Pension 'Druzhba'. A gem of late Soviet modernism.

The book "Sanatorium 'Friendship'. The Pearl of Late Soviet Modernism" by Igor Vasilevsky and Roza Tevosyan is dedicated to one of the most unusual monuments of late Soviet architecture, erected in Kurpaty on the coast of Southern Crimea in 1983–1985. Commissioned by the trade unions of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the USSR, the project by architects Igor Vasilevsky and Nodar Kancheli managed to combine several "evolutionary lines" of Soviet architecture and engineering art. Built on an unfavorable slope in a seismic area, the building was conceived as a gravity-defying spaceship. The authors of the book trace the building's succession from early Soviet constructivist architecture and the romance of the commune, recalling pre-war projects of Soviet resorts: Nikolai Sokolov and Alexey Shchusev in Macesta, the RKKA sanatoriums