The figure of the «architectural critic» in the Russian media culture of the 1990s-2000s.

Danilov Vadim ORCID: 0009-0004-0306-359X Postgraduate student; Department of History and Theory of Culture; Russian State University for the Humanities 115573, Russia, Moscow, Orekhovy ave., 29k1, sq. 154 rrotullohem@gmail.com

Introduction

The figure of an architectural critic has appeared in the Russian media field since the 1990s - until that moment, representatives of architectural institutions whose publications appeared on the pages of professional periodicals were mainly engaged in the production of expert judgments in the field of architecture. Up to a certain point, mass media did not seem to notice architecture, and if they did, then in an extremely functional way: on the pages of non–specialized publications and popular newspapers, as a rule, notes on the commissioning of new square meters of housing and public buildings were published, sometimes – the publication of photographs and drawings of projects planned for implementation, accompanied by purely technical characteristics. In the perestroika era, public interest in the architectural topic grew significantly ^{[1, pp. 235-236]}, however, it was primarily expressed within the framework of a city-protection discourse addressed to the past ^{[2, pp. 216-217]} (and only with rare exceptions in the form of civil campaigns against new construction), which bypassed the topic of modern architecture. It is impossible not to mention the already begun collapse of the Soviet construction complex, which negatively affected the number and quality of commissioned facilities, which were met by the unprofessional public with indifference or emphasized rejection ^{[3, p. 132]}.

The use of the term "architectural critic" in the Soviet period can be found quite rarely, an appeal to this kind of author's identification is rather an exception, instead of it, as a rule, the generalizing marker "art critic" or the more abstract "architectural criticism" is used. Professional architects, art historians and architectural theorists can act as a representative of Soviet architectural criticism, but the concept of an "architectural critic" itself was formed more specifically in the 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet architectural discourse. Probably, the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" of 1972 played an important role in this process ^{[Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On literary and artistic criticism". January 21, 1972 // The CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. Moscow: Politizdat, 1986. Vol. 12. pp. 170-173]}, after the publication of which a number of articles appeared in professional periodicals calling for "increased criticism". In addition to ideological cliches, in these articles one can find arguments and discussions characteristic of this period about what a Soviet "architectural critic" should be ^{[Bakun A.I. Tasks of architectural criticism // Construction and architecture. 1972. No. 3. p. 37]} and conclusions about the deplorable state of Russian architectural criticism ^{[Shvidkovsky O. Architectural criticism. Problems and tasks // Architecture of the USSR. 1972. No.5. pp. 2-3]}. Curiously, none of the representatives of the professional architectural community were in a hurry to declare themselves an "architectural critic" and this trend continued until the end of the Soviet era.

The result of the increased interest in architectural criticism is a unique event called the "Meeting of Architectural Critics of Socialist Countries", which took place in 1983 and did not receive particularly wide publicity in the press^{. Hite. A necessary condition for progress // Architecture. adj. to the "Construction Newspaper". №3 (565). 1984. 24 January. pp.1-2.]} As the Czechoslovak architectural historian Radmira Sedlakova-Valterova recalls (known among other things as a "professional architectural critic" and actively published in architectural journals of the Czechoslovak Republic in this capacity), of the 36 participants in the meeting, only four recognized architectural criticism as the sphere of their professional activity, and its content differed little from standard architectural discussions, with the exception of constant statements about the "need for criticism" ^{[Valterova R. Prvni seminar kritiku architekturu // Ceskovsky architect. 1984. No.5, s. 5-7.]}. A specific institutional understanding of architectural criticism leads to attempts to artificially "nurture" such a sought–after architectural critic - in the 1980s, on the pages of architectural magazines we can find extensive lists of competencies written by architects and architectural theorists necessary for a future architectural critic, as well as a whole training course on architectural criticism, created by S. Zavarikhin ^[4].

However, soon the concept of an "architectural critic" will finally have understandable connotations, and this will happen in an environment very far from professional architectural discourse. In the post–Soviet period, cultural processes are taking place that spread the architectural agenda to a wide audience - the situation of vagueness and unpredictability of the new path of development of domestic architecture transfers architectural issues from a purely professional environment to the category of cultural agenda, in which the wide dissemination of new print media plays a key role. Since the early 1990s, columns about architecture written by authors who are not representatives of architectural institutions have begun to appear in socio-political newspapers - institutional specialists are being replaced by people who are not directly related to architecture, among whom are carriers of art history education and already established professional journalists.

