Construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station

The first Five-Year Plane (1928-1932) and the second Five-Year Plane (1933-1937) were decisive for country. They had large scale of construction. The White Sea-Baltic Canal, Magnitka, Turksib, and the Stalingrad Tractor Works were only a small part of the largest construction projects of that time. A separate line in this list is one of the most grandiose projects of the first Five-Year Plan - the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station. In spite of the unprecedented scale of construction and titanic difficulties, the DnieproHES was built on time and started up in October 1932. It was not just a grand constructing, but a peculiar symbol of the great power of the then still young state.

Pavel Redin was a contemporary of this legendary construction. He created a series of paintings dedicated to this event. In those paintings you can see the whole history of construction. Many of the paintings in this series were exhibited at the artist’s anniversary exhibition.

In Zaporozhye newspapers of that time, articles were published on this event, and also were described the artist's paintings and his work on them. You can familiarize with these newspaper articles under the links: 'Hour with Redin' and 'Music of colors'.

Komsomol members of the first five-year plan

Industrial Giants of Zaporozhye

The construction of Dnieper hydroelectric station was the energy base for the construction of large industrial enterprises in Zaporozhye: the Coking plant, the Chemical Plant, the Repair and Mechanical Plant and the Zaporizhstal plant, one of the largest metallurgical enterprises at that time. This plant was built in an incredibly short time - less than 3 years, and began work in November 1933. Currently, Zaporizhstal is the largest city-forming plant in Zaporozhye.

Pavel Redin has repeatedly visited this plant and wrote the “industrial landscapes” of this industry giant: blast furnaces, open-hearth, factory yard. One of Redin's works, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Zaporizhstal plant, depicts the meeting of three prominent statesmen on the building site of the future giant: Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin and Vlas Yakovlevich Chubar. This meeting took place in 1932 at ceremonial events dedicated to the launch of the first electric smelting furnace.

Agriculture of the USSR

After general collectivization in the early 1930s, agricultural activity in the country was carried out only collectively by agricultural artels (collective farms) or agricultural enterprises (state farms). The heyday of collective farm construction came in the 1950s and 60s. Virgin lands were developed; progressive methods of management were introduced. The financial well-being of collective farms grew; built residential buildings for workers, clubs, and office buildings. There was a growing demand for building decorations, including painting.

Collective farms ordered paintings depicting rural life. Many such works were painted by Pavel Redin. Unfortunately, only a few photographs of these paintings have been preserved, without specifying for whom those pictures were painted.