The House on the Embankment  |
By Sergei Nikitkin
The mammoth structure that sits across the river from the Kremlin has become a symbol of Stalinist repression and terror, yet few remember the man who created the city's most imposing structure of the constructivist period.
During his stay in Italy Iofan saw a number of his designs completed, including an electric power plant outside of Rome, a cemetery and a number of urban dwellings. In 1924, as the country was mourning the death of Vladimir Lenin, Iofan returned to his homeland. During his 10-year absence Russia had become a new country, but Iofan appeared to adapt quickly to the new rules of the game. He immediately applied to join the Bolshevik party and began to work in the provinces. Unlike many of his more famous colleagues of the day — including Ilya Golosov, Konstantin Melnikov and the Vesnin brothers, all masters of constructivism — Iofan did not participate in the famous competitions of the 1920s, when the architectural projects remained largely on paper. It therefore came as a surprise to many when Iofan was selected to design an apartment block for the People's Commissars' Council. Why was an unknown chosen to build a house for some of the most powerful people in the Soviet Union? Iofan was a friend of Alexei Rykov's, a prominent figure and then president of the People's Commissars' Council. Rykov had been the one to invite Iofan to return from Italy. And when it came time to build a new government house, Rykov tapped his friend for the job. As it happened, Rykov fell out of favor shortly after the house was completed, but by then his protïgï had already made an independent name for himself. Rykov was executed in 1937 along with Nikolai Bukharin and other prominent revolutionaries — the same year Iofan triumphed at the Paris World's Fair with his U.S.S.R. pavilion topped with Vera Mukhina's famous "Worker and Peasant" statue. Iofan celebrated another victory in 1937. After a series of competitions, he was chosen to head a group of architects designing Stalin's famous Palace of Soviets. The ill-fated Soviet skyscraper, however, never got off the ground. Today the church that was destroyed to make way for the project, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, has been restored on the same spot. Built between 1928 and 1931, the House on the Embankment experienced a number of set backs while under construction. Citing fire safety regulations, a city law at the time prohibited the construction of buildings higher than seven stories. Iofan managed to circumvent this rule for his 11-story structure, only to witness the very first block he built be destroyed by fire. The incident may have been caused by the sloppy work of the builders — most of them peasants who had come in from the country with no building experience to find work during the hungry years of the late 1920s. Iofan was reportedly disappointed by the final version of his vision. What appeared on paper as a logical composition of 25 blocks looked, in reality, like a chaotic clump of buildings made even more depressing by the gloomy shade of gray used to paint the exterior. Iofan had originally chosen to paint the house rose to compliment the color of the Kremlin walls across the river. The 500-apartment complex was finally opened in April 1931 — becoming home to the highest-ranking members of the Soviet hierarchy. Some of the tenants included Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, his KGB henchman, Lavrenty Beria, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Alexandrov, author of the Soviet anthem. The house itself is considered to be the grandest constructivist work ever built in Moscow. Ironically, Iofan himself could hardly be considered a constructivist. He was, rather, a pragmatic man who worked in the style of the times. Yet Iofan avoided the futuristic ideals of the more avant-garde architects of his day. While many were designing communal houses that separated families and subjected tenants to Draconian discipline, Iofan designed flats of relative luxury, complete with central heating and even a telephone. Considering there were no more than 1,000 working phone numbers in Moscow at the time, an additional 500 phones was no small benefit. The House on the Embankment did have one thing in common with the visions of Iofan's avant-garde colleagues. The complex was virtually self-sufficient, complete with a library, a gym, a restaurant offering cooked meals to take home, a kindergarten and a Dom Kultury, or House of Culture, that was eventually converted into the massive Estrada Theater. Later a state-of-the-art dry cleaner was installed, as well as a giant movie theater, the Udarnik, seating more than 1,600. Busy bureaucrats never had to set foot outside. Considering the living conditions of most Moscow residents in the early 1930s, the first dwellers of the House on the Embankment were living in comparative paradise. Yet their apartments, equipped with functional furniture also designed by Iofan, were far from luxurious. Looking at the preserved interiors today, it is hard to imagine that this was a building for the elite. Between the apartments are narrow corridors that, some suspect, may have been set up for eavesdroppers.
Some family members of the fallen were fortunate enough to escape prosecution, but they were, nonetheless, evicted from their homes in the House on the Embankment. Some apartments had three different tenants in one year. Those who did manage to remain inside the gray walls felt anything but relief. Neighbors were suspicious of one another and the area was crawling with Beria's guards. Some of the inhabitants even confessed to hearing voices behind the walls. Some say the voices were imaginary — a product of the jittery times. But others point to the wide gaps between apartment walls that were discovered after Stalin's death. These gaps were certainly wide enough to contain people and listening devices. However, they never found a trace of the eavesdroppers, nor a means for them to access and exit the secret corridors. During World War II the building was evacuated and, under Stalin's order, mined to prevent the Germans from seizing it. Some speculate the Soviet leader was afraid the Nazis might find traces of his terror machine and use it against him. After the war, the house lost some of its prestige. As the Party elite, among them Leonid Brezhnev, started to set their sights on newly built luxury houses along Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the House on the Embankment became home to many scientists and artists. Today, of course, the house with its spectacular Kremlin views is considered to be prestigious once again — only slightly less terrifying. Visiting Tips Those who visit the House on the Embankment, located at 5 Ulitsa Serafimovicha, should not miss the house museum, located in the first entryway. The museum, staffed by longtime resident Olga Trifonova, the widow of Yury Trifonov, who wrote the best-selling "House on the Embankment," is only open on Wednesdays from 5 to 8 p.m. and on Saturdays from 2 to 5 p.m. Sergei Nikitin is the editor in chief of Stolypino homewards Internet, a web site focusing on Russian culture (www.stolypino.narod.ru). He welcomes comments and questions about Moscow architecture at postmodernidze@imail.ru
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Just whisper the words "Dom na Naberezhnoi," or House on the Embankment, and it is enough for any Muscovite to conjure up images of walls with ears, late night arrests and disappearing Party leaders.
