Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

242

(Clockwise, from left to right): 

A. Dushkin, R. Sheinfain

and E. Grinzaid. Variant of 

the design for Maiakovskaia 

station, ca. 1936 (GNIMA)

A. Dushkin. Studies for 

Maiakovskaia station, 1937 

(Family collection)

A. Dushkin, R. Sheinfain

and E. Grinzaid. Design. 

Cross section, 1937 

(Metrogiprotrans)

A. Dushkin, R. Sheinfain

and E. Grinzaid. Design. 

Longitudinal section, 1937 

(Metrogiprotrans)

Fundación Juan March

monumental “synthesis” that was the fruit of an “or-

ganic” rather than a “mechanical” merger of architec-

ture and painting, frescoes and mosaics, sculptural 

works and bas-reliefs. This approach was in fact only 

gradually achieved. Almost completely absent from 

the first phase, in which there was a predominance of 

pure comparison with the architectonic tendencies 

that survived the end of the “creative” groupings, this 

turn came across in a marked and characterizing way 

in the stations built during the second constructive 

phase,

18

 where the architects involved, representing 

older and younger generations alike, started to be 

systematically accompanied by artists like Evgenii 

Lansere, Matvei Manizer and Nataliia Dan’ko, usually 

selected by the planners themselves for reasons of 

aff inity.

19

Aleksandr Deineka was one of the leading figures 

in this adventure. But if the Maiakovskaia station rep-

resents an absolute masterpiece, this is due to the 

fact that the uniqueness and extraordinariness of 

Deineka’s work cannot be dissociated from the con-

tribution made by Aleksei Dushkin (1904–1977),

20

 a 

relatively unknown architect in the West, but one who 

belonged to the group of highly talented proponents 

of Soviet culture, whose own name is linked (among 

others) to some of the most beautiful underground 

stations, such as Revolution Square and Palace of the 

Soviets (today called Kropotkinskaia).

In the Maiakovskaia station, every element finds 

its own organic place and mosaics made of glazed 

tessellae form the ornamentation of an environ-

ment conceived as a constructively and ideologi-

cally coherent whole, down to the tiniest details. 

The underground hall, 155 meters (over 500 feet) 

long and clearly inspired by the solution which John 

Soane came up with for the Bank of England in Lon-

don, despite being located 34.5 meters (113 feet) be-

low ground, is striking for its extraordinary sense of 

space, the glowing and luminous quality of its light-

ing, the fluid nature of its diff erent parts, the dialogue 

between the decorative features and the other ele-

ments, and the dynamism of the forms that do away 

with any sense of oppression and claustrophobia. 

The floor, made of polished marble, whose design 

was intended to bring to mind an abstract composi-

tion of suprematist inspiration dominated by Malev-

ich’s reds and blacks, seems to have been designed, 

as Nataliia Dushkina has put it, like a “runway” for the 

flying machine surmounting it, which takes on the 

theme of space and its symbolic transfiguration in 

the kingdom of the sky as a unifying argument. In 

interpreting the opportunities off ered by the use of 

load-bearing steel structures—with contributions 

from the engineers I. Gotsiridze, R. Sheinfain and E. 

