This is a thesis paper I wrote for my art history class this past semester and this is the artwork that I reference.
“The Fall of Tatlin’s Tower”
Although Vladimir Tatlin created The Monument to the Third International to represent his radical belief that Communism would bring about a new globalist utopia, the fact his design was never constructed would become a foreshadowing symbol of how Communism could never produce an innovative new world for the common man. From the moment I saw Tatlin’s tower and learned that it was meant to represent and promote a Communistic utopia, I admittedly felt angry and could barely look at it without contempt. My grandmother is Ukrainian, and I grew up hearing the horror stories that Communism inflicted on our people. How could Communism be something that anyone would want to promote, let alone an artist that seemed to have such high standards of individual goodwill? However, despite my immediate hostility, I knew The Monument to the Third International would be the artwork I would choose to write on for my thesis paper. I needed to know more about Tatlin as an artist, how he translated his Communist ideals through his artwork, and the reasons why these utopian promises were never fulfilled.
Vladimir Tatlin was born in 1885 in Moscow, Russia. After both his parents died when he was seventeen, he ran away to Odessa, Ukraine and joined the Merchant Marine. Becoming a sailor would broaden his perspective to a more worldview. The forms and shapes that he would choose in the design for his monument to the third would be influenced by his time as a mariner on the Black and Mediterranean Seas. As a young adult, he returned to Moscow and became an artist, first a painter and then a sculptor. This was during the time of the Russian Tsars and the bourgeoise society that did little for the middle and lower classes of people and ended in the Russian Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin. In 1919, Tatlin was commissioned by Lenin’s propaganda program to construct this ideal of utilitarianism towards a collective whole and came up with a prototype, The Monument to the Third International, that was intended to be the world’s tallest monument. Tatlin’s art would become an integral part in making tangible Lenin’s ideals of the revolution.
In a bankrupt post-revolutionary Russia, “Tatlin's Tower”, as his monument is also referred, was a radical architectural design that represented the radical utopian ideals set forth by Lenin and the Communist party. Communism was meant to represent public solidarity; a union between the peasantry and working-class. It promoted an ideological, socialist society of healthy, physically strong builders who would both literally and figuratively exemplify the Soviet future. Tatlin claimed The Monument to the Third International symbolized the progressive path that a future with the Communist party promised to be and the revolution of equality thought to come out of this type of utilitarian government. He envisioned new art for the new man in the new world. Constructivism was looked at as an organizational and formative principle and the creation of a new objective that Tatlin and several other artists were adapting to. Constructivism combines art with engineering and promotes the ideals of a society that is free from class through the creation of commonly useful objects. After the revolution, many Constructivist artists that encouraged a culture based on this fresh perspective through their art, design, and architecture were given positions of importance in order to teach and administrate under these new principles.
Tatlin leaned heavily on these principles and hyper-focused on the element of movement, both structurally and interactively, in his design for The Monument to the Third International. The tower was a structure intending to be taller than the Eiffel Tower in France and would have been the tallest building in the world at that time. Use of the design element of scale in this way may be emphasizing stability and rising of power. The monumental tower would be a frame of steel that would spiral upwards like a slanted pyramid, which could have been influenced by the pyramids of Egypt that Tatlin could have seen from his days as a sailor. This movement and repetition of a telescopic design, also reflective of a seaman’s tool, takes the viewer's eye on a path around the tower in order to focus on key areas within the tower’s infrastructure. This also creates an idea of upwards momentum. Tatlin’s design would not just serve as a symbol of change, but the architecture would also be functional as the literal headquarters of the Third International, or Communist Party, and so, he would add another element of movement to the tower that would be more than an implied or optical illusion. The key focal points within the tower are four glass structures that would house the different departments of government, each one physically rotating around within the tower at different speeds. The monument would be made of steel and glass, Constructivist medium used to signify industry and productivity, yet representative of the simple materials used by the common man. The use of steel and the medium of glass could also symbolize the idea of transparency and the forging of a strong trust between a government and its people, an important aspect in appealing to the common citizen. The tower’s first inner section was a large glass cube and would be where the legislative branch of government would meet, and as it was designed to slowly turn, it would make one revolution per year. The second glass section, located above the cube, would be a glass pyramid where the executive department would meet, revolving at a rate of once per month. Above the pyramid would be a glass cylinder, where the press office would be and set to revolve once per day. Lastly, a half glass sphere at the top would serve as the tower’s radio station, revolving once per hour. Tatlin’s tower would connect the themes of elevation, levitation, and communication, serving as an international meeting place for the public. Tatlin contemplated the tower as an extension of the earth’s axis up into the atmosphere and would be capable of sending and receiving radio waves and, on a cloudy day, it would be able to shoot lasered messages across the sky to be seen from the ground. A center of worldwide telegraphic and telephonic communication, this innovative design harnessed an aspect of motion and rhythm on a global scale. It seems that Tatlin's desire of equality was buoyed by Lenin's promise of a Communist utopia, which is reflected in every aspect of Tatlin's unique and masterful construction. Unfortunately, Stalin's plans for the Communist Party would not mirror Lenin’s, neither would it support the structural ideal that was figuratively behind Tatlin’s design.
