Soviet Architecture - Cold War DOCUMENTARY
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Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the Soviet Architecture.
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#ColdWar #Soviet #Architecture
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I'm from the city of Yekaterinburg that was mentioned in the video
My city was mostly wooden before the 1930s and 1960s - these periods are two waves of mass constructions. Yekaterinburg isn't that big (especially comparing it to Moscow), so you can actually see different styles of architecture within city-centre. And even though they may look the same, soviet buildings are quite unique with unique philosophy behind them. Constructivist buildings of 1930s embrace simple geometrical design and emphasis for creating a community, which corresponds with the idea of creating a "new soviet man". Сталинки, that appeared in late 30s and 40s, were inhabited by the soviet elite at the time - engineers and communist party officials - this is why they are bigger, have more decorations, the apartments have high ceilings, etc. Хрущевки (sorry, this name is much easier to write in russian) aime to provide cheap PRIVATE apartments for families to solve housing problem. Брежневки, that were built in the 1970-1980s, have more floors, wider apartments and are in general more comfortable - and the Брежнев-era in Russia is often considered the period of social stability and prosperity.
So, my friends, soviet architecture is much more complex that you could have thought
I have got a glimpse of your city and thought “ a very nice city in a nice place “ , just a pity not a lot of the wooden houses remain in the city, We were invited to visit one of them- beautiful!
I’m living in the country the descendants of the founders have been send to… Salut
And I like the movies of Jacques Tati(scheff)
There was that one old house - that once belonged to the merchant Ipatiev - which was torn down.
@@ericoberlies7537
Hahaha….
Instead you got a cathedral !!!
No, on the other riverbank…
IVE LIVED IN BULGARIA for 14 years now and I now live in a "commi block" - my attitude has completely changed towards the architecture and indeed the commi blocks
, they are a great solution to housing needs and avoided the problems of the tower blocks in the UK.
@@piccalillipit9211Nice
Mind you, these mass produced concrete blocks are not just a thing of the Soviet or Communist world, you'll find these kind of buildings and townships in western Cities, Suburbs and Banlieues. In America they are commonly known as "projects".
Same case in the Asia-Pacific, mainly Japan and Hong Kong in the 1950s, South Korea and Singapore in the 1960s, and Vietnam and the Philippines in the 1970s. Only Japan, HK, and Singapore still build new public housing developments today.
Yes and they created ghettos, horrible.
@@cdrone4066 which means the US did something terribly wrong. It worked in Japan, Singapore, Austria, etc. Why didn't it work in the US?
Living in projects in America is a choice.
Also regarding uniformity, how about those mcmansions.... .... .... USSR isn't only one to adhere to cultural uniformity.... ... ... only in say USA it wasn't maybe as centrally planned, but oh boy does that home owners association make sure no one deviates from the cultural norms.
Funny to hear that the USSR was a very ideological state, as if that weren't the case for all countries; as if the rise of car-centric, single-house suburbs in the US wasn't equally reflective of ideology, that of consumerism, individualism, and racial segregation.
well said
And those single house suburbs were mostly copy-pasted as well, to skimp on costs and rake in more profits for developers.
@@ianhomerpura8937true
One thing I believe Soviet architectural thinking got right was that a lot of apartment buildings (that would be wielka płyta in my country) were surrounded by a lot of plantlife: trees, bushes, flower gardens etc. This was partially because of the belief in workers' right to rest, so the immediate surrounding of their houses were planned to be quite lush, and partially because cars were considered luxurious goods, so there wasn't so much need for parking spaces.
This creates some problems nowadays, now that families often have two cars (one for each parent) and need to find places to park them, but I think it's a small price to pay to not be surrounded by concrete, marble and sandstone nightmare that are modern apartment buildings (known colloquially as "patodeweloperka", which are made quick, cheaply, not very durable, and often against any common sense).
Poland should have expanded its metro and commuter railways instead of being too obsessed with cars. It's just weird that nowadays only Warsaw has a decent metro rail system, with Lodz planning to build only now.
