 34. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Central Hotel. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 35. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Directorate of Perm-Sverdlovsk Railroad. (28/8/1999)
of neoclassicism - either the Neoclassical Revival, as in the case of the Business Club and the Railroad Administration, or a form of modernized, "stripped" classicism, exemplified by the Central Hotel and the Industrial Bank (also known as the Business Building).
Large-scale Soviet construction in the city accelerated with the proclamation of the first Five-Year plan in 1928 and continued throughout the 1930s with the development of the Stalinist drive for industrialization. This campaign led not only to the expansion of heavy machinery production, represented by such factory giants as Uralmash (Urals Factory for Heavy Machinery), but also resulted in the almost total rebuilding of central Sverdlovsk. Completely devoid of "bourgeois," "decadent" ornamental detail, the streamlined, modernist aesthetic embodied in Constructivist architecture served admirably as a propaganda statement of the country's progress "under socialism."49 From the main post office to the central department store, from apartment blocks to office buildings, a new urban environment arose during the late 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, the Constructivist architecture of Sverdlovsk is arguably the best preserved ensemble of the style anywhere in Russia. Not even Moscow, whose architects such as Moisei Ginzburg contributed to the building of Sverdlovsk, can boast of such a dense concentration of landmarks to the enthusiasm of the period. Despite the ravages of time and primitive construction methods, the Constructivist-era buildings have been maintained, and they give a sense of the dynamism that gripped the city as new factories arose to meet the increased demands of industrialization.
The period's idealistic mixture of social imperatives and modern design is embodied in buildings such as the Physiotherapy Institute, completed in 1929 by G. A. Golubev; the Factory-Kitchen, built in 1928-1930 to relieve the need for individually-prepared, home-cooked meals; the
Soviet Trade Workers Club, built in 1928-1930 by K V. Korzhinskii; and the Press Building, a streamlined structure with a curved corner, built in 1929-1930 by G. A. Golubev and V. Sokolov (Fig. 36). Although completed only in 1934, the Main Post Office (also known as the House of Communication) represents something of an extreme - beyond Constructivism - in the application of industrial design to a prominent administrative structure (Fig. 37). The author
Fig. 36. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Press Building. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 37. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Main Post Office. (26/8/1999)
of the project, K. I. Solomonov, seems to have drawn from structures such as grain elevators for the general shape of the building, with narrow apertures for equipment rooms on the upper stories.
Following the new industrial construction, the most acute priority for Sverdlovsk in the 1930s was housing for the tens of thousands of workers moving to a city whose population almost tripled within a decade, from slightly over 150,000 in 1929 to 423,000 in 1939. The early housing developments were austere blocks with small balconies, such as the still-functioning First and Second Apartment Complexes of the City Council (or Soviet), built in 1925-1928 and 1929, respectively, to a design by S. V. Dombrovskii. The City Council Fourth Apartment Complex, begun in the late 1920s and completed in the early1930s, shows more attention to formal design, with large multiple-pane windows placed within simple, but boldly segmented, structural grid (Fig. 38). Despite their simplicity, the designs of these progressive apartment complexes paid careful attention to issues of light, ventilation, and spacing along large boulevards.
More ambitious projects appeared with the support of large industrial and administrative entities. For examples, Uralmash supported a large housing and administrative development,
Fig. 38. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). City Council Fourth Apartment Complex. (26/8/1999)
centered on the new Square of the First Five-Year Plan, that included an apartment complex begun in 1928 and completed in the 1930s by P. V. Oranskii, V. Bezrukov, and M. V. Reisher (Fig. 39). In this project the architects adopted horizontal window strips that increased available light for the apartments and at the same time emphasized the modernity of the design. The most striking structure of the Uralmash project was the water tower built in 1930 by M. V. Reisher (Fig. 40). Invested with elements that are both anthropomorphic and futuristic, this boldly defined volumetric design proclaims the power of modern engineering, with the large circular
Fig. 39. Ekaterinburg. Uralmash Apartment Complex. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 40. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Uralmash water tower. (28/8/1999)
tank enclosure resting on exposed vertical piers that lead to the shaft of the pumping system at the rear. Although little known outside the immediate region, the Uralmash water tower is one of the most successful creations of Russian modernist architecture.
