To the Street

Professional architects and even politicians were not the only Leningraders concerned about the limits of modern aesthetics and the inadequacies of current historic preservation efforts. In March 1987, scaffolding went up around two of the city's most historic hotels: the Astoria, from the bar of which John Reed and his fellow Western journalists witnessed much of the revolutions of 1917, and the Angletera where, in room no. 5, the poet Sergei Esenin committed suicide, writing a final verse in his own blood. Immediately following the first appearance of construction materials at each site, the city's morning paper, Leningradskaia pravda , was deluged with phone calls and letters. To quiet the storm, the editors ran a special interview with the city's chief architect, S. I. Sokolov, in which the renovation plans for the two hotels were set forth.^[43]

Most of Sokolov's remarks dealt with plans for the more famous Astoria, a style moderne hostelry on St. Isaac's Square now reserved largely for foreigners (see Figure 23). Sokolov promised that the Astoria would be returned to its prerevolutionary magnificence, becoming a monument to the achievements of "the leading masters of Petersburg

Figure 23.
The Astoria Hotel.

style moderne ." Accordingly, particular attention would be paid to restoring the hotel's facade and major public spaces to their original appearance, while service areas would be rationalized. Individual guest rooms, "several of which do not conform to contemporary levels of comfort," would be upgraded.^[44]

Sokolov continued by indicating that the future prospects for the Angletera next door were more complex. The building, located on the corner of Maiorov Prospekt and Gogol' Street in central Leningrad, is much older, having been initially constructed in the 1840s and remodeled many times to suit various purposes. Sokolov noted that it would not, therefore, be possible to restore the Angletera to its original form. Rather, the city's chief architect promised that several major elements of the building's facade would be reconstituted, and some effort would be made to preserve the room in which Esenin died. The vagueness of his statements about the Angletera was emphasized at the close of the interview when Sokolov reported that the Finnish construction firm working on the Astoria site had committed itself to completing its work by August 1989, but gave no indication as to when the Angletera reconstruction would be completed.^[45]

Only four days after the appearance of Sokolov's interview—and just days after the erection of construction barriers and scaffolding around both hotels—Leningradskaia pravda reported that hundreds of people had been demonstrating day and night at both sites, carrying placards reading, "Friends, the History of Our City Is Our Root! Save

Our Monuments!"^[46] The paper went on to publish conversations with several participants in the increasingly raucous vigil, which had begun on March 18, the day following the Sokolov interview.^[47]

Aleksandr Zhuk, an honored architect of the RSFSR and a corresponding member of the Leningrad-based RSFSR Academy of Arts, defended the renovation projects by pointing out that the plans had been developed as early as 1978 at the behest of Intourist, the agency responsible for foreign tourists in the USSR, and had been approved by the USSR Council of Ministers.^[48] Zhuk observed further that the buildings had become quite dangerous. Meanwhile, Iurii Andreev, editor in chief of the publication series "Library of the Poet," joined with Zhuk to argue for renovation, pointing out that every effort would be made to preserve those rooms associated with Esenin and to turn them into a special memorial to the poet.^[49]

Only days later, however, the influential national literary paper Literaturnaia gazeta recounted the entire incident in an article by Mikhail Chulaki.^[50] Chulaki excoriated city officials for their mishandling of the affair, citing extreme heavy-handedness on the part of Chief Architect Sokolov as well as Leningrad city soviet Deputy Chair Boris Surovtsev. Chulaki thought the situation would have been better managed and the fate of the Angletera more secure had Leningrad officials practiced Gorbachevian glasnost.

The ruckus refused to disappear.^[51] Weekly demonstrations continued each Saturday morning, sometimes leading to confrontations with the police. Letters continued to pour into the editorial offices of Leningradskaia pravda (and, presumably, to other public agencies) denouncing the insensitivity of Leningrad planners and politicians to their city's cultural heritage.^[52] Meanwhile, the Finnish construction crew hired to carry out the job had totally dismantled the Angletera in a matter of weeks.^[53]

As time passed, the Leningrad regional and city party committees attempted to assert their control over the situation. Evidently, party leaders moved on two fronts, both of which suggest that the real crime from their point of view was public disorder rather than the destruction of an historic building. On one hand, party agencies began quite early on to lay blame for the incident at the feet of city officials. Party agencies severely criticized city soviet Chair Vladimir Khodyrev, Deputy Chair Boris Surovtsev, and others for their lack of openness in dealing with the public prior to the beginning of demolition and for their clumsy handling of the street demonstrations once public order had broken down.^[54] While few commentators seemed to argue that the Angletera could not have been saved (there appears to have been a clear consensus that the building was simply beyond repair), from the party's point of view, those involved with the project should have engaged the public in various review and deliberative sessions before the erection of con-

struction fences and the arrival of the wrecking crews. Within a year, such lessons may have been absorbed, as open discussions between planners and the public over the fate of the city center became more frequent.^[55]

