ARCHITECTURE
Before history came to an end
There was a time, not so long ago, when architects dreamed of buildings to serve the needs of the residents of two egalitarian, socialistic Jewish states
To Build and to be Built
The Architecture of the Kibbutz, the Book of Shmuel
Mestechkin, edited by Muki Tzur and Yuval Danieli
Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers (in Hebrew)**
231 pages, NIS 129
Bauhaus in Birobidzhan
Edited by Boris Kotleman and Shmuel Yavin
Bauhaus Center (English, Russian and Hebrew)
155 pages, $60
The Shmuel Mestechkin designed Library at Givat Haviva
By Ziva Sternhell*
Two newly published books deal with different aspects of Jewish settlement born of the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the period between the two world wars. Both in the far reaches of the eastern Soviet Union and in the tiny slice of land on the Mediterranean's eastern edge, there were small groups of Jews who attempted to build a new society that would combine their socialist ideals with the fulfillment of their national aspirations.
The physical conditions were especially difficult, but their faith in the rightness of their path allowed them – at least in the case of Israel – to lay the foundations for flourishing communities that would eventually come to symbolize the small state, before it moved on to other "ideals."
'To Build and to Be Built" is a book dedicated to the architect Shmuel Mestechkin (1908-2004) and his role in the establishment of the kibbutzim, while the catalog "Bauhaus in Birobidzhan" – an exhibition that ran last summer at Tel Aviv's Bauhaus Center – deals with the experiment of creating an autonomous Jewish state in the Soviet Union.
Reading these two books today, with the world economic crisis in full force around us, is a unique experience in itself: The atmosphere of self-examination that accompanies the collapse of the extreme capitalistic approach – or at least of the blind worship of its principles – allows the reader to look at these two books from a perspective not enslaved to the conventions that governed unchallenged only a few months ago.
Neither of these two volumes is a scholarly work. The exhibition catalog, edited by Shmuel Yavin and Ber Boris Kotlerman, documents the attempt to change the course of Jewish history, as part of the young Soviet government's bid to solve the Jewish problem and turn the country's Jews into a productive force. To that end, the Soviet government invited Hannes Meyer, the second director of the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Germany, to plan a new city in Birodbidzhan.
The sage of the agricultural settlement in the eastern Soviet Union lasted only some 20 years, from 1929 to 1949, but it aroused fervor throughout the Jewish world. Faith-imbued pioneers arrived to far-off Birodbidzhan from around the globe, and Yiddish culture enjoyed a surprising renewal. But the Stalinist purges and the revolution's retreat from the pluralistic approach of the revolutionary period shattered the dream, and today all that remains are some sites for tourists. Nonetheless, the subject is now undergoing a revival of interest as part of a rediscovery of "lost" cultures, and provides an interesting backdrop to the history of the kibbutz.
Chicken House in Mizra
Spirit of the period
For its part, the book on Mestechkin, edited by Muki Tzur and Yuval Danieli, not only focuses on the architect's activities, but also attempts to reconstruct the era of pioneers, which in recent years has become something of a punching bag. The book the quality of a collage, being comprised of memoirs, meditations, texts and letters drawn from kibbutz archives and newsletters, all intended to depict the environment and conditions under which Mestechkin designed the master plans and individual buildings of kibbutzim.
The editing is rough, contradictions turn up in the writing, many of the texts and photographs are undated and Mestechkin's work receives only superficial analysis. But despite their lack of professional polish and the way they leap between subjects, Tzur and Danieli succeed not only in recreating the enthusiastic spirit of the period, but also in raising a number of ideas that allow for an examination of Mestechkin's work not only as that of a Bauhaus student but also as a man who served as a partner in one of the high points of the Zionist revolution.
The book's editors do not presume to have compiled an objective work, and they focus principally on the early period of settlement. In the wake of ongoing criticism of the "human engineering" attempted in the kibbutzim, they present the heroic tale of self-sacrifice displayed by the pioneers who came to Israel to build with their own hands a just and egalitarian society.
The same innocence that characterized prophets of "the end of history" two decades ago, or those who envisioned capitalism as the comprehensive solution to society's problems, also propelled the kibbutz pioneers into the faith that it was possible to change human nature. The distinction between capitalists and the halutzim was pinned, of course, on the moral level of the latter and in their willingness for self-sacrifice for the benefit of the masses.
The book is filled with moving descriptions of the difficulties faced by the early settlers, from the hard physical labor to the crowded conditions experienced by families and single people in the unsanitary tents and huts, over a period of years.
The halutzim consciously put off improving their personal living conditions until the community and work structures were built. This meagerness of conditions also characterized the minimal furnishings in members' apartments, which consisted of a metal-frame bed topped with a straw mattress, a closet assembled from crates, a modest table and a stool. This asceticism stemmed not just from economic distress, but was also part of the ethos of the early kibbutzim. This proletarian modesty was part of a declared ideology.
On this subject, the editors go to some lengths to define the worldviews that spawned such a fascinating social revolution, comparing it to the establishment of communes in other places. On the one hand, they emphasize the Marxist recoiling from utopian ideals and belief in religious redemption, both of which are characterized by being cut off from history and the escape from the material world.