One of the most ambitious housing enterprises conceived as a single design project was the apartment complex of the Uraloblsovet (Urals Regional Soviet), built in 1931-1933 by Moisei Ginsburg, A. L. Pasternak, and S. Ia. Prokhorov. Fronted on Malyshev Street by a long eight-story building (Fig. 41) with the horizontal window strips characteristic of Constructivist housing design, the project led to an interior courtyard formed by four other buildings, the first of which abuts Malyshev Street and is linked to the main building by a top-story conduit (Fig. 42). The courtyard facades also have rectangular projecting balconies for each apartment. This combination of an unadorned, bold-relief geometric structure with equal access for every apartment to light and ventilation is representative of a belief, briefly held in the Soviet Union, in modern architecture as the key to a new, rational, transforming social order. And unlike other model housing designs, such as the Narkomfin building in Moscow (by Ginsburg and Ignatii Milinis), the Uraloblsovet project still
Fig. 41. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Urals Regional Council (Uraloblsovet) Apartment Complex, Malyshev Street No. 21. Building 1. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 42. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Urals Regional Council Apartment Complex, Malyshev Street No. 21. Buildings 1 and 2. (25/8/1999)
functions as an urban housing and commercial development.50
For all of the enthusiasm directed toward the industrialization of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the Communist regime relied on coercion not only for political repression but also to mobilize its economic and labor resources. The main internal security forces - referred to variously as the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD - were not only continuously lauded in propaganda, but also entrusted with high-visibility construction projects in cities such as Moscow and Sverdlovsk. The fact that the security ministry used its vast pool of GULAG prisoner labor for construction projects throughout Siberia, as well as in the rest of the Soviet Union, was not always widely publicized, but this component of the coercive Stalinist economic structure was hardly a secret, particularly in Siberia.51
The extent to which the security forces proclaimed their role in Soviet society is evident in one of the most prominent Constructivist ensembles in Sverdlovsk: the Chekists' Village (gorodok chekistov), a collection of apartment buildings, a large club with performance halls, and an eleven-story semi-cylindrical tower for offices and a dormitory-style hotel, all built over a period of seven years, from 1929 to 1936. This entire complex, which covers the equivalent of six
city blocks, was intended for the use of the secret police, or «chekists» (so named from the earliest designation of the Soviet security police, the Cheka). The architects of record are Ivan Antonov, V. Sokolov, and A. Tumbasov.52 Although the project began during a period when Constructivist ideas still prevailed in large projects, its final phases reached completion after Constructivism and most of its proponents had been excluded from the Stalinist design process. Yet the general imprint, from beginning to end, is of Constructivist design, an apparent irony in view of the project's patron, the bulwark of state control.
Modernist architectural principles notwithstanding, the Chekists' Village loudly proclaims its duty to the Soviet state, even from the air. Outlines of the general design resemble the letters «CCCP» (for USSR) or, in another interpretation, a hammer and sickle. The Chekists' Village is a fascinating example of what was both a very public and a self-enclosed world for those who enforced the ruling ideological dogma. The housing blocks conformed to a characteristically austere design, although their angled and staggered placement in relation to the street creates a visually striking pattern (Fig. 43).
The dominant feature of the project, however, was the office and dormitory tower, which now
Fig. 43. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Chekist Village (Gorodok Chekistov). HousingComplex, Lunacharskii Street. (27/8/1999)
serves as the budget Hotel Iset. Despite the modern appearance of its curved facade (Fig. 44), the tower walls were constructed in 1929-1932 primarily of bricks, hand carried via wooden ramps to the top levels. (The combination of visionary design and primitive building methods is typical of Constructivist projects, realized in an economy scarce in technology and rich in labor from the countryside, especially in the aftermath of collectivization.) What appears to be a cylinder from the street view becomes a dramatic concave facade from the courtyard (Fig. 45), with elevated passageways on the lower levels leading to the adjacent F. E. Dzerzhinskii club and theater
Fig. 44. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Chekist Village (Gorodok Chekistov). Office building and dormitory, Lenin Prospect. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 45. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Chekist Village (Gorodok Chekistov). Office building and dormitory, courtyard façade. (25/8/1999)
building. The club building, which in addition to a theater included a store and dining room for the residents of the "village," contains one of Soviet architecture's most dramatic stairwells, spiraling upward through five levels toward the reinforced concrete beams of a Communist star (Fig. 46).