I live in Japan. There are lots of Krushevka in some suburbs. I used to live in one for about 4 years. I really liked it. It was spacious, well maintained, and cheap. There were dozens of them with lots of trees and greenery and playgrounds in between them. And each complex has its own little shopping center. The buildings in my complex had nice murals painted on the walls. They're nice places to live.
Ah, danchi. Yep, the Japanese got the idea from the Soviets. Since millions of young people were moving from the countryside to work for factories in the cities, the government had to build thousands of housing units at a much faster and cheaper rate, so they build prefab apartments. The government still builds new public housing today, and they never stopped, unlike the US and UK.
Krushevkas are the best solution if any country is facing a housing crisis, it provides the population with cheap and affordable houses, while also creating a neighborhood out of nowhere. Its unfortunate that most of the western world doesn't do them because "communist idea is evil" and so nobody even considers building them. If they built a few Krushevkas in California, the homeless problem would be solved in 5 years, maybe less.
IVE LIVED IN BULGARIA for 14 years now and I now live in a "commi block" - my attitude has completely changed towards the architecture and indeed the commi blocks. They are exactly as you describe and I love living in mine.
@@CSLucasEpicyou can thank Western, British media for that lie.
Teaching Marxist concept via architecture reminds me of victor Hugo's thoughts on architecture being the first form of mass communication.
fire is older than architecture, but is only the second oldest form of mass communication. yelling is the oldest.
@@perfectallycromulent that is on a personal level. At the societal level, it did start with architecture. The higher your status in society and wealth, the larger your house will be.
@@ianhomerpura8937 yeah, and the way people get high status is by yelling at other people to tell them to do what they want, including building those houses. yelling, it's been popular for a few hundred million years now.
Sorry, can't hear you over the Great Pyramid
Wow, we honestly learned so much in this. Thank you!
Fun fact: There are more "communist blocks" in former west germany then in former east germany
There was a HUGE demand for housing post WW2 in West Germany do to on the one side cities being destroyed from the war and on the other side around 10 million people fleeing/being ethnically cleansed from eastern europe now ending up in western germany.
There are still entire cities based on commie blocks in west germany and basically every city has at least one city district full of them. Even my home village of 5.000 people has several 5 story commie blocks do to this.
It was simply the easiest and fastest way to build housing for a huge ammount of people in a short ammount of time. If everyone waited for single family homes being build in west germany the refugee camp slums would have remained until the 1990s.
It's almost like the USSR suffered some massive depopulation for completely unrelated reasons, yet still threw up buildings 😂
@@ZMCFERONof course WW2 didn't happened right?😊
I've heard this is why Germany has some apartment practices that seem odd to other countries, like not having built in kitchens - the renter has to install counters and whatever else they want.
@@westrim
As a renter you rent a functional apartment WITH kitchen!
That’s why I was surprised in France where you find only the sink in the kitchen…
Eastern Germany lost an awful amount of inhabitants after 1989-the Reunification- they had to demolish A LOT of the pre-fabricated bars and still continue to do so.
Fun (more like ironic) fact: the building pictured on the thumbnail nowadays serves as the head office of one of the largest commercial banks in Georgia
Brilliant presentation! One of the best episodes yet!👍
I came from comunist country. When government in 60-ies first built this buildings that simbolized modernisation and progress. It was privilege to live in this kind of settlements. Latter and now it simbolize depression and apathy. It's interesting how perception of society change by the time.
it's strange why we can't picture a homeless village in california as a pathetic symbol of the united states of america
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa we can, it's just far less of an issue. it's like taking a magnifying glass and blowing it up. there's a crisis there for damn sure but the nation itself still outperforms in most sectors against nations you can compare it to fairly, excluding places like luxembourg. the quality of life in comparison to your average post-soviet nation's citizen is just not fair. americans on average live a much nicer life than people in the countries it has made enemies of, and therefore, i consider that to be cherry-picking
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa and yet for some reason, the US, both on the federal and state level, still refuses to build any new public housing, made worse by the cap on housing enacted through the Faircloth Amendment in 1997.
@@ianhomerpura8937 it's opposed by the people. when you construct public housing all it does is get filled in by high crime and low income. that's it. it never improves. all you're doing is building in capacity for your area to contain people you don't even want around you. would YOU vote for public housing to be build right next to your home?
