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Moscow’s crumbling Soviet architecture

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Russia has seen a dramatic surge in new construction in recent years, especially in cities like Moscow. But Jessica Golloher reports that some Muscovites worry that historically significant buildings are being sacrificed in the name of progress. (Photo: Jessica Golloher)

• Photo gallery: Moscow’s dilapidated Narkomfin building
• The BBC’s James Rodgers visited Narkomfin in 2008

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MARCO WERMAN:  Russia has seen a dramatic serge in new construction in recent years, especially in cities like Moscow.  But Jessica Golloher reports that some Muscovites worry that historically significant buildings are being sacrificed in the name of progress.

JESSICA GOLLOHER:  It’s 10 degrees below zero as Kevin O’Flynn walks through the snow towards a run-down apartment building in the center of Moscow.  It looks like it’s been through a war.  Windows are broken.  Wires are hanging from the roof and there’s an enormous piece of concrete five floors up ready to tumble to the ground.  O’Flynn is with the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society.  He says this building, known as Narcomfin, was built in the 1920′s and it was an avant-garde masterpiece.

KEVIN O’FLYNN:  Architects come here especially just to see this building because it was a revolution in its time.  This was a building which was supposed to help people live together as a Socialist living.  The ideas that are seen inside the building influenced architects throughout the world.

GOLLOHER: But now the building is in danger of falling apart or being demolished though there have been international calls to save it.  But Russian officials haven’t responded and they didn’t return repeated calls for a comment about what it plans to do with the building.  And Narcomfin is not the only historical building in Moscow that’s in danger.  According to a recent report from the Preservation Society, some of Moscow’s most important cultural buildings are falling prey to a demolition derby.  Kevin O’Flynn says money has a lot to do with that.  He says many of these buildings occupy prime real estate and city officials are well aware of that.

O’FLYNN: I think they have been caught up in the huge real estate business.  There’s chances here to make billions.

GOLLOHER: Just a few miles from the Narcomfin Building, Lydia Shestakova works at a museum in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Our Savior in Kadash.  She says the Cathedral’s location, in the center of Moscow, has made it vulnerable to development even though the area is a legally protected site. Shestakova says some of the buildings surrounding the cathedral are being cleared away for a new office complex.  Those buildings are supposed to be off limits to development.  That’s apparently news to E.S. Sinitzin.  He directs the construction company working on the compound.  He says he’s been given the go-ahead by the Moscow city government.  Anna Bronovitskaya of the Architecture Preservation Society says it’s not surprising.  She says that historic protection laws exist on paper but they’re often not enforced here.  But, even when the government does take steps to preserve historic property, Anna Bronovitskaya says it doesn’t do it right.  She gives the example of the renovation of the Bolshoi Theater.  That’s been underway for years she says, some of it nearly destroyed the foundation.  Still, even if the government is lagging on preservation some observers say the public is becoming more aware of what’s being lost.  David Sarkisiyan is head of Moscow’s Architecture Museum.  He says the museum mounted an exhibit last fall after three historical buildings were torn down in Moscow in one year.  Sarkisiyan says the exhibit consisted of three graves with photos of the old buildings along with their names, dates of birth and death.  He says visitors would stop, cry and have a drink at the installation as if they were mourning someone at a gravesite.  For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher in Moscow.

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