Grinzaid—hidden in decorative domes and archways 

made of corrugated stainless steel separating the 

central hall from the platforms, Dushkin devised an 

environment that could be read in a crystalline, tec-

tonic way, bolstered by the theme of the metal frame 

that denied the gravity of the wall masses which were 

so evident in the early works. Every detail was includ-

ed in this design, whose far-reaching compositional 

key lay in the space theme and in the lightness and 

levity of an ensemble which found its culminating 

point and its decorative and narrative sublimation in 

the series of thirty-five ovoid mosaics by Aleksandr 

Deineka. These compositions, whose off icial theme 

was phrased as “A Day and Night in the Land of So-

viets,” had the presence of the sky as their constant 

feature. From the architect’s

21

 words we know that 

the solution which was finally implemented was the 

result of an arduous design process issuing from the 

meeting between architects and structural engi-

neers, which led to the rejection of the conventional 

proposal put forward by Samuil Kravets and finally 

defined the splendid and carefully thought-out spa-

tial apparatus that made the potential of the new 

structural arrangement obvious, underpinned as it 

was by the use of pilasters and steel beams. Thanks 

to this, Deineka’s work does not jump out at first 

glance. The mosaics in which the artist described a 

perfect day in the land of triumphant socialism, fitted 

inside the sequence of double vaults which Dushkin 

planned precisely to accommodate the features of 

the decoration, making it possible at the same time 

to disguise the sources of light, had and still have to 

be discovered and contemplated, one after the oth-

er, as one walks across the entire length of the hall.

Traversing this hall from end to end, anyone look-

ing upward could admire, a little at a time, standing 

out against the illusorily depicted sky rendered vi-

brant by the glazed tessellae, almost as if they were 

part of the storyboard of a documentary film, the 

kolkhoz (collective farm) fields, the blast furnaces of 

the new industrial plants built under the forced in-

dustrialization program, the work and recreational 

activities of the communist youth, and the ideal life 

of the Soviet family which new laws were striving to 

strengthen after the collapse of the 1920s.

22

 People 

could admire parachutists jumping and Red Army 

airplanes streaking across the skies of the mother-

land, in some cases inspired by the sketches of the 

selfsame Dushkin;

23

 and then the new methods of 

exploration, which had intrigued the avant-garde

24

 

culture and anticipated, in the quest for new strato-

spheric prizes, the conquest of the cosmos in the 

postwar years. The chromatic liveliness of the mo-

saics, which reflected the light emitted by various 

sources and which today still make Maiakovskaia one 

of the best-lit stations in the underground system, 

achieved its greatest intensity in the central areas 

portraying morning and afternoon scenes. Perhaps, 

for the first passengers, these really gave the impres-

sion of being close to the ground and the open sky.

From the outset, the Metro enjoyed great suc-

cess. In the days following its inauguration, crowds 

ceaselessly thronged to admire the work. A life-size 

model based on the complete reconstruction of a 

module, from floor to ceiling, which, reflected by 

a pair of large mirrors, created the spatial eff ect of 

the thirty-five spans of the Muscovite original, was 

one of the main attractions in the Soviet Pavilion 

at the 1939 World’s Fair held in New York. The work 

was discussed in various articles in the specialized 

press, and even today certain passages, taken from 

those distant pages, make a perfect introduction for 

an emotional understanding of one of the indispens-

able chapters of Soviet artistic and design culture. In 

August 1938, in the authoritative pages of 

Arkhitek-

tura SSSR

, the central organ of the Architects’ Union, 

Sosferov described his own personal experience and 

anticipated the surprise of future visitors with words 

that still apply today. “Starting out from the small, 

modest entrance in the theatrical building on May-

akovsky Square, this station . . . consists in a short 

passage and a small ticket off ice directly linked, by 

escalator, to the underground part. The severe clad-

ding of the grey marble walls and the total absence 

of clear and dazzling details prepare onlookers for 

their approach to the central part of the construc-

tion. The (well) known exiguity and suppression of 

size in the underground sections even better un-

derscore the eff ect of extraordinary spatiality and 

levity that characterize the deep environment . . . 

The cadenced series of pilasters combined with 

wide arcades reveals the whole station to the eye . . . 

The sensation of freedom is even more pronounced 

thanks to the oval domes covering the succession 

of spans in the central area. Thanks to these, the 

emphatically lowered arches became even lighter 

Fundación Juan March

A. Dushkin, R. Sheinfain

and E. Grinzaid

Maiakovskaia station. Central 

Hall and view of the station  

from the train tunnel, and 

ceiling mosaic by Aleksandr 

Deineka, 1938 (GNIMA)

Aleksandr Deineka

Ceiling mosaic at the 

entrance to Maiakovskaia 

station, 1938 (Casabella 679)

Aleksandr Deineka

Sketch of mosaic for 

Maiakovskaia station. 