This is influenced by several factors: since the mid-1990s, there has been extremely high construction activity, notable transformations within which primarily affect Moscow, to which a significant proportion of publications in the press of that time are devoted. It is worth noting that regional architectural journalism also existed in the 1990s and 2000s, and on an impressive scale by current standards, but this topic is already the subject of a separate study. According to a number of studies, up to 90% of all new construction ^[5] was carried out in the center of Moscow, bringing unprecedented transformations to the architectural appearance of the capital ^{[Old Moscow. Inventory / edited by Yu. Grigoryan // Adj. to the magazine Project Russia. 2011. №4 (62)]}. Against this background, there is a need for intermediaries between the new architecture and a wider audience than the professional community – new construction is of high interest, and not only at the level of Mayor Luzhkov's grands projets, many of which have become large-scale informational occasions. A significant percentage of buildings of new architecture are localized in the city center, especially for the new "author's" architecture, which is produced by private bureaus. Architecture successfully occupies its new place as part of the "cultural agenda", and the figure of an intermediary between it and the general public is now thought of somewhat differently than during the functioning of the "commission on architectural criticism, propaganda and theory of architecture" ^{[Chronicle // Architecture of the USSR. 1983. No.2. p.63]}.

To the history of the concept

The figure of an "architectural critic" in the media environment does not take shape immediately. Turning to the first article by the later famous Russian architectural critic Grigory Revzin, published in 1993 in the daily newspaper Segodnya, we find that he was introduced to readers as a "reviewing art critic" ^{[Revzin G. The Modest charm of hairdressers // Today. 1993. June 1. No. 21. p. 9]}. However, already in 1995, the texts of Revzin and other authors of "Today" about architecture were published with the mark "criticism". The phrase "architectural criticism" begins to appear primarily in the texts of its authors – even at an early stage of the existence of a new format of architectural journalism, the authors of the newspaper Grigory Revzin and Mikhail Tumarkin talk about the shortage of critical publications about architecture and urge to put the genre of architectural review on a par with more traditional varieties of media criticism. Here is a quote from the "software" Revzin's 1995 text, in which he portrays a modern critic as an intermediary who "translates" architecture into cultural meanings: "Architecture does not exist in culture, but in some other place. There is a construction boom. The context of big money, mafia connections, and power structures is there. There is no cultural context" ^{[Revzin G. Love for modernity // Today, special issue. "Expo today. Architecture". 1995. No. 6. p. 2.]} – after all, without this mediation, what is happening in architecture is "not realized" by society.

Indeed, architectural criticism of the 1990s was distinguished by the irregularity of its appearance on the pages of magazines and newspapers - headings could suddenly appear and disappear again for months, which will be observed in the 2000s. The appearance of "full-time" architectural critics can be counted from the newspaper Kommersant (since 1998), in which regular columns by Grigory Revzin begin to appear (mostly he is called a "correspondent" and a "columnist"). Full-time architectural publicists also appear in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Nikolay Malinin) and Kultura newspaper (Anna Martovitskaya). Previously unknown to the general reader, the figure of an architectural critic in the 2000s began a victorious march through various publications - now it can be found not only in newspapers, but also, for example, in glossy magazines, in which architecture is beginning to be attributed to the sphere of elite cultural consumption. It can be said that the specific image of an architectural critic is formed before its name becomes established – the designation of authors writing about architecture as "architectural critics" does not immediately become as widespread as in the case of literary critics and film critics, but its steady use is formed throughout the 2000s, turning by the end of the decade "an architectural critic" into a completely recognizable character from the field of public intellectuals – we can say that this is largely due to the efforts of the critics themselves.

By 2008, the newspaper Vremya Novosti launched the heading "Club of Architectural Criticism", indicating a new noticeable diversity of representatives of this profession ^{[Zmeul A. Hopeful crisis // Vremya Novosti. 2008. December 16. No.233. URL: http://www.vremya.ru/2008/233/13/218870.html ]} – an architectural critic becomes an integral author for publications writing about the cultural agenda in one way or another, there were up to a dozen critics in the category reflecting the largest players in the media field in various genres – characteristically, there are no professional architectural publications among them. In a little over a decade, the figure that was previously absent from the media space acquires distinct features and becomes quite well-established. In the media culture of the 2000s, an architectural critic is one of the many public intellectuals born in the process of constructing an elitist discourse in the press, along with film and theater critics, literary critics, and political commentators ^[6]. ^{It should be noted that in 2009, Grigory Revzin, in the status of an "architectural critic", was shortlisted for the "Most Influential Intellectual of Russia" on the OpenSpace portal, along with politicians, writers, TV presenters and economists [The most influential intellectual of Russia (voting) // openspace.ru . URL: https://os.colta.ru/votes/details/13323 /]}.

