Miron Merzhanov
Encyclopedia
Miron Ivanovich Merzhanov, born Meran Merzhanyantz , was a Soviet architect of Armenian
descent, notable for being the de-facto personal architect of Joseph Stalin
in 1933–1941. Arrested in 1942 on political charges, Merzhanov continued professional work as a sharashka
architect, designing numerous public buildings in the Black Sea
region, Krasnoyarsk
and Komsomolsk-na-Amure.
(today the district of Rostov-on-Don
). On the eve of World War I
he graduated from high school and was admitted to Saint Petersburg
Institute of Civil Engineers. Merzhanyantz was eventually drafted into the Russian Army and served in deep rear training units. After the Russian revolution of 1917
he deserted and returned to Rostov
. When faced with mandatory draft into Denikin
's front-line troops, he preferred to volunteer with the military engineers, again escaping combat service. With the fall of the White movement
, Merzhanyantz relocated to Krasnodar
. There, in 1920–1923, he completed engineering training at a local college and married Elizaveta Khodzhaeva, daughter of a successful architect from Kislovodsk
.
Throughout the 1920s Merzhanov (using a Russian version of his surname) was active in the Mineral Waters area (Essentuki
, Kislovodsk
, Pyatigorsk
). His designs of 1920s belong to the constructivist architecture
school with a neoclassical
monumental impact and visual "dematerialization" of load-bearing structures. Merzhanov's trademark details were corner balconies and setback
s breaking through otherwise flat-wall surfaces. Later, he cited Ivan Zholtovsky and Frank Lloyd Wright
as his principal sources.
In 1929 Merzhanov won a contest to design a Red Army
sanatorium
in Sochi
, sponsored by the Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov
. Voroshilov and Merzhanov became close friends for life, staying in contact after Merzhanov's arrest in 1943 and Voroshilov's forced retirement in 1960. This constructivist project, completed in 1934, and the nearby funicular
ramp became an iconic landmark of 1930s Sochi, elevating Merzhanov to the upper tier of Soviet architects. It was followed by two more sanatoriums in Sochi in "grand" style of Stalinist architecture
, a Bocharov Ruchey dacha
settlement and public buildings in Moscow
and Komsomolsk.
In summer of 1933 he was summoned to design a single-story residence in Kuntsevo that became Joseph Stalin's Kuntsevo Dacha
and where the dictator died in 1953. Merzhanov met Stalin in person later, in 1934, when the architect received another commission for a large summer house in Matsesta on the Black Sea. Stalin made a peculiar request - no fountains; Merzhanov, however, squeezed in a natural-looking pool. More dachas for Stalin and top statesmen were built to Merzhanov's design in Gagra
and Sochi area in 1935-1937. This time, according to Merzhanov, Stalin did not issue any direct advice, fully relying on the architect. Their relationships remained strictly official, never crossing the line of subordination.
Modest, modernist
-but-not-constructivist appearance of Stalin's houses may indicate that the dictator's real personal taste was quite different from the official Stalinist architecture of the period.
According to the biographer Arkady Akulov, Merzhanov co-designed Golden Stars of Hero of Soviet Union and Hero of Socialist Labour, but his version is not corroborated in mainstream historical sources.
Following the German invasion of 1941
, Merzhanov was involved in defense projects in and around Moscow, and stayed in the city when the Academy of Architecture evacuated to Chimkent. In August 1942, Merzhanov, his wife and his associates were arrested. On 27 February 1944 he was extrajudicially sentenced for 10 years in labor camps for Anti-Soviet activities
. According to the sentence, testimonies against Merzhanov were produced in advance in 1938, and both witnesses were executed in the same year. Merzhanov was lucky enough to be sent to Komsomolsk camps where city authorities, who collaborated with him as a free professional in the 1930s, extricated him from the barracks. For the next five years he headed a construction sharashka
. Merzhanov's public building in Komsomolsk follow the Stalinist style of late 1930s. Meanwhile, his wife perished in the camps and his son, Boris Merzhanov (1929–1983), was arrested in 1948.