Even as the final buildings of the Chekists Village were under construction, the high styles of Stalinist architecture, driven by neoclassical and Renaissance revivals, began to make their appearance as dominant elements in the Sverdlovsk cityscape. Such projects typically consist of long vistas culminating in massive porticos or other columnar forms. One of the largest, and longest in construction, was the main complex of the Urals Polytechnic Institute (now one of Russia's major technical universities), built between 1928 and 1939 by G. Ia. Volfenzon, A. P. Utkin, and K. T. Babykin. The massive ionic portico of the central building overlooks a green sward dedicated to Sergei Kirov and flanked with university buildings in a general design that reminds of certain American university campuses of the same period. The slight rise on which the main building is situated allows the portico to define not only the immediate ensemble but also the city's main thoroughfare, the wide, tree-lined Lenin Prospekt, which stretches four kilometers
Fig. 46. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Chekist Village (Gorodok Chekistov). F. I. Dzerzhinskii Club and Theater, main stairwell. (25/8/1999)
from Kirov Square. This visually effective design was part of the new general city plan begun in 1930 and completed, with many revisions, in 1936 under the direction of the architect S. V. Dombrovskii.53
Other major examples of prewar Stalinist architecture in Sverdlovsk include the reconstructed Railroad Station, completed in
1939 by G. P. Valenkov and V. I. Smirnov. In a burst of neoclassical fervor, the entire facade is fronted with ionic columns. More typical of late Stalinist architecture is the Regional House of Officers, completed by V. V. Emelyanov in
1940 (Fig. 47). With square Corinthian pillars and pilasters (instead of the more traditional columns), the facade of this ensemble, which includes a separate theater, resembles landmark Soviet buildings such as the Lenin Library (19281940) in Moscow. More distinctive, however, is the tower with loggias that rises from the main
Fig. 47. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Regional House of Officers. (27/8/1999)
building. Derived primarily from the tower of Andreian Zakharov's Admiralty Building (18101823) in Saint Petersburg, this type of square tower with spire became a characteristic feature of administrative buildings, pavilions, river stations, and apartment buildings during the last fifteen years of Stalin's rule.54
During World War II, Sverdlovsk, located in the security of the Urals, assumed even greater importance as an industrial and research center. The expansion of local factories and the arrival of institutions evacuated from the western part of the Soviet Union placed extreme demands on housing that were met with standardized structures of logs and cinderblocks.55 Following the war showcase architectural projects adopted the bombastic style prevalent in Moscow. The most notable example is the Building of the Executive Committee of the City Soviet (in effect, city hall), built on Lenin Prospect in 1947-1954 by G. A. Golubev and, after Golubev's death, by M. V. Reisher, who had formerly been one of the leading practitioners of the modern school. The building's facades, whose design was influenced by the work of Ivan Zholtovskii in Moscow, display massive Corinthian capitals and the spired tower rising above the main entrance (Fig. 48). The structure culminates at the corners and above the entrance with gilded statues of workers in heroic poses, at
Fig. 48. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Executive Committee of the City Soviet. (27/8/1999)
a time when the mass of the working population was still housed in substandard conditions.
During the mid 1950s a few large, neoclassicist projects were carried to completion, such as the Main building of the Urals State University (Fig. 49), completed in 1957 to a design by A. P. Taff; and the main entrance to the Central Stadium, completed in 1957 by S. A. Vasilyev and Iu. A. Vladimirskii, with heroic statuary placed atop Doric columns (Fig. 50). Nonetheless, with the death of Stalin, in 1953, and the rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet architecture placed greater emphasis on the mundane goals of providing mass, standardized housing. Even administrative and state office buildings were generally deprived of the historicist
Fig. 49. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Economic Council Building (main building of Urals State University). (28/8/1999)
Fig. 50. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Central Stadium. (26/8/1999)
or classicizing decorative effects of the previous era. Sverdlovsk was no exception to this tendency, during rapid expansion from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, when the population reached 1,300,000. One of the few distinctive buildings of this period was the new Circus, built in 1980 to a design by Iurii Shvartsbreim and Mariia Korobova. The main roof is suspended from a series of arched, trussed supports, which give the appearance of a geodesic dome in the shape of a lotus.
With a relatively strong industrial and educational base, Ekaterinburg has maintained an economy capable of supporting new architecture in the post-Soviet period. As in other provincial centers, much of this activity is directed toward the construction of private apartment buildings, built to modern standards and amenities. One recent example seems to draw its inspiration from American architecture of a century earlier (Fig. 51). In an attempt to rival one of the world's tallest reinforced concrete television towers at Moscow's Ostankino studios, work began in the early 1980s on a Sverdlovsk television tower that stands unfinished, near the city center, at almost 200 meters.