Who is a critic?

As P. Rixon notes, new forms of media criticism tend to occupy a niche similar to the already established forms of criticism, which is a consequence of the realization of the interests of both the print media industry and those industries whose product criticism is directed at. Thus, criticism is placed under a "double hegemony" ^{[7, pp. 22-24]}. We can say that we are talking about attempts to "neutralize" any new direction of criticism with the help of proven practices. In the case of architectural criticism, we are dealing with the interest of economic actors (for example, the largest participants in the construction market) in keeping criticism from revealing certain socio-political issues and placing it on a par with the traditionally more isolated from political discourse "literary-centric" areas of criticism (film criticism, literary and musical criticism). It should be noted that in the domestic context of the 1990s-2000s, architectural criticism is simultaneously embedded in the framework of established forms of cultural criticism and is demonstratively politicized, which is a reflection of the specific alignment of political and economic forces and their influence on the media market.

Critics in the "pre–network" era of traditional print media are usually "appointed" by publications that hire certain authors - it is worth noting that, given the specifics of print media, the key feature of media criticism should be the ability to attract a certain audience, thereby meeting the requirements of the dominant cultural industry, and the very set of expert analytical skills that stood in the the head of the corner in institutional criticism (here it is appropriate to recall the endless lists of critics' competencies that were created in the late Soviet period ^[8]) recedes into the background ^{[9, pp. 9-10]}. So the critic's new expert position turns out to be simultaneously connected with his media affiliation – authors who publish on the pages of respectable publications "by default" receive a certain level of reader loyalty, but the critic's own self-presentation activity as an expert also becomes important, for which a special, "external" position is constructed in relation to interested parties, which it should also fit into the set of expectations of the audience from her.

Becoming on a par with other columnists of Kommersant, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Totals and Vedomosti, architectural critics receive part of the reader's "credit of trust" to respectable business newspapers, and their self–presentation is based on the image of that specific reader that these publications construct - an intellectual bourgeois for whom culture It is "one of the components of prestige" ^{[10, p. 8]}.

Self-presentation criticism

Let's pay attention to the self–presentation of the authors precisely as "architectural critics" - in the analyzed sample of publications of mass media that printed architectural critical articles for the period 1995-2008. Most often, this is done by the columnist of Segodnya, and subsequently Kommersant, Grigory Revzin, in whose reviews we can observe a periodic appeal to the critic's own status as a carrier of expert a position that is emphatically separated from the positions of others: architects, the public, etc. At the same time, the declared uniqueness of his own expert position is combined with irony regarding the image of an architectural critic constructed "from the outside" as a representative of the media landscape:

"I am still an architectural critic, that is, a rather sophisticated being in the sense of describing my feelings about space. So, the only thing that escaped me when I saw this descent was an intelligent Anglicized "Wow!"" ^{[Revzin G. House for a snowy mountain. Kommersant Weekend 2008. No.18. URL: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/890903 ]}.

The specificity of the critic's status as a public intellectual, emphasizing the values of an aesthetic character as opposed to a roughly functional approach, is what separates him from the professional architectural environment.:

"For example, as a critic, I often feel that I am not able to appreciate the subtlety of an architect's work with a heating main, but I am more interested in the artistic effect" ^{[Revzin G. Competition of elderly football players. Kommersant Weekend 2005. No.105. URL: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/585163 ]}.

The polemical acuteness and the external position in relation to traditional authorities give the image of the critic a certain scandalousness, which Revzin ironically emphasizes:

"A critic is a person who is primarily engaged in revelations, therefore, when faced with the task of writing a eulogy, you feel dumbfounded. Nevertheless, I want to do just that" ^{[Revzin G. Consider me a classicist // Kommersant Power No.33. 2005, p. 52]}.

Anna Martovitskaya, an architectural columnist for the newspaper Kultura, focuses on the expert position of the critic in her article on the results of the architectural festival – a critic is someone to whom the architectural community demonstrates its achievements, which will be given an expert assessment:

"The results have been summed up, prizes have been distributed, and it's time for the critic to sit down at the computer and remember: what was actually shown to him at the exhibition" ^{[Martovitskaya A. Not covered with ivy // Culture. 2003. No. 19. p.4]}.