In the beginning of 1949, halfway through his jail term, he was summoned to Victor Abakumov, Minister for State Security
, and assigned to lead the design and construction of MGB Sanatorium in Sochi. However, Abakumov fell from power in 1951 and Merzhanov was relieved from the half-finished Sochi project. Nevertheless, the palladian
Felix Dzerzhinsky Sanatorium, then the largest structure in Sochi, was completed in 1954 to Merzhanov's original plans.
After Stalin's death, Merzhanov ended up in Krasnoyarsk
, and headed a local design bureau until 1960 (under city architect Gevorg Kochar, another exiled Armenian). His associate on the Sochi project, Gleb Makarevich, persuaded Merzhanov to continue practice in Moscow. Merzhanov later designed and built two glass office towers in non-descript, Khrushchev
-period style. He remained active until a 1971 accident which left him crippled.
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
descent, notable for being the de-facto personal architect of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in 1933–1941. Arrested in 1942 on political charges, Merzhanov continued professional work as a sharashka
Sharashka
Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...
architect, designing numerous public buildings in the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
region, Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk is a city and the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. It is the third largest city in Siberia, with the population of 973,891. Krasnoyarsk is an important junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and one of Russia's largest producers of...
and Komsomolsk-na-Amure.
Biography
Meran Merzhanyantz was born to a middle-class Armenian family in Nor NakhichevanNor Nakhichevan
Nakhichevan-on-Don , also known as Nor Nakhichevan is an Armenian-populated region in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia. In 1778, Catherine the Great invited Armenian merchants from the Crimea to Russia...
(today the district of Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
). On the eve of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
he graduated from high school and was admitted to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
Institute of Civil Engineers. Merzhanyantz was eventually drafted into the Russian Army and served in deep rear training units. After the Russian revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
he deserted and returned to Rostov
Rostov
Rostov is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, one of the oldest in the country and a tourist center of the Golden Ring. It is located on the shores of Lake Nero, northeast of Moscow. Population:...
. When faced with mandatory draft into Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army and one of the foremost generals of the White movement in the Russian Civil War.- Childhood :...
's front-line troops, he preferred to volunteer with the military engineers, again escaping combat service. With the fall of the White movement
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
, Merzhanyantz relocated to Krasnodar
Krasnodar
Krasnodar is a city in Southern Russia, located on the Kuban River about northeast of the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It is the administrative center of Krasnodar Krai . Population: -Name:...
. There, in 1920–1923, he completed engineering training at a local college and married Elizaveta Khodzhaeva, daughter of a successful architect from Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies in the North Caucasian region of the country, between the Black and Caspian Seas. The closest airport is located in the city of Mineralnye Vody. Population:...
.
Throughout the 1920s Merzhanov (using a Russian version of his surname) was active in the Mineral Waters area (Essentuki
Essentuki
Yessentuki is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, located at the base of the Caucasus Mountains. The city serves as a railway station in the Mineralnye Vody—Kislovodsk branch, and is situated southwest of Mineralnye Vody and west of Pyatigorsk. It is considered the cultural capital of Russia's...
, Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies in the North Caucasian region of the country, between the Black and Caspian Seas. The closest airport is located in the city of Mineralnye Vody. Population:...
, Pyatigorsk
Pyatigorsk
Pyatigorsk is a city in Stavropol Krai on the Podkumok River, about from Mineralnye Vody. Since January 19, 2010 it has been the administrative center of the North Caucasian Federal District of Russia...
). His designs of 1920s belong to the constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced...
school with a neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
monumental impact and visual "dematerialization" of load-bearing structures. Merzhanov's trademark details were corner balconies and setback
Setback (architecture)
A setback, sometimes called step-back, is a step-like recession in a wall. Setbacks were initially used for structural reasons, but now are often mandated by land use codes.-History:...
s breaking through otherwise flat-wall surfaces. Later, he cited Ivan Zholtovsky and Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
as his principal sources.
In 1929 Merzhanov won a contest to design a Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in Sochi
Sochi
Sochi is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, situated just north of Russia's border with the de facto independent republic of Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast. Greater Sochi sprawls for along the shores of the Black Sea near the Caucasus Mountains...
, sponsored by the Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military officer, politician, and statesman...
