The Soviet Pavilion at the World Exhibition in New York: Search and Implementation of an Architectural Image

Abstract

This article addresses the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in New York City, 1939, especially the architectural and artistic image of the Soviet pavilion, including its search and implementation. Archiveal documents from the Soviet section of the International exhibition in New York, as well as professional periodicals of the 1930s, analyzed to interpret and evaluate the New York exhibition and the Soviet pavilion in the Soviet public field, make up the main data base for the article. First, the competitive practices of the 1930s and their hidden mechanisms, ruled by party-state power, are shown through the case of the New York Pavilion. Further, the stylistic peculiarities of the pavilion are considered, and ideas among the power circles about worthy forms of the “export” representation of the USSR by architectural and artistic means are shown. With the example of an “Americanized” style of the Soviet pavilion, the practice of appropriating alien architectural forms was demonstrated as a way to emphasize the involvement of Stalinist culture in current global trends. Attention is also drawn to the contradiction between official “internal” discourse, with its main thesis of turning to “classical heritage”, and the choice of a modern language for “export” architecture.