Let's also pay attention to the emphasis placed on his own professional status by the critic of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Nikolai Malinin, drawing a symbolic line between what an architectural critic should talk about from an expert position and what is not, because criticism is primarily interested in the architectural process itself, and not those high–profile events about which it is interesting to discuss with the masses – the surname of the sculptor Tsereteli acts here at the same time as a substitute for a profane attitude to architecture, which does not separate monumental sculpture from it, and philistine bad taste:

"An architectural critic is an exotic profession, the first question you hear when introducing yourself in a company of other interests is: "Well, how do you feel about Tsereteli?" Although for some reason I do not ask the plumber how he treats products that have passed the long way of the rectum" ^{[Malinin N. The street writhes without language // An independent newspaper. 2000. March 2. URL: https://www.ng.ru/art/2000-03-02/1_street.html]}.

The construction of a community of "critics" takes place within the framework of articulating their position, in order to strengthen it. Here we find two ways: the first serves to represent oneself as part of a progressive community of like–minded people - Grigory Revzin addresses him in his review of the Moscow project of the Russian Avant-Garde residential complex by Dutch architect Eric Van Egeraat, reminding the reader of the fact that the project met with almost unanimous critical approval:

"The Russian avant-garde and the Dutch architect together create such an attractive composition for modern criticism that it is impossible to expect even a word against it" ^{[Revzin G. Zamoskvoretsky avangard // Kommersant Vlast. No. 9, 2004, p. 64]}.

In situations where we are talking about certain architectural trends that are presented as "progressive" in the discourse of architectural criticism, the community of critics also appears to be a united front, to which the authors consider themselves:

"In general, critics were perplexed to note that mostly neat projects made according to the European standard were exhibited at the festival, and especially at the competition" ^{[Martovitskaya A. Streak "Architecture" // Culture. 2001. No. 49-50. p. 6]}.

In the second case, a reference to the community is made to further highlight its unique expert position by disagreeing with the opinion of the "majority", which lacks the insight to capture truly relevant architectural trends:

"... we are present at the collective obsolescence of architectural criticism, which does not keep pace with the process and continues to defend the old rebellious principles" ^{[Revzin G. Alexander Brodsky defeated Russian architecture // Kommersant. 2002. №84. URL:https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/323059]}.

One way or another, the presence of "colleagues in the shop" in architectural criticism is indicated quite explicitly. Moreover, being an architectural critic implies adherence to a number of "progressive" positions regarding modern architecture. At the same time, unlike other genres related to artistic criticism, the emphasis is more on the potential influence of this expert group on the architectural process, as well as the communication of its own aesthetic paradigm to a certain layer, the "educated class". It should be noted that such a position arises, among other things, against the background of the existence of an alternative line of architectural criticism, inheriting the Soviet architectural discourse, which does not receive wide media representation, remaining entirely within the framework of narrowly professional small-circulation publications. However, new architectural critics, due to the specifics of their activities, regularly cross paths with her – in the process of searching for information, attending architectural events and social interactions in the architectural environment.

The reader

Addressing the audience of the "educated minority", critics construct in their texts the position of the philistine, which correlates with the privileged view of a representative of the "bohemian bourgeoisie" (bourgeois bohemian) ^{[11, pp. 46-47]} – as a rule, deeply conservative, prone to bad taste and speaking in unison with the city authorities (the declared opposition of the current government is the key a trait not only for architectural critics, but also for the public intellectual in general) ^{[12, pp. 93-95]}. The architectural community is thought of in a somewhat similar way – outside of the creative personalities that appear in the texts of critics, there is a certain faceless mass that has "unfair" access to the main part of the resources for the production of architecture and prevents the advent of "correct" architecture by its position, blindly serving a public customer, or too afraid to contradict the taste of a private customer. In this community, Soviet aesthetic views and professional patterns of behavior are constantly being reproduced, the struggle against which is being raised to the banner of architectural critics. The critic is presented as a caring bearer of a cultural-trager position, taking on the noble mission of "enlightenment", who expects the same behavior from representatives of the architectural community, who enroll them as "allies". An uninterested, external position is declared unacceptable.

Commenting on the competition for the new building of the Mariinsky Theatre, Izvestia critic Olga Kabanova connects the unwillingness of the public to understand modern architecture with the lack of its bright samples through which it could be comprehended, thereby assigning responsibility for negative trends in architecture, including the architects themselves:

"And our society orders exactly the frozen music that looms before its eyes" ^{[Kabanova O. Architecture of moderation // News. 2002. September 2. URL: https://iz.ru/news/267437]}.

