Architect of Disaster

Like many a monarch before him, Dictator Joseph Stalin was obsessed by the desire to commemorate his long reign in monuments of stone. Gathering together a team of architects, he set them to designing riotously ornamental plazas, parks and skyscrapers, without regard for expense. Among his chief architects: Party Member Alexander V. Vlasov.

Rising out of sprawling slums, Moscow's gingerbread skyscrapers are a source of embarrassment to Stalin's collective successors, who have felt obliged to point out that elevators often stick, plumbing frequently fails, and doors and windows are full of cracks. Complained Party Secretary Khrushchev: "The architect needs a beautiful silhouette, but the people want apartments." A year ago Khrushchev proposed the speedy production of cheap, prefabricated concrete living units, later sent a delegation of ten Soviet building experts to study U.S. methods.

The delegation was amazed by the utilitarian aspect of modern U.S. design and the generous use of steel and glass in U.S. buildings. Said one: "A child's dream of a Christmas tree come true." But the travelers had no chance to put up Christmas trees of their own. Last week the Kremlin called for the complete reorganization of the building industry, ripped into Soviet architects for "neglecting the need to create conveniences for the population." Deprived of their Stalin prizes, the architects were accused of building "utterly unjustified tower superstructures, decorative colonnades and porticoes . . . as a result of which, state resources have been overspent to an amount with which more than one million square meters of living floor space could have been built." Singled out for special mention: Moscow Architect Alexander V. Vlasov, who "not only failed to conduct a proper struggle against this extravagance, but [was] guilty of superfluities in designs he drew up."

Where was Architect Vlasov? A top member of a Soviet delegation studying U.S. building methods, he was in Manhattan, checked in at the Plaza Hotel and on a shopping expedition, when the news of Khrushchev's decree came through. "I do not believe what has been printed in the American press," said Delegation Leader Koziulia. "It's not true." Next day, boarding the Queen Elizabeth on his way home, Vlasov, smiling nervously, cracked: "As you see, I'm alive, and I'm in good humor." Added Russia's chief specialist in Stalinist baroque as he sailed off into the unknown: "It will all be straightened out in Moscow."

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