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Vopra [Vsesoyuznoye Ob’yedineniye Assotsiatsii Proletarskikh Arkhitektorov; Rus.: All-Union Alliance of Associations of Proletarian Architects].
Russian architectural group, active from 1929 to 1932. It was one of several ‘proletarian’ cultural organizations that came into being in every branch of art in the late 1920s and served to criticize Constructivism and the avant-garde from the viewpoint of proletarian class ideology. Organizations particularly attacked by Vopra were OSA (Association of contemporary architects) for its Constructivism, ASNOVA (Association of new architects) for its rationalist formalism, and MAO (Moscow architectural society) for its eclecticism and stylizations. Vopra’s chairman was the art historian Ivan Matsa (1893–1974), while other prominent members included the architects Karo Alabyan (1897–1959), Vasily Simbirtsev, Arkady Mordvinov (1896–1964), Aleksandr Vlasov, Gevork Kochar (1901–73), Abram Zaslavsky (1899–1962) and Viktor Baburov (1903–77), many of whom were recent graduates from Vkhutein (Higher (state) artistic technical institute; see VKHUTEMAS), Moscow. In its Declaration published in Stroitel’stvo Moskvy in 1929, Vopra denounced the Constructivists for their ‘mechanical approach’ and proclaimed that ‘the new proletarian architecture must develop its theory and practice on the basis of an application of the method of dialectical materialism’, which was to be combined with critical use of historical experience and the latest technological achievements. Disseminating its ideas through the unofficial organ Sovetskaya arkhitektura (‘Soviet architecture’), it also sought to consolidate young Communist Party members who were architects on the grounds of Marxist–Leninist theory and the ‘Party general line’. By 1930 Vopra had 49 members in its Moscow section and had also organized branches in the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Tomsk. Teams of architects from the organization took part in many open competitions in 1930 and 1931, for example that for the Palace of Soviets, Moscow. Although its members were able to realize very little during the Vopra period, not least because this was abruptly curtailed in 1932 with the dissolution of the group and the foundation of the all-embracing Union of Soviet Architects, many went on to assume dominant positions in the latter and as a result became successful Soviet architects.
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