Architectural Guide

Ievgeniia Gubkina

Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv has always balanced delicately between a fierce will for autonomy and a sometimes greater need to comply with strong neighbouring powers. Originally a semi-autonomous Cossack fortress, it grew into an important university city and industrial and trading centre in the Russian Empire, was closely connected with the rise in Ukrainian national consciousness at the beginning of the twentieth century, was briefly taken by Anton Denikin’s White Army in June 1919, and then became the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922, a status it retained until 1934. It led the way under NEP but was refashioned by Stalin and his successors to conform to the narrative of centralised Soviet power. Today it is the country’s easternmost and most vulnerable city, pounded daily by Russian drones and missiles.  

Kharkiv’s architecture and urban form reflect this conflicting history. Most notably, Kharkiv is a city of two centres – the historical core around the old fortress and a new administrative centre built in the 1920s and 1930s in a revolutionary new style expressing a new economic and social relations model. 

This book attempts to document Kharkiv’s buildings in words and photographs, even as many of them are being destroyed by Russian bombs. It is also a confession of love for the city from the book’s author, Kharkiv native and architecture historian Ievgeniia Gubkina. 

This title is part of the Histories of Ukrainian Architecture programme initiated by DOM publishers in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty on 24 February 2022.

135 x 245 mm
340 pages
300 images
English/Ukrainian
Softcover

ISBN 978-3-86922-407-7

Here you can find the blurb.

This title is expected to become available in Spring 2025.

More titles on the subject:

Kyiv. Architectural Guide. 100 Iconic Buildings since 1925