"The kibbutz attempted," they write, "by way of the collective, of all things, to arrive at palpable history." On the other hand, they recognize that at the same time there flowed below the surface a messianic impulse of a "cadre of individuals who saw themselves as select." Manual labor, simplicity and routine achieved a halo of revolutionary holiness reminiscent of certain religious orders throughout history. In the modern period, the return to "the substance experience" has served as an alternative to bourgeois decadence and capitalism.
This was the context into which kibbutz architecture was born, in which Mestechkin – one of the country's most important architects – played a central role. Though he himself lived in Tel Aviv, rather than a kibbutz, he saw himself as a socialist. He had been among the founders of the Hanoar Haoved (working youth) movement, and was a personal friend of Yisrael Galili, the leader of the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement.
Mestechkin's years in the Bauhaus school (1930-1933) helped him to translate his ideas and talent into the language of modern architecture. From photographs of his buildings and from the texts, one can derive the initial impression that Mestechkin had adopted both the idealism of the kibbutz and the principles of the modern architectural movement. In this case, the integration seems quite natural: The minimalism, the simplicity and the commitment to social needs provided the theoretical basis for both of these revolutionary phenomena.
Kibbutz Mizra Dining Room
Ideals into practice
The many photographs that appear in the book, particularly those from the early days, highlight the actualization of ideals into practice. Ascetism and "minimum housing" (a central tenet of avant-guarde architecture in Europe in the 1920s), and also financial restraints, gave birth to the recurring line of simple buildings that became a foundational symbol of the kibbutzim.
Nevertheless, as Tzur and Danieli point out, reality was far more complex than the ideals. From the very beginning, the early pioneers were faced with dilemmas that went beyond the need to integrate universal values with national aspirations. The ideal of returning to nature and working the land was juxtaposed with the contradictory goal of conquering nature and joining the urban proletariat. Questions of the proper relationship between the individual and the collective also increased with time.
The questions that occupied the early kibbutz members found expression in design decisions. The quarrels that broke out over landscaping design, for example, were spurred by more basic questions: Was there any justification for an ornamental garden and for non-fruit bearing trees whose only purpose was decorative? Must a community garden be integrated into the environment or should it be made to stand out from natural growth by way of the image of a green garden in which an eternal spring prevails? Mestechkin aspired to find a middle ground between the contradictory demands. He attempted to preserve the principle of quality, "without turning the kibbutz into a unitary model," according to the book, and to plan the kibbutz in such a way that the entire community would become a home, while at the same time allowing members a measure of privacy. He recognized the importance of aesthetic values, but rejected a "vague multiplicity of elements" and "an undefined capricious line." This modern architecture was also opposed to the "imposed symbolism" dictated by the ideaology of the commissioning client.
These principles formed the basis for Mestechkin's work, which became known not only in kibbutzim, but in urban structures as well, such as in the cooperative housing developments of Tel Aviv and the city's Kibbutz Hameuchad House (photos of which he always carried in his pocket), the open-air theater at the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus, and the desert structures along the Dead Sea and at Kibbutz Sde Boker. Although "To Build and Be Built" does not present an in-depth analysis of the worldview of a man recognized as one of the architects who brought Bauhaus to Israel (along with Arieh Sharon and Munio Gitai-Weinrub), the small amount of writing he left behind does provide some hints to the sources of his inspiration: Mestechkin studied at the Bauhaus in its final years, when the institute was under the guidance of Mies van der Rohe. He imported to Israel some of Mies' more well-known elements: strict minimalism, structural rationalism, and some of the basic classic principles. The 1930s was a time when the Russian Revolution and the great construction project then under way in the USSR was leaving its mark on architecture.
Mestechkin defined Soviet planning as "heroic," and delineated the advantages of the socialist city and the collective life. At the same time, though, he was cautious in the way he implemented those ideas. To him, basic human needs took precedence over lofty ideology.
Shmuel Mestechkinkin (1980s)
Although the book also deals with the years in which Mestechkin fervently adopted the principles of brutalism, the section on the pioneering period is more interesting and important. As the ideas of the kibbutz began to fade, under the influence of the cultural, economic and political changes that seeped into Israeli society in the 1970s, they were replaced with an extreme individualism. The devastating critique of the "human engineering" that had taken place in the kibbutzim, and of what was now perceived as the enslavement of the individual to the good of the collective, were part of a wider trend that effaced the achievements of the Russian Revolution and of socialist parties world-wide.
As such, there is significance to a book like this, which would restore to the kibbutz movement and to Shmuel Mestechkin their lost honor. The comparison between the intellectual and physical conditions that gave birth to the movement, as described in the book, and the settlement project in Birobidzhan portrayed in the catalog "Bauhaus in Birobidzhan" highlights the enthusiasm of the period, which allowed for the fulfillment of dreams. The fact that these dreams would sooner or later crash against the ground of reality should not cause us to ignore the good intentions of the revolutionaries, nor must it be seen as proof that they were doomed to fail from the outset. For it is precisely when opposing theories, no less extreme, begin themselves to shatter, theories that turned individualism into a rallying cry, that it is fitting to reexamine the history of the kibbutz movement from a new perspective.
* Ziva Sternhell teaches in the history and theory department of the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem.
** The book was published in cooperation with Hashomer Hatzair Archives Yad Yaari and the Mordechai Kiriati Fund
