[stereolambda]

I don't know if I should be disappointed by the pretty philistine reactions here. In the MDM in Warsaw I find so satisfying the fact that monumental reliefs show office and factory workers, mothers etc. instead of political leaders or so-called great people. I'm well aware that this is Stalinist 1950s architecture but to some extent you can enjoy art in abstraction from its historical context. I would likely agree that overt references to communism should be visibly contextualized or closed in a museum.

Monumental, uncompromising modernism to me expresses the desire to boldly go, as a civilization, and conquer nature both inside and outside of us. Today this desire is very controversial for pretty much all mainstream sensibilities - but I don't think we should rob the future generations of a chance to interact with this on their own.

[keiferski]

Disliking Soviet architecture doesn’t make one a philistine. Especially when much of it was forced upon the populace at the point of a gun.

Regarding Warsaw specifically, most of those monuments are still in existence because they didn’t depict actual people, only generic workers. There were plenty of other monuments of individual political leaders that have been torn down since the collapse of the USSR.

In any case, many of these buildings are interesting but I’m not sure I’d ascribe a positive aesthetic opinion to them. Most of the best urban design in ex-Soviet countries is in pre-Soviet cities.

[stereolambda]

> Disliking Soviet architecture doesn’t make one a philistine.

Surely not - what does is declaring one's taste the main test for demolishing stuff or not. It may not be strictly architecture, but for a long time in the 20th century folklore scholars refused to document things that weren't "pure" enough in their folkloriness, but were "contaminated" by references to the urban/modern culture. We lost quite a bit of cultural history because of that. There should be some humility here, the generations after you can have different tastes.

> Especially when much of it was forced upon the populace at the point of a gun.

I can sympathize in some of that logic - that's why I said that we should have the right to move or alter things that are blatantly against our values. It's good that the monuments of Lenin and such were torn down. But if we follow that to the extreme, maybe the whole historical city of St. Petersburg should be demolished (if you know how it was built), and the Pyramids, and maybe even most of the old royal residences and castles around the world.

[keiferski]

The question isn’t really what “we” should tear down, it’s what the specific country wants to do. And I don’t think most people would agree with your designation of what “good values” are supposed to be.

Warsaw is filled to the brim with Socialist Realist architecture, which itself was far, far more political than basically any form of pre-20th century architecture like that found in St. Petersburg. It was explicitly designed to convey an ideological program that was forced upon the country.

It’s also the remnant of a state which terrorized and oppressed the country for half a century. Not to mention that Warsaw was only rebuilt because the Soviets let the Warsaw Uprising fail and then let the Nazis destroy the city block by block.

It’s a false equivalence.

All that aside, I’m sure there will be plenty of the buildings preserved for posterity. I wouldn’t worry too much about that...there are simply so many of them.

[stereolambda]

> The question isn’t really what “we” should tear down, it’s what the specific country wants to do. And I don’t think most people would agree with your designation of what “good values”

I'm not saying what the good values are, this is purely your invention. The only thing I assume is that maybe people want to be led by some coherent logic in what they do, regardless of the specific values that they have. Aside from pointing out that destruction, well, destroys things.

The old architecture wasn't built because it was just "pretty" either. If you don't see oppressive politics and an ideological program that was forced upon the country in tsar Peter I's works it just means that you 1) are forgetting some history, 2) aren't reading the architecture close enough (as mainly art historians are taught its deeper idioms) or 3) just care less about things than happened a sufficiently long time ago. Which is what will also happen with people's perception in the future, sadly or not.

edit: I didn't see your last paragraph when writing my response, and maybe wouldn't be prompted to write if I did. All I can say is, maybe.

[wwosik]

MDM in Warsaw is fine - at least from outside, no idea how comfortable it is inside. But it is a regular city built for humans.

BTW I find the centres of some US cities with their very dense skyscrapers and always shadowed streets as much bad and distopian.