The pre-history of the communist future in Czechoslovakia: Case studies in architecture and revolutionary socialism before 1948

Abstract

Scholars have recently written about the importance of Marxism and political agitation within architectural discourses of post-war East Central Europe. Less attention has been paid to the period before World War II and the ways in which Marxist language and concepts were already infused into interwar avant-garde practices and debates. This essay argues that a necessary corrective to this gap in the historiography is to write new histories of interwar revolutionary socialist architecture that do not presuppose the failures of the socialist project itself. These histories emerge from a time in Europe when Marxism offered an enticing alternative vision of the future in a region where economic and social deprivation was real and urgent. Three case studies in Czechoslovakia will be discussed: Karel Teige’s engagement with Hannes Meyer, the discourse of the Architectural Working Group, and early experimentation with the collective housing typology in Litvínov, Prague, and Zlín.