Capturing Soviet Kazakh Architecture in Almaty

Almaty, Kazakhstan, is a great place to walk around with a camera. Soviet-era architects in Almaty were generous with their brightly-colored paint and exceedingly creative in their decorative touches. Add a touch of stately decay, and the buildings simply beg to be photographed.

Residential building in Almaty's Golden Quarter.

Stalin visits Lenin

One of the most appealing things to me about Almaty is the ubiquity of Kazakh patterns in the city’s architecture. Although the Soviet Union has a reputation as a “breaker” of nations, the story that Almaty’s architecture tells is more complicated. Having battled nationalists as they reintegrated the territories of the former Russian empire, Lenin and Stalin recognized the threat that nationalism presented to the fledgling Soviet state. As Marxists, however, they couldn’t let nationalist sympathies stand in the way of the international workers’ revolution. So, early on they adopted the strategy of granting the form of nations to the Soviet Union’s many ethnic groups without allowing them what every nationalist desires—independence. The many ethnic groups of the former Russian Empire were thus divided into republics named after the dominant group and united into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This new state promised to square the circle by reconciling nationalism and internationalism. 

Soviet territorial divisions, 1922-1936.
История России. Атлас. / Главный редактор Н.Н. Полункина. - М., ФГУП ПКО "Картография", 2004.

In order to achieve this lofty goal, the maxim “national in form, socialist in content” was applied to all areas of cultural life, including architecture. In the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic’s capital city of Yerevan, for example, architects developed a “neo-Armenian” and later a Stalinist “Armenian national style” based on long-standing Armenian traditions of church architecture and intricate stone carving. 

Monument to Stalin in Yerevan, Armenia.
It stood from 1950 to 1962.

If anything, this emphasis on national distinctiveness only intensified over the Stalin period. Soviet nationalities policy in the second half of the 1930s has been described by Terry Martin as “primordialim” because of its strong emphasis on the deep historic differences between nations. (Tragically, the very same pattern of thought that allowed some very inspired architecture to flourish also seems to have made it easier to brand entire groups such as the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens as inherently traitorous after World War II.) The later years of Stalin’s rule were the height of the national style in architecture in the various Soviet republics. In 1950, Armenia, the USSR’s smallest republic, erected the country’s largest statue of Stalin. The architect who designed the statue’s monumental pedestal, Rafael Israelyan, admitted later that the dominant inspiration for the base upon which the vozhd (leader) stood had been Armenian churches. 

Detail from the main entrance of the pedestal.
Image from Rafael Isralian.

As Dennis Keen explains in an excellent article, the Kazakh patterns that decorate Almaty’s buildings are inspired by the textiles that lined the interior of the portable Kazakh dwellings known as yurts before Kazakhs were forced to abandon nomadism for a more “civilized” way of life. While the yurt has disappeared along with the nomadic lifestyle, these intricate patterns have found a new life around windows and door frames and under the cornices of roofs.

I now present to you the most glorious examples of architecture in the Stalinist national style in Kazakhstan that I have been able to gather in the past two weeks. I took examples from both imposing government buildings and more humble private residences in order to capture the full range of these beautiful patterns.


 Unfortunately, many private residences are not included on the list of protected buildings despite their obvious architectural merits.

Residential building in the Golden Quarter.

I want this balcony.

Every Soviet socialist republic had to have an opera and ballet theater. These massive constructions symbolized the Bolshevik commitment to bring culture to the masses. Ballet still commands crowds of adoring fans in the former Soviet Union.

Almaty's opera and ballet theater.

Delicate patterns decorate the front of the opera house.

Another residential building in the Golden Quarter.
The overhanging roof reminds me of the Balkans.

Expanding access to higher education was another major priority of the Soviet government, resulting in the construction of university buildings both elaborate and modest. The government of Kazakhstan has shown a continued commitment to higher education by offering many Kazkahs scholarships to study in the U.S. and opening Nazarbayev University in the capital city of Astana. Nazarbayev University has attracted many U.S.-trained academics.

The Kazakh National Agrarian University was built in 1954.
The figures of students on the building are one of my all-time favorite examples of Stalinist kitsch.

Just like every republican capital had to have an opera and ballet theater, they also needed an Academy of Sciences. These institutions were prestigious research institutes where scholars dedicated themselves entirely to research and writing. (Membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, in contrast, is more of an honorific, and members still maintain university affiliation.)

The Kazakh Academy of Sciences is very well-maintained.

The spires on this building remind me of mosques. During the Soviet period this was the building of the consumers' union.

Taking pictures of residential buildings can be awkward when their inhabitants are looking out the window!

For infinitely more pictures of Almaty's wonders, great and small, check out Dennis Keen's website, Walking Almaty.