Figure Novgorod Drama Theatre, 1990
Source: Excerpt from V. A. Somov, Dramatichesky Teatr v. g. Novgorode [Drama theatre in the city of Novgorod], Institut ‘Giproteatr,’ Tipografiya Ministerstva Kultury SSSR [Giproteatr Institute, Publishing House of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR], 1990, p. 3.
- 1 Mikhail Alekseyevsky, The Summary of Surveys and Interviews of Residents of Veliky Novgorod Concern (...)
1The Novgorod Drama Theatre barely squeezes into the black-and-white photograph circulated shortly after its opening in 1987 (fig. 1). No spectators, however, are yet waiting for a performance. For now, the building, captured in the harsh midday light, takes centre stage. The strong contrast between light and shadow enhances the structure’s dramatic geometry, accentuating the streamlined shapes of the facades, a water tower, ramp, transformer substation, and on-site sculptural elements. Positioned prominently in Veliky Novgorod, a medium-sized historic city in the North-West of the Russian Federation, the theatre stands between the river Volkhov on one side and Velikaya Street on the other. The structure does not fail to catch a puzzled eye, casually referred to by some present-day Novgorodians as an “unfinished launchpad.”1 The nickname refers to the building’s long-delayed construction, which took over a decade to complete due to numerous interruptions, as well as labour and funding shortages.
- 2 Ksenia Litvinenko, “Performing Universality: Building Norms and the Circulation of Theatre Architec (...)
- 3 V. A. Somov, Dramatichesky Teatr v. g. Novgorode [Drama theatre in the city of Novgorod], Institut (...)
- 4 Frédéric Chaubin, CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed, Cologne, Taschen, 2011; for th (...)
- 5 Eglė Juocevičiūtė, “Frederic Chaubin, Cheating The Space Or Cheating The Time. An Interview with Fr (...)
2The Novgorod Drama Theatre was one of several dozen theatre buildings designed by the Giproteatr Institute—a specialized interdisciplinary organization of the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union—serving various cities as part of the Soviet state’s cultural provision program.2 The project was well-received by the Soviet architectural community, with its photos and plans featured in several thematic publications that represented Giproteatr’s institutional output or Soviet theatre architecture more broadly.3 In 2011, twenty-four years after its opening, the building suddenly gained international recognition with the publication of yet another image—Frédéric Chaubin’s photographic survey of architecture across fourteen countries with Soviet-era legacies.4 The survey featured the now dilapidated theatre alongside other iconic “Cosmic Communist Constructions” from the 1970s and 1990s. The book referred to the theatre as “Vladimir Somov’s Fyodor Dostoyevsky Theatre of Dramatic Art,” emphasizing that this building was, in fact, a testament to the “crazy vision” of its creator, Giproteatr’s Vladimir Somov.5 Somov’s 1970s design was portrayed as something distinct from the late socialist architectural context, a bold and eccentric vision realized in spite of the bureaucratic constraints and limitations imposed on architects’ “creativity” during that era.
- 6 Mark Akopyan, “Bezlikaya korobka ili arkhitekturnoye otkroveniye?” [Faceless box or architectural r (...)
- 7 Zoom conversation with the competitio’s coordinator, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2020. Where po (...)
3Through photography and video, this narrative, centred on Somov’s artistic vision, and the aesthetic presentation of the building as a self-standing monument, gained traction in the architectural press and in a documentary film.6 It eventually made its way into the competition brief for the theatre’s renovation concept, prepared by the Moscow-based consultancy KB Strelka at the request of the regional government in 2019.7 The competition brief encouraged contestants to highlight the building’s unique architectural features and emphasise aspects of Somov’s creative vision that were left unrealized in the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, it presented a particular portrayal of Somov as a “dissident” architect, rhetorically placing him in opposition to the Soviet construction industry of his time.
4Using the 2020 architectural competition for the renovation of the Novgorod Drama Theatre as a starting point, this article seeks to reconstruct the narratives behind the attribution and contextualisation of this late Soviet-built structure within a contemporary authoritarian context. It also aims to situate the discourses and material realities that were contemporaneous with the theatre’s design and construction, exploring the contours of architectural autonomy available within the late Soviet system and highlighting the broader set of actors involved in the project’s realization.
5The narratives surrounding the competition are reconstructed though content and visual analysis of the competition brief, the official website, related press articles and publicity, three winning project proposals, and a context interview with the competition’s coordinator. The contextualisation of the Novgorod theatre project is based on a range of historical documents from Giproteatr’s dispersed archives, including materials from the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s collection at the Russian State Archive for Literature and Arts (RGALI), documents from private archives of former Giproteatr employees, visual sources related to the Novgorod theatre project from the Schusev State Museum of Architecture. The paper also surveys thematic articles from the professional architectural journal Arkhitektura SSSR and Giproteatr’s institutional journal Stsenicheskaya Tekhnika I Tekhnologiya to reconstruct contemporaneous debates and changing approaches in Soviet theatre design. Given the relatively limited documentation of the project, contextual interviews were conducted to gain insights into the informal aspects of architectural production and maintenance that are often difficult to reconstruct using just archival sources. I interviewed the chief architect of the Veliky Novgorod Theatre, two former Giproteatr architects, Giprotetr’s former structural engineer, and the former director of the Novgorod Theatre. All interviews were cross-referenced for accuracy, accounting for potential biases and memory limitations.
6The article argues that the renovation project constructed a specific vision of the late Soviet period to preserve—one that relies on an alleged separation between the architect-“author” and their material and institutional surroundings. The article, then, suggests to de-centre the singular architect’s identity encouraging a deeper exploration of other contexts essential for understanding and attributing the building project, including systemic or postmodern critiques from the late Soviet period, bureaucratic forms of architectural labour, and the functioning of architectural practice within the framework of the late Soviet building industry, planned economy, and governance.
