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The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) was the second economically and culturally developed republic in the Soviet Union. It was formed, following two years of revolutionary tumult and war, on the territory that had previously belonged to the Russian empire; between 1919 and 1934 the capital of Ukraine was in Kharkiv, after which it was moved to Kyiv. In 1939, Galicia, with the center in Lviv, which had at that time belonged to Poland (and was previously a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire) was annexed by the Soviet Union and became a part of Ukraine; Hungarian Transcarpatia was added in 1945, and Crimea (previously a part of Russia) in 1954. Between 1941 and 1943, Ukraine was under the control of Nazi Germany, while its capital was moved to Rivne.
During the interwar period, Ukraine, whose economy had previously been predominantly agricultural, saw rapid industrialization, exemplified by such milestone projects as the Dnieper Hydroelectric Plant (designed by architect Viktor Vesnin and built in 1927-1932), which relied on German and American equipment, and Kharkiv Tractor Plant, designed by American office of Albert Kahn in 1930. The Derzhprom ([The Building of] State Industry) in Kharkiv, then the capital of Ukraine, by Leningrad architects Sergey Serafimov, Samuil Kravets, and Mark Felger (1925-1928) celebrates both the promises of industrialization. Yet, the industrialization was paid for by the expropriation of agricultural products from peasants, which led to a catastrophic famine in Ukraine (Holodomor) as well as in other agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, such as the Volga region and Kazakhstan. According to recent estimates, between 5.7 and 8.7 million people died in the Soviet Union in the course of the famine of 1930-1933, 3.9 million of them in Ukraine.[1]
Upon the retreat of the German army in 1943, most of the territory of Ukraine lay in ruins, with 85% of the city center of Kyiv and 70% of the city center of Kharkiv destroyed.[2] Urban reconstruction became the primary task for architects, many of whom returned to Ukraine from the war-time evacuation. Monumental boulevards and ornate neo-Classical buildings marked the architecture of the reconstruction period; by the 1960s, the stylistic and construction solutions became modernist.
The main centers of the architectural profession were in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv, where the main institutes of higher education and main design institutes were located. As elsewhere in the USSR, no private architectural initiative was allowed; instead, architects worked in state-run institutions (scientific-research institutes of design and construction), which were structured by workshops.
Although women were well represented among students of architecture, they were much less present in leadership roles. The head of the workshop was a leadership position that several women were able to obtain; the roles of heads and deputy heads of institutes were mostly reserved for men. Although women were able to make achievements in all subfields of architecture, including design, urban planning, interior design, landscape architecture, structural engineering, and pedagogy, they were particularly well represented in “peripheral” spheres: Valentyna Maevska contributed to landscape architecture; Nina Manucharova–to interior design; Alla Anishchenko specialized on the design and construction of large domed buildings; Tamara Tselikovska–on metro stations; Ariadna Loboda–on standardization and typification; Valentyna Shevchenko, Raisa Bykova, Iryna Malakova, and Iryna Ivanenko–on historic preservation.
Yet, in rare cases, women did achieve positions of power. Such notable exceptions include Lydia Kreitor, the chief architect of a city (Kirovohrad, contemporary Kropyvnytskyi) between 1962 and 1968), and Muza Novakova, the chief architect of Vinnytsia in 1960. Three out of more than twenty recipients of Ukraine’s highest architectural award–”people’s architect”–are women: Natalya Chmutina (1987), Yevhenia Marynchenko (1997), and Tamara Panchenko (2007). Chmutina, perhaps the most successful female architect in Ukraine, was a full professor at Kyiv Art Institute and the author of several landmarks of modernism.[3] Marynchenko was one of the designers of the Cinema Concert Hall (National Palace “Ukraine”) in Kyiv and of the project for the Palace of Culture in Baghdad. Tamara Panchenko, who specialized in architecture of health resorts and sanatoriums, was the head of the Department of Planning and Development of Resorts and Recreational Areas at Dipromisto; between 1980 and 1990, she was a board member of the Union of Architects of Ukraine.
Following the independence of Ukraine in 1991, women-architects met with new economic challenges but also received new opportunities. Larysa Skoryk, in addition to maintaining architectural practice, became a politician and a member of the parliament of Ukraine between 1990 and 1994.
For a list of women-architect in Ukraine, including award recipients and architects active in different cities, see Wikipedia page (in Ukrainian):
[1] Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).; data by Kyiv Appeal Court, 2010. Information published by LB.ua website. Availalbe online: https://lb.ua/news/2010/01/14/19793_nalivaychenko_nazval_kolichestvo_zh.html
[2] Paul Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 684.
[3] On Chmutina, see O. V. Maznichenko, Nataliya Borysivna Chmutina: Zhyttevyi ta tvorchyi shyakh arkhitektora. (Kyiv: ADEF-Ukraina, 2012).
