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  113 3 • National in Form, Socialist in Content Sorela and Architectural Imagery Through five years of war and the years of stagnation and crisis that followed, it was huddled up and metamorphosizing inside a cocoon from which emerged the colorful butterfly of a new art. Do we want to give it a name? Well—it’s socialist realism, and it’s Czechoslovak. Karel Honzík on the Slavic Agricultural Exhibition, 1948 Czech and Slovak architects were slow to accept the changing cultural climate of the late 1940s. In the first years of Communist rule, designers were brought into a state-run system of architecture and engineering offices with a mandate to standardize the design and delivery of buildings through the widespread implementation of industrial methods. The architectural leadership remained committed to modern forms and used their political credentials to protect the profession from the encroachment of Soviet-style socialist realism. By early 1950, however, the political elite were growing restless as the Soviets put more pressure on them to conform to expectations. Strict adherence to the “Soviet model” of cultural production soon became a necessity , and organizational changes were needed at Stavoprojekt. Karel Janů and Jiří Voženílek were removed from their posts, and discussions of socialist realism began to dominate in the press, the universities, and the Stavoprojekt regional offices. With this transition, the optimism of the first two years of Communist rule began to fade and architects reluctantly entered into the second phase of socialist architecture, socialist realism. Interwar modernist Josef Havlíček, Zarecor third pages.indd 113 2/24/11 2:54 PM 114  National in Form, Socialist in Content then head of the Prague Stavoprojekt office, captured the sense of widespread discontent among architects when he coined the pejorative nickname “Sorela ” for the new style.1 There are two stories about the origin of the name. One suggests that it is a reference to a brand of pomade or shoe polish popular in the interwar years, and the other considers it a combination of SOciálistický – REalismus – LAkomý (Socialist – Realism – Lakomý).2 Party loyalist Zdeněk Lakomý was the head of a new Stavoprojekt research initiative established to integrate socialist realist methods and theories into the work of the regional offices.3 Despite the unconfirmed origin of the term, the meaning of Sorela was clear at the time, as expressed recently by architect Jaroslav Sedlecký: “‘Sorela’—a slang term, coined as a conversational shorthand for the phrase ‘socialist realism,’ was originally used only among architects and artists and had such a strong charge of negative value about it that it was kept private—it was a little like a swear word.” With the end of socialist realism and changes in the political climate, the term Sorela eventually became the common name for the architecture of this period.4 Unlike in the Soviet Union, where socialist realism dominated the architectural culture for more than twenty years, Sorela had a short shelf life among Czech and Slovak architects. Its main protagonists were architects seeking personal success in the new system; some were recent university graduates looking to put their academic training to use and others were safeguarding their professional positions in an increasingly turbulent political environment. For a few architects, the support was expressed in idealistic terms, although some historians have argued that even those architects committed to the socialist cause acted with the same self-preservationist motives and questionable moral intentions as their more pragmatic counterparts.5 In late 1954, the artificiality of the community’s support was evident when many Czech and Slovak architects abandoned Sorela at the first signs of reform in the Soviet Union. Those who chose to continue working in the style fell out of favor. Within a few months, Stavoprojekt’s founding agenda of industrialization and standardization resurfaced as the primary component of a post-Stalinist vision of socialist architecture. This immediate reversal was possible in Czechoslovakia because the technocratic vision at the heart of Stavoprojekt’s first years was never undermined. Research and experimentation continued unabated, especially within a new group of research institutes organized in 1951 with the help of outgoing director Jiří Voženílek and supported , albeit secretly at first, by the highest levels of government.6 There was also specificity to the situation in Czechoslovakia when compared to some of its regional neighbors, since the memory of interwar practice and the commitment to a scientific understanding of architecture were never completely lost. A local architectural discourse...

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