Figure 2. Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod. A view from the Volkhov River, 2016
The site before the start of the “beautification” program. In the foreground, tire tracks mark the asphalt, hinting at the square’s informal use for drifting.
Source: Egor Rogalev
- 8 “Sofyskaya naberezhnaya v. Velikom Novgorode [Sofiyskaya embankment in Veliky Novgorod]”, Project R (...)
- 9 Zoom conversation with the competition’s coordinator, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2020.
- 10 “Acron Sponsors Renovation of Theatre in Veliky Novgorod,” Acron, 2020, [online] [https://www.acron (...)
- 11 “Simon Henley joins an international jury for the competition to renovate Vladimir Somov’s Dostoevs (...)
- 12 Jan-Carlos Kucharek, “Roger Watt’s new role at Somov’s Dostoevsky Drama Theatre,” The RIBA Journal, (...)
- 13 Krysstell Marin, “Rhizome won the Contest for Renovation of Veliky Novgorod Drama Theatre,” Metaloc (...)
7In 2017, the area surrounding the Novgorod theatre was included in the state-funded blagoustroistvo (“beautification”) programme, which aimed to enhance the recreation spaces along the pedestrian path on the Volkhov River’s embankment through public works.8 In parallel to this process, the Novgorod regional government initiated the theatre renovation competition in 2019, directly selecting Moscow-based consultancy KB Strelka as the project operator.9 The competition was sponsored by Acron, a major privately-owned producer of mineral fertilizers with its main plant located in Veliky Novgorod.10 The jury was assembled from high-profile Russian and British experts, including Sergey Gnedovsky, vice president of the Russian Union of Architects; Anna Bronovitskaya, art historian and Soviet architectural heritage specialist; Anna Osipova, executive director of the Tula-based Oktava creative cluster; Simon Henley, partner at Henley Halebrown; and Elena Kirilova, deputy prime minister of the Novgorod region.11 Roger Watts, co-founder of the London-based Haworth Tompkins design studio, served as a mentor for competition participants.12 The selection process, lasting from August to December 2020, included lectures, an online tour of the building, and consultations with jury experts for competition participants. Following the portfolio review of the sixteen participants, three finalists—Archiproba Studios (Moscow), FORM bureau (Moscow), and Rhizome group (St. Petersburg)—were invited by the jury to create detailed renovation concepts, with Rhizome ultimately producing the winning proposal.13
- 14 Daniela Zupan, Vera Smirnova and Amanda Zadorian, “Governing through Stolichnaya Praktika: Housing (...)
8The competition’s agenda and structure provide a valuable lens through which to explore the processes, actors and hierarchies involved in heritagisation related to late Soviet-built structures in an authoritarian context. Blagoustroistvo has been described as a governance technique and an “infrastructural ideology” that proliferated in post-2008 Russia, and criticised for its centralized decision-making, reduced access to resources and opportunities for disadvantaged communities, prescriptive programming intended to encourage “appropriate” citizen behaviours, and an imbalance in knowledge and expertise between the capital and the regions. This imbalance is reinforced by the spread of the so-called Moscow “model” through external experts, consultancy firms, and think tanks.14 Although the 2020 renovation competition was not officially part of the blagoustroistvo initiative (different funding stream), it shared key features: the limited involvement of Novgorod residents and theatre staff in decision-making, top-down programming, services aimed primarily at middle-class consumers, and the dominance of London- and Moscow-based experts on the jury. Recognizing these power imbalances is crucial, especially since post-WWII buildings in Russia are rarely designated as historical monuments and often lack binding guidelines or opportunities for various publics to contribute. Similarly, the Novgorod Drama Theatre competition was not subject to heritage protection regulations, allowing organizers and invited experts to independently define the renovation’s guiding values.
- 15 “The Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod. Architecture Contest for Renovation Concept,” [eng.theatre-n (...)
- 16 Jan-Carlos Kucharek, “Roger Watt’s new role at Somov’s Dostoevsky Drama Theatre.”
9The competition’s ambition, as stated on the official website, was to develop a reconstruction concept that would elevate the Novgorod Drama Theatre to the status of “world-class architecture” of the second half of the 20th century, comparable to “iconic” landmarks like the Boston City Hall and the Sydney Opera House and introduce new solutions for cultural and leisurely consumption. It also aimed to boost tourism and attract foreign visitors, invoking the “Bilbao effect,” across four scales: the city and region, the country, and internationally.15 The architectural plans for the theatre’s reconstruction aimed to redefine its identity by introducing a more varied use scenario (i.e. by adding cafes and a yoga studio), extending its operation beyond performance hours and transforming it into a multifunctional cultural centre.16 Therefore, the competition regarded the building as a multifaceted entity, simultaneously recognising and negotiating between its historical value, commercial potential, and new social significance. As a result of the envisioned transformation, the competition promised to link the theatre to new associations: a global “map” of spectacular twentieth century tourist destinations. However, according to the competition concept, this required restaging the building’s more unusual qualities to enhance its appeal to both local and international consumers.
10Accordingly, the competition brief suggested that “design solutions should emphasize the uniqueness of the architecture and interiors of the original building […] and embody the unrealized ideas of the author,” who
- 17 Strelka KB, Tekhnicheskoye zadaniye. Konkurs na arkhitekturnuyu kontseptsiyu rekonstruktsii Novgoro (...)
[…] took advantage of all the loopholes provided by the building norms that were being revised at the time, followed the recommendations of experts of the “theatre of the future,” borrowed design techniques from foreign colleagues, but in the end created something unique.17
- 18 For comparison, on tendencies in the preservation of socialist mass housing in formerly state socia (...)