Gouache on paper, 76 x 52 cm. 

Family collection

Fundación Juan March

still. The mosaic vaults, situated in the upper part 

of the domes, encourage the illusion of a perspec-

tival ‘trompe l’oeil’ (

sfondato

).”

25

 A few months prior 

to the appearance of this magazine, off ering a first-

hand report in 

Iskusstvo

, Deineka had written, in an 

article titled “Artists in the Metro”: “Descend into the 

underground, citizen, and raise your head! You will 

see a brightly illuminated sky, in mosaic; and if you 

forget that above the dome lies a stratum of Moscow 

earth forty meters thick, and you feel bright and easy 

in that underground palace, as a powerful stream of 

cool air, cleansed of dust, envelops your face, then 

the architect and the artist have accomplished their 

task.”

26

This essay was originally published in Italian, in a slightly diff erent form, in 

Aleksandr Deineka. Il maestro sovietico della modernità, exh. cat. Palazzo 

delle Esposizioni, Rome (Rome: Skira, 2011).

1.  See, among others, the feature “Arkhitektura, zhivopis’, skul’ptura” (Ar-

chitecture, Painting, Sculpture), published in the journal 

Arkhitektura 

SSSR, and articles appearing in the magazine Akademiia Arkhitektury. 

For example, Mikhail V. Alpatov, “Problema sinteza v arckhitekture re-

nessansa. Stancii Rafaelja” [The Problem of Synthesis in Renaissance 

Architecture. Raphael’s Rooms/Stanze], 

Akademiia Arkhitektury 1–2 

(1934): 19–22; Mikhail V. Alpatov, “Problema sinteza v isskustve Barokko” 

[The Problem of Synthesis in Baroque Art]

, Akademiia Arkhitektury 6 

(1936): 3–11. Ivan Matsa et al., 

Problemy Arkhitektury [Problems of Archi-

tecture], vol. 1, t.1 (Moscow: Vsesoiuznaia Akademiia Arkhitektury [All-

Union Academy of Architecture], 1936). A consideration of the experi-

ence of monumental painting is proposed by R. Kaufman, “Sovsetskaia 

monumental’naia zhivopis’,” 

Arkhitektura SSSR 7 (1939): 42–49.

2.  In reality, such mosaics had been initially conceived for the Pavelets-

kaia station: Josette Bouvard, 

Le Métro de Moscou. La construction d’un 

mythe soviétique (Paris: Éditions du Sextant, 2005), 236.

3.  The Russian names of stations are in the feminine gender as they are 

adjectives that modify the feminine word for “station.” While this station 

is named after Mayakovsky, it is referred to with the feminine variant of 

this name, Maiakovskaia [Trans.]. 

4.  “Za luchshii metro v mire”

 [For the World’s Best Metropolitan Railway], 

Stroitel’stvo Moskvy 1 (1933): 12.

5. Moshe 

Lewin, 

The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social 

History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Andrea Graziosi, 

L’URSS di Lenin e Stalin. Storia dell’Unione Sovietica, 1914–1945 (Bolo-

gna: Il Mulino, 2007).

6. Loris 

Marcucci, 

Il commissario di ferro di Stalin. Biografia politica di La-

zar’ M. Kaganovič (Turin: Einaudi, 1997). Kaganovich’s role in Moscow’s 

“construction site” in the 1930s is described by Loris Marcucci, “Un polit-

ico e la costruzione del piano,” in 

URSS anni ’30–’50. Paesaggi dell’utopia 

staliniana, ed. Alessandro De Magistris (Milan: Mazzotta, 1997), 32–45; 

Timothy J. Colton, 

Moscow. Governing The Socialist Metropolis (Cam-

bridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1995); Alessandro De Magistris

, La costru-

zione della città totalitaria (Milan: Città  Studi Edizioni, 1995); Harald 

Bodenschatz and Christiane Post, eds., 

Städtebau im Schatten Stalins. 

