War, Revolution and Post-war Development
The last examples of neoclassical revival were laid down shortly before the outbreak of World War I. Independent developers in Moscow started a number of unconnected large housing projects; advent of the elevator allowed them to reach 9-story mark. These buildings, usually called cloudbreakers (Russian: тучерезы) usually appeared outside of the Garden Ring: the city restricted highrise construction in the historical center, including the ban on Ivan Mashkov's 13-story tower in Tverskaya Square that could become Moscow's first skyscraper. In Saint Petersburg, Ivan Fomin and Fyodor Lidwal started redevelopment of Goloday Island - a residential park spanning over one square kilometer, the largest single project of the period. It materialized only in part; Moscow projects were mostly complete during the war, while some remained unfinished into the 1920s.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the movement lost its leaders in literature (Ivan Bunin) and fine arts (Benois, Dobuzhinsky) to emigration. Some of the architects, especially those based in Saint Petersburg or having a foreign citizenship (Fyodor Lidwal, Noy Seligson) emigrated too; some disappeared in the fog of war like Ernst Nirnsee. However, the influential architects who shaped the neoclassical movement (Fomin, Ivan Kuznetsov, Mayat, Schuko, Rerberg, Zholtovsky) remained in Soviet Russia and quickly restored their role as leaders of the profession. Zholtovsky, who was at the helm of VKhuTEMAS architectural school in 1918-1922, temporarily emigrated to Italy after a revolt of modernist students ousted him from his chair; Zholtovsky returned in 1926, and was immediately awarded with a string of new projects - both Renaissance and constructivist. Other neoclassicists of his generation also had to modernize their art to some extent, and had successful practice in the second half of 1920s, producing high-profile buildings (Rerberg's Central Telegraph, Fomin's Dinamo Building in Moscow).
Most of urban neoclassical buildings of 1905-1914 survived the Soviet period quite well - they were, in fact, the most recently constructed pre-revolution buildings, and despite inadequate maintenance their initial quality was high enough to stand unaltered for nearly a century. Many have lost original interiors; in the decade following World War II some of Moscow apartment buildings were built up (adding two or three stories was a common and inexpensive solution to the housing shortage), but their external styling survived. Another wave of reconstruction that started in 1990s and continues to date, have caused numerous facadist rebuilds. Pure, unaltered examples of the style are nevertheless quite common. Nationalized country estates, on the contrary, did not fare just as well. Their new functions (ranging from almshouses to military headquarters) sooner or later called for alteration and expansion; new owners had no incentive to preserve the original buildings. Frequently they were abandoned and left to decay - especially after the World War II depopulated the countryside.
Read more about this topic: Russian Neoclassical Revival
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