Architecture of the Word: Symbolic Transformations of the Soviet Architectural Avant-Garde in Public Rhetoric

This article examines symbolic transformations and representations of the Soviet architectural avantgarde in public rhetoric from the 1920s to the present. It shows that initial dependence of the avant-garde architecture on the character of public representation defined its nature and further social development. The author emphasizes that the emergence of new language for describing modernist architecture in general and Soviet avant-garde in particular stems from the fact that today this kind of architecture is increasingly projects onto itself cultural, social and political meanings during public debates about the historical past, national symbols, and identities.