Die internationale Suche nach der sozialistischen Stadt in der Sowje-

tunion 1929–1935 (Berlin: Braun, 2003).

7.  Alessandro De Magistris, “La metropolitana di Mosca. Un laboratorio 

del realismo socialista,” 

Urbanistica 100 (1990): 23–36; Alessandro De 

Magistris, “Mosca, la metropolitana rossa,” 

Casabella 679, vol. 64 (June 

2000): 8–29; Bouvard 2005 (see note 1 above). See also Dietmar Neu-

tatz, “Arbeiterschaft und Stalinismus am Beispiel der Moskauer Metro,”

 in 

Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neue Wege der Forschung, ed. 

Manfred Hildermeier (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), 99–118; Dietmar Neu-

tatz, 

Die Moskauer Metro. Von den ersten Plänen bis zur Grossbaustelle 

des Stalinismus (1897–1935) (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2001).

8.  Lazar M. Kaganovich, “Podeda metropolitana-podeda sotsializma” [The 

Victory of the Metropolitan is the Victory of Socialism], 

Izvestiia  117 

(1935); 

Metrostroi 5/6: 4–9.

9.  De Magistris 1995; Colton, 1995; De Magistris 1997; Bodenschatz and 

Post 2003 (for all, see note 7 above)

.

10.  Nikolai Kolli and Samuil Kravets, eds., 

Arkhitektura moskovskogo metro 

[The Architecture of the Moscow Metropolitan] (Moscow: Izd-vo Vsesoi-

uznoi akademii arkkhitektury, 1936).

11.  Vladimir P. Sysoev, 

Deineka. 1899–1969 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972).

12.  Elena V. Shunkova, ed., 

Masterskaia monumental’noi zhivopisi pri Aka-

demii arkhitektury SSSR [The Studio of Monumental Painting] (Moscow: 

Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1978). 

13.  Alessandro De Magistris, “URSS. L’altra ricostruzione,” 

Rassegna 54/2 

(1993): 76–83; De Magistris 1997 (see note 7 above).

14.  Bouvard 2005 (see note 1 above). On the figure of Ordzhonikidze, see 

Oleg V. Khlevniuk, 

In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhoni-

kidze (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1995); Francesco Benvenuti, “A Stalinist Vic-

tim of Stalinism: ‘Sergo’ Ordzhonikidze,” in 

Soviet History, 1917–1953, ed. 

Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie, and E. A. Rees (London: St. Martin’s Press, 

1995), 135–57.

15.  Kolli and Kravets 1936 (see note 1 above)

.

16.  L. Brodskii, “Osveshchenie stantsii metro” [Station Lighting in the Metro-

politan]

, Arkhitektura SSSR 9 (1938): 11–17.

17. From 

Greek 

krypte (underground chamber or vault) and Latin porticus 

(from 

porta, door), in ancient Roman architecture a semi-subterranean 

vaulted corridor that supports portico structures above ground [Ed.].

18.  Vitalii Lavrov, “Arkhitektura moskovskogo metropolitana. Dve ocheredi 

metro” [The Architecture of the Moscow Metropolitan. Two Stretches of 

Railway], 

Arkhitektura SSSR 9 (1938): 2–5.

19.  Bouvard 2005 (see note 1 above)

.

20.  Nataliia O. Dushkina and Irina V. Chepkunova, eds., 

Aleksei Nikolaevich 

Dushkin. Arkhitektura 1930–1950 (Moscow: A-Fond, 2004).

21.  Aleksei N. Dushkin, 

Iz neopublikovannoi knigi o tvorcheckoi deiatel’nosti. 