11Hence, along with articulating a design task, the competition’s operator also formulated a certain historical frame for describing the architectural history of late Soviet socialism: the architect had opposed the anonymous and heavily bureaucratised planning, regulation and allocation system. However, the brief did not address how theatre-building norms might have evolved, who comprised the “theatre of the future group” experts, or how “foreign techniques” were integrated into the Veliky Novgorod project. Professional realities such as financing, regulation, and procurement in the complex late Soviet context were downplayed, with these elements portrayed as obstacles to Somov’s creative vision and largely disconnected from the future of the “cultural centre.”18 Let us take a closer look at concrete examples of various aspects of Somov’s design concept that were aestheticized in the competition and recontextualize them within their historical contexts.
- 19 Strelka KB, Specifications for the Competition, p. 11, 35.
- 20 In-person interview with Vladimir Somov, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2016. It is unclear, what (...)
- 21 In-person interview with Vladimir Somov, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2016.
12One of the key tasks put forward by the competition was to fulfil some of Vladimir Somov’s unrealised ideas using technologies that were not available at the time of the project’s construction. In particular, the architect’s theory of the “total theatre” was imbued with specific values as an inspiration for reworking and rebranding the surrounding territory in the renovation proposals.19 Somov had originally developed a project for a “total theatre” within an architectural competition initiated by the Union of Soviet Architects in the 1970s.20 The competition entry featured a flexible open-air theatre integrated into a natural landscape. Echoing ambition of the Walter Gropius’ 1927 unrealized “Total Theatre” project, Somov’s proposal aimed to break from the rigid monumentality of a traditional Italian-style proscenium theatre. Somov’s design featured a colour and music screen, freestanding props, and a transformable open-air arena stage. As he explained, these elements were important for immersing the audience in the performance of the day. Before the performance began, actors would greet incoming audience members as they made their way from the surrounding hills onto the stage. Somov himself noted that the project was inspired by his work trip to Greece, where he visited and measured ancient amphitheatres, and by his acquaintance with theatre director Yuri Lyubimov, who engaged audiences in the theatre’s recreation areas even before they took their seats in the auditorium.21
- 22 Strelka KB, Specifications for the Competition, p. 11.
13The 2020 renovation project presented Somov’s idea as “ahead of its time,”22 reinterpreting the “total theatre” concept within the renovation context of the Novgorod Drama Theatre and encouraging participants to explore and expand on its various design applications.
- 23 Rhizome, Presentation for the 2nd Competition Stage, Reconstruction of the F. M. Novgorod Academic (...)
- 24 “Zachem v. Velikom Novgorode rekonstruiruyut teatr dramy [Why is the drama theatre being reconstruc (...)
14Competitors aligned with this approach: the winning bureau proposed to connect new and existing functional blocks, uniting the theatre into a single continuous “landscape” to “immerse” visitors into the life of the institution by opening up theatre workshops and the roof to visitors23; other teams likewise utilised lighting solutions for the exterior façade and interior structural elements and proposed to diversify the functional content of the building and user scenarios outside of the performances.24
Figure 3. Vladimi Somov Project of the Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod, General plan, 1974
Paper, pencil, ink, applique. Size: 130.2 x 94.0 cm.
Source: The Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, GNIMA OF-6231/3.
Figures 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d. Novgorod Drama Theatre, 2016. The technical elements, such as water towers and the transformer substation, along with additional decorative components, are integrated into the overall sculptural composition of the site surrounding the building.
Source: Egor Rogalev
- 25 While acknowledging that the Soviet architectural community often dismissed “postmodernism” as an e (...)
15While some elements of this vision—such as the sculptural design of the transformer booth and fountains surrounding the theatre building, a small open-air amphitheatre stage, and a strong visual identity for both the interior and exterior articulated in the custom standardised details—could be discerned in the Novgorod theatre project (fig. 3), Somov’s proposal for an almost fully de-materialized “total theatre” was never intended for construction; rather, it synthesized a Soviet polyphonic postmodern critique25 of the rigid constraints imposed on theatre architecture by the traditional proscenium stage and its associated heavy technology.
- 26 Veniamin Bykov, Ivan Maltsyn, “Problemy proyektirovaniya novykh teatralnykh zdany [Problems of desi (...)
- 27 Ibid.
- 28 E. I. Okuneva, “K Istorii Normirovaniya v Proyektirovanii Teatrov” [Towards the History of Standard (...)
16Such a critique emerged in the late 1940s in response to the increased regulation and funding restrictions in Soviet theatre introduced during WWII. These constraints, as noted by Soviet theatre historian Veniamin Bykov and engineer Ivan Maltsyn in 1961, led to a proliferation of “cliché” theatre spaces across the country, often limited to a standardized stage-auditorium relationship that were “not much different from the classical theatre of the 16th-19th centuries, with its traditional box-shaped stage separated from the auditorium by a ramp barrier.”26 As early as 1948, the USSR Academy of Construction and Architecture’s Research Institute of Public Buildings, in collaboration with prominent Soviet theatre directors, began exploring experimental theatre designs and reviving some of the ideas from the interwar period. These experiments aimed to challenge the rigid conventions imposed by wartime scarcity and to expand staging possibilities of newly built or reconstructed theatres.27 New technological schemes for the stage-auditorium arrangement were tested in experimental projects such as the Leningrad Theatre of Young Spectators (1950) (fig. 5) and the Eduards Smilgis Latvian Art Theatre (1949). The introduction of new theatre building norms in 1969, which drew partially on this experimentation, eased some restrictions and enabled Giprtoeatr’s design team to implement the flexible stage design in the Veliky Novgorod theatre project (fig. 6, 7).28
Figure 5. Stage Transformation Options at the Leningrad Theatre of Young Spectators, 1950
Source: Excerpt from Veniamin Bykov, Ivan Maltsyn, “Problemy proyektirovaniya novykh teatralnykh zdany [Problems of designing new theatre buildings], Arkhitektura SSSR, n°°1, 1961, p. 27.
