I'll be damned. You're right -- I never realized before that VDNKh was modelled after an estate, but from an aerial view, it's obvious: http://www.idrp.ru/htm/fair/expo/planvvc.htm
--- On Tue, 6/9/09, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] socialist realism tour
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 8:42 AM
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 6/9/09, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] socialist realism tour
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 8:18 AM
> >
> > Have you ever been to VDNKh in Moscow?
>
> [WS:] Long time ago, if memory serves. I have not
> been to Moscow since I turned 17.
>
> However VDNKh is more of an imperial style architecture -
> replicating royal residences. By contrast, the MDM
> (which translates Marshall street Residential District) -
> where my pics were takes - was a commercial-residential area
> designed for ordinary proles and featured art that venerated
> proletarian work. It is an interesting twist because
> "bourgeois" architecture of pre-communist era often featured
> human shapes as a decorative element - but these were either
> mythological figures. Socialist realist design used
> the general concept but changed its symbolic contents to
> reflect "material reality" instead of "bourgeois
> mythology."
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
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