1976–1977 (from the unpublished book on Creative Activity, 1976–1977), 

in Dushkina and Chepkunova 2004 (see note 20 above)

, 168–72.

22. Sheila Fitzpatrick, 

Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary 

Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1999); Vladimir Paperny, 

Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Cul-

ture Two (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

23.  Dushkina and Chepkunova 2004 (see note 20 above).

24.  Alessandro De Magistris and Irina Korob’ina, eds., 

Ivan Leonidov 1902–

1959 (Milan: Electa, 2009).

25.  I. Sosferov, “Stantsii metro Gor’kovskogo radiusa”

 [Metro Stations. The 

Gorky Line], 

Arkhitektura SSSR 8 (1938): 25–39.

26.  Aleksandr Deineka, “Khudozniki v metro”

 [Artists in the Metro], Iskusstvo 

6 (1938): 75–80, quoted here from Egor Larichev, “Deineka in the Metro,” 

SoloMosaico (2010): 104–5, http://www.solo-mosaico.org/larichev.pdf.

Fundación Juan March

246

187. Viktor Deni (Denisov) 

and Nikolai Dolgorukov

Est’ metro! [The Metro is Here!], 1935

Poster. Lithography and 

letterpress, 99.1 x 69.7 cm

Text, top left: Hail our great Stalin

Text, top right: “There are no 

fortresses that the Bolsheviks 

cannot take.” Stalin

OGIZ-IZOGIZ, Moscow-Leningrad

Print run: 10,000. Price: 60 kopeks

Collection Merrill C. Berman

Fundación Juan March

184.

 Stroitel’stvo Moskvi 

[The Construction of Moscow]

no. 10–11, 1933. Magazine

Letterpress, 30 x 22 cm

Mossovet, Moscow

Archivo España-Rusia

186.

 

Stroitel’stvo Moskvi 

[The Construction of Moscow] 

no. 5, 1934. Magazine 

Letterpress, 30 x 22 cm

Mossovet, Moscow

Cover image: Krasnye Vorota 

metro station, architect I. Golosov

Archivo España-Rusia

185.

 V. P. Volkov

Tonnelnyi shchit i rabota s nim 

[The Tunnel Shield and Work 

with It], 1934. Book

Letterpress, 22 x 16.5 cm

Metrostroi, Moscow

Archivo España-Rusia

185b. Fold-out spread

Fundación Juan March

248

188.

 General’nyi plan rekonstruktsii 

goroda Moskvi [General Plan for the

Reconstruction of the City of Moscow] 

1936. Book. Letterpress, 26.7 x 20 cm

Izdatel’stvo Moskovski Rabochi, Moscow

Fundación José María Castañé

188b. Fold-out with underground map

Fundación Juan March

Underground 

as Utopia 

Boris Groys

Utopia requires

 

a certain physical isolation to protect 

its every carefully conceived and constructed detail 

from potential corruption by the rest of the imper-

fect world. It is no coincidence that reports of uto-

pia invariably take the form of a travel description in 

which an individual has to 

undertake a diff icult or 

fraught journey, in space or time, often involving 

some kind of sacrifice, only to discover, usually 

by chance, a utopian world on some island, some 

concealed high mountain plateau, another planet 

or another time.

 As 

a rule, when the traveler even-

tually leaves this utopian world, there is no going 

back. Something invariably happens to make it ir-

revocably inaccessible: an avalanche in the moun-

tains, a shipwreck in which old sea charts are lost, 

or a fire in which the time machine explodes. And 

so, the first rule for anyone seeking to construct a 

utopia is to find some remote place where every-

thing can actually be created anew according to a 

cohesive plan. 

