MONUMENT TO THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
Vladimir Tatlin, 1919
A Constructivist Image of the Communist Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a momentous event, transforming Russia itself and beginning a series of changes that brought communism to large parts of Europe. Russian communists realized what a major development this was – they saw the work of revolution as global (‘Workers of the world, unite’) and the Russian Revolution as part of a worldwide class struggle. The Russian organization Comintern, also known as the Third International, had as its task the promotion of revolution worldwide and fostering the unity of the world’s communist groups. Soon they were calling for a monument, not just for the 1917 Revolution but also to communist revolutions everywhere.
Most artists initially responded to the call with the usual kind of monument – a figurative design featuring a statue of a specific revolutionary figure. But Vladimir Tatlin, the artist, architect and engineer who was given the job of coordinating post-revolutionary monuments, wanted something different: a new kind of structure for the radically new kind of world that, people hoped, the revolution would usher in. Tatlin was a fascinating if shadowy figure. He started his working life as a merchant seaman and ship’s carpenter, then switched to art, learning how to paint icons in Moscow. But, in 1913, he visited Paris, where he saw Picasso’s early Cubist works and the trend towards abstraction. By the time of the 1917 Revolution, he was producing abstract paintings and sculptures. He was not trained as an architect, but was fascinated by all kinds of structures and was restlessly inventive. He was especially interested in flight, and made bird-like gliders as well as sculptures that looked as if they had been caught in mid-air. This unusual artist was bound to come up with an unusual monument to the Third International, something unlike any construction seen before: a structure, according to one critic, made of steel, glass and revolution.
Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, often known simply as Tatlin’s Tower, is an enormous spiralling form made out of steel and glass. At some 1300ft (almost 400m) high, it would have dwarfed Paris’s more conventional Eiffel Tower and been the world’s tallest building. Its proposed location, straddling the River Neva in St Petersburg (called Petrograd in this period) against a backdrop of eighteenth-century buildings put up by the emperor Peter the Great, made blatantly obvious the way it confronted the old world with something entirely new.
The form of the tower is unique. It is based on a steel framework in which two helixes describe upward curves, getting tighter as they rise higher, and held together by straight steelwork that leant outwards. It gives an impression of dynamism but also strength, echoing in its combination of curves and angles the style of the Constructivist art that was becoming popular in the post-revolutionary period.
There is something assertive about the tower’s sheer size and location, and there is a similar quality in the materials. Historians often talk about iron, steel and glass as ‘modern’ materials. By 1920, they were not very new, but it was still very unusual to see an exposed metal framework such as this, with every strut and brace openly displayed. Metal was an industrial material, made in factories, assembled by workers and usually hidden from view. It was a world away from stone, plaster and brick – the traditional visible materials of architecture – and the contrast Tatlin’s metal tower made with the stucco-covered Classical buildings of St Petersburg could not have been greater. The tower was an image of modernity.
The tower’s framework held four inner structures, each constructed as a perfect geometrical form, each designed to revolve at a different rate, making the monument a literal image of revolution. These structures were intended to house the headquarters of the Comintern. At the bottom is the biggest of these, a cube, containing Comintern’s legislature; it is designed to turn very slowly, making a full revolution once a year. Next, slightly smaller, comes a pyramid, holding the executive of Comintern and turning once a month. Above this is a cylinder, housing the press office and revolving once a day. At the very top is a hemisphere containing a radio station and making a complete turn every hour.
Tatlin believed that the perfect geometrical forms of the cube, pyramid, cylinder and hemisphere had an inherent beauty – and the fact that the tower was functional as well as being a monument added to its beauty. It was part of his revolutionary philosophy that beauty and usefulness complemented one another. An important feature of the geometrical structures is that they are visible through the framework and are faced largely in glass. People looking in from outside could see how the organization was functioning, in marked contrast to the hidden machinations of the Tsarist regime. The tower is a symbol of transparency.
Together with a group of students, Tatlin built a large wooden model of the tower in 1920. This was followed by others – some in wood, some in metal – which were exhibited and even carried around the streets in processions to show the people what the latest form of architectural propaganda was going to look like. A model was also displayed as an adjunct to a famous agitprop spectacular, The Storming of the Winter Palace, which was put on in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1920 to commemorate the revolution.
The tower did not get past the model stage. Tatlin seems not to have specified the exact details of the structure (the models varied somewhat in their details) and the enormous amounts of steel required would have been hard to come by in post-revolutionary Russia, which suffered an economic slump. The government had other priorities, such as putting food on people’s plates. However, the influence of the tower lived on. Many artists saw the models, and the tower’s thrusting, spiralling structure became one of the most famous works of the Constructivist movement in art.
None of the contemporary models survived, and for decades after Tatlin conceived it knowledge of the monument relied on a few faded photographs and drawings. But even in these faint images, the tower is easy to respond to – there is something about helical and spiral forms that is instantly attractive and their wide appeal reflects the collective spirit behind the idea. ‘Invention’, says Tatlin, is ‘always the working out of impulses and desires of the collective, not of the individual.’ Born out of a collective struggle, the design of the Monument to the Third International – in reproductions, on paper and as an idea – still provokes widespread admiration.
