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[PARKS AS A MAIN ATTRACTION FOR A SOVIET MAN] Parki kul’tury i otdykha Moskvy: Putevoditel’... [i.e. Parks of Culture and Recreation: Guidebook]

Portugalov, P.A.

Moscow: Moskovsky rabochii, 1935. Item #457

113, [11] pp.: ill., photographs, plans. 19x13,5 cm. In original illustrated dust wrapper and wrapper. Good, losses and restoration of the dustwrapper and wrapper.

First and only edition, One of 1000 copies. Very rare. Dustwrapper and wrapper by Buev and Iordansky.

This is a guidebook to six Moscow parks in 1935 with prices, repertoire, description of the activities, schedule, general information, medical help, emergency, restroom, territory, entries, hours of work (mostly from 10 am till 11 pm). The description of the activities are divided into sections: leisure and sports; theaters, shows, and entertainment; mass cultural and political work; children’s playground; services like barbershop, manicure, atelier, perfume, etc.

The most interesting is the information about Gorky Park which was founded in 1928 and designed by avant-gardist Konstantin Mel’nikov. The idea of organizing multi-functional parks in the city, connecting cultural and educational work with rest, first appeared in the USSR. This was the first park of this kind opened in Europe. The idea of a need for a central park of culture and leisure in Moscow arose in the late 1920s in relation to Moscow’s reconstruction with notions of a socialist ‘city of the future’. The people of Moscow not only heatedly discussed what the park would be like, they created it themselves. At subbotniks and sundays, they broke paths, tamped the grounds, dismantled unnecessary buildings, uprooted the stumps, etc. Years from 1929 to 1937 are called the ‘golden age’ of the park, which in the 1920s was renowned as a ‘cultural combine of alteration of consciousness’. There were carousels, ferris wheel, karting (‘bumping cars are safe as they have shock absorbers’), parachute tower (it cost 1 rouble, the tower was 25 meters), cableway across the pond, ‘bridge of obstacles’, paraboloid of wonders (participants were inside a transparent ball which spiraled down and were able to experience wonders of physics), etc. A lot of these attractions lasted only for a few years due to fragile materials.

The most valuable part of the book are photographs of sport grounds, mass games, children’s town, dances, boat rides and many other of day to day life of Soviet people.

Worldcat locates a copy at the Stanford University.

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