Soviet Architectural Modernism

Soviet architectural modernism was one of the three principal architectural movements of the Soviet Union, running from 1955 to 1991 and beginning with a Central Committee resolution titled On the Elimination of Excesses in Design and Construction, which broke with the ornate neoclassical Stalinist style that preceded it in favor of a purely functional austerity built chiefly from reinforced concrete. During the Khrushchev Thaw, Soviet architects gained access to international professional journals and exchanged ideas with architects across the Eastern Bloc and Cuba, allowing Western modernist ideas to be reworked into a distinctly Soviet expression. Brutalism formed much of its basis, sharing an emphasis on massive functional forms, though Soviet modernism also incorporated facing materials such as marble and sandstone alongside mosaic panels and bas-reliefs not typical of brutalism elsewhere. The term itself only came into use in the early 2010s, popularized in part through the French photographer Frederic Chaubin's documentation of former Soviet buildings that had previously been classed simply as brutalist.