The revival of church construction is another notable feature of post-Soviet urban architecture. In Ekaterinburg a major patron is the city's largest industrial employer, Uralmash, which raised much of the support to build the Church of the Nativity of Christ (1996-1999; architect: Alexander Dolgov), now one of the city's best attended. Designed with traditional Russian elements in a style that derives primarily from the nineteenth century (Fig. 52), the church and its golden domes signal the revival of Orthodoxy in a factory area formerly considered a bulwark of communist power. Although most of the city's churches were destroyed during the 1920s and 1930s, and the few remaining ones were usually shorn of their cupolas and converted to uses such as an automobile garage, some of the survivors (for example, the Church of the Ascension and the
Fig. 51. Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Uncompleted television tower. Foreground: Kazantsev estate, wing and gate. (26/8/1999)
Fig. 52. Ekaterinburg. Church of Nativity of Christ, southeast view. (28/8/1999)
Fig. 53. Ekaterinburg. Church of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land ("on the Blood"), west view. (1/4/2017)
Old Believer Church of the Trinity) are now being returned to use and restored at considerable cost.
But the main focus of attention in religious architecture is the construction of some form of memorial on the site of the former Ipatiev house, where Nicholas II and his family were murdered the night of July 17, 1918. The house was razed in 1978 during Boris Yeltsin's tenure as governor of Sverdlovsk Region. The former Ipatiev property had a log chapel dedicated to the Martyr Princess Elizaveta Fedorovna and the New Russian Martyrs (designed by Alexander Dolgov), as well as a temporary metal canopy, with a cross, over the site of the house. The designs for a permanent religious memorial at the site, the Church of All Russian Saints (Fig. 53; 2000-03), were published in 1998, together with plans for an even grander, interconfessional, temple of worship and repentance.56
V. I. Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii i kul'tury goroda Verkhotur'ia i Verkhoturskogo kraia (Ekaterinburg: Izdatel'stvo Ural'skogo universiteta, 1998), 37-38, 40. The administrative boundaries of the Verkhoturye region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are indicated in E. K. Zolotov, Pamiatniki Verkhotur'ia (Ekaterinburg: Architecton, 1998), 22. Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 13.
On the Trinity Church, see Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 42; and Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 13.
On the founding of the monastery and the first Church of Saint Nicholas, see Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 64; and Leonid I. Denisov, Pravoslavnye monastyriRossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: A. D. Stupin, 1908), 660-61. On the founding of the Convent of the Intercession, see Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 106-07.
Among the many studies of the schism, see Kenneth N. Bostrom, ed. and trans., Archpriest Avvakum. The Life Written by Himself (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1979).
An account of the life of Yakov Lepikhin, one of the main instigators of the mass immolations in the Verkhoturye area, is presented in Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 51-59. This account provides insights into the variety of motives that fueled the proponents of Old Believer resistance, motives that in many cases were rooted in secular conflicts and social dislocation, rather than issues of religious observance.
The establishment of the Verkhoturye kremlin and the Trinity Cathedral are chronicled in Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 38-42; and Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 162-67. For a survey of the architectural monuments of Solikamsk, see William Brumfield, Solikamsk: Arkhitekturnoe nasledie v fotografiiakh / Solikamsk: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2007). With 10 color plates and 53 black/white photographs by the author. The establishment of the Verkhoturye kremlin and the Trinity Cathedral are chronicled in Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 38-42; and Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 162-67. The distinctive qualities of late seventeenth-century Russian church architecture are discussed in William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter seven.
A detailed analysis of the architectural and decorative style of the Trinity Cathedral is presented in P. A. Tel'tevskii, "Troitskii sobor v g. Verkhotur'e," Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo, 12 (1960):167-78. On seventeenth-century architectural ceramics in Russia, see Brumfield, History, 160-63, 180-81. The reference to Moscow's goncharnaia sloboda is included in Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 38.
The inscription is reproduced in Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 164-65. Presumably this inscription would have been vetted
in Moscow, although that did not prevent a mistake in the name of one of the prelates.
Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 42.
Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 182-83.
For excellent reproductions of archival photographs of the Church of John the Baptist, see Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 106, 111. See Denisov, Pravoslavnye monastyri, 665; Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 114-15; and Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 184-85. See Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 64; and Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 171-72.
