Talk: The Story of a Soviet Sanatorium

Join architect Alexei Ginzburg, publishers Natalia Shilova, Frank Althaus and Mark Sutcliffe, and photographer Richard Pare to discuss a new English-language publication of the original book on the NKTP (People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry) Sanatorium in Kislovodsk, by architect Moisei Ginzburg.

The Sanatorium was commissioned in 1934 by Grigory Ordzhonikidze, one of Stalin’s closest allies and head of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry (he committed suicide after falling out with Stalin in 1937, the year of the sanatorium’s completion). Despite the prevailing ideology that sought to outlaw modernism in favor of Stalinist neoclassicism, architect Moisei Ginzburg, with a team that included Ivan Leonidov, Evgeny Popov and Nikolai Paliudov, succeeded in creating an architectural ensemble that essentially retained its modernist integrity – and today remains a masterpiece of 1930s modernism – while making only minor concessions to the new Stalinist orthodoxy.

Celebrated photographer of the Soviet avant-garde Richard Pare will show some of the photographs he took of the Sanatorium just over ten years ago. Pare describes the building as, ‘a last gasp of the modernist impulse.’ It features the only ever built project by avant-garde architect Ivan Leonidov – a grand sweeping staircase. Pictures of the Sanatorium by Richard Pare can be seen here.

Copies of the book will be available to buy.

In English.