Monument to the Third International: Tatlin Tower. Description, history, features

So and not built tower Tatlin 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 a non-incarnate socialist paradise in the territory of the USSR.

Purpose of the tower

After the October Revolution, the new government tried to perpetuate its victory in the most courageous at that time forms. The end of the 10's - the beginning of the 20's. Was a period of avant-garde and other innovative trends in culture, art and architecture. Propaganda projects were implemented even despite the civil war and the difficult situation on the fronts.

The main forge of such ideas was the People's Commissariat of Education. In 1919, the Department of Fine Arts, which was part of the People's Commissariat, instructed the well-known advanced artist Vladimir Tatlin to take up the project 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 instrument in achieving a great goal. A few years later, the proletarian campaign will end in defeat from Poland. Meanwhile, the International occupied one of the main positions in the state ideology.

The personality of Vladimir Tatlin

Named after its author, Tatlin's tower could have been born as it was conceived, only in his head. This artist and painter was one of the most original avant-garde artists of his time. In the tsarist era, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, absorbing all the 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 go-goer an adept of constructivism.

The tower of the Third International Tatlin was created by him at the most suitable time. In Soviet Russia, the ideological evaluation of art has not yet settled. Already in the Stalin era, all the fashion trends such as constructivism, avant-gardism and cubism will be banned. Socialist realism will triumph. This form of style will be alien to the forms and ideas that the Tatlin tower embodied in itself.

Deconstructivism, constructivism and other schools were alive at the beginning of the 1920s. Just then, Tatlin returned to his homeland, hoping to realize his wildest dreams. All moods of the then creative intelligentsia were subject to these moods - from writers to architects. For them, Soviet Russia became a utopia - a new world, opposed itself to the old and bored European order.

Advanced architectural design

The prepared tower Tatlin was supposed to be 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 basis of the monument were three glass "turrets", mounted on each other with a complex system of spirals and rods. Despite the fact that initially the rooms were separate, all together they created a unique composition from a combination of different geometric shapes.

The tower of the 3rd International Tatlin was an ambitious undertaking also because, according to the plan of the "creative collective" (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 around their 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 floor in the form of a cube was to make one revolution per year. It was intended for the legislature. Here congresses of the International could be held, on which the constitutions, decrees, etc., would be discussed.

The average pyramid rotated at a rate of one revolution per month. It would become a home for the executive. Meetings of the executive committee, the secretariat, as well as other administrative bodies were to be held in the room.

Upper level

The top cylinder made one turn per day. Here would be all the media: newspapers, information bureaus, brochure publishing centers, proclamations and manifestos. This place, as planned by the architects, was to become the forge of agitation materials for the proletarians of the whole world. The cylinder was also the most well-equipped room. It housed telegraph, radio, and all the latest technology for information transfer. Outside, a large wall hung on the street, lit by flashlights. These were just sketches concerning equipment. The further fate of the premises was to be discussed at the meetings of special commissions, which did not begin to work because of the closure of the project.

For the rotation of the tiers it was planned to create an unprecedented power grid, which supplied the building with all the necessary energy. The Tatlin tower would not only be amazing for passers-by, but also comfortable for people who worked and sat in it. The glass walls were supposed to be double, by analogy with the device of a conventional thermos, that would allow to keep the temperature comfortable for the operation.

Opposition to bourgeois art

Important was not only operational, but also artistic significance, which was carried in the tower of Tatlin. Constructivism and other bold ideas of the architect were opposed to bourgeois art and town planning. The socialist metropolis of the future (originally to build a citadel of the Third International was planned in Petrograd) was to become the complete antithesis of European capitalist capitals like London and Paris.

The revolutionary nature of the project was emphasized by the authors in any of their undertakings. Socialist architects argued that the old habit of philistines to lead their lives on the earth (it was born 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 early 20-ies.

When the model was already ready, the Soviet government issued several pamphlets dedicated to 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 said that at last art for the first time served a practical purpose, citing as an example three conceptually different tiers.

Public success

For the first time, Tatlin's miniature tower in Moscow was presented at the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets in 1920. This project was elated and was soon presented at several international exhibitions as a symbol of the utopian intentions of the new socialist government.

In the West, the tower of Tatlin also became famous. Facts about Russia and its avant-garde construction regularly appeared in the European press. It was an excellent propaganda tool, eclipsing the horrors and crimes of the civil war.

Refusal of construction

As time showed, 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 authorities really wanted to realize the monument to the Third International. The Tatlin Tower even received several incarnations in wooden models. However, in 1924, Tatlin, who had been working on his grandiose project for several years, was given the first hint of curtailing the work - he was not allowed to go abroad to present the monument.

A few months later, the government finally abandoned the ambitious venture. There were several reasons. First, the country experienced a terrible economic devastation, when money was not literally anything. The whole fault was a protracted war. To rectify the situation, the Bolsheviks went to drastic measures, including the introduction of a surplus-appropriation.

On the eve of the death of the patient, Lenin agreed to make an ideological compromise. He became the inspiration for the 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 at the initiative of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) That a campaign of terror against the avant-garde began, to which Tatlin also belonged. The ideas of bold innovators were too independent of the central authorities. Avant-gardists, immediately after the revolution took hold of the main posts in the state educational and propaganda institutions, began to displace from their posts under various pretexts. Moreover, their ideas were completely incomprehensible to the common people and to the very proletariat, to whom the innovators allegedly served. For the Soviet propaganda of the new model, simple motives and plots, understandable to the workers, were needed. So gradually emerged socialist realism, which became a state doctrine.

The fate of Tatlin

It was the tower of Tatlin that became one of the first victims of a new policy directed against avant-gardism and constructivism. The architect himself faced a typical choice of his contemporaries - to go into conflict with the authorities, or to accept new dogmas and create within them. Tatlin decided to yield to 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 perestroika, when a lot of research was written about forgotten and forbidden currents in Russian art.

Memory of the Tower

Today, the model of the famous Tatlin tower can be seen in the Tretyakov Gallery, where in 2011 the conceptual exhibition dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the artist was held. His monument to the Third International remained in European memory. The model of the tower is in the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art. At the same time, the original mock-up, presented in 1920 in the House of Soviets, was lost in the special reserve, and possibly even destroyed.