That, however, is no easy task. For the construc-

tion of a utopian world requires people, materials 

and certain infrastructure; a true desert or wilder-

ness is ill suited to the purpose. On the other hand, 

if utopia is created in the midst of an inhabited 

area, it automatically and almost imperceptibly 

adapts to the existing living conditions. A piece of 

earth already developed for living makes things a 

little too easy for the creator of a utopia: by starting 

life there before the future emerges and the utopia 

is complete, the utopian dream will never come to 

fruition. That is why the proper strategy to build a 

utopia is to find an uninhabited, and preferably un-

inhabitable ou-topos, or non-place, in the midst of 

an inhabited world. This combines all the advan-

tages of the topical and the utopian

: 

the infrastruc-

ture required for its construction already exists, but 

cannot be deployed, leaving no other option but 

endless construction

. 

Indeed, the construction pe-

riod for a utopia must be infinite, for no finite period 

of time can suff ice to weigh up all the details with 

the requisite care. It should be borne in mind that 

since any utopia is built for eternity, its construc-

tion must needs take no less than an eternity. 

The first attempt to build a utopian city in Rus-

sia was undertaken by Peter the Great in the late 

seventeenth to early eighteenth century. A pre-

eminently suitable non-place was determined: 

the site chosen for the city of Saint Petersburg 

was a marsh. This marshland proved to be the per-

fect soil on which to nurture Western civilization 

in Russia. A more solid fundament would surely 

have tempted the Russians to indulge in a firmly 

grounded ideology. After all, when each attempt 

to gain a foothold inevitably ends with sinking 

into the swamp, the situation that creates is quite 

a diff erent one. Here, the choice is between uto-

pian survival and topical, place-bound, home-

land-rooted demise. Indeed, thousands met their 

deaths in the swamps of Saint Petersburg. Those 

who survived, however, became impervious to all 

anti-utopian dreams of solid ground beneath their 

feet and set about building the real utopia on the 

only land available to them

—

the marshland.

Admittedly, Saint Petersburg was not entirely 

utopian. As the name itself suggests, all that Pe-

ter wanted to do was to transport Rome—the city 

of Saint Peter—to the banks of the Neva in order 

to replace, or rather continue, the Roman Empire 

through the Russian Empire. When the Soviet gov-

ernment ended the Petrine era of Russian state-

hood in the wake of the October Revolution and 

moved from Petrograd

1

 to Moscow, the task it 

faced was more diff icult by far: the creation of a 

utopian city that had no precedent in history, for 

there had never before been a communist city. The 

marshlands were no foundation for such a utopia, 

for even a marsh is still part of the surface of the 

earth. Ideally, the new city would take the form of 

a heavenly Moscow hovering over the old city of 

Moscow—as a meta-level of historical reflection.

With this in mind, some Soviet artists and architects 

actually began drawing up plans for the construc-

tion of Moscow as a city in the air. Kazimir Malevich 

proposed designing and building “planks” on which 

the people—now known as “earthlings”—could move 

around freely in all directions above the earth. Ide-

ally, individual earthlings would have their own little 

Fundación Juan March

spaceships of simple suprematist design, and could 

choose their respective partners freely. Somewhat 

less radical projects of the 1920s, proposed by El Lis-

sitzky and others, envisaged buildings standing on 

massive stilts high above the historical city. The peo-

ple who lived there would fly from house to house 

in airplanes, but would spend the rest of the time in 

static accommodation, albeit beyond the reach of 

everyday Moscow life.

Another, less drastic variation on the theme of the 

desired social utopia involved avoiding any concrete 

topos

 by constantly changing location. The poet Ve-

limir Khlebnikov had already previously proposed 

that every urban citizen should have a mobile dwell-

ing made of glass which could migrate freely in all 

directions on the surface of the earth. That would 

solve the problem of finding a site for the planned 

ou-topos

: the location of such a dwelling would be 

a non-place.