@@rrai1999 which is weird because it only happens in the US. In many countries, public housing developments are built for both lower and middle class families, so there is more incentive to operate and maintain them.
Some say the University of Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada) is a prime example of Soviet-style architecture.
The brutalist school of architecture.
The Cold War, can you please make a video on Françafrique, which is basically France's Monroe Doctrine approach towards Africa. I want you to make a video on this topic, since the concept of Françafrique dates back to the Cold War era.
16:24 believe it or not, this design and function competition based around the space race went to even the vacuum industry. Both the United States and the USSR made vacuums that looked like space ships and were made to have extreme suction, they even had advertisements in both nations utilizing some form of the concept of comparing your home vacuum to the ‘vacuum’ of space. I saw a huge display of said vacuums and ads at the museum of clean in Idaho.
True! I was born in communist Hungary, and we had a Soviet vacuum cleaner called
" Raketa" which translates to rocket. And it indeed looked spaceshipy
Edit: I remember my Father had to put in a stronger fuse in the circuit breaker, bc the original one would melt down when my mom turned on the Rocket😅😅😅
16:45 Awesome!
As someone who enjoys both history and architecture this episode was a real treat. Any chance of an episode focusing on Australia?
The 1975 crisis could be a great episode.
Great episode, learned quite a bit, thanks!
These panel houses are exactly like state housing in the 1960s in Tunisia.
at least you had sun-
@@daniel-ino Too much to be honest. Cold and rain are a gift here. We are in a dry period with water reservoirs almost empty all over the Mediterraneannl.
Say what you want but that architecture is badass.
Smithsonian Associates hosted a webinar on Brutalism a few weeks ago. It was fascinating. Some of the buildings are really beautiful but they’re all striking. Thanks for a great video.
I am so suprised that you don't have more followers when considering the high quality content you are producing!
The Khrushchevska are quite good designs, we need to build them in the West but with obvious improvements in terms of heat retention, insulation etc. But as a concept and their aesthetics they are much better than western toeerblocks, apartments with green moats around them and, in the UK, the obsession with building semidetached houses (were running out if land) or appartements which are built for young single people and not families.
Thanks
7:10: And was the nation’s tallest building up until the Varso Tower was built.
The soviet architecture is so fascinating, Im in love with the central asian buildings and the bus stops.
I wonder why most of these more artsy and outlandish buildings are in central asia or the Baltics or Georgia and not in Russia or most of the other comunist states
To be honest, there are just as many in Russia but with this video we tried to de-focus Russia slightly given the current context. But beyond that, they are indeed probably more concentrated in the periphery precisely because expressions of national identity were more acceptable outside the RSFSR :)
What my neighbourhood is considered 'the stereotype" is 💯 true.
Free home for pople
Isnt khrushev despise abstract art and archtecture.?
what's going on with the audio? it keeps looping a couple of notes in the background at around 10 mins?
This style of architecture looks modern even today
Спасибо, приятно послушать известную историю советской архитектуры на английском языке.
Только стоит уточнить, что вы имеете ввиду под пропагандой социалистических принципов через советскую архитектуру.
Какие именно принципы?
Some of those design ideas from 5:24 forward are so very typical 30s totalitarian gigantism reminiscent of some other contemporanean regime's plans.
Is also like imperialism Britania in 1880
The audio doesn't sound good at all.
In Finland you can find some of this style, not talked about much but most people live in block house/soviet flat style sub-urbs
The style being very brutalistic
Were they built during the time of Kekkonen?
Mostly yes. Due to Finnish countryside losing jobs, alot of people moved to cities, government was very busy building housing for everyone, result being not so pretty
@@javel114 but as a result, there are almost no homeless there. Still a great achievement since a lot of countries struggle with that all the time.
This is true. And lately most suburbs have been improved, more parks etc. But the main reason for having to build these type of suburbds is urbanisation.
There are also a lot of this kind of buildings in China, especially in northern part.
Constructivism produced some amazing buildings in public spaces, very unique utilitarian style and function, before Soviet Realism and anti formalism kicked in.
