Never-Before-Seen Photos Capture Dwindling Remnants of Soviet Modernism

Sitting between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia, almost perfectly centered between Russia and Iran, Uzbekistan has long been at a global crossroads. It was a central part of the Silk Road trading route and its culture and architecture have been shaped by those who passed through, from Alexander the Great to the Islamic clerics and rulers who helped build the intricate mosques and palaces the country is traditionally known for.

In the 20th century, though, Uzbekistan was carefully sculpted by Soviet Russia. As a part of the USSR, the Uzbek capital was seen by party leaders as a means to demonstrate how socialism could push beyond its traditional European bounds and bring stability and prosperity to Central Asia—and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Nowhere is that vision more evident than in the dozens of modernist buildings crafted by the Soviets in one of the empire’s most populous cities, Tashkent, between the 1960s and the fall of communism.  

These buildings have all been lovingly captured in a new Rizzoli book, Tashkent: A Modernist Capital (out November 12, 2024), an extension of years of work by the Uzbekistan Art And Culture Development Foundation, which aims to preserve the architectural marvels. The foundation’s Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI project documented 24 sites, including cultural venues, residential buildings, and scientific facilities, in an effort to reinterpret the legacy of Soviet modernism in Uzbekistan and birthed a 2023 conference (with a keynote lecture by Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas) and a touring exhibit that debuted at Triennale Milano. As a result of the overall push, 20 buildings have earned national heritage status in the country and 154 modernist mosaic panels have been marked as officially protected. The group is now trying to use their efforts (and, in turn, this book, with new photography by Karel Balas and text by curator Béatrice Grenier) to land Tashkent’s modernist buildings on the UNESCO World Heritage List, something that’s all the more urgent in recent years, with some of the relics facing neglect, redevelopment, or threats of demolition.

Tashkent’s modernist origins are, in part, a result of tragedy. While the Soviets had already planned to urbanize the Uzbek capital as part of a wider effort to assimilate its citizens, many of the city’s old districts and ancient structures were leveled after a massive earthquake in 1966, expediting the process. USSR leaders jumped at the chance to use the reconstruction to show what a model Soviet city could be, enlisting architects from across its republics to work with Uzbek experts to craft buildings that blended European modernism with traditional architectural styles in Central Asia. In the book, Grenier writes that the resulting buildings constructed between the ’60s and early ’90s were meant to show "prosperity, abundance, leisure, and progress," subtly conveying the message of the party through poured concrete and ornate sun-shading screens. 

Take, for instance, the Peoples’ Friendship Palace, built between 1979 and 1981 and designed by Moscow architects Yevgeny Rozanov (who worked on the 1970 State Museum of History of Uzbekistan, formerly the Lenin Museum) and Elena Sukhanova. The 6,000-person cinema, concert hall, and political gathering space sits on a large and imposing plaza. Its decorative honeycomb elements recall a vaguely Islamic style, with traditional eight-pointed stars worked into the floors. Meanwhile, intricately carved interior doors play off more modern elements, like the concrete latticework sunshade known as a panjara, which can be found in a number of Uzbekistan’s modernist buildings. There are beautifully crafted chandeliers and art pieces throughout, with hundreds of glass balls reflecting light like a prism. In the book, Grenier says that the building was so expensive to operate that it never opened for everyday use, only holding special events. The fortress-like building, she writes, remains "a distinctive monument to the era of ‘stagnation,’ with its detachment from reality and the mismatch of architectural decorations to actual social processes."

Another example of Soviet modernism’s grandiosity is the Big Solar Furnace, also known as "the Sun," located in Parkent (roughly 30 miles east of Tashkent), which blogs have rightly pointed out looks a bit like a Bond villain lair. Completed in 1987 when the Soviet Union’s strength was waning, the heliocomplex by Moscow architect Viktor Zakharov is ostensibly a cutting-edge clean energy facility that can capture the power of the sun, though it was more specifically used as a defense enterprise, using solar power to manufacture refractory metals and heat resistant tiles to construct Soviet space shuttles and the powerful Soviet rocket, Energia, in response to the West during the Cold War. Impressive in not only its scientific abilities but also its scale, the furnace is concave so as to direct the sun’s rays to a central parabolic mirrored concentrator. The building’s interior, decorated by USSR artist Irena Lipene, is also impressive, with abstract, spatial sculptures made of masses of frilled sulfide glass, detailed ceramic installations, and metallic art to fit the astronomical theme.