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[DNIEPER CONQUERED] Dneprostroi

Vinograd, B.

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe nauchno-tekhnicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1931. Item #1459

56 pp.: ill. 20x13,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine rubbed with minor fragments lost, pencil marks and underlinings occasionally, otherwise very good.

First and only edition. Very rare.
Dneprostroi meant the construction of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, one of the giants of the Soviet industrializations and the pride of the first five-year plan. It was a “powerful and unruly river harnessed and taken in service to the proletariat”. Since 1925, the Soviet Union has released a lot of books praising this project on different stages. Among them are ‘Tragic Night’ designed by S. Telingater, ‘Water Giant’ designed by S. Obolenskii, photobooks with similar titles ‘Dneprostroi’, ‘Dniprobud’, ‘Dneprostroi and the New Zaporizhzhia’ designed by N. Mishchenko, G. Epifanov, M. Kirnarsky, et al., various children’s books, including four editions of Marshak’s poems ‘War with the Dnieper River’, excursion guides and numerous technical bulletins. Impressive images of the dam were included in almost all editions and ephemera devoted to triumphal successes of industrialization.

This book was printed a year before the construction was finished. Through text and photographs, it overviewed the pre-construction history of the place, projects of the dam and process itself, shock-workers and their machines, separate parts of the station and complementary facilities. Special attention was paid to Sotsgorod #6 (now Zaporizhzhia city) which was a residential district for workers. A small Alexandrovsk town was rebuilt in the constructivist urban planning by architects V. Vesnin, N. Kolli, G. Orlov, V. Lavrov. This construction began in 1929 and should have become a city of the future. The book features some constructivist components of this place: House of Workers of Dnieper Industrial Combinat, kitchen-factory, Administration of the main engineer of Dneprostroi.

Price: $950.00