There are some instereting videos I saw on the subject:
From EcoGecko: USSR Urban Planning - th-cam.com/video/CWKuCoSg85w/w-d-xo.html
From DavidHoffman: The Story of the Sputnik Moment - th-cam.com/video/GhJnt3xW2Fc/w-d-xo.html
From WhatIsPolitics?: Why the Russian Revolution Failed ... - th-cam.com/video/_WXSsSgLpRE/w-d-xo.html
The USSR's housing plan was fantastic - the video on urban planning is very informative. A State shows its guts when it builts. You'll be surprised on how similar the US and the USSR buildings are similar - all you have to do is go after the interviews Trump's doctors gave when he was on the military hospital.
Also important to remember that we're talking of a country that had Kachaturian, Shostakovich, Dostoievski and the most important director in Cinema history - Eisenstein - who did the most important scene ever filmed in Ukraine, BTW. It's the famous "Odessa Staircase Scene" from "Battleship Potenkin".
good video!
P.S. Abkhazia is a region in Georgia, not a sovereign country :).
The 'luxurious' apartment towers in Australia don't even come close to the well thought planning in Eastern Europe. They are isolated, accessible by cars only, stuck very close with other competing towers blocking views, fenced off with little greenery.
I love eastern block brutalism. It's so... brutal.
Have you mentioned Panel'ki? Or is it for Brezhnev years? Houses of cards 😂
One word to describe Soviet Architecture, brutalism.
There is a special place in my heart for soviet bus stops
I actually love their architecture. Particularly their Embassy in Cuba. Very brutalist we don't have enough brutalist architecture
we have way too much
I reckon we already have enough.
@@bluegregory6239 lol...ok
You did not give enough example of actual architecture
At university I asked a lecturer who regularly visited the USSR which city he liked. He said Saint Petersburg Moscow is bloody horrible 😃
I think it should be noted that they only showed outsiders the good stuff, not the bad. Kinda like modern north korea where you have a tour guide. Thus, he got a skewed representation of the cities he visited
@@thorthewolf8801 Pyongyang is modern city with sanghai standard. Outside the city is 1900 korea
USSR had lots of problems. But no one can say they didn't give a damn about housing people...unlike some other notable nations.
you obviously have no idea about architecture, firstly, brutalism was not an invention of the Soviets, secondly, panel houses were built to the same extent in the West, they are still standing today, thirdly, you forgot the fact that those buildings were built with a complete infrastructure of schools, hospitals, workplaces, shops, everything in within a radius of a few minutes' walk, unlike, for example, American satellite towns, which look much worse and without a car, a person is lost there, there is nothing there, only residential houses one after the other,
How much homelessness did the Soviet Union have in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s?
I know, I know -- there is no homelessness in a slave plantation or prison camp (every slave having his hovel, every prisoner having his cage), ....BUT, couldn't we in America learn something from the socialist enemy?
We in the U.S. have ENTIRE government departments (at least at the state and federal level, in the big cities municipal as well) DEDICATED to "housing and urban development", and yet we have hundreds of thousands homeless (if you count the quasi-homeless -- millions of people).
As an engineering task, it is not difficult to build basic level housing for the poor. Of course, it will be "drab", maybe downright ugly. It SHOULD be drab, the spaces tiny, and the facilities quite minimal. This would provide an incentive for those capable of working to earn enough to LEAVE these places and go live in domiciles where they pay rent or mortgages. ...If it's something free or at an artificially low cost, it should be drab and minimalistic ON PRINCIPLE. (We don't want everyone housed this way, just those who are desperately poor and would rather have this than live under a tarpaulin or cardboard on some sidewalk.)
If people complain that they don't like living next to such a drab or ugly structure, then they should try to earn more money to go live in a nicer neighborhood.
Would you rather see THESE structures, or are rows of tents, cardboard boxes, tarps, etc. lining the sidewalks and infesting the greenspaces something better?
Really cool video!
Greetings from a "commie block" that got a paint job and is no longer grey. ;-)
Make a video about the rif war 1909- 1926
The Cold War is from 1945 to 1991. The 1958 Rif revolts would fit the timeline better.
Beautiful probably European picture tube TV in the background. With modern screen? And really terrible plus kind of crappy probably American one framing the videos.
