Chervonozavodsky Theater - modernized constructivism.

Palace of Culture of the Osnovyansky district The building of the Chervonozavodsky Theater was an important step for the Kharkiv authorities. It had to be constructed at the place where the People's House, the cultural center of the factory district and the place where the first revolutionary groups gathered before. In 1905, an armed uprising took place there. A worker named Artem was killed during a fight with the police. This story became a part of the new Soviet history, and by the early 1930s, this place was already a memorial. Therefore, the new theater had to be a decent building. It was intended for a local troupe housing, to act as a club and a large 1,800-seat hall for the Communist party meetings. A young architect Valentin Pushkarev, a local adept of new avant-garde architecture was awarded as the winner of the architectural contest. He worked in collaboration with another young architect, Volodymyr Peti. Pushkarev was inspired by the ideas of constructivism, which in the late 1920s became the mainstream. The theater building resembled a factory unit and had minimum decorations. Many walls in the rooms without daylight were left without decoration at all. However, taking into account the early 1930s, the building had some references to classical models. A well-known group of artists was invited to paint the theater in 1932. They were students and followers of Mykhailo Boichuk, who moved to Kharkiv in 1932. Their sketches were published in the press in 1932, but soon after that, Mykhailo Boychuk and his closest comrades were accused of "counterrevolutionary traditionalism," their paintings were destroyed, and the artists were arrested in 1936. In the mid-1930s, public tastes began to change. Constructivism began to give up its position in favor of Stalinist architecture. The almost finished theater did not meet the new tastes, and its architect, who tried to defend his creation, was accused of self-promotion. Well-known Kharkiv architect Oleksiy  Beketov blamed the Pushkarev for the lack of details, calling his design "provincial."  The building had to be modernized by adding a colonnade and a sculpture. The project was transferred to the bureau of Viktor Trotsenko, who completed the construction in 1938. In 1963, the theater was reconstructed again by architects P. Rusynova and E. Lyubomilova. Olha Shvydenko