On the other hand, the party was not kind to the demonstrators. By some accounts, all students involved in the demonstrations were expelled from their institutions of higher learning (presumably non-student demonstrators suffered some form of punishment at work as well). After a process of negotiation, many students were readmitted, but their "leaders" were not permitted to return to their studies. In a more public vein, the regional party committee observed that, "under conditions of widening democracy," groups, on the whole, "performed patriotic and socially useful roles." Some groups, however, became "characterized by the display of nationalism, Slavophilism, unhealthy temper, and absence of civil maturity."^[56] Such tendencies were seen by the regional party committee as manifest in the Angletera demonstrations and were clearly identified as violations of the public good.

Another important postmortem of the affair appeared in the July 1987 issue of Leningradskaia panorama .^[57] Some architects contributing to this review reiterated those points made by Chief Architect Sokolov months before.^[58] The Astoria, they argued, is one of the finest examples of Petersburg style moderne and is in urgent need of rehabilitation. The proposed plan will return the hotel to its previous splendor. The Angletera, on the other hand, is nearly a century and a half old, was originally constructed for other purposes, has been remodeled over and over again, suffered significant war damage, and simply can not be saved. Nevertheless, the architects involved in the project have worked closely with the Finnish construction crews to ensure that at least the facade will be restored before the construction has been completed. Additionally, the architect-commentators noted, plans for the project had been under consideration for nearly a decade, with relevant articles regularly appearing in professional publications since 1979. Therefore, they suggested, it is simply incorrect to assert that the city's architects have not been mindful of Leningrad's history and of the public interest.

Other commentators took exception to this position, pointing out that contemporary preservation methods, as internationally practiced, would permit restoration of the Angletera facade and interior.^[59] If only Leningrad architects and builders were willing and able to practice their craft at the world level, they lamented, the entire issue could have been avoided. As it is, these commentators feared, Leningrad will be left with just another memorial plaque reading not even "In this building. . . ," but only "On this site stood a building in which. . . ."

Finally, some sought to separate questions of public decorum from the various architectural issues under contention.^[60] "Youthful maximalism" cannot become the basis for serious professional deliberation,

this argument went. Although buildings of particular merit should be protected and preserved, everyone must recognize that cities are living organisms and must change. The Angletera has little architectural merit and is historically significant only insofar as someone committed suicide there. Therefore, the planners were correct in directing their attention to the more important Astoria. In conclusion, they suggested, professionals should approach complex problems such as those posed by the Astoria-Angletera project in a fully professional manner.

The commentary in Leningradskaia panorama summarizing the positions captures some of the emotion encountered and many of the practical problems raised as Leningrad architects have struggled to come to terms with the rich architectural heritage of their city. Even more important, perhaps, it helps illustrate precisely why the Angletera demonstrations mark an important watershed in public concern for historic preservation in Leningrad. As the opponents to the hotel's destruction stated over and over, what was at stake was the preservation and protection of the city's history and character from the onslaught of modern architecture. Rejection of two decades or more of architectural construction design and planning practices had now moved from the pages of professional journals to the city's streets.

At their core, such critiques of Leningrad and Soviet planning, design and construction practices—like those highlighted by the stroll along Prospect Enlightenment and by the demonstrators on St. Isaac's Square—rested on a shared rejection of modernist planning theories. Leaving aside the fact that construction in Leningrad is of lower quality than in the West, Prospect Enlightenment is not significantly different in conception from Sarcelles outside of Paris or the Southwest Redevelopment Project in Washington, D.C., or other dehumanized urban spaces created during the third quarter of this century. All these projects rest on a "radical" architectural vision that sought to liberate cities and their inhabitants from the tyrannies of bourgeois industrial development. Ironically, they do so through the construction of mass-produced apartment blocks that, by virtue of their size, psychological and physical isolation, and visual monotony, only fragment the social fabric and emphasize the tyranny of the individual over that of the public.^[61] A socialist state system explicitly concerned with promoting collective values clings to an urban design philosophy that elevates res privata over res publica , even after architects and planners in various capitalist societies have turned their backs on many of these aspects of the modernist "revolution."