In the late 1920s, these ideas merged in a pro-

gram of “disurbanism,” formulated by the renowned 

Soviet architect Mikhail Okhitovich, which found 

wide approval among progressive Soviet architec-

tural circles. According to this program, Moscow, fol-

lowed by other cities, was to be de-urbanized. Each 

individual would receive an apartment in which it 

would be possible to travel from place to place. Any-

one wishing to spend a lengthy period of time in one 

place could dock his or her apartment into a block 

made up entirely of such mobile dwellings.

These projects never came to fruition. Their au-

thors were persecuted under Stalin’s regime, some 

of them arrested and even executed. Nevertheless, 

the basic question of how to construct a utopia re-

mained a topical issue in the Stalin era. In the end, 

the utopian city of Moscow was indeed built. Only 

after its completion did it become clear where the 

conceptual errors of the earlier projects lay: all of the 

avant-garde projects had lacked depth—whereby 

the word “depth” is to be taken quite literally.

The utopian projects of the 1920s focused either 

on the surface of the earth or the skies above. They 

ignored the depths of the underground or the inner 

earth. In other words, they looked at heaven and 

earth, but thought not of hell—the infernal realm of 

the underworld. The early avant-garde did not think 

dialectically enough and overlooked the possibility 

that a totally utopian project should also include the 

underworld in order to avoid being one-sided and, 

with that, too topical or place-bound. It was the 

Stalinist era that led heaven into hell and made the 

synthesis possible. The product of that synthesis is 

the true utopian city of Moscow, the underground 

Moscow: the Moscow Metropolitan, that is, its fa-

mous Metro.

The topos of the underground railway is certainly 

an 

ou-topos

. People do not normally live beneath 

ground. For a place such as this to become inhabit-

able it has to be developed and formed. It is a space 

where there is no place for anything inherited, estab-

lished, traditional, self-evident or unplanned. It is a 

place where people are entirely dependent on the 

will of those who have created the place. That gives 

the underground railway designer the opportunity of 

shaping the entire life of each individual as soon as 

he or she enters the system. It is particularly impor-

tant that the entrances and exits linking the under-

ground space to the conventional human environ-

ment are easily controlled: the only way to enter the 

underground system is to use the pre-determined 

gateways. Ordinary city-dwellers can barely even 

fathom how the underground railway tunnels run be-

neath the ground. The 

ou-topos

 of the underground 

remains hidden to them. The path to utopia can be 

cut off  at any moment, the connections barred, the 

tunnels filled in. Although the underground railway is 

part and parcel of urban reality, it remains a phantas-

ma that can only be imagined, but not fully grasped.

People in the cities of the Western world, of 

course, do not perceive the underground railway 

as a utopian space, but merely as a technical con-

venience. But the Moscow Metro of the Stalin era 

functioned in an entirely diff erent way—and traces of 

its other, utopian function are still discernible today. 

The Moscow Metro of the Stalin era was not primarily 

a means of transport, but the design for a real city 

of the communist future. The sumptuously palatial 

magnificence of the Stalin-era metro stations can 

only be explained in terms of their peculiar function 

of mediating between the realms of the heavens and 

the underworld. No other building works of this time 

come anywhere close to the opulence of the metro 

stations. They are the most eloquent expression of 

the Stalin era.

The symbolic function of the Moscow Metro was 

expressly reflected in the culture of the Stalin era. 

The first metro line, and the one that set the standard, 

was opened in 1935. One year before that, the Soviet 

leaders had disbanded all existing artists’ organiza-

tions and had created a uniform system of adminis-

tration for the arts. Socialist realism was declared the 

only permissible approach in every genre. However, 

this approach was promoted in a purely ideological 

way—such as “showing the revolutionary develop-

ment of life” or being “socialist in content and nation-

alist in form.” Translating this somewhat abstract de-

mand into artistic practice was to be enabled by pre-

senting certain artworks as role models. The Moscow 

Metro took on this role of universal model for the en-

tire field of visual art. Admittedly, the metro stations 

could not show “the revolutionary development of 

life” any more than they could be “nationalist” or 

specifically “socialist.” But they did demonstrate to 

all what was meant by that: the impossible could be 

achieved, and something could be constructed out 

of nothing.

