[A PRAISE TO WESTERN ARCHITECTURE PRODUCED IN THE USSR] Arkhitektura sovremennogo zapada [i.e. Architecture of the Modern West]

Moscow: Izogiz, 1932. 185, [2] pp.: ill. 26.9x19.5 cm. In original publisher's cloth binding. Slight wear and rubbing, former owner's inscription on the title-page, a few red pencil check marks in text. Otherwise in a very good condition. No dust-jacket.
Scarce. First edition. 1 of 7,000 copies. Edited by V. Kemenov. Design by one of the key avant-garde artists of the Soviet Union El Lissitzky (1890-1941). An important book in the history of Soviet constructivism.
Written by the noted Soviet art critic and historian of architecture David Arkin (1899-1957), this book came out a few months before the beginning of the era of "Stalinist architecture", when the author had to completely abandon his modernist views and principles. In December 1947, David Arkin, secretary of the Union of Soviet Architects, was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and criticized for having produced the monograph Arkhitektura sovremennogo zapada [i.e. Architecture of the Modern West], in which the author "promoted 'cosmopolitanism' and 'Americanism' in Soviet architecture." Printed in 1932, this "troubled" edition represents a praise to the Western architecture and contains in depth examinations of the work of the preeminent modernist designers and architects of the time including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, J. J. P. Oud, Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer, Richard Neutra, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn, Moholy-Nagy, and Frank Lloyd Wright, etc. Profusely illustrated throughout with black and white photographic reproductions of designs and built structures, the edition features analysis of the 20th century modernist trends - constructivism, functionalism, and "new architecture" - and focuses on various achievements of foreign construction. The book also includes selected excerpts from the treatises of the aforementioned architects. Among the articles featured are Le Corbusier's «A New Era in Architecture», «Reorganization of Cities», «Modern City for 3 Million Inhabitants», «Aesthetics of a New City», «Plan for the Restructuring of Paris»; Bruno Taut's «What is New Architecture», «Problems of Housing Architecture»; Oud's «The Future of Architecture and its Possibilities»; Frank Lloyd Wright's «The Third Dimension», and others.
Photographs of the constructions presented on the pages of the edition offer a curious insight into the state of Western architecture in the 1930s.