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VDNKh. Soviet antiquity

Varvara Lozenko

VDNKh is a park in north­w­est Moscow. It occu­pies 2,375,000 square meters which is greater than ter­rit­ory of the Prin­cip­al­ity of Monaco. It houses more than 80 pavil­ions and monu­ments ori­gin­ally designed to show­case the achieve­ments of the USSR. Each one is devoted to a spe­cific aspect of the Soviet Union: agri­cul­ture, eco­nom­ics, sci­ence, industry, cos­mos etc. The VDNKh’s gen­esis was the All-Union Agri­cul­tural Exhib­i­tion (VSKhV) of 1939. This dis­play of the fruits of Social­ism and showpiece of Sta­lin­ist monu­mental art was inten­ded to open two years earlier, but was delayed by the pur­ging of many of its lead­ing par­ti­cipants. In 1959 the park was renamed Exhib­i­tion of Achieve­ments of the National Eco­nomy (Vys­tavka Dos­tizheniy Nar­od­novo Khozyaystva) or ВДНХ/VDNKh. In 1992, VDNKh was renamed, receiv­ing its cur­rent name VVC (All Rus­sia Exhib­i­tion Cen­ter. For many gen­er­a­tions of Soviet people it has been a must to visit in Moscow, so-called Soviet Dis­ney­land. Today, the term “VDNKh” is still in use.. TEXT BY Var­vara Lozenko: The USSR was a semi-surreal coun­try where everything was based upon myth­o­logy and future was the only rel­ev­ant time cat­egory. By the year so and so com­mun­ism will be attained. And every Soviet fam­ily will flour­ish in prosper­ity, with free apart­ments and all sorts of com­mod­it­ies shower­ing on them — in the future, by the year so and so. The present was smirky and unstable, and the past was com­pletely crossed out.

But it was neces­sary to incor­por­ate that almost sac­ra­mental atti­tude towards the future into some sort of mater­ial basis that would have some sort of time ref­er­ence. And then — of all the epoques of human his­tory — the Antiquity was ladled out. Good choice! This res­ul­ted in a curi­ous con­fig­ur­a­tion — both from the point of view of his­tory as well as art his­tory. The Soviet myth seemed to derive from things like ancient demo­cracy of the Athens and the Roman repub­lic. To derive imme­di­ately, skip­ping all the chapters of human his­tory as if it were some sort of irrel­ev­ant non­sense. And the All-Soviet agri­cul­tural exhib­i­tion (as it was ori­gin­ally called) that later evolved into the Exhib­i­tion of the Achieve­ments of the Peoples’ Industry became a model of that ideal state, a Soviet empire in mini­ature. But it’s not that safe to joke with His­tory. By Jove, the His­tory is sens­it­ive to jokes of the kind. You wanted irony on the his­tory level, didn’t you? Well, here you are. The dig­ni­fied pavil­ions resem­bling ancient temples that first housed exhib­i­tions of now non-existant branches of industry and were later con­ver­ted into pavil­ions of the Soviet repub­lics even­tu­ally degraded into kiosks selling seeds and honey (for whatever reason that com­pletely escapes me). Just the way the neoantique Soviet empire lost its provinces, its mini­ature model, the Exhib­i­tion of achieve­ments of the Peoples’ Industry lost let­ters — the acronym changed from VDNHh into VVC. But the most appro­pri­ate name for the place would be the Soviet his­tory dis­ney­land.

So here it is — the crum­bling away stucco, the cracked columns and the degraded sculp­tures, and now it seems that the Soviet antiquity resembles the Greek and Roman pro­to­types more than ever. Actu­ally, it almost looks older. And where are those peoples whose women in the centre of the Peoples’ Friend­ship foun­tain sym­bol­ize the myth­ical friend­ship of the Soviet repub­lics? Where are the fattened pigs, cows, horses, sheep that sev­eral dec­ades ago filled those pavil­ions and sym­bol­ized the achieve­ments of the Soviet industry and agri­cul­ture — from rab­bit breed­ing to com­puter sci­ence? And where are the people, the legendary people, those brave, hard-working Soviet people, pion­eers of indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion and con­quer­ors of the space? Where are they, the con­tem­por­ar­ies of my par­ents and grand-parents, those who had the word “USSR” once stamped into the pass­port and forever into the soul? They are long gone, van­ished in time and sunken into dust. Like a lost civil­iz­a­tion, like the people of the Atlantis. Only their shad­ows — one walk­ing with a stick, one walk­ing a grand­son or a deaf dog, one wear­ing a out­fash­ioned straw hat — they shuffle along the half-antique half-ruins. Walk­ing at a slow pace, they are remem­ber­ing the glor­i­ous past that they have rushed past by because when it was their present every­one was think­ing only about the future.