Figure 6. Stage Transformation Options at the Novgorod Drama Theatre, 1970-1987
Source: Excerpt from V. A. Somov, Dramatichesky Teatr v. g. Novgorode [Drama theatre in the city of Novgorod], Institut ‘Giproteatr,’ Tipografiya Ministerstva Kultury SSSR [Giproteatr Institute, Publishing House of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR], 1990, p. 14.
Figure 7. A variant of a “three-part stage” with sliding partitions on the sides removed at the theatre in Veliky Novgorod, Circa,1987
Source: Excerpt from V. A. Somov, Dramatichesky Teatr v. g. Novgorode [Drama theatre in the city of Novgorod], Institut ‘Giproteatr,’ Tipografiya Ministerstva Kultury SSSR [Giproteatr Institute, Publishing House of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR], 1990, p. 8.
- 29 Christoph Bernhardt, Andreas Butter, and Monika Motylinska, Between Solidarity and Economic Constra (...)
- 30 For instance, on Italo-Soviet exchanges, see Da Hyung Jeong, “Italo-Soviet Architectural Exchanges (...)
- 31 Jarmila Gabrielová, Kronika Pražského quadriennale [Chronicle of the Prague Quadrennial], Divadelní (...)
- 32 Richard Anderson, Russia, Modern Architectures in History, Reaktion Books, 2015, p. 269–70; From th (...)
17Furthermore, the late 1960s-1970s saw the rise in popularity of a more intimate and less technology-heavy “poor theatre,” the rise of historicism and the theatricalization of urban space, and the development of alternative or flexible stage design solutions. These ideas circulated internationally via a number of state-sponsored “platforms of exchange”29: international exhibitions and competitions, the professional press, institutionalised exchanges of delegations and personal contacts.30 Since 1967, for example, the Czechoslovak capital has regularly hosted the Prague Quadrennial exhibition and festival of theatre arts and the associated Congress of the International Organisation of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians (hereafter OISTT, later renamed OISTAT). This provided an opportunity for transsystemic exchange between representatives of capitalist, socialist and non-aligned countries.31 Soviet professional architectural and theatre design journals, such as Gosstroy’s Arkhitektura SSSR (Architecture of the USSR) or the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s Stsenicheskaya Tekhnika I Tekhnologia (Stage Equipment and Technology) made contemporary experimental theatre projects and fragments of European and American postmodern critique available to the Soviet public through translations and reviews. These publications also provided a platform for different perspectives of Soviet actors to be voiced, published, and disseminated, as long as they passed the censorship requirements.32
- 33 Yu. P. Gnedovsky, “Teatr dlya Budushchikh Pokoleny (itogi mezhdunarodnogo konkursa) [Theater for Fu (...)
18Not only the ideas about the flexibility of stage-auditorium arrangement, but also theatre’s changing role in the city, central to the Somov’s “total theatre” proposal, were widely debated at the time. In 1977, the students at the Moscow Architectural Institute (hereby MARKhI) were invited to participate in the international “Theatre for the future generations” architectural competition on behalf of the Soviet Union. The competition was organized on the initiative of the Belgian engineer and the head of the architecture commission of the OISTT A. Zhukovsky in 1977. The first and second prizes respectively were won by the MARKhI teams. The winning project by Mikhail Khazanov, Mikhail Belov, Vladimir Lomakin, V. Ovsiannikov, and T. Arzamasova proposed the theatricalization of urban space in the historical centre of Moscow around the Bolshoi Theatre, creating an open “theatrical zone”—“an interconnected system of theatre halls, streets and squares”—that would allow theatrical action and performances to be extended into the urban environment.33 At the same time, traditional “back-of-house” theatre spaces would open in the city, so spectators could observe the preparation of performances in theatre workshops (this proposal fully overlaps with the winning 2020 project of the Rhizome bureau, which suggests to “open up” theatre workshops to visitors in the Novgorod theatre).
- 34 “Informatsiya. Proyekty teatra budushchego [Information. Projects of the theatre of the future] ”, (...)
- 35 V. V. Listovsky, “Arkhitektory i teatr budushchego (konkurs na eskiz-ideyu)” [Architects and theatr (...)
19In 1978, following the international success of the OISST competition, the Union of Architects of the USSR organised a domestic state-sponsored competition for a so-called “outline idea” for the “Theatre of the Future.”34 The competition attracted ninety-four projects: more than half was submitted by Moscow-based designers, and the rest from Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk, Vilnius, Klaipeda, Lviv, Riga, Tselinograd, Karaganda, Omsk, Yerevan, Tbilisi, and other cities. The applicants included a variety of design professionals from different design institutes, including those who would later self-identify as “paper architects.” Following up on the recent discussions, the contest aimed to develop a perspective on “how Soviet architects imagine the theatre of the future, to reveal their point of view on the prospect of further development of the architecture of a theatre building,” and “to establish new stage design ideas [...].”35 It was especially noted that the projects collected at the competition would eventually form the basis of theoretical and experimental research:
The holding [...] of the competition was connected [...] with the fact that in recent years the problem of the development of theatre architecture is the subject of numerous discussions both in our country and abroad. The need to clarify the position of our architects was also due to the presence of a noticeable gap between the requirements of normative documents that determine the direction of modern theatre construction, and the search for theatre architects [emphasis mine].36
20Notably, design organisations did not participate in the exhibition. The organisers explicitly invited emerging architects to submit projects individually or in small teams. Responding to critique from the inside of the professional architectural circles, the competition likewise challenged the existing logic of regulation (theatre building norms). The exhibition therefore suggested expanding the logic of systemic change in state-sponsored theatre design to include the ideas of individual practitioners as possible reference points for future revision of this branch of state-sponsored construction.
21Commentators at that time observed similar trends within the competition to those expressed by the Somov’s “total theatre proposal”:
- 37 V. D. Krasilnikov and V. Egerev, “Zavtrashny teatr glazami arkhitektorov” [Theatre of tomorrow thro (...)
