In the 1970s, Vladimir Paperny was working at the Central Research Institute for Theory and History of Architecture (TsNIITIA) in Moscow. During this time, he also worked on his dissertation on Stalinist architecture. Paperny adopted a value-neutral approach: he referred to the modernist architectural avant-garde of the 1920s as Culture One, and to the monumental and neoclassical style of the Stalin era as Culture Two. Around the same period, Paperny crossed paths with Zurab Tsereteli, a Georgian-born artist who, at the time, was involved in large monumental projects across different regions of the USSR. In 1981, Paperny emigrated to the United States, where he later published his magnum opus under the title Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two. Tsereteli, on the contrary, remained in Moscow, continuing his unstoppable artistic production in all possible places and throughout all political episodes—from the USSR to Russia, the post-Soviet Republics, and the rest of the world. We asked Paperny to reach out to Tsereteli for an interview, but Tsereteli declined. What follows instead is a series of brief personal memories that Paperny has of various episodes in Tsereteli’s incredible career.
