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When we think of traveling circuses, the “big top” tent likely springs to mind with its acrobats, clowns, tightrope walkers, and other entertainers and pageantry. Sometimes the traditions are controversial, such as the use of elephants and lions for performances. But visions of bedazzled animals or the swinging trapeze are nevertheless etched in our collective memory.

In the former U.S.S.R., the tradition took on a whole new meaning. Circuses had been nationalized in 1919, a few years before the Soviet Union was formed. Along with theater, opera, and music, the genre was also co-opted by the socialist government as a propaganda machine, turning family-friendly entertainment into a channel for Communist Party ideological messages. And with its enormous popularity, venues were in demand.

Great Moscow State Circus

Between the 1950s and 1980s, the U.S.S.R. commissioned dozens of arenas across the nation, conceived as year-round event venues. Their strikingly geometric, brutalist designs are eye-catching and modern, reflecting the government’s fixation on expressing its power and technological progress. In the 1960s, the Space Race exemplified the Soviet Union’s critical role on the world stage. Arena architecture was yet another way to demonstrate the nation’s might, even occasionally resembling flying saucers.

Cirk, a new book from David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka of Zupagrafika, highlights the wide range of permanent circuses still standing around Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and further afield. “These arenas combined socialist modernism, experimental engineering, and choreographed spectacle,” the publisher says, adding: “Together, they reveal a lesser-known chapter of postwar modernist architecture shaped by ideology and mass entertainment.”

One of Cirk‘s more playful features is a series of pop-out paper models of actual buildings including state circus buildings in Bishkek, Chișinău, Dnipro, Moscow, and Tashkent. Find your copy on Zupagrafika’s website.

Kyrgyz State Circus, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Press-out models

Dnipro State Circus, Ukraine. Photo by Artem Baidala

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