Lev Rudnev

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Lev Rudnev

Lev Vladimirovich Rudnev (Russian: Лев Владимирович Руднев; 13 March 1885 [O.S. 1 March]-November 19, 1956) was a Russian architect, representant of the Stalinist architecture.

Lev was born to a family of a school teacher in the town of Opochka (other sources state Novgorod). He graduted from the Riga real school and entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg (1906). In Academy he studied painting under Leon Benois and architecture under Ivan Alexandrovich Fomin. In 1915 Rudnev received classification of the artist-architect.

After the February Revolution Rudnev won the competition for the monument to the Victims of the Revolution on the Field of Mars in Petrograd (March of 1917). The avant-gard monument there was built by his project. In 1922-1948 Rudnev is a Professor of the Academy of Arts (former Imperial Academy of Arts) in Leningrad; in 1948-1952 he is a Professor at the Moscow Institute for Architecture (Moskovskij Arkhitekturny Institut). Rudnev was also a member of Soviet Academy of Architecture.

The main building of the Moscow State University is designed by Lev Rudnev and co-authors

He was the author of many Soviet large scale (sometime described as megalomaniac) projects, including:

Frunze Military Academy in Moscow (1939),
Administrative building on Shaposhnikov street( 1934-1938);
Administrative building on Frunze embankment (1938-1955);
Buildings of Latvian Academy of Sciences in Riga
The main building of Moscow State University) - 1949-1953, probably the best known of his buildings, Stalin Prize of 1949;
House of the Government of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in Baku (finished in 1952);
Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw in Poland (1952-1955)