Narkomfin-Kommunehaus Narkomfin Community Building (1987)
20 21 the Narkomfin commune, like many other Constructivist buildings, had been under historic preservation because of its significance for national architectural history. However, all attempts to restore the house were thwarted for reasons known only to a few. Was it perhaps because it stood so close to the American embassy? For a time I gave up my job due to my fascination with it. I mutated into a historic monument preservation activist. I wrote letters to the mayor of Moscow, collected signatures, and was received at the courthouse. I recruited allies. We organized conferences and exhibitions. In the course of time I learned more about the reasons for the rejection, also from the inner soul of the Russian folk. In this land, one is just more connected to the playful colorfulness of Russian nesting dolls than to the clear lines of the Constructionist box architecture as the Muscovite construction director confided to me one time. According to him a good architect must be able to draw complicated drawings and render them into reality. ‘Less is more’, I thought and assiduously pooh-poohed his explanation. Likewise, the city management pooh-poohs the eyesore in the middle of the city and surrounds it with additional streets and new construction and still refuses to touch it. The building has to this day not been restored, but it is still standing and has not been given permission for demolition as others have been. I am happy every time I visit my house again in Moscow. I dream that one day it will be possible to register this architectural inheritance of the Soviet Union on the UNESCO list of World Cultural Inheritance Sites. Until then there is a long way to go, or as one says in Russian, “doroga dlinnaja”... Anke Zalivako The Moscow State University System (MGU) In 1968, shortly after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact states of Czechoslovakia, I took up quarters in MGU as a West German exchange researcher. I lived in a sort of research city, one of seven mega Stalinist palaces which housed students and academics from the Lomonossow University. MGU is the abbreviation for “Moskovkij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet imeni M.V. Lomonosova”. It is there I first encountered the Deschurnaja (a very soft ‘sch’). It is an institution without which the MGU system could not have functioned. Deschurnaja means so much as “those who are on duty.” They were those who had both the strict as well as the caring supervision over the numberless hallways about which the supposedly 6,000 rooms of this research complex were divided. They provided for order, took care of bedding and looked after the newcomers. Nothing escaped their notice. They were there for all small and large concerns. It was advisable to be on good terms with them. Without them one would really be in a fix. At that time many Western researchers believed the Deschurnaja to be part of the extensive surveillance system. Everywhere there was hysteria. Many colleagues regarded themselves as being surrounded by ‘Gustavs’ (our term for our Russian friends who were informants) and bugs. They felt robbed of the opportunity, which was then offered especially to Westerners in this institution, of relatively unbiased communication with the Russians. When my fiancé visited me during the early part of 1969, it was clear that she had to be introduced to the Deschurnaja. The next day the Deschurnaja told me that if my fiancé was going to stay with me, then this must be registered with the police. I explained to them that she was not going to stay with me, but that she would naturally be visiting me frequently. Tacit agreement was reached through this oral regulation. They no longer minded my girlfriend’s presence at whatever time of day. The MGU system also resembled a Moloch in its contempt for human beings. For that there are statistics which I cannot confirm and must be taken with a pinch of salt. The highest part of this Stalinist palace had 32 stories. The four fully symmetrical wings each have 18 stories to which are joined extensions each with 12 stories. 110 elevators are able to simultaneously carry 1,500 people. There are supposedly 45,000 rooms in the building which are connected by 145 km of corridors. During the day, around 20,000 people are in the central MGU building. 10,000 people are supposed to live in it. There are cafeterias, restaurants, a swimming pool, a movie theater, grocery stores that sell fruit, vegetable and eggs. There are said to be students there who do not set foot on the street for months at a time. It is understandable that there are many stories about the MGU in circulation – madness. Every couple of weeks or so the news of a suicide would quietly make the rounds. More often, dull thuds were heard, although not seen, when after heavy drinking, vodka bottles refilled with water crashed into the same courtyards as the suicide victims. According to the GDR regulations, East and West Germans were not allowed to interact in the MGU. In spite of this, I met one of my best friends there, an East German researcher. Our rendezvous was very conspiratorial. The Russians had no comprehension for the ban on German-German contact. “Why aren’t you speaking with each other when you are both German?” Once when my East German friend was visiting me in my room, there was a knock on the door of the anteroom. I opened the door after closing the door to my room behind me. There was an East German colleague who knew that I was German. He asked me in Russian about the whereabouts of my friend. I replied in Russian that he wasn’t with me. What a pair of idiots we were! Moscow was not a beautiful city at the end of the 1960s. Much of it was inhospitable and cold. So it was good to have a place of refuge, and to know where one belonged. Hinrich Enderlein