The construction of the Metro was placed under 

the direct supervision of Lazar Kaganovich, one of 

the most powerful members of the Stalinist regime. 

Stalin himself, of course, had the last word. However, 

there are many witnesses to the fact that the architec-

ture of the first metro stations, at least, was based on 

proposals drawn up by Kaganovich himself. In other 

instances, he reworked existing designs so com-

pletely that there was no trace left of their original 

form. The artistic individuality of the architects barely 

played a role at all—only their technical skills were re-

quired. The Stalinist leadership wanted the design of 

the metro stations to express its own collective taste, 

its own collective vision of the future. In this sense, 

too, the Metro is utopian—it was the work of cultural 

outsiders, of non-specialists, of non-artists, people 

who had no place in the conventional realm of cul-

ture and who could therefore find the opportunity of 

cultural “self-expression” only underground.

Accordingly, no expense was spared on the Met-

ro: only the costliest, the finest and the most impos-

ing would suff ice. At the same time, the construction 

of the Moscow Metro was touted propagandistically 

as the prestige project 

par excellence

. The so-called 

metrostroevets

, that is, the workers involved in the 

construction of the Metro, became heroes of the new 

culture. Poems, novels and plays were written about 

the Metro and its builders. Films were made about 

them. Their progress was constantly reported in ev-

ery newspaper throughout the land. Delegations of 

Metro builders were invited to all important political 

events. Honors and medals were bestowed on them. 

The Metro was ubiquitous in Stalinist culture, becom-

ing the foremost metaphor of its civilization. Its role 

in society was to tangibly embody the utopian proj-

ect of building a communist state.

Fundación Juan March

Of course, it could be said that, in purely artistic 

terms, the Moscow Metro was not utopian at all, giv-

en that the artistic design of the stations was teeming 

with historical reminiscences. This is a criticism often 

leveled at Stalinist architecture: that it is too histori-

cal, too eclectic, that its break with the past is not 

radical enough, which is why it is not really utopian. 

This criticism, however, reveals the same misunder-

standing of utopia that prevailed in the spatial con-

cepts of the avant-garde, which took into account 

only the earth’s surface and the heavens, but not the 

underground. Such spatially limited utopias cannot 

be truly utopian; they are instead topical—that is to 

say, they have a place in the sense that they exclude 

other spatial areas. The same is true in terms of time. 

The utopias of the avant-garde are not utopian for 

the simple reason that they have a place, or 

topos

, in 

time—that is to say, the present and the future. Any 

utopia that delves deeper into the dimension of time 

incorporates the past. In that respect, it no longer 

has a specific place in time, and is therefore elevated 

above the concept of time.

The Moscow Metro stations evoke the image of a 

past that never existed, a utopian past. Some resem-

ble the temples of Greco-Roman antiquity, some the 

magnificent palaces of old Russia at the time of the 

Russian Empire or the heyday of Russian baroque, 

and still others the exquisite architecture of the Is-

lamic East. Everywhere there is marble, gold, silver 

and other precious materials that are associated 

with a past age of splendor. In the midst of all this 

grandeur there are countless frescoes, sculptures, 

mosaics and stained-glass panels that evoke an al-

most religious atmosphere. Yet these fine arts were 

not used to portray the heroes of classical Antiquity 

or Russian history, but for the most part Stalin and his 

inner circle, along with workers and peasants, revo-

lutionaries and soldiers of the Soviet era. In this way, 

the entire past was appropriated by the utopian pres-

ent. In the Moscow Metro, all traditional artistic styles 

were severed from their historic ties and used anew. 

The past was thus no longer distinct from the pres-

ent and future—throughout the depths of time, down 

the centuries to Antiquity, all that could be seen was 

Stalin, Soviet flags and a people gazing optimistically 

toward the future.

Stranger