[...] the aspiration to merge the theatre space with the city space, natural landscape, or historical environment, the removal of a division of space between spectators and a playroom, universal or flexible stage designs, emphasis on theatrical technique, special effects.37
22All the projects exhibited visionary proposals for the future of theatre design that were often not connected to any area or design task but instead outlined possibilities – “sketches.” Among them were a modular theatre, where a stage would be organised by means of mobile amphitheatres, a theatre-landscape that simultaneously formed a unique image of the environment and became a means of solving various scenographic problems, as well as a historical multi-stage theatre, where each stage was organised in accordance with a certain epoch (fig. 9).
Figure 8. L. Pavlov, N. Bartenev, V. Shteller, N. Gorkin, V. Sokolov, “The Theatre of Individual Perception
Source: Arkhitektura SSSR, 1979
Figure 9. A competition entry by M. Gavrilova and A. Kositsyn “799 997.”
A multi-purpose theatre-museum, where visitors could view, and experience auditoriums designed in accordance with different historical epochs and geographies.
Source: Personal archive of Margarita Gavrilova.
23The first prize of the competition was awarded to a design collective from the Moscow architectural establishment: L. Pavlov, N. Bartenev, V. Shteller, N. Gorkin, V. Sokolov for a project called “The Theatre of Individual Perception” (fig. 8). According to the project description, the project visualised a thought experiment concerning the problem of the impact of the spectacle on the viewer. Architects attempted to “eliminate the influence on the individual viewer of the perception of others, to provide her with maximum freedom of emotional expression, without being embarrassed by anyone’s presence.”38 Each theatre seat in the proposed theatre project was designed as an enclosed capsule from where the person could follow the performance in isolation from the rest of the public, whereas the outer wall of the building formed an amphitheatre, from where the action could possibly continue as a city festival, where an exchange of individual experiences could take place. The emphasis on the “individual perception” in the winning project offered a subtle critique of the “mass” character in Soviet cultural mobilisation, highlighting the importance of individual creative and intellectual development.
- 39 B. M. Galeyev, “Vsesoyuznye teatralizovannye festivali, posvyashchennye 100-mu dnyu rozhdeniya Leni (...)
24The more radical suggestions voiced in the Soviet professional architectural community included completely dismantling a theatre building and transforming a city into a continuous performance space with sound and projection technologies (echoing the sound and colour screen in Somov’s “total theatre” proposal). The vanguard of this movement was led by the Kazan-based Scientific-Research Institute, “Prometheus,” a state-sponsored media art collective that designed and implemented sound-visual installations across the Soviet Union. Their leader, B. M. Galeyev, imagined the space of the “theatre of the future” unfolding in historical sites and urban districts: “squares can also become a theatre [...] where the scenery is the surrounding buildings and landscape, where instead of the roof there is the sky, where there are no actors.”39 Prometheus’s ultimately cybernetic future for a Soviet theatre was a future where creative labour would be automated into a site-specific installation looped by a computer, creating an immersive environment without a distinction between the auditorium and human-centred performance. Such abstract and experimental commitments were far from being “underground” or subversive actions, as Prometheus was commissioned to design a sound-lighting composition for the 25th anniversary of the Second World War in Kazan (1975) and completed an installation to celebrate the 100th birthday of Vladimir Lenin (1979) in their signature techniques. Instead, it should be seen as an attempt by senior architectural establishments and ministerial bureaucracy to safely engage with young architects’ ideas without truly challenging the foundational principles of late Soviet governance of culture.
25The second winning project of the 1977 OISTT student competition was executed by the architects Georgi Solopov, Alexander Brodsky, and Ilya Utkin and a scenographer A. Dnieprov who had proposed placing a theatrical stage made of cubic modular volumes in the context of a historical city. Similar to Somov’s call against overburdening theatre space with technology, they stated:
We see the future of the theatre not in the improvement of technical equipment, not in the wonders of automation, but in humanity, in the involvement of the broad masses in the creative process... So, mobile architecture, reshuffled in accordance with the production, as well as with the seasons, is proposed in this project.40
26Drawing on the tradition of the Soviet synthetic theatre, the contestants proposed to engage theatre with other arts, including philosophers, poets, musicians and architects in the theatre troupe. On the one hand, this proposal appealed to the need to further democratise theatre, inviting all social groups to join the co-creation of a performance. On the other hand, it suggested “flexibility” as a core method and element for achieving a more “humane” theatrical space.
- 41 Regina Bittner, Architecture of Cultural Transgression. Cultural Centres between the Fronts; Claudi (...)
- 42 Anne White, De-Stalinization and the House of Culture: Declining State Control over Leisure in the (...)
27The historian Regina Bittner has reminded us that on both sides of the “Iron Curtain,” flexibility often emerged as a panacea to cultural building design in the context of the youth and underground cultural movements’ criticisms of the modernist top-down programming of the 1940s-50s.41 New public building projects, such as the famous Stadthalle in Karl-Marx-Stadt (completed in 1974), which was widely circulated in Soviet architectural press, were designed with a focus to foster individual creative development rather than impose pre-defined scripts on its users. Similarly, the main auditorium of the Novgorod Drama theatre afforded sixteen different stage-auditorium configurations for various types of events. Flexibility and multifunctionality supposedly could ensure a more “horizontal” cultural participation and accommodate a broader range of spontaneously arising “cultural needs” and forms of creative expression. However, the alleged democratisation of cultural institutions, in technical parlance, ironically meant that theatres and cultural complexes continued to become increasingly technology-reliant, with controllers, expensive lighting and acoustic solutions and mechanisms for the upper and lower mechanisation of the stage. Even after the update of the rigid Soviet theatre building norms in 1969, allowing for a more variation in theatre design, theatres and other types of cultural complexes continued serving the purposes of cultural governance.42 Whereas state-sanctioned professional competitions for emerging architects encouraged young designers to submit their critique in a systemic way and enter into a conversation with authorities and institutionalised regulation techniques, rather than form an opposition to the regime.