Archival photographs and drawings of the Saint Nicholas Church are presented in Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 73, 75. On the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, see Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 174-75; and Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 78-81. The gate Church of Saints Simeon and Anna is described in Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 176; and Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 82-83.
On the choice of design for the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Cross, see Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 178-79; Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 84-85; and E. K. Zolotov, "Arkhitektura palomnicheskogo khoda k moshcham pravednogo Simeona Verkhturskogo," in Verkhoturskii krai v istorii Rossii (Ekaterinburg, 1997), 48-54. For a listing of the technical work and firms involved, see Zolotov, Pamiatniki, 84, 86.
I am grateful to Elena Dvoinikova, a restoration specialist from Ekaterinburg, who showed me the renovation work at the monastery and introduced me to Viktor Siminenko, head of the restoration firm «Terem» in Ekaterinburg. Siminenko explained the process of recreating not only the appearance of the iconostasis, but also the Kuznetsov formula for the clay and the glazing.
On the House for honored Guests, see Baidin, et al., Ocherki istorii, 180-81. For other examples of the modern approach to log architecture in Russia, see William C. Brumfield, The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
For a study of the planning and architecture of historic Russian factory towns, with particular emphasis on the Urals, see Rena Lotareva, Goroda zavody Rossii XVIII-pervaia polovina XIX veka (Ekaterinburg: Isdatel'stvo Ural'skogo universiteta, 1993). See also V. N. Lakhtin, Sistema rasseleniia i arkhitekturno-planirovochnaia struktura gorodov Urala (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1977).
See Hugh D. Hudson, The Rise of the Demidov Family and the Russian Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1986), 40-41.
On the Demidov tower and its place in the history of Neviansk, see V. I. Baidin, ed., Ocherki istorii, kultury i byta starogo Nev'ianska: liudi, pamiatniki, dokumenty (k300-letiiu goroda) (Ekaterinburg: Izdatel'stvo Ural'skogo universiteta, 2001). I am grateful to Aleksandr Sakantsev, director of the Neviansk office of the Sverdlovsk Regional Restoration Center, who guiding me through the tower. Sakantsev is responsible for the recent superb restoration of the carillon in the tower. On the Old Believer connections, see Hudson, Demidov Family, 55-56.
A lithograph of the Neviansk tower and the church as they existed at the end of the nineteenth century is contained in Zhivopisnaia Rossiia. Otechestvo nashe v ego zemel 'nom, istoricheskom, plemennom, ekonomicheskom i bytovom znachenii, vol. 8, part 2, Priural 'skii krai (Saint Petersburg: M. O. Vol'f, 1901), 182. See also Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 109-13. In 1924 the name of the city was changed to honor bolshevik activist Yakov Sverdlov. The name reverted to Ekaterinburg in 1991, but the larger administrative territory is still designated as Sverdlovsk oblast'.
For an account of Tatishchev's role in the early development of Ekaterinburg, see Valentin Luk'ianin and Maiia Nikulina, Progulkipo Ekaterinburgu (Ekaterinburg: Bank kul'turnoi informatsii, 1998), 13-16. See also Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 30.
10
11
12
13
i;
16
17
18
1У
21
31
Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 15-16. A schematic reconstruction of the fortified factory complex is contained in Vladimir Bukin and Vladimir Piskunov, Sverdlovsk: Perspektivy razvitiia do 2000 goda (Sverdlovsk: Sredne-Ural'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1982), 34-35. See also Lakhtin, Sistema rasseleniia, 17-19.
Tatishchev, as a high state functionary, was a determined opponent of the privileges granted to the Demidovs. See Hudson,
Demidov Family, 62-65.
On the discovery of gold, see Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 51.
For the evolution of the town plan in the eighteenth century, see Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 38, 184-85; and Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 18-19.
Information on the Ascension Church, as well as on the demolished churches of Ekaterinburg, is contained in V. Ia. Komarskii and N. N. Tagil'tseva, Khramy Ekaterinburga-Sverdlovska (Ekaterinburg: Renome, no date). The Rastorguev-Kharitonov affair is noted in Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 48-49.
See Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 90-91; and L. A. Kozintsev, Kamennaia letopis' goroda (Sverdlovsk: Sredne-Ural'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1989). See also A. M. Raskin, Arkhitektura klassitsizma na Urale (Sverdlovsk: Izdatel'stvo Ural'skogo universiteta, 1989).
On the house of the Chief Mining Director, see Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 93.