For a moment i thought you said… soviet bastards! Anyway it would have suited thrm better 😮😅
This was a very much "no bells and whistles" approach in construction.
In socialism, this means that you cannot afford a bell and somebody stole the whistle...
What a stupid analysis.
Of course, the ideology is reflected in architecture. For example, it inspired the birth of constructivism, but economics was much more important.
Under Stalin, the economy grew by 17% per year, monumental structures were built in the country, such as the metro and so on. Stalin could afford to build imperial cities.
Khrushchev broke the Stalinist economic model, it came to food riots. This could not but affect the construction. Moreover, Khrushchev made it so that the size of the salary did not depend on the results of labor, he made it so that an engineer could earn less than a worker.
Such changes led to a rapid decline in labor productivity and a critical drop in its quality. If the West was struggling with unemployment, then in the USSR there was another problem - they could not find workers for non-prestigious professions, which included builders.
As a result, they built for a long time and not of high quality. In late Soviet buildings, it was a great success to find an evenly plastered wall.
No one forced architects to design miserable houses. They were simply forced to introduce national features into architecture.
The economy of the USSR was dying, and architecture was dying along with it.
PS For those who do not understand. The problem is not socialism, the example of Stalin proved that socialism can be very competitive, the problem is in the applied economic model.
The evil-ution of Soviet architecture👹👺
Love all your videos. Very informative. But your pronunciation of evolution is cringy.
Why are you so stiff in one POSE, professor! Did DADDY have something to do with it!?
🤪🍕🙏💩
Hi David,
seems you are both fascinated and hate the SU at the same time. Too bad, hater!
Thank you for trying to be objective rather that just pumping common "there's just grey blocks of flats" lies. It is a pity that in a section about palaces of culture you have presented only dream projects rather than real buildings. I have visited "USSR palaces of culture" exhibition in Moscow a month ago - there're plenty of really marvelous building of various epochs. But that would probably need hours and hours of video. I could be talking about same Linnahall in Tallinn, National library, Palace of political education, all designed by Raine Karp, for an hour at least. Mart Port with his projects of Yismae (got USSR Lenin architecture prize for that) or Lasnamae (I mean original "car-free" project with speedtram that never got built) was also great. And Soviet Estonia EKK (Collective farms building company) that was designing marvelous things - beginning with collective farmers kindergartens and ending with Copuncil of ministers summer house is also worth mentioning.
Love it when westeners say that soviet era architecture is copy-pasted. Yea- unlike an american suburb made from the same house from a Sears Catalog. The thing is- soviet buildings were standardized in order to maximize the ammount of tenants per square meter, where the american suburb homes were made to maximize profit from square foot.
@@chiefslinginbeef3641 Most soviet-era buildings, and all post stalinist ones are non communal. Apartments were not shared.
USA USA USA
Yo those craftsman houses from back in the day were high quality. Modern American Apartments look like Soviet era apartments with nicer finishes (brick or hardee board).
The more it changes, the more it continues the same.
Thank capitalist Jesus we were born in USA.
Soviet microdistrict is better than usa Suburbia. With 15 minutes city
I didn't know that Soviet architects had to construct bus stops. It's really interesting. The things you learn everyday.
all that is privately owned home is one and the same apartment block.
but something that is owned by the public such as metro stations and bus stops. differ from one another reflecting the ideas and culture of each district. This is in line with the socialist ideology
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa indeed
Sadly all these buildings are just decaying in capitalism.
That is so cool! I'm Ghanaian and I didn't know about the soviet influences in some of our iconic buildings.
*IVE LIVED IN BULGARIA* for 14 years now and I now live in a "commi block" - my attitude has completely changed towards the architecture and indeed the commi blocks
You have to remember when they were built they had not suffered 20 years of post Soviet collapse and neglect. Now they are being refurbished it is much easier to see them as pretty good solutions and in many many ways FAR superior to the American car-dependent suburb.
A lot of north american cities are starting to find out just how bad an idea it was to build cities around cars and not people.
You have a good sense of humour, sir!