. Voroshilov and Merzhanov became close friends for life, staying in contact after Merzhanov's arrest in 1943 and Voroshilov's forced retirement in 1960. This constructivist project, completed in 1934, and the nearby funicular
Funicular
A funicular, also known as an inclined plane or cliff railway, is a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other.-Operation:The basic principle of funicular...
ramp became an iconic landmark of 1930s Sochi, elevating Merzhanov to the upper tier of Soviet architects. It was followed by two more sanatoriums in Sochi in "grand" style of Stalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture , also referred to as Stalinist Gothic, or Socialist Classicism, is a term given to architecture of the Soviet Union between 1933, when Boris Iofan's draft for Palace of the Soviets was officially approved, and 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev condemned "excesses" of the past...
, a Bocharov Ruchey dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
settlement and public buildings in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and Komsomolsk.
In summer of 1933 he was summoned to design a single-story residence in Kuntsevo that became Joseph Stalin's Kuntsevo Dacha
Kuntsevo Dacha
The Kuntsevo Dacha was Joseph Stalin's personal residence near the former town of Kuntsevo , where he spent the last two decades of his life and died on 5 March 1953. The building is set in a forest not far from the modern-day Victory Park.The so-called "nearer dacha" was built in 1933-34 to...
and where the dictator died in 1953. Merzhanov met Stalin in person later, in 1934, when the architect received another commission for a large summer house in Matsesta on the Black Sea. Stalin made a peculiar request - no fountains; Merzhanov, however, squeezed in a natural-looking pool. More dachas for Stalin and top statesmen were built to Merzhanov's design in Gagra
Gagra
Gagra is a town in Abkhazia, Georgia’s breakaway republic, sprawling for 5 km on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains...
and Sochi area in 1935-1937. This time, according to Merzhanov, Stalin did not issue any direct advice, fully relying on the architect. Their relationships remained strictly official, never crossing the line of subordination.
Modest, modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
-but-not-constructivist appearance of Stalin's houses may indicate that the dictator's real personal taste was quite different from the official Stalinist architecture of the period.
According to the biographer Arkady Akulov, Merzhanov co-designed Golden Stars of Hero of Soviet Union and Hero of Socialist Labour, but his version is not corroborated in mainstream historical sources.
Following the German invasion of 1941
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, Merzhanov was involved in defense projects in and around Moscow, and stayed in the city when the Academy of Architecture evacuated to Chimkent. In August 1942, Merzhanov, his wife and his associates were arrested. On 27 February 1944 he was extrajudicially sentenced for 10 years in labor camps for Anti-Soviet activities
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)
Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times...
. According to the sentence, testimonies against Merzhanov were produced in advance in 1938, and both witnesses were executed in the same year. Merzhanov was lucky enough to be sent to Komsomolsk camps where city authorities, who collaborated with him as a free professional in the 1930s, extricated him from the barracks. For the next five years he headed a construction sharashka
Sharashka
Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...
. Merzhanov's public building in Komsomolsk follow the Stalinist style of late 1930s. Meanwhile, his wife perished in the camps and his son, Boris Merzhanov (1929–1983), was arrested in 1948.
In the beginning of 1949, halfway through his jail term, he was summoned to Victor Abakumov, Minister for State Security
Ministry for State Security (USSR)
The Ministry of State Security was the name of Soviet secret police from 1946 to 1953.-Origins of the MGB:The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. Since the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and...
, and assigned to lead the design and construction of MGB Sanatorium in Sochi. However, Abakumov fell from power in 1951 and Merzhanov was relieved from the half-finished Sochi project. Nevertheless, the palladian
Palladian architecture
Palladian architecture is a European style of architecture derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio . The term "Palladian" normally refers to buildings in a style inspired by Palladio's own work; that which is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of...
Felix Dzerzhinsky Sanatorium, then the largest structure in Sochi, was completed in 1954 to Merzhanov's original plans.
After Stalin's death, Merzhanov ended up in Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk is a city and the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. It is the third largest city in Siberia, with the population of 973,891. Krasnoyarsk is an important junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and one of Russia's largest producers of...
, and headed a local design bureau until 1960 (under city architect Gevorg Kochar, another exiled Armenian). His associate on the Sochi project, Gleb Makarevich, persuaded Merzhanov to continue practice in Moscow. Merzhanov later designed and built two glass office towers in non-descript, Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
-period style. He remained active until a 1971 accident which left him crippled.