IX. Retell the text.

Sibrevkom

(Picture gallery)

In 1921 The Siberian Bureau of the central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolshevicks) and the Siberian Revolutionary Committee (Sibrevcom) moved from Omsk to Novonikolaevsk. In 1925 the All-Union Central Executive Committee made a resolution to form the Siberian region with the centre in Novonikolaevsk. The building of Sibrevcom was built in the shortest possible time – within seven months – to accommodate administrative institutions.

The symmetrical façade of the building is decorated with two-storied pilasters fixed in the rusticated ground floor. The façade is crowned with a cupola, motivated only in terms of composition. The front entrance is set off by a way with two «Egyptian» columns, bearing an entablature-balcony of the second floor slightly protruding from the façade. The front entrance is flanked with two protruding portions topped with the statues of a worker and a peasant by the Altai sculptor Stepan R.Nadolsky. The statues are placed on pediments. Andrei D. Kryachkov tried to express the public character of the building by erecting it recessed from the red line and making a grand porch with a central staircase and lateral rounded ramps decorated with pylons.

Although the building is not of great size, the architect succeeded in making it monumental. Kryachkov gave special attention to the design of side façades, topped with stepped parapets with semi-circular windows in the centre. Eclectic decoration of the Sibrevcom building contains both neoclassical decorative devices and some ornamental motifs of Art Nouveau. The color scheme advocated by Kryachkov has justified itself in the course of time as the most practical and expressive in the severe Siberian climate. It is a restrained grey color scheme of the plastered walls of the construction. In 1930 the newspaper «Sovetskaya Sibir» strictly criticized Kryachkov for the non-proletarian character of architecture of the Sibrevkom building.

Vocabulary

to fix – устанавливать

cupola –купол

bay – ниша

bearing – несущий

peasant – крестьянин

grand porch –(зд.) парадный подход

lateral –боковой

ramp –пандус

to advocate –оправдывать

restrained –сдержанный

Exercises

I. Try to translate the following words without using a dictionary:

Committee, resolution, region, composition, façade, statue, monumental, scheme, expressive.

II. Define the part of speech of the following words:

Revolutionary, administrative, slightly, worker, special, semi-circular, strictly, non-proletarian, practical.

III. Answer the following questions:

1.When did the Siberian Revolutionary Committee move from Omsk to Novonikolaevsk?

2.What resolution did the All-Union Central Executive Committee make in 1925?

3.How many months did it take to build Sibrevcom?

4.What is the façade of the building decorate with?

5. What is the façade of the building crowned with?

6.What details did A.D. Kryachkov use to express the public character of the building?

7.What did Kryachkov give special attention to?

8.What devices does Eclectic decoration of the Sibrevcom building contain?

9. Has the Kryachkov's color scheme justified itself?

10. Why did the newspaper «Sovetskaya Sibir» strictly criticize Kryachkov's Sibrevcom building?