The beauty and creative defiance of Soviet bus stops
If you are from the UK, you are probably familiar with the banal sight of bus stops. Usually characterised by cracked perspex, fast food advertisements and a faint smell of urine, you would be forgiven for viewing them as another forgettable aspect of a daily commute. However, behind the Iron Curtain, bus stops provided an invaluable opportunity for artistic expression within the Soviet Union.
In the West, life in the Soviet Union is often viewed as very authoritarian and uniform. Cars, clothes, music and, indeed, architecture were designed to be very consistent and egalitarian. So, when you hear ‘Soviet architecture’, images of brutalist flatblocks and the bleak landscape of places like Norilsk are likely what springs to mind. This was all by design, of course, since the architecture of the USSR was under strict supervision by the state.
The early Soviet period was dedicated to rebuilding the country following the 1917 revolution. Doing away with the bourgeois decadence of time passed and building a thriving, leading-edge society for the good of the proletariat. Early architectural plans for Moscow in the 1920s detail innovative, artistic plans for new buildings. An all-enveloping plan that would have seen Moscow become unlike any other city in the world at that time. Unfortunately, few of these plans were fully realised, and cost-cutting measures led to the uniform concrete jungle that many now associate with the former Soviet state.
During much of the Cold War, the priorities of the Soviet government were more focused on military spending, foreign policy, and the space race, which allowed for certain things, like bus stops, to be somewhat overlooked. As a result, local artists and architects saw an opportunity to express their creativity through the design of bus stops. In contrast to the brutalist and Stalinist concrete structures that are now synonymous with the Eastern bloc, the 15 republics that made up the USSR soon became populated with wonderfully complex, colourful and imaginative bus stops.
From modernist masterpieces to mosaics and elaborate statues, the bus stops of the former Soviet Union are as varied as they are beautiful. Many look as though they are shrunken versions of huge architectural marvels that would be the focal point of major cities around the world, yet they remain humble and often forgotten. While for many people in the modern day, living in ex-Soviet countries, these bus stops may form as ordinary a part of the daily commute as the banal old red bus stops of England might be to us, they represent so much more. Not only did the bus stops allow architects and artists to have some colourful influence over their local area, but they also represent a sense of creative defiance against the totalitarian regime of the Soviet state.
Tragically, many examples of these defiant bus stops are being lost. Partly as a result of troubling memories from the times in which they were built, great swathes of bus stops are being torn down and replaced by soulless modern bus stops, like the ones you would expect to find across the rest of Europe.
Now, with added difficulty in travelling to Russia due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it is difficult to say how many Soviet-era bus stops remain. Thankfully, Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig has been documenting these architectural marvels for years across 14 former Soviet states. In addition to his book Soviet Bus Stops, Herwig helped create a documentary in 2022 that detailed the importance of these structures and their rich history of cultural defiance.
Watch the trailer below.
