„Najlepszy jest wyjazd niczym nieskrępowany”. Jana Minorskiego i Edmunda Goldzamta relacje z podróży za żelazną kurtynę w roku 1956
“The Best Voyage Is One Restricted by Nothing”. The Reports of Jan Minorski and Edmund Goldzamt from their Journeys to the Other Side of the Iron Curtain in 1956

Summary/Abstract: In the period of Stalinism in Poland, Jan Minorski (1914–1980) and Edmund Goldzamt (1921–1990) were the most prominent promoters of Socialist Realism in architecture, and it is only as such that they were considered in earlier studies. This article is an attempt to critically analyse their accounts of the journeys they made to Western Europe at the time of the fundamental reorientation of official architectural discourse. International contacts, which had been very limited during the Stalinist era, were then resumed, and the “façade” (i.e. Socialist Realist) architecture began to be criticised. Of interest here are Minorski and Goldzamt’s attempts to reconcile their previously preached ideological message with the reality they had observed on the other side of the Iron Curtain in order to create a new narrative about contemporary architecture. These are probably the only such accounts by protagonists of Socialist Realism to have been published during the Thaw. Through their analysis, it will be possible to better recognise the phenomenon known as “Socialist Modernism”.

• Details
• Contents