An interesting double rebuke is towards the indifference of architects and customers – as at the same time guilty of an inadequate level of aesthetic education of the public, and at the same time also not having good taste:

"And the public in its conservatism, of course, will be right. Over the past decades, she has not had the opportunity to make sure that modern architecture can be not only daring, but also beautiful" ^{[Kabanova O. How to reconstruct the Mariinsky? // News. 2002. January 22nd. URL: https://archi.ru/press/russia/34639/kak-rekonstruirovat-mariinku]}.

Anna Martovitskaya broadcasts a similar position in her review of the architectural festival "Architecture" – the success of Moscow architecture is associated with the fact that the "right" values were conveyed to the wealthy consumer through the efforts of ideological architects:

"Muscovites are much more relaxed in this sense (read more brazenly) and have managed to convince at least some wealthy citizens that they need to pay not for an arbitrary combination of glass and marble towers, but for Architecture. Their colleagues from the regions are too afraid not to receive orders at all in order to educate the taste of their customers" ^{[Martovitskaya A. Frozen music with a serious face// Culture. 2003. No.41. p. 5]}.

Interestingly, the critic himself is not thought of in this situation as an actor of transformations, but there is an implicit hint of his dominant position in the hierarchy of carriers of ideas about good taste – which should sound in unison with the reader's ideas as a representative of a privileged class.

Another characteristic technique is to present the critic's position as a "voice crying out in the desert", which in no way can find worthy public support. Thus, the position of the critic as an expert is further strengthened by constructing his own uniqueness:

"But it is not in our tradition to preserve ruins, we love a well-restored history" ^{[Kabanova O. Architect of Socialism// Izvestia. 2001. August 21st. URL: https://archi.ru/press/russia/34647/zodchii-socializma-v-sredu-ispolnyaetsya-sto-let-so-dnya-rozhdeniya-dmitriya-chechulina]}.

The idea of removing oneself from the unyielding masses and institutions, of course, does not imply the departure of the real one – it is about consolidating the boundaries of the "educated minority" of readers who potentially share the ideas of the critic:

"In addition, the hearts of Muscovites, ordinary visitors to Tsaritsyn, are imbued with a feeling not even of satisfaction, but of jubilant gratitude to the mayor who gave Moscow such a miracle. When you so radically disagree with the population and the authorities in the area where you are an expert, you need to switch to the position of an ethnographer" ^{[Revzin G. Empty instead // Kommersant. №158. 2007. c. 1.]}.

The constant focus on the situation of information scarcity, the lack of professionals writing about architecture emphasizes the unique status of the author as one of the few truly knowledgeable experts able to capture the "spirit of the times". Describing modern Russian architectural processes, Nikolai Malinin notes that "for the last ten years there has been something to talk about. But there is no one" ^{[Malinin N. The street writhes without language // An independent Newspaper. 2000. March 2. URL: https://www.ng.ru/art/2000-03-02/1_street.html]}.

The above fragments illustrate the thesis that a media critic, as an expert, takes the position of a mediator or mediator, whose goal is to convey to the audience a set of ideas about "good taste" (of course, already corresponding to the taste of the audience), as well as to present a certain interpretation of the architectural process placed in a cultural context. This is how the "heroes and villains" of modern architecture arise, a radical opposition of innovators and supporters of progressive architectural ideas to the bearers of outdated artistic values is born, creative heroes are appointed, each time becoming a "ray of light" in the dark realm of domestic architecture - at the same time, an analysis of architectural life, statements about the birth of a particular style, "victories" of one style over another – all this changes almost every year. A particularly characteristic example is the myth constructed by critics about the confrontation of "neo–modernism" with the "Moscow style" ^{[13, 56-61]}, which will be destroyed by the critics themselves a few years after its creation - it turns out that the irreconcilable opponents of "progressive" architecture quite successfully begin to create in such a hostile direction, and the architecture of neo-modernism itself it turns out to be in fact an unremarkable boring European architecture of the "Swiss province" ^{[Revzin G. The Unbuilt architect // Kommersant Vlast. 2007. No. 22. p. 50]}, as Grigory Revzin notes, and immediately appoints the so–called "neoclassicists" to the role of new trendsetters, which this time does not find a wide response in the community of architectural critics.

