Kharkiv, Capital of Soviet Ukraine, and the Derzhprom Building

Ukraine’s capital is Kyiv, but for a period during the Soviet era the Ukrainian government was based in Kharkiv. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies) states that Kharkiv “was the capital of Soviet Ukraine from 1920 to 1934.” It was during that period that Derzhprom (Держпром, the House of State Industry), which stands on Kharkiv’s Freedom Square, was built to bring the capital’s government offices together in one place.

When did it become the capital?

Encyclopedias differ on when exactly Kharkiv became the capital.

Even before this, Kharkiv had briefly served as a base for Soviet power. According to both IEU and VUE, the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets was held in Kharkiv on December 24–25, 1917, and elected a Soviet government (the People’s Secretariat). Control of Kharkiv then changed hands repeatedly — German forces, the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and Denikin’s Volunteer Army — and, according to VUE, a third Soviet government was installed on December 12, 1919. The period referred to as “the capital years” in this article’s title runs from that point at the end of 1919 through 1934.

Kharkiv during its years as capital

According to IEU, interwar Kharkiv, as the capital, was developed more intensively than many other Soviet cities. Its municipal area grew from 141 square kilometers in 1924 to 272 square kilometers in 1939. The Kharkiv Tractor Plant began production in 1931, and a turbine plant started operating in 1934.

The 1920s were a period of the “Ukrainization” policy, and Kharkiv also became a center of literature and theater. IEU writes that writers’ organizations such as Pluh, Hart, VAPLITE, and Nova Generatsiia were active until 1932. According to VUE, the Berezil theater, led by Les Kurbas, moved from Kyiv to Kharkiv in 1926. The writers’ apartment building Slovo (1929) also dates from this period. What later happened to the writers who lived there is covered in our article on the Executed Renaissance.

How Derzhprom was built

According to VUE’s entry “Держпром у Харкові” (written by V. V. Vecherskyi), the decision to build a large administrative building in the capital, Kharkiv, was made in March 1925, and a design competition was held that same summer. The design that won first place and was actually built was by the architects Serafimov, Felger, and Kravets. Construction was directed by the engineer Rotert. The building opened on November 7, 1928, to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the October Revolution, but VUE writes that construction actually continued into 1929. IEU also gives the years of construction as “1925–1929.”

The building consists of nine blocks, grouped in threes into three clusters, arranged fan-like toward the center of the circular part of Freedom Square. The height rises from six stories at the outer edges to eleven stories at the center, with the two central blocks standing 11 stories and 63 meters tall (VUE). The blocks are linked by covered bridges built at the third-, fifth-, and sixth-floor levels, with city streets passing underneath them. VUE explains that the flat roofs, continuous ribbon windows, and undecorated walls make this the clearest expression here of the architectural approach known as Constructivism.

The building housed the Council of People’s Commissars of the republic, the State Planning Committee, the Supreme Council of the National Economy, and various people’s commissariats (equivalent to ministries) (VUE). From 1934, once the capital moved to Kyiv, the Kharkiv Oblast Executive Committee occupied it.

It was in this building that Mykola Skrypnyk, the politician who advanced Ukrainization, died in his office on July 7, 1933. IEU describes it as suicide, anticipating the end of Ukrainization and his own purge, while VUE writes that it was officially recorded as suicide but that he was actually killed by the secret police. Because the encyclopedias disagree, this article does not assert either account as fact.

VUE further states that, in the early 1930s, the authorities banned the Constructivist style itself, calling it “Ukrainian nationalist sabotage.”

1934: the capital moves to Kyiv

According to an explanation from the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, at a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine on January 18, 1934, Second Secretary Postyshev reported that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and “Comrade Stalin personally” were proposing to move the capital from Kharkiv to Kyiv. The decision was approved that same January at the 12th Party Congress, and formally decided by the Council of People’s Commissars on June 24, 1934. The transfer of government and party bodies began that day, and ceremonies and a military parade were held in Kyiv. Kyiv formally held the authority of the capital from August 1, 1934, and its status as capital was written into the January 1937 constitution.

IEU writes that, through the repression of Ukrainian institutions and nationally conscious intellectuals, the famine of 1932–33 (the Holodomor), intensified Russification, and the transfer of the capital, Kharkiv “lost much of its Ukrainian character.” The Holodomor is covered in a separate article.

The World Heritage Tentative List and enhanced protection

Derzhprom is not a World Heritage Site. It was added to UNESCO World Heritage Centre’s Tentative List (a list of candidates that countries are considering nominating in the future) on April 27, 2017, on an application by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. The criterion cited is (iv), an outstanding example of a type of building. The application describes Derzhprom as “the world’s first office building of state scale built in a Modernist form” and “the largest building in the world built in the Constructivist style.” This is the description in Ukraine’s own application — VUE also writes that it is “the largest building in the world built in the Constructivist style” — but it is not an assessment that UNESCO itself has endorsed. Ukraine’s World Heritage Sites are listed in our article on Ukrainian cities and World Heritage.

Separately, the committee of the Second Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict added 20 Ukrainian sites, including Derzhprom, to the List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection on September 7, 2023 (UNESCO, Ministry of Culture of Ukraine; UNESCO’s own document describes this as a provisional listing). Enhanced protection requires parties to a conflict not to make the cultural property the object of attack and not to use it for military purposes.

Damage in 2024

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Derzhprom has repeatedly been damaged in attacks on Kharkiv. According to VUE, on the night of October 28, 2024, the building was newly damaged in an attack using Russian guided bombs. According to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, an attack on November 8, 2024 caused a powerful explosion at the third-floor level of entrance No. 7, collapsing the second and third floors and severely damaging the exterior walls and roof. In response, UNESCO’s committee decided on December 11, 2024 to apply its “special monitoring” (ad hoc monitoring) mechanism to Derzhprom, and the Ministry of Culture says this is the first time the mechanism has been used for Ukraine.

The list of damaged Ukrainian cultural sites verified by UNESCO also includes the Slovo building in Kharkiv.