Derzhprom Building in Kharkiv: Symbol of Modernity and Power
Derzhprom — that is more often referred to as Gosprom (the Russian-language abbreviation for the State Industry Building, Ukrainian: Budynok derzhavnoii promyslovosti) — is a constructivist building that was projected in 1925 and built during 1925–1928 in Kharkiv, the capital of the newly emerged Soviet Ukraine. The first of its kind in the inter-war Europe, the building looked like an embodiment of the bold fantasies of the futurists.
There were, however, several practical reasons behind the decision to build Derzhprom. When bolsheviks decided to move the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from Kyiv to Kharkiv, it turned out that the city did not have any remarkable buildings to represent Soviet power there. Keeping this in mind, Soviet commissar Felix Dzerzhinsky launched a competition, the outcome of which was the project by the architects Sergei Serafimov, Mark Felger, and Samuil Kravets. The city square, where the building was erected, has long been named after Dzerzhinsky. Only after the demise of the Soviet Union it was renamed as Svobody (Freedom) Square.
By the year of its completion (1928) Derzhprom has become the most spacious single structure in the world. Made out of concrete and glass, the building had three parts connected by the sky-ways on different levels. The highest of the skyscrapers had twelve stories, and each section had a separate entrance.
In fact, Derzhprom was built before the American skyscrapers of the 1930s, and only three years after the General Motors Building in Detroit (now known as Cadillac Place). The Dessau-Bauhaus, projected by the German architect Walter Gropius and known as the embodiment of the European modernist functionalist architecture, was constructed in 1925–1926, around the same time. The architectural style, of which Derzhprom was an example, can be regarded as a precursor of brutalism, which emerged later in the 1960s both in Europe and in North America.
However, unlike Bauhaus and the General Motors building, Derzhprom was and still is a mostly unknown landmark. One of the reasons behind this lack of knowledge is the fact that the architects who brought the building to life did not belong to the “major avant-garde associations in the USSR” (Owen Hatherley) and were “pragmatists” rather than “theoreticians”.
Another reason was the removal of the Soviet Ukrainian capital back to Kyiv in the mid-1930s. Initially, Derzhprom was planned as a state office building. After Soviet state administration had moved to Kyiv, the multi-storied building was mostly used as a television center, a hotel, and, after the demise of USSR, as an office space for small private businesses. In the 1920s, the Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia proclaimed that “houses will not last as long as we. Each generation will have to build its own city”. Ironically, Derzhprom in Kharkiv outlived the Soviet regime and became a witness of the major events of the contemporary Ukrainian history.
It should be noted that Derzhprom is only a part of the architectural ensemble on Svobody Square. In particular, the statue of Lenin was located in the center of the square, right in front of the Derzhprom building. The square itself felt like a vast, rather uncomfortable space that had been appropriate for the May Day demonstrations but eventually lost its appeal. As I have mentioned, the square held the name of the Soviet commissar Dzerzhinsky, but was renamed as Svobody (Freedom) square right after Ukraine had become independent in 1991.
However, the statue of Lenin was still there, in the middle of the square. Both people and authorities just let the monument be. This lack of action was regarded as a sign of unwillingness to say goodbye to the communist past.
Everything changed, however, in 2014. After Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity the country experienced the so-called Leninopad — demolitions of statues of Lenin all over Ukraine, including Kharkiv. This demolition signalized that Kharkiv dwellers were eager to say a decisive goodbye to the Soviet past and were looking forward to developing a pro-Ukrainian, pro-European model of civic and political identity.
The architectural face of Svobody Square was once again changed by another dramatic event of contemporary Ukrainian history — namely, by the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine. In March 2022, the building of Kharkiv Regional Administration was ruined by the Russian missile. Both literally and figuratively, the empire “strikes back” and tries to impose old Soviet identity on the city dwellers who made their pro-Ukrainian choice eight years before the full-scale war.
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The legacy of Soviet Ukrainian culture remains largely unknown — and in particular, in North America. Ironically, some of the attempts to bring knowledge about this legacy to the wider audience attest to the general lack of understanding of the recent historical events in Ukraine.
In one of the Canadian libraries, I found the album “The Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922–1932” (The Monacelli Press, 2007). The book contains the photos of the objects of modernist architecture in the present-day Russia and Ukraine. All photos in the album were made by the British photographer Richard Pare. In the introduction to the album, it is stated that the age of modernity in Soviet architecture had no time to be noticed “even by the most attentive observer” before it had already ended.
While the photographer’s effort to preserve the architectural legacy of modernism should be praised, it is difficult not to notice that the book presents both Russian and Ukrainian legacy under the label of “Russian”. In the last decade of the 20th century, when the photos were taken, the Soviet Union was already gone. Still, the names of all the Ukrainian buildings in the album, as well as the names of streets and cities were transliterated in Russian, not in Ukrainian. Both the photographer and the publisher seem to overlook the fact that there was no Dzerzhinsky Square (p.204 of the book) in Kharkiv in 2007, it had been renamed back in 1991. One would call it a factual mistake; but it can also be seen as a deliberate misappropriation of cultural legacy.
In 2023, the empire still strikes back, but Kharkiv and Derzhprom stay strong. Just like thousands of Ukrainians, I do hope that the ongoing Ukrainian struggle for freedom will eventually make our culture visible to the world.
