Hannes Meyer: Soviet Architect. Life and Work in the USSR, 1930–1936

Efrussi's "Hannes Meyer: Soviet Architect. Life and Work in the USSR, 1930-1936" constitutes a critical contribution to the Bauhaus literature. Efrussi mined the post-Soviet archive, uncovering important details about Meyer's projects for the USSR that had previously gone unnoticed. The resultant book fills in a major gap in our knowledge about Meyer's work in the 1930s and forces us to rethink our broader understanding of the Bauhaus project.

Prof. Dr. Angelina Lucento

Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies

Duke University

Based on meticulous work with archival sources, Tatiana Efrussi’s book painstakingly documents the activity of Hannes Meyer in the Soviet Union, demonstrating how, designing and planning for Moscow, Izhevsk, Birobidzhan and elsewhere, the second director of the Bauhaus turned into a 'Soviet' architect, embroiled in the politics of architecture in the 1930s USSR.

Dr. Alla Vronskaya

Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture

Department of Architecture, City- and Landscape Planning

University of Kassel, Germany

Tatiana Efrussi has presented the definitive publication on the work of Swiss architect Hannes Meyer in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1936. Following his dismissal as Bauhaus director in Dessau in 1930, Meyer went to Moscow on his own initiative with a whole group of loyal students and partners. Based on in-depth archival research, Efrussi now characterizes Meyer not only as an emigrant in the Soviet Union but also as a “Soviet architect” – and can thus not only fill in blind spots in his work biography but also make him visible as an actor in the architectural-political debates and power struggles of these years of Stalinist upheaval. Engaged, polemical, humiliated and forgotten for a long time – but remained true to himself as an internationalist and regionalist.

Dr. Thomas Flierl

www.thomasflierl.de

In this outstanding book, Tatiana Efrussi follows Swiss architect Hannes Meyer through his Sovietness in the making, unfolding Meyer’s political activities and architectural and urban projects chronologically through six intense years that coincided with a tumultuous period. Meyer was a con- vert who had embraced militant Marxism after being expelled from the directorship of the Bauhaus and moved to Moscow—initially with a group of Bauhaus graduates—and we learn from his texts and letters details of his newfound belief and efforts, which involved rebranding his Bauhaus tenure as already a Marxist pedagogical project. This political allegiance would be with him for the rest of his life, even if he eventually understood that there was no place for him in the Soviet Union, as he leaves before the first show trials in 1936.

[…] A necessary book about the history of foreigners, in particular architects, in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. And really, relevant for everybody with an interest in history curious about how Stalinism operated at all levels.

[Extract from book review at the journal 'The Russian Review', Vol. 85, No. 4. Reviewer: Daniel Talesnik (University of Bath). DOI: 0.1111/russ.70173]