The Fate of the Creative Legacy in the Modern Architecture in Russia

In relation with the celebration of the 80-th anniversary of Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) union of architects in 2012, the central museum of communication technologies (named after A.S. Popov) opened an exhibition “Architecture of Leningrad. 1930s-1990s”. Summing the results of this exhibition, the authors of the article give their evaluation of architecture in Petrograd-Leningrad-Saint Petersburg. The basic principle implemented in the exhibition is continuous sequence of development stages. This exhibition is not only a report, but also the description of painstaking efforts and a difficult road passed by architects of Saint Petersburg. The way ahead, or back, or aside, but, as a result, to understanding how we, once a prominent architectural country of the world, unreasonably rejected those capabilities, changed our creative attitude to architecture and then rejected that altogether. That exhibition reminds us about the way we were assisted and the obstacles we met; how we created our own problems and then found brilliant solutions to them, enriching the cultural legacy of this country and the world. The exhibition is unique, because it helps us understand what the architecture of tomorrow may look like.