Soviet Modernism, 1955-1991, Az W 08. 11. 2012 – 25. 02. 2013

Text: Katharina Ritter, Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair, Alexandra Wachter

Holocaust Monument, Kaunas, Lithuania, 1983

In the Vienna-based Architekturzentrum the exhibition open till February was the very first attempt to present a comprehensive view of the architecture the non-Russian member states of the former Soviet Union created between 1950 and 1991. The research and the exhibition pushed into the background the perspectives formed by Russia and focussed on the architecture of Azerbaidian, Estonia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Armenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Putting the cliché of the uniform Soviet architecture in brackets, the exhibition concentrated on the regional characteristics, from the time of the „ice-breaking” or melting to perestroika. The most influential buildings, however, inevitably bring up the necessity to write a history of the modern post-war Soviet architecture. In this selection we followed the concept of the curators of the exhibition and thus emphasized the architectural significance of the regions concerned.