Pravdy Avenue

The area to the North and West of Svobody Square was built up in the late 1920s-early 1930s. The avenue was named after one of the first Soviet newspapers — the Pravda. The area was built up with residential apartment buildings of up to seven storeys. Together with a residential estate, kindergartens, schools and shops were constructed. Much later this principle was to become the basis for planning small residential neighbourhoods — the system which was applied in many parts of the city. Some buildings and complexes were given symbolic names which referred to the vocation of their tenants. Many of these names are still retained, including the Red Industrialist House (5, Pravdy Av.) designed by S. Kravets, one of the designers of Derzhprom, and built in 1930, the Tobacco House (1, Pravdy Av., designed by P. Frolov, 1931); the House of Specialists (7, Pravdy Av., designed by L. Lemysh, 1936). All of them are designed in the style of Constructivism.

Animated discussions of the external outlook of the facades were quite common at that time. Some insisted that the ruling proletariat should live in luxurious palaces, others claimed that the entire architecture of the past was a product of the malign classes, whilst the working class needed architecture of new industrial forms — buildings with dark grey cement facing designed in a simple manner without any architectural details. The buildings of this part of the city clearly illustrate this stylistic search.

A monument to the founders of Kharkiv was erected to commemorate the city’s 350th anniversary in August 2004 at the crossroads of Pravdy Avenue and Lenina Avenue, close to Svobody Square. It was sculptured by a famous Moscow sculptor Z. Tsereteli. A symbolic horse-rider is tribute to those hard-working people who secured the city its status of a major industrial, educational and scientific centre of Ukraine.

The oldest buildings in this street are those of the Regional Clinical Hospital (13, Pravdy Av.) designed by A. Spiegel on the land plots belonging to the University in the 1880s.