Detroit–Moscow–Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917–1945

During the Soviet Union’s First Five-Year Plan—a development initiative that lasted from 1928 to 1932—a group of American architects and engineers worked from a Moscow office to help implement Stalin’s highly ambitious program to industrialize his agricultural country. Their Soviet counterparts were eager to borrow American expertise, and the Americans enjoyed the challenge of their task and were amazed to encounter female Soviet engineers. (The profession had yet to open up to women in the United States.) The editors of this volume have put together a gripping collection of scholarly essays detailing this cooperation, richly illustrated with photographs and designs. The Americans contributed to the construction of over 500 heavy-industry plants across the Soviet Union, many of which are still in operation. In the mid-1930s, the Soviets also turned to the Americans to help design the Moscow Palace of the Soviets, which was to become the world’s tallest building but was never built. In contrast to earlier historians, the collection’s authors emphasize that American-Soviet collaboration was not a one-way street: construction practices developed in the Soviet Union were implemented by American architects and engineers when they returned home to work on the New Deal’s vast infrastructure projects.