Celebrating a Soviet Past at VDNKh
Above: A beautiful tour of the entire park from up above. You get a true sense of just how expansive this park is, along with all that it has to offer.
The Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva is an expansive public space that embraces the nation’s past in a way that nowhere else in the city can. Charles Shaw, a contributor to the January 2014 issue of The Appendix, says it best:
“Its mix of solitude and tackiness preserves a spirit of guileless accessibility, making it perhaps the only major site in modern Russia to embrace the Soviet past with pride rather than reservation. At VDNKh the Soviet era cannot simply be razed like so many redundant factories; it’s too beautiful and too beloved. It’s also massive—too indigestible to emerge sparkling and wifi-equipped on the other side of renovation, like Moscow’s Gorky Park, whose Soviet spirit has been practically erased in a seeming effort to reproduce London in Moscow. Like the Soviet past, VDNKh can be neither unified nor resolved.”
— Charles Shaw, January 2014 issue of The Appendix [1]
The VDNKh, which translate to the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, was previously called the All-Russia Exhibition Center until 2014. This public space has an interesting, complex history that dates back decades, from the grips of Communism to today. This exhibit was first opened in 1935, fashioned intimately by Stalin himself. There might be no better place to explore the reflection of the nation’s Soviet past, as this park today “celebrates innovation and achievement in a sector of the Soviet economy that all but disappeared with the fall of Communism.” [2] More than just a park, the VDNHk today is an expansive post-Soviet public space that offers a fascinating look into Russian political, economical, and social histories and victories. This space illustrates that parks can be more than just mere public meeting spaces and serve as tools to commemorate a city’s achievements. The VDNKh is where art, culture, history, architecture, shopping, and public space all meet to create quintessentially “Soviet” experience that is probably nowhere else to be found in the city.
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[1], [2] Shaw, Charles. "The Most Soviet Park in Russia." The Appendix, March 24, 2014.