See Komarskii and Tagil'tseva, Khramy,11; and Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 88.
See Komarskii and Tagil'tseva, Khramy, 12. For an archival photograph of the convent at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 46. See also Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 87. On the 1845 plan see Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 16-17; and Lotareva, Goroda zavody, 185.
For a panoramic view of Ekaterinburg taken from the bell tower of the Cathedral of Saint Catherine (not extant) in 1898 by the photographer V. L. Metenkov, with the Sevastianov house in foreground and the Malakhov houses across the City Pond, see Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 54-61.
This house, formerly located on Korobovskaia (Tolmachev) Street, was moved to Proletarian Street and reassembled for a small area of historic structures known as the Literary Quarter. A description of this district is contained in Luk'ianin and Nikulina, Progulki, 42-43
For a photograph of the original Provodnik building, see Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 68.
See G. D. Selianinova, "Intelligentsiia i terror: opyt grazhdanskoi voiny na Urale," in S. Papkov and K. Terayama, eds., Ural i Sibir' v stalinskoi politike (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograf, 2002), 5-30. Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 74.
Constructivist architecture has been thoroughly studied by both Western and Russian specialists. Major publications in English include: Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); and Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1987).
On Ginsburg's Narkomfin housing complex (built for the People's Commissariat of Finance) and Soviet housing design of that period, see Milka Bliznakov, "Soviet Housing during the Experimental Years, 1918-1933," in William Craft Brumfield and Blair A. Ruble, eds., Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History (Washington and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1993), 85-148.
For a recent authoritative analysis of the question of GULAG labor, see O. V. Khlevniuk, "Ekonomika OGPU-NKVD-MVD SSSR v 30-50-e gody XX v.: Problemy i istochniki," Istoricheskie zapiski 5(123) (2002): 43-68. Nikolai Bylinkin, Vera Kalmykova, Aleskandr Riabushin, and Galina Sergeeva, Istoriia sovetskoe arkhitektury (19171954) (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1985), 92-93.
The difficulties in completing the 1930s Great Sverdlovsk general plan are discussed in Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk,
23-25. See also Iuliia L. Kosenkova, Sovetskii gorod 1940-kh — pervoi poloviny 1950-kh godov: Ot tvorcheskikh poiskov
kpraktike stroitel'stva (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2000), 357-58.
Photographs and analyses of these structures are contained in Brumfield, History.
Wartime construction is discussed in Bukin and Piskunov, Sverdlovsk, 96.
On the chapel by Dolgov and plans for the memorial church, see K. V. Efremov, "Nekotorye aspekty arkhitekturnogo proektirovaniia Pravoslavnogo khrama," in Architecton, 1-2 (1998): 65-67.
33
37
3y
43
45
4y
51
522
53
55
Ворота в Сибирь: архитектурное наследие Верхотурья и Екатеринбурга
У.К. Брумфильд
Университет Тулейн Новый Орлеан, Луизиана, США
В статье представлен аналитический обзор архитектурных памятников г. Екатеринбурга, а также исторических городов Верхотурье и Невьянск. В части, посвященной Вехотурью, особое внимание уделяется первой половине XVIII века и, в частности, Троицкому собору, а также Свято-Николаевскому монастырю и Крестовоздвиженскому собору, выдающемуся произведению русской церковной архитектуры начала XX века. Основная часть статьи посвящена прежде всего архитектуре г. Екатеринбурга начиная с середины 18 века до позднего советского периода, рассматриваются важные конструктивистские здания города. Особенностью этой статьи является ее фотографическая документация, выполненная в основном в 1999 году до начала строительного бума, который во многом изменил облик города.
Ключевые слова: Екатеринбург, Верхотурье, Невьянск, Соликамск, Тобольск, Царь Фёдор Ио-аннович, Борис Годунов, Алексей Михайлович, Петр I, Екатерина II, Николай II, Дом Ипатьева, Иона Пошехонец, Симеон Верхотурский, река Тура, Исеть, Сибирский приказ, Нарышкинское барокко, Александр Турчевич, Никита Демидов, Вилим Иванович де Генин, Московский тракт, Лев Расторгуев, Михаил Малахов, классицизм, стиль модерн, конструктивизм, Яков Свердлов, НКВД, Константин Бабыкин, Уралмаш, Моисей Гинзбург, Уралоблсовет, Городок чекистов, Сигизмунд Домбровский.
Научная специальность: 17.00.00- искусствоведение.
