The never-built Tatlin tower was one of the most daring experiments in Soviet architecture in the first post-revolutionary years. Today it has become one of the symbols of the non-embodied socialist paradise on the territory of the USSR.
Tower purpose
After the October Revolution, the new government tried to perpetuate its victory in the most daring forms of those times. The end of the 10s - the beginning of the 20s. was a period of avant-garde and other innovative movements in culture, art and architecture. Propaganda projects were carried out even despite the civil war and the difficult situation on the fronts.
The main smithy of such ideas was the People's Commissariat of Education. In 1919, the Department of Fine Arts, a former part of the People’s Commissariat, instructed the famous advanced artist Vladimir Tatlin to take up the design of the monument to the Third International. The Bolsheviks still dreamed of a world revolution and believed that it was this international organization that would become their main tool in achieving a great goal. In a few years, the proletarian campaign will end in defeat from Poland. So far, the International has occupied one of the main positions in state ideology.
Personality of Vladimir Tatlin
Named after its author, the Tatlin Tower could be born as it was conceived, only in his head. This painter and artist was one of the most original avant-garde artists of his time. In the tsarist era, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, absorbing all the then popular foreign trends. Pablo Picasso had a great influence on Tatlin. In part, it was the ideas of this master that made the young Russian visitor an adherent of constructivism.
The tower of the Third International of Tatlin was created by him at the most suitable time. In Soviet Russia, an ideological assessment of art has not yet been established. Already in the Stalin era, all fashion trends like constructivism, avant-garde and cubism would be banned. Socialist realism will triumph. This condom style will be alien to the forms and ideas that the tower of Tatlin embodied in itself.
Deconstructivism, constructivism, and other schools were alive precisely in the early 1920s. Just then Tatlin returned to his homeland, hoping to realize his wildest dreams. All then creative intelligentsia, from writers to architects, was exposed to these moods. For them, Soviet Russia became a utopia - a new world that opposed itself to the old and boring European orders.
Advanced architectural design
The upcoming Tatlin tower was to become something completely new and unprecedented. Her project was born as a synthesis of bold creative and at the same time utilitarian and monumental forms. The base of the monument was three glass "towers" mounted on top of each other using a complex system of spirals and rods. Despite the fact that the premises were originally separate, all together they created a unique composition from a combination of different geometric shapes.
Tower 3 of the Tatlin International was also an ambitious undertaking because, according to the plan of the “creative team” (as Tatlin himself called the author's association), each part of the building was to receive the latest mechanisms. They would allow the premises to move on its axis, which was an engineering challenge for that era.
Lower and middle tiers
The speed of rotation of the tiers increased with each "floor". The lowest cube-shaped room was to make one revolution per year. It was intended for the legislature. Congresses of the International could be held here to discuss constitutions, decrees, etc.
The middle pyramid rotated at a speed of one revolution per month. She would be home to the executive. The premises were supposed to host meetings of the executive committee, the secretariat, as well as other administrative bodies.
Upper tier
The top cylinder made one revolution per day. All the media would be here: newspapers, information offices, centers for publishing brochures, proclamations and manifestos. This place, as conceived by architects, was to become a forge of propaganda materials for proletarians around the world. The cylinder was also the most well-equipped room. It housed the telegraph, radio and all the latest information transfer technologies. Outside, a huge wall-mounted screen hung on the street, lit by lanterns. These were just drafts regarding equipment. The further fate of the premises was to be discussed at meetings of special commissions, which had not yet begun work due to the closure of the project.
To rotate the tiers, it was planned to create an unprecedented power grid, which supplied the building with all the necessary energy. The tower of Tatlin would be not only amazing for passers-by, but also comfortable for the people who worked and sat in it. Glass walls had to be double, by analogy with the device of a conventional thermos, which would make it possible to maintain a temperature comfortable for the activity inside.
Opposition to bourgeois art
Important was not only operational, but also the artistic value that the Tatlin tower carried in itself. Constructivism and other bold ideas of the architect were opposed to bourgeois art and urban planning. The socialist metropolis of the future (originally planned to build the citadel of the Third International was planned in Petrograd) was to become the complete antithesis of the European capitalist capitals like London and Paris.
The revolutionary nature of the project was emphasized by the authors in any of their endeavors. Socialist architects argued that the old habit of petty bourgeoisie to lead their lives on earth (it originated with agriculture) was fundamentally wrong. Therefore, the tower was conceived as a phantasmagoric skyscraper, where all activity would literally boil in the air. According to the project, the height of the building was to reach 400 meters - an unprecedented figure for the beginning of the 20s.
When the layout was ready, the Soviet government issued several brochures on the tower, including an essay by Nikolai Punin. He praised the idea of building a skyscraper of the future, which would become a symbol of the victory of socialism. Punin on the pages of his work stated that finally art first served its practical purpose, citing three conceptually different tiers as an example.
Public success
The first miniature tower of Tatlin in Moscow was presented at a meeting of the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets in 1920. This project was a delight and was soon presented at several international exhibitions as a symbol of the utopian intentions of the new socialist government.
The tower of Tatlin also gained fame in the West. Facts about Russia and its vanguard construction regularly appeared in the European press. It was a great propaganda tool that overshadowed the horrors and crimes of civil war.
Abandonment of construction
As time has shown, the whole idea of a monumental skyscraper of the future turned out to be only a propaganda campaign of the Bolshevik government. Perhaps the Soviet government really wanted to bring to life the monument to the Third International. The tower of Tatlin even received several incarnations in wooden mock-ups. However, in 1924, Tatlin, who had been working on his grandiose project for several years, was given the first hint about curtailing the work - he was not allowed abroad to present the monument.
A few months later, the government finally abandoned the ambitious undertaking. There were several reasons. First, the country was in terrible economic ruin when there was literally no money. The protracted war was to blame. To rectify the situation, the Bolsheviks took drastic measures, including the introduction of a surplus appraisal.
On the eve of his death, sick Lenin agreed to an ideological compromise. He became the inspirer of a new economic policy, and the situation in the country gradually began to improve. However, in 1924, the leader of the revolution died, and Stalin came to power.
Finally, it was precisely on the initiative of the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks that a terror campaign began against the avant-garde artists, to whom Tatlin belonged. The ideas of bold innovative artists were too independent from the central government. The avant-garde artists who immediately took control of the main posts in state educational and propaganda institutions immediately began to be ousted under various pretexts. In addition, their ideas were completely incomprehensible to the common people and the very proletariat, which the innovators allegedly served. For Soviet propaganda of a new type, simple motives and plots that were understandable to the workers were needed. Thus, socialist realism gradually emerged, which became state doctrine.
The fate of Tatlin
It was the tower of Tatlin that became one of the first victims of the new policy against avant-garde and constructivism. The architect himself faced the typical choice of his contemporaries - to conflict with the authorities or accept new dogmas and create within their framework. Tatlin decided to cede the state.
True, in the future he did not create anything similar in scale to his tower. During his lifetime, the architect was able to organize only one exhibition. He died in 1953, following Stalin. Interest in Tatlin’s work was revived already during the perestroika period, when many studies were written about forgotten and forbidden trends in Russian art.
The memory of the tower
Today, the model of the famous Tatlin Tower can be seen in the Tretyakov Gallery, where in 2011 a conceptual exhibition dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the artist was held. His monument to the III International remained in European memory. A model of the tower is in the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art. At the same time, the original layout, presented in 1920 in the House of Soviets, was lost in the special guard, and possibly specially destroyed.