Bookvica

[BOOK CONSTRUCTION BY VASIL’ YERMILOV] Prohrama vsesoyuznoho konkursu na proekt pam'yatnyka ta muzeyu na mohyli T.H.Shevchenka [i.e. Program of the All-Union competition for the design of a monument and museum at the grave of T.G. Shevchenko]

Item #2815

Kharkiv: Persha book. fabrika DVOU-UPP im. G.I. Petrovskaho, 1931. 55 pp.: ill., 17 l. ill. 30 cm x 22 cm. 1000 copies printed. Original illustrated cardboard binding. Binding is rubbed, two wax stains on the front cover, both folding plates (panorama and the map of the park) with small tears. Amateur doodle-like pencil drawings of the proposed sight on the rare side of the front cover. Otherwise very good.

The album celebrating the death of the famous Ukrainian poet, this edition is a constructivist masterpiece by standard-bearer of Ukrainian modernism Vasyl Yermylov (1894-1968). In Russian and Ukrainian.

The competition was announced at a particularly revealing moment in Soviet commemorative culture. During the 1920s, Bolshevik attitudes toward death were shaped by an uneasy combination of militant atheism, technological utopianism, and the search for new secular rituals. Cremation was actively promoted by Soviet propagandists as a progressive and scientific alternative to traditional burial, symbolizing a decisive break with religious custom and the old social order. Yet at the same time, the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 produced an entirely different model of commemoration. Instead of cremation, Lenin's body was embalmed and placed in a purpose-built mausoleum on Red Square, transforming the revolutionary leader into the center of a new Soviet civic cult.

The present publication reflects this broader shift from the simple marking of graves toward the creation of monumental memorial complexes. Particularly significant is the inclusion of a panoramic survey from Taras Shevchenko's grave (one of two folding plates at the back), allowing architects to study the landscape from the poet's own vantage point and to integrate the monument into a carefully choreographed visitor experience. In this respect, the project bears striking similarities to contemporary discussions surrounding Lenin's Mausoleum. Both sought to transform the burial site of a revered figure into a destination for mass pilgrimage, combining architecture, landscape, museum space, and political symbolism into a unified commemorative ensemble.
Yermilov's design features the classic gradations of his work at the DVU, from red to black and white (for the binding), and a blue and white palette for the main body of the book. The use of letterform circles and bars, rooted in Lissitzky's work from the first half of the 1920s, lends the edition a sense of sectional structure and airiness. The unusual use of photographic illustrations at the end of the album creates a cinematic synthesizing effect of the poet's life and death: a series of his portraits at different stages of his life gives way to a series of death masks and an image of his grave, photographed from different angles.

The project was reviewed and approved by an unusually broad commission representing major industrial enterprises, government institutions, military organizations, professional associations, and cultural bodies across Soviet Ukraine. Among the represented organizations were the Kharkiv Power Station (GEZ), the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory (KhPZ), the Serp i Molot and Shevchenko factories in Kharkiv, the Petrovsky Works in Dnepropetrovsk, the Marti Shipyard in Nikolaev, the Leninska Kuznya shipyard, the Kyiv Railway Depot, the municipal authorities of Stalino, Luhansk, and Krivoi Rog, the Shevchenko Machine- Tractor Station, Dneprostroi, the Shevchenkivshchyn a collective farm, the village councils of Kyrylivka and Moryntsi, the Kaniv District Executive Committee, Kaniv trade unions, the Kaniv Party organization, the Kaniv branch of the Workers of Education Union (Rabotpros), the Avangard commune, the cruiser Nezamozhnyk, LOChAF, the Kharkiv School of Red Commanders, the All-Ukrainian Society of Proletarian Architects, the Kharkiv Society of Proletarian Architects, literary organizations of the Autonomous Moldavian SSR, the Ukrainian Central Bureau of the Scientific Workers’ Section, the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers (VOAPP), the All-Ukrainian Society of Peasant Writers (VOKP), artistic organizations of the Ukrainian SSR (including the former AHRU, ARMU, and OSMU), as well as representatives of the national minorities of Soviet Ukraine—Poles, Jews, Bulgarians, and Germans.

Not found in Worldcat.

Price: $2,750.00