Do without a critic

Project Russia stands somewhat apart – the main and for a long time the only "non-systemic" post-Soviet architecture magazine, which, however, is not a professional architectural publication in the traditional sense of the word, but a kind of intellectual gloss. In the period 1990-2000, the magazine was distinguished by a pronounced ideology of the publication, which in its texts for many years was formulated by the editor-in-chief of the publication Bart Goldhoorn, aimed at "destroying monopolies that still dominate in Russia" and supporting "rational, economical, modern, socially oriented, responsible" architecture" ^{[Goldhoorn B. From the editor // Project Russia. 2000. No. 1 p.4.]}. In this case, it is difficult to call the figure of the critic at least somewhat pronounced - note that the entire writing staff of the magazine is not divided into regular authors of certain headings, acting more like a collection of like–minded people. Instead of reviews placed in a clearly defined place in the grid of newspaper or magazine headings, in the "Project Russia" criticism, as a rule, is located among the "literary" headlines, mostly one-time headings, which are formed in each issue in accordance with the stated theme of the issue.

The analysis of the architectural criticism of the "Russia Project" shows us that we are dealing with the same discourse that the new newspaper and magazine criticism broadcasts – despite the architectural specialization of the publication, there is no professionalization and closeness to the external reader, educational pathos and familiar ways of constructing expertise remain, which in the context of the magazine receive a curious development. First of all, the deliberately depersonalized narrative of critical reviews catches the eye, in which the focus is on correlating architectural structures with the declared "values" of the publication. The references to the personal experience and aesthetic impressions of the critic are noticeably reduced – each of the authors of the "Project Russia" He speaks as if on behalf of the entire progressive community, which has a vision of what proper modern architecture should be.

We can say that in the "Russia Project" we are already dealing with a kind of expert totality, a space where the possibilities of alternative discourses are closed (or at least significantly limited) ^{[14, p. 96]}. Rare appearances of the figure of the critic in his texts are in the form of abstract criticism of the external, "conservative" or "typical".

Conclusion

During the 1990s and 2000s, a specific type of author's self-presentation was formed in Russian media culture as an "architectural critic", which has a set of characteristics markedly different from those that accompanied the use of such identification in previous periods, the most notable of which is the construction of the author's position as a public intellectual, the discourse of elitism, focused on the audience, which It can be described as an "educated minority".

We find that in the case of such the most recognizable critics of the period under study as Nikolai Malinin or Grigory Revzin, self-presentation as an "architectural critic" goes beyond the simple status of a columnist in specific publications, extending to the entire public sphere. Sharing a number of key attitudes, not every author of architectural criticism of this period actively uses the identification of himself as an architectural critic, however, Revzin and Malinin, being the most media-famous authors writing about architecture and having their own recognizable style, most intensively represent themselves as architectural critics, which also works for the production of a certain expert monopoly.

So, Grigory Revzin himself, in one of his interviews, retrospectively limits representatives of professional architectural criticism to just two people, one of whom is himself (!): "There were two of us focused specifically on the newspaper: Kolya Malinin and after him I" ^{[Tarabarina Yu., Revzin G. Grigory Revzin: "There is no methodology – sheer shamanism" // <url> URL: https://archi.ru/russia/68123/grigorii-revzin-net-nikakoi-metodologii-sploshnoe-shamanstvo ].} Other authors who worked in this field are still defined by Revzin as representatives of other directions who were brought into architecture "by accident". It is characteristic that the phrase "architectural critic" itself will later be firmly associated with Revzin, sometimes being used with such epithets as "the main architectural critic of the country" ^{[Conversations about media: Grigory Revzin and Yuri Saprykin // Afisha Gorod. August 6, 2012. URL: https://daily.afisha.ru/archive/gorod/archive/media-revzin-saprykin /].}

Self–identification as a critic is part of the construction of a new expert position that shifts the monopoly of professional architectural knowledge and transfers architecture to the sphere of cultural consumption. In some cases, as demonstrated by the magazine "Project Russia", such identification is not required due to the characteristics of the medium, which is already constructing a privileged position in architectural discourse. If on the pages of a socio-political publication or a glossy magazine, the architectural position works as one of the extensions of the values and attitudes of the "educated class", their projection on the field of architecture, then in the case of the "Project Russia" we are already dealing with a set of ideas about architecture that are "pre-established" on the agenda of the publication, therefore the critic-mediator is replaced to an impersonal "fixative critic" who only complacently notes the unstoppable advance of progress.