Background
Shchusev, Aleksei was born in 1873 in Petersburg, and studied at the Petersburg Academy of Arts.
Shchusev, Aleksei was born in 1873 in Petersburg, and studied at the Petersburg Academy of Arts.
In 1910, academician. Became Stalin’s chief architect (the Soviet Albert Speer), responsible for the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, 1925-1930, the Магх-Engels Institute in Tiflis (Georgia), the theatre on Mayakovsky Square, the Hotel Moskva and the Komsomolskaia-Kol’tsevaia metro station. Father-figure of socialist realism in Soviet architecture.
His early pre-Stalinist work is outstanding: for example, the Kazanskii Vokzal, one of the busiest central railway terminals in the USSR, constructed during 1913-1926, in 17thcentury style. All his Stalinist-period buildings combine classical and Georgian styles. Awarded the Stalin Prize.
Member of the USSR Academy of Architecture, 1939.