@@Georgi_Slavov Like all societies георги, they don't appreciate what they have and they long for what others have. Try living in an American suburb where you have to drive 15 km to get milk because no shops or businesses are allowed in the residential zones. You are in Sliven I guess...?
@@piccalillipit9211 i live in Sofia. Living in the USA-absolutely NO PROBLEM!
@@Georgi_Slavov GO, Go live in America, it will make you really appreciate Bulgaria 😀
Do Soviet Animation. They're really diverse and "artsy".
Commie lover
@@Kingedwardiii2003 smartest commenter on TH-cam
/s
@@Kingedwardiii2003 smartest commenter on TH-cam
/s
Andropov's Ears in Tbilisi was yet another one of the most bizarre structures in the Soviet Union.
Balds favorite hotels are designed in Soviet architecture
So happy you mentioned Christopher Herwig's soviet bus stop book! I was lucky to be one of the Kickstarter backers for the project, and the diversity of the designs and expressions are incredible.
Thank you for showing examples of Soviet architecture that I had not previously. I had been under the impression this is was either drably uniform or trying to be innovative just for the sake of being different.
When I was a kid, we lived in a Soviet built building and it was not practical at all. It was 15 stories but sort of bi-level. So if you lived on floor 12.5, you would take the elevator to 12 and then walk about 20 steps up the stairs. Elevators didn't go there, even though that affected half of the apartments.
A stepchild...
Можете ли вы сказать в каком городе это было? Никогда не слышал о таких постройках
Excellent. Also good that you actually explain the french Concrete Brute connection. I still missed one thing though: There is also a strong Sowjet historical connection. Google Sowjet Constructivism, Vladimir Tatlin, etc. 🙂
A good addition to your video is to cite Brasilia, Brazil capital city built from the scratch on the 50's by a communist architect! Love your channel
The most beautiful and remarkable architecture was during the Stalin’s time
Great topic. Thanks for presenting it in such positive light! The many fascinating bus stops brought a smile on my face. I didn’t know anything about those.
America and the west copied Soviet architecture because it's a cheap, effective way to build fast. The buildings may not last as long, and not be pleasing to the eye, but they are affordable.
Public housing from the same era is the same in many parts of the United States
It's good that the United States has torn down those bad buildings so now all the poor people can live in tents or city sewers
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa
Most of them are either still standing or were replaced by newer public housing projects in the last 20 years. Yes, there are homeless people, but they don’t have to remain homeless. I was once homeless myself and once I decided to work my way out of it, I was able to change my circumstances. I know there are people with difficult challenges, but the opportunity to have a better life is available if they’re willing to work for it.
@@BB-kt5eb however, the cap on public housing put in place through the Faircloth Amendment back in 1997 was one of the most idiotic things Congress ever passed. As a result, the government both at the federal and state levels cannot intervene to end the housing crisis by building more public housing. It gave NIMBYs the power to artificially inflate housing prices for their own benefit.
Awesome! 'Bald and Bankrupt' will enjoy the bus stop segment.
@@panosdotnet The words russian and slave are synonims.
In at least one regard, Soviet urbanism was superior to what was being done in the US. In the USSR, residential neighborhoods were designed as self-contained small towns, with all the amenities of daily life within short walking distance. Meanwhile the US built sprawling suburbs in which there is nothing but endless rows of identical houses for miles on end, and you need to take your car just to buy groceries.
Which set up spurred amazing economic growth and wealth creation? lol
@@englishsteel-nz6im US style suburbs don't create wealth, in fact they are parasitic drains on the cities, which is where the economic activity takes place. Without massive subsidies they would all be insolvent.
@@englishsteel-nz6im those same suburbs from the 20th century are now dilapidated and unable to maintain the subsidized economic “growth” they generated
@SincerelyFromStephen how's the situation in the Khruschevka's lolol or other Soviet planned towns? USA still pretty rich overall.
@@englishsteel-nz6im they’re both badly planned in different ways. The US is still rich, but the suburbs from the 50s are now becoming the new slums as newer suburbs replace them in endless cycles of unprofitable sprawl.
