Soviet Architects and the Zhdanovshchina at Home and Abroad

The zhdanovchshina transformed Soviet culture in the late 1940s. This article examines how the late Stalinist ideological campaign affected Soviet architects whose postwar work spanned domestic projects and international engagements. Opening with an account of the controversy in Moscow in 1948 over a new textbook on the history of urban planning, the article follows architects as they traveled abroad, representing the USSR at the International Union of Architects. The article explores the interplay between these two spheres of domestic and international activity, arguing that the zhdanovshchina caused Soviet architects to alter their global behavior. It reshaped domestic discourses and practices while spilling into the international arena, fueling Cold War tensions, and reconfiguring postwar internationalism. Soviet architects deployed the zhdanovhshcina abroad, using it to forge relations with their counterparts in the communizing world. When taken abroad, the zhdanovshchina facilitated the emergence of a global socialist urbanism just beginning to form in the postwar years.