Kharkiv in the 1920s-1930s as the Capital of Victorious Modernism

Abstract

Documenting and demonstrating (based on material from archives and literary primary sources) the extraordinary growth and development of Kharkiv in the interwar period with an emphasis on the time when it became the first capital of Soviet Ukraine is the main goal of this article. The ideas of modernism were vividly embodied in the architecture and urbanism of the city in the 1920s and early 1930s. Large-scale urban transformations turned it into one of the largest and most significant industrial, cultural, scientific and educational centers of the USSR in a very short period. It became the third most important city after Moscow and Leningrad. And in 1928 modernism was officially recognized as the leading direction in its architecture.

Keywords

• interwar modernism in Ukraine
• the first capital of the Ukrainian SSR
• Kharkiv Constructivism
• urban planning in the 1920s-1930s