28Therefore, despite the Leonid Brezhnev’s government taking a conservative turn following the violent crackdown of the Prague Spring in 1968, the critique of “traditional” theatre architecture and urbanism was generally tolerated throughout the late Soviet period as long as it did not cross the Party line. This critique characterised by growing scepticism towards certain modernist design principles and increased regulation in architectural production. However, the critical voices rarely included theatre users’ or workers’ perspectives in their designs, nor did they oppose or criticise the centralised state control over culture, censorship, or the domination of Moscow-based organisations in the production of cultural buildings through the RSFSR. In this regard, the 2020 renovation project’s desire to present Somov’s “total theatre” project as a kind of “dissident” revolt against late Soviet reality, with which the authors of the renovation proposals should establish symbolic continuity, is not entirely accurate and rather constitutes a part of the competition’s mythology. Instead of recognising it as part of a broader professional debate, the competition singled it out as an exceptional example of individual will confronting an inflexible totalitarian state.
- 43 Walking Interview with the Novgorod Theatre Director, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko and Egov Rogal (...)
29Another assumption put forward by the 2020 competition suggested that Vladimir Somov’s project could not be “fully” realised due to the poor state of the late Soviet construction industry. Accordingly, the competition brief included early drawings from Somov’s private archive as a reference point for the renovation proposals. One of the drawings, for example, displayed the gallery in the main hall with fully glazed wall sections and a reflective floor surface (fig. 11). The tall windows were realised; however, they soon posed a challenge to the theatre’s maintenance team. According to the theatre’s director interviewed in 2016, the heat was escaping through the windows so much that theatre visitors had to keep their coats on throughout the duration of a performance in winter, and fees for heating went through the roof, putting significant restraint on the institution’s budget.43 To address the issue, the theatre’s props team sewed large, draped curtains to help insulate the windows (fig. 13a, 13b). During the reconstruction, several competition participants referred to the curtains as an element disruptive to the project’s overall aesthetic. The winning team remarked:
By clearing the foyer space, we align it more closely with the original author’s vision, emphasizing an expressive, almost dematerialized quality of its components […] [and] its scale and volume.44
30Let us examine the relationship between the project and the construction industry, as well as the interplay between the aesthetics envisioned by Somov and the material resources and bureaucratic processes involved in realizing the project.
Figure 10. Vladimir Somov, Project of the Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod, Main façade, 1974
Black paper, pencil, ink, gouache, watercolor, felt-tip pen, applique. Size: 99.0 x 198.5 cm. The competition emphasised that stained glass and colour scheme of the facade and the sculptural composition (right) were not realised, encouraging participants to incorporate and re-stage these elements in their projects.
Source: The Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, OF-6231/1.
Figure 11. Vladimir Somov, Project of the Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod, Foyer interior, 1974
Paper, pencil, ink, gouache, tempera, watercolor, silver powder, bronze powder. Size: 98.5 x 98.5 cm.
Source: The Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, OF-6231/8.
Figure 12. Vladimir Somov, Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod, Interior of the main auditorium, 1970-1987
Paper, cardboard, pencil, ink, watercolor, applique. Size: 74.5 x 100.5 cm.
Source: The Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, OF-6431/15
Figure 13a. and 13b. Draped curtains installed by the theatre administration and workers to help better insulate the windows in the main hall of the drama theatre in Veliky Novgorod, 2016
Source: Egor Rogalev
Figure 13c. Additional decoration installed by the theatre administration and workers above the cloakroom of the drama theatre in Veliky Novgorod, 2016
Source: Egor Rogalev
Figure 14a. and 14b. A rehearsal at the main auditorium of the drama theatre in Veliky Novgorod, 2016
Since the construction of the building in 1987, the theatre troupe has never used the transformation possibilities afforded by the auditorium design.
Source: Egor Rogalev
- 45 V. M. Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some (...)
- 46 Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some Proble (...)
- 47 In-person interview with the Giproteatr’s former structural engineer, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenk (...)
- 48 Ibid.
- 49 Vinogradov, “Prichiny nesovpadeniya realnoy i smetnoy stoimosti stroitelstva i rekonstruktsii teatr (...)
- 50 Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some Proble (...)
- 51 TEO or “feasibility study” —the first stage of preparation of working documentation in the late Sov (...)
31In 1983, the director of Giproteatr, V. M. Vinogradov, prepared an extensive report that analysed the complex of problems faced by theatre designers in the Soviet theatre building economy.45 In this document, Vinogradov put forward solutions to better predict and control the “real construction costs of theatre buildings in the pre-project stage” and argued for the regulation of “capital investments” based on the first-hand experience of the design institute.46 As Giproteatr’s structural engineer recalled in 2019, this report had followed a “scandal” surrounding the long-delayed construction of the Veliky Novgorod Drama Theatre, designed by Somov and Giproteatr’s structural engineers O. G. Smirnov and L. Parshin.47 According to Belov, the new Chairman of Gosstroy had paid an unscheduled visit to the theatre’s construction site during his holiday in a nearby sanatorium and was appalled by the excesses of the building’s volume and construction solutions.48 Indeed, as the engineer confirmed, the project had problems with the building’s complex structural core whose production at the local metallurgical plant proved to be incredibly laborious and challenging. However, as Vinogradov pointed out in his report, in defence of the design team, difficulties had commenced almost a decade earlier due to the project’s funding, and, therefore, did not testify only to Giproteatr employees’ missteps. In other words, he argued that there were systemic flaws and that Gosplan restrictions had contributed to a delay.49 Similar to the competitions for young architects reviewed in the previous section, the report constituted another type of critique that architectural professionals could mobilise in the late Soviet period. According to Vinogradov’s report, the funding for the Novgorod theatre was approved by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR and included in the so-called “title list” (titulny list) of buildings financed by the state capital investment plan of 1970.50 Already in 1971, Giproteatr’s design team developed a “technical project” (TEO)51 for the theatre with an approximate “construction volume of 53 thousand cubic meters,” estimated at 2.98 million rubbles. However, the project approval at Gosgrazhdanstroy was severely delayed by more than two years. The initial design was rejected, and the architect had to come up with a new proposal. As Somov recalled in 2016, the main problem was the lack of evidence on acoustic qualities of the main auditorium:
- 52 Here the architect refers to the Moscow-based Research Institute of Building Physics, which, betwee (...)