We had a lot of brutalist buildings go up in the 1950s and 60s in the UK, much derided then and since it is interesting that there were examples where fires did not take hold because of the construction materials, whrreas we had the Grenfell disaster precisely because of measures put in place to "improve" the aesthetics of the building.
Le Corbusier was a SWISS architect from La-Chaux-de-Fonds where he realized his first buildings…
And as the example of the “House of the Soviets” in Kaliningrad/Königsberg shows us - the Soviet architecture was not always successful…
Finally! I've been looking for a video on soviet architecture for so long!!!
Vinh, Republic of Vietnam, rebuilt by the DDR . . . . how Stalinism affects South-East Asia
I find the cookie cutter suburbs of America as bad if not worse than the " commie blocks". I've lived in both.
Do you know what the Soviets could design beautifully imo? Many of their military jet aircraft and rockets, especially the rockets, just beautiful
Up until the US started taking it more seriously.
That thumbnail looks crazy.
Call me crazy but the soviet futurist architecture is my favorite on earth.
Khrushchev is one of my 'if you could have dinner with anyone' candidates. What an interesting person.
Lots and lots of blood on his hands. Don't forget to bring that up at dinner with him.
Easy to say when you are not forced to pick between youself and others to send to the gulag.
"If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive" I'd rather have dinner with someone alive than dead. 😮
Commie blocks seem dystopian looking at it with first world sensibilities. However, compared to what came before, these were actually a decent improvement.
Many of the previous habitations of these people had no electricity, plumbing, paved walkways, horrible access to jobs, markets, institutions, and public transit.
For example, Akon tells a story coming when he came from Senegal to the ghettos of the USA.
To him the projects were paradise compared to his rural village in Senegal.
He was amazed by the all appliances, refrigerator, tv, electricity, running water, toilet, parks, basketball courts, central location to buses and trains.
@danielhalachev4714 right.
Because of the lack of affordable housing (such as public housing), now we have homelessness on our streets, parks, and beaches. Many live in the sewers like Ninja Turtles.
At least before, these people would be housed in the "projects". Not great looking ones but at least it provided shelter.
Not saying all public housing is paradise, but it definitely beats tent cities, beggars at every intersection, feces and needles on streets, and mental illness on public transport.
Thank you for this video! I am an architect from Russia and I grew up in 'khrushevka' :)
I would say that Soviet architecture and city planning was a part of the global architectural thinking from the start despite the USSR being a closed coutry. Soviet Constructivism was clearly connected with the German Bauhaus. Stalinist architecture was somewhat similar to Art Deco. And then there was modernism in USSR and all over the world. Interestingly Soviet cities despite being almost car-free were designed around modernist ideas about street and road networks (cul-de-sacs, collectors and arterials instead of frequent street grids).
That transportation dept. pile was the very first thing I saw when I was dropped off the Rize-Baku bus in Tbilisi. It’s even worse in real life.
Panelház for the win!
I like to call it "Commie Deco".
Tetris irl
There are some buildings valued by architects. Sadly often they had to make a way for new building and it doesn't help common people see them like "that Commie building". I recall one Balkan country (FYROM?) turned their brutalist city center into a "Disneyland of Kütsch architecture", so it wouldn't look Communist.
To be fair, Secessionist, Neo-Gothic or other older buildings often end up demolished (when minor repairs were needed) or with their ornaments removed during reconstruction. In my city we had 19th century villa being demolished to make a way for a block of apartments. The investor had to pay 500000 CZK which is less than 22000 Euro, 2-room flat costs almost 300000 Euro.
Yep. It was sad though, since those brutalist buildings in Skopje were actually a collaboration between some of the world's greatest architects. This was because most of the city had to be rebuilt after the 1963 earthquake.
Thank you for explaining brutalist. I had no idea. I always thought this was from the word brutal and was used to disparage the architecture.
Stalin actually had cool buildings
Every single dictator had cool buildings, that’s literally one of the points of being a dictator, to show you might threw architecture.
Informative historical coverage video about Soviet Architecture during the USSR period...
Oh ... about the Bauhaus: Tom Wolfe had a book called "From Bauhaus to the Chaos or our time" about how the ideas from Bauhaus were taken into the "cheapest to build" that created all those hot glass building with steel frames.