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Historian Karl Schlogel explores the multiple layers of Moscow architecture in his newly translated book.

In "Moscow" -- the new, first-ever English translation of his 1984 book "Moskau Lesen," regarded as a classic in art and architecture circles -- German historian Karl Schlogel draws a portrait of a city that hides its past, where information that is publicly ignored or suppressed is a matter of private excitement. Colorful anecdotes illustrate his point: In a secondhand-books store, a saleswoman reluctantly puts down her glasses to hand a customer the pre-revolutionary book she has been reading; at a run-down club for factory workers, a custodian becomes so excited about a foreign visitor who has come to see the Constructivist architecture that she eagerly shares a piece of cake.
Recently, Schlogel returned to Moscow to present the translation, published earlier this year by London's Reaktion Books. At his talk in the Baltschug Kempinksi hotel on June 1, he spoke of how the city's look and feel had changed dramatically in the 20-some years since he lived here. Schlogel emphasized the fact that among world cities, Moscow is second only to Shanghai in the intensity of construction, and that "the city has lost more of its history in the last 15 years than it did in the entire Soviet period." Yet he made other observations that support one of the central arguments of his book, that "a city can change radically and still remain true to itself."

In the book, Schlogel writes that Moscow "cannot be portrayed as a single, integrated whole." Consequently, the book's structure is fragmentary and crosses several genres. Some chapters wouldn't be out of place in a guidebook, with architectural tours of the Boulevard Ring or the Art Nouveau buildings of Fyodor Shekhtel. Other sections are like memoirs, with vignettes about shopping in hard-currency stores or attending smoky get-togethers of foreign correspondents and local journalists. Another chapter uses statistical data about the steady growth of white-collar jobs in postwar Moscow to flesh out the author's impression of the Soviet Union's bloated bureaucracy -- something he gleans from the officious plaques and opaque abbreviations on various buildings.
This disconnected approach fits Schlogel's reading of Moscow as a layered city, a "geological deposit and a quarry." He takes each layer in isolation to explore what it says about the surface, sometimes uncovering interesting links. He tells us that Vladimir Tatlin, a leader of the Constructivist movement, had a studio in the belfry of the Novodevichy Monastery, and suggests a connection between the tiered tower where Tatlin worked and the spiraling wedding-cake of his designs (never realized) for the Monument to the Third International.
Constructivism and its legacy in Moscow's architecture figure largely in Schlogel's book, so it is fitting that the English translation has come out at a time when awareness of the movement's importance is growing. Mayor Yury Luzhkov, whose time in office has seen the demolition of scores of historic buildings, announced in April that investors had been found to preserve two buildings by the influential architect Konstantin Melnikov, the hive-like house near the Arbat where he lived and the Rusakov Worker's Club near the Sokolniki metro station. In this environment, it's hard to imagine educated Muscovites expressing disdain for these buildings, but during his talk Schlogel said that in the early 1980s no one was interested in them. He recalled telling his Russian friends about plans to inspect the Rusakov and Kauchuk workers' clubs. "They were shocked," Schlogel said. "They would ask, 'Why are you looking for these workers' clubs, these factories? Old, ugly, poor stuff.'"

The author also spoke at length about the proposed Russia Tower, designed by British architect Norman Foster for the new Moskva-City business district. He sees it both as a return to the values of lightness, transparency and glass propagated by Moscow's modernist architects in the 1920s, and as an echo of the ambition and the internationalist atmosphere of the young Soviet Union. "The competition for the design of the Russia Tower was the first to draw major international architects since the competition for the design of the Palace of Soviets," Schlogel said, referring to the unbuilt project planned in the 1930s for the site of the Christ the Savior Cathedral, which garnered proposals from figures like Le Corbusier and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. Like the Russia Tower, the Palace of Soviets was intended to be one of the tallest buildings in the world.
The parallels to a failed project are somewhat ominous for the future of Moskva-City. A recurring theme of Schlogel's book is Moscow's "resilience" -- the success of changes that fit the city's radial ring structure, like Stalin's broad, spoke-like avenues, and the failure of those that don't, such as Le Corbusier's radical proposal to rebuild Moscow as a rectangular grid. As Schlogel noted in his talk, Moskva-City would draw the capital's focus away from the Kremlin and shift the city's center upriver. It's still unclear whether Moscow is ready for that.

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