Joseph Stalin came into power after Lenin died and would begin an era of violent oppression that brought death and destruction and had little to do with building and inspiring a new future. Stalin knew art would be a form of visible communication to promote only what he wanted the world to see and shed a positive light on Communism and his leadership, but he didn’t see the value in the abstract qualities of Constructivism. Stalin would force Tatlin and all the other revolutionary Modernists to work in a more traditional academic style. Although the third republic monument was definitely communist, it was rejected by Stalin and his Stalinist propaganda. Tatlin’s idea for a Communist prototype that was intended on being the world’s tallest international monument could have been a concrete functional building to be used for the Communist Party, but Stalin ultimately changed the party’s ideal, resulting in Tatlin's work being rejected and Tatlin was eventually accused of anti-communist behavior later in life.
Lenin died the year after my grandmother was born and 10 years later, Stalin would come to Ukraine, trying to sell Communism under the guise of the idea that it was for the collective good of all. As Communism first came to Ukrainian villages, the working-class people refused their offer of a collective society. Ukrainian farmers were prospering, and the idea of giving collectively everything they owned did not sit well with these rural inhabitants. Eventually though, the Communists took everything they had anyway by force, but gave nothing back in return. To look at Tatlin’s design, one could aspire to the greatness that the monument itself would be if constructed, and Tatlin believed that this was what the Communist party would bring as a relief to the suffering working class of the world, but the only greatness brought by the hand of the Communist party to Ukraine lay in the mass death of a people who fought back to keep their own nationalism. As the leader of the Communist Party, Stalin would create a “man-made” starvation in Ukraine that would last almost 5 years and would come to be known as Holodomor, killing millions of Ukrainians. In theory, Tatlin created a concrete version of a vision for humanity that was not yet in existence, and “Tatlin’s Tower” and other modern-futurist art like it would be used as a tool for political propaganda for Lenin, and yet Stalin would wind up twisting Lenin’s Communistic ideals, oppressing the very people Tatlin wanted to free from socioeconomic class. The common man that Tatlin thought would benefit from this type of utopia became the victims when they refused to be a part of Stalin’s dystopian regime.
I just recently visited Ukraine in October of 2019 and I saw with my own eyes the huge monuments that had been erected to convince the world that Communism was friendly, but this idea of comradery was proven to be a lie. These massive monuments protruding from the ground seem like giant Soviet flags used to try to stake Ukrainian land for Russia. One might think that my passion is more in the history of Stalinist oppression than in Tatlin's monument specifically, but as an artist myself and a promoter of equality, I’m intrigued by how Tatlin must have felt when he realized the vision he was creating with his art that promoted equality was ultimately rejected. I can definitively say that I can respect his ideals and separate his artwork from the illusionistic propaganda that would become the focus of Socialist Realism artwork that Stalin wanted. Tatlin was a visionary with the ability to see the potential in everyday common objects. I think that helped him to envision the potential in everyday people to form a utopia worthy of The Monument to the Third International, but was the world ready to accept it? I tried to find other contemporary Ukrainian artists’ works to compare to his that were within the same context of creating a functional idea for a global society, but even though some had a futuristic style, most Ukrainians did not support Communistic ideals or a collective collaborative lifestyle. In fact, I don't know if there were any, and Ukrainians were a very culturally rich people that celebrated their own identity through the arts. Tatlin's desire of equality partnered with Lenin's promise of a Communist utopia, but what happened in Ukraine indicates why this utopia would never have succeeded under Stalin’s Communist ideals. Stalin was a stringent ruler, seeing anyone and everyone as dispensable, and anyone’s accomplishment was seen as a threat to his own political power. Even if Stalin were to have allowed Tatlin to continue with his monument, the Communist party no longer promoted the common man’s utopia, and Stalin's own lack of vision for a new world of peace became the reason Tatlin’s tower fell before it was ever built.