- 53 In-person interview with Vladimir Somov, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2016.
When I designed this theatre, no one wanted to approve it, because they said that nothing would be audible in this hall. For about three years this theatre hung in the air [...]. I was not well versed in this theory of sound amplification, but I intuitively felt that everything should have worked out fine […]. There was an Institute of Building Physics and Acoustics in Moscow,52 and the local head of one of their departments decisively signed this project. But first, he made us build the wooden model of the auditorium larger than a desk [to test acoustic qualities of the building – my note]. When this institute came to the already built theatre for examination, we hired local students and sat them throughout the hall [...] They had to understand what the person on the stage was saying – non-Russian words, or Russian, but distorted. It turned out that there was perfect audibility.53
32Only the act of “signing” the necessary paperwork by the Research Institute of Building Physics representative could enable the Novgorod theatre project to commence within the system of Soviet customised design. Those official approvals were perceived as an asset and a structural precondition, without which the design team could not practice. On the other hand, as it also often happens with narratives of architects working in the Soviet institutional system, paperwork procedures were described as something that threw sand in the wheels of design team’s creative “intuition.”
- 54 Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some Proble (...)
- 55 Colloquial for “protracted construction” in Russian.
33Eventually, after “four drafts for the theatre’s design solution,” Gosgrazhdanstroy approved one of them, yet, at that time, as Vionogradov’s report highlighted, the final version turned out to be “twenty thousand cubic meters larger” than the 1971 project.54 As a result, ten years later, once the construction was nearing the end, the contractor faced a severe budget deficit as the building price significantly rose, turning the theatre into one of the so-called late Soviet “dolgostroy.”55 In response, the Giproteatr’s director was required to provide an extensive explanation of why the Institute did not resubmit the project with a new increased cost estimate.
- 56 V. Z. Chernyak, Effektivnost proyektnykh resheny zrelishchnykh zdany [The effectiveness of design s (...)
34Buildings for culture and the performing arts were funded within the so-called “limit” (limitnije) budgets.56 At the time of the Novgorod theatre project approval, a standard maximum “limit” budget allocated for constructing a theatre in the Soviet Union amounted to three million rubbles. However, as Vinogradov contended, hardly any theatre that Giproteatr had completed during the 1960s-70s would fit within this margin. More likely, it would amount to four or four and a half million.
Figure 15. Photographer unknown, Drama Theatre in Veliky Novgorod, General view during construction, 1980s
Glossy photo paper, silver gelatine print. Size: 30.5 x 40 cm.
Source: Shchusev Museum of Architecture, OF-6430/2
- 57 Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some Proble (...)
35This happened for various reasons. Yet mainly because the costs (confirmed by inspectors that had been trained to detect and avoid “superfluous” design solutions) were based on more approximate TEO project documents and not on the completed project documentation that could have included all necessary specifications. An increase for the three million budget cap could be granted only after the approval of the central planning organisation, Gosplan. However, such a request could put the project on hold for years.57 For this reason, even knowing that there was not enough money to realise the project, Giproteatr would often go ahead without resubmission. As a result, when the money ran out, the design organisation had to find other sources of funding. While the Gosstroy chairman saw unacceptable excess, Vinogradov, as he was exposed to the administration of numerous actual building projects, in contrast, saw structural problems that he aspired to breach – with a report.
- 58 The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League.
- 59 Vinogradov, “O Nekotorykh Problemakh Ekonomiki Stroitelstva Teatralnykh Zdany” [Towards Some Proble (...)
- 60 Walking Interview with the Novgorod Theatre Director, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko and Egov Rogal (...)
36By referencing concrete theatre building projects in this report, including the Novgorod example, Vingoradov has shown that, because of such a restriction, many theatres were co-financed informally, including using the so-called “volunteer” labour. As Vinogradov reported, residents, members of Komsomol58 organisations, or employees of industrial enterprises were often told to participate in the construction of the project pro bono.59 As the then-Novgorod theatre director remembered in 2016: “Those who are now, let’s say, thirty-five years and older Novgorodians—all worked on this building [as] schoolchildren, students.”60 The value of students’ labour, of course, was not included in the main project budget and was instead delivered via shadow agreements between the Institute, the chief architect and the city administration. Therefore, the architect relied not only on his “creative vision,” but also on the unprofessional semi-voluntary labour that casually went into construction of large public buildings in the late Soviet context. This constituted a different managerial type of “creativity” of the Soviet designer, which did not relate to drawing or modelling but rather to finding informal solutions within the loopholes of the institutionalised system of architectural production.
- 61 Interview n°1 with the Giproteatr’s former architect, conducted by Ksenia Litvinenko, 2019; Intervi (...)
37Other sources of informal financing would arise from municipal budgets that were classified as “other city expenses” and often covered the beautification (blagoustroistvo) of the territory surrounding a theatre, and the provision of utilities. Furniture, wall decoration materials and some of the elements of technical equipment could be purchased with help of the operating costs of the theatre itself.61 In addition, local industrial facilities could produce unstandardised equipment or structural elements of the building “off the books.” As the official costs of limit budgets often did not match the real costs of the building, some of the building’s elements, like the façade cladding, would likewise be sourced informally. Therefore, negotiating and manoeuvring between institutional guidelines and spontaneously arising opportunities was part of Somov’s experience of architectural work in Giproteatr.
- 62 János Kornai, Economics of Shortage, Amsterdam, North Holland Publ. Co., 1980.
38As it is well known, state socialist decision-making relied heavily on practices of informality to breach economic shortages and was far from a well-oiled, all-encompassing bureaucratic machine.62 Lots of things and practices could escape regulatory discipline in the centre-stage building industry, too. Spontaneity, undocumented agreements with local actors, and involvement in a shadow economy allowed Giproteatr’s architectural practitioners to squeeze as much as possible out of the limit funding scheme and to ultimately try to abide by the plan. Therefore, along with restrictions (flaws within the command system and inflexible funding schemes), the late Soviet context also provided informal possibilities that Somov’s design team took advantage of. These included informality in sourcing building materials, nepotism in providing “volunteer” labour, and the institutional context of the architectural profession.
39Such activities reveal another form of creativity within late Soviet architectural practices: collaborating within interdisciplinary institutional teams and negotiating resources within the system. This type of creativity does not lend itself to attributing a building to a single author, as with authorship of project-related drawings; rather, it represents a more dispersed and interconnected process, enabling a deeper understanding of the historical context from which the building emerges through collective negotiation. They also illustrate a different genre of institutional critique, one that emerges through otherwise bureaucratic practices, such as producing reports. The aesthetics of Somov’s “creative vision” exemplified by the early drawings that the 2020 competition aimed to preserve, would be dynamically re-negotiated during the project’s realisation, including by the architect himself, but also by the broader set of actors, who made the theatre’s construction possible. Therefore, the Novgorod theatre building can be seen as a materialisation of such a multifaceted and ongoing negotiation characteristic of the late Soviet period and post-Soviet economy of maintenance: between ambition and bureaucratic procedures, between aesthetics and material constraints, between official and illicit resources, between professional and amateur labour, between limited maintenance budgets and self-organisation of theatre workers. Rather than a testament to a single “author,” the building is a peculiar manifestation of the late Soviet institutionalised design maintained in the post-Soviet reality.
40This paper has reflected upon the complexities of inheriting late Soviet architecture within a contemporary authoritarian context through a process of heritagisation. Taking the 2020 competition for the renovation of the Novgorod Drama Theatre (1970-1987) as its starting point, the paper demonstrated that the competition’s concept relied on the isolation of certain narratives regarding the architectural profession in the late Soviet period. In particular, the competition organizers emphasized the importance of the chief architect Vladimir Somov’s early drawings and a visionary project of the “total theatre” (although unrealised) as worthy of preservation. At the same time, the competition brief deemed some aspects of late Soviet institutional history, specificities of the building industry and maintenance practices as negligible, framing them as obstacles to the architect’s creative expression. This selective approach to heritage reflects broader challenges in preserving Soviet-era architecture, and as this paper has shown, that approach overlooks how professional practices, institutional contexts, and economic conditions complicate the concept of creative autonomy. By reflecting upon the narratives promoted by the renovation competition, this study foregrounded two historical contexts downplayed by the renovation project’s selective approach, yet crucial for understanding the historical significance, attribution and materiality of the Novgorod Drama theatre.
41Firstly, the paper argued that Somov’s “total theatre” competition proposal was part of a broader postmodern critique of the perceived rigidity and dogmatism of modernist theatre designs that were prevalent throughout the 1940s-1950s. This critique had emerged among the Soviet professional theatre design community since at least 1948, in the pages of professional architectural journals, international exhibitions and congresses, such as the Prague Quadrennial and the Congress of the International Organization of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians, as well as among the official domestic and international competitions for emerging architects and gained momentum in the 1970s. Despite the conservative political climate of the Brezhnev era, this critique of modernist principles and rigid regulation in architecture had persisted, albeit within acceptable limits. Young architects and designers working in the Soviet Union at that time promoted the theatricalization of urban spaces, historicism, alternative flexible stage designs, and a greater intimacy between performers and audience in theatrical performances. The critique also addressed an increasing regulation in architectural production. However, it fell short of incorporating the perspectives of theatre users and workers and could not challenge the centralized state control over cultural production and censorship. In other words, the state-sanctioned competitions encouraged critical suggestions, but only within the possibility of applying them to building regulations, rather than fostering outright opposition to the regime itself. This context highlights the complexity of balancing flexibility and multifunctionality in theatre design with the broader objectives of top-down cultural control. In the Soviet context, individualism and spectacle, attributed by the competition brief as Somov’s project’s unique qualities, were not only present but also tolerated and manifested through “official” architectural avenues of the 1970s.
42Secondly, the paper turned to narratives concerning the interplay between the architectural profession, bureaucratised control over construction, and resource and labour constraints. On the one hand, the section contextualised the delayed and understaffed construction of the Veliky Novgorod Drama Theatre, where systemic flaws and bureaucratic hurdles affected the project’s progression and budget. On the other hand, the section discussed how the late Soviet context simultaneously opened illicit possibilities that had been harnessed by the design team. For example, the theatre’s construction relied on informal financing and labour arrangements, illustrating the existing negotiations between architectural ambitions and the creative use of loopholes in existing bureaucratic procedures characteristic of late Soviet architectural practice. Accordingly, along with artistic creativity, the section advocated for recognising the managerial creativity exhibited by the design team who salvaged additional funding and resources informally while navigating the institutionalised system of architectural production. Additionally, it noted a form of collective creativity involving broader sets of actors beyond the architect, such as construction and theatre workers and local communities, who contributed to the project’s realisation and maintenance through semi-voluntary labour or informal agreements. This collective effort demonstrates a shared commitment to overcoming obstacles and realising architectural visions within the constraints and possibilities of the late Soviet context, as well as the maintenance work of the post-Soviet period, which cannot be attributed to the chief architect alone. Ultimately, the paper argues for a more nuanced analysis of late Soviet architectural heritage, characterised not only by the dreams and visions of the chief architect but also by the contextualisation of the architectural profession and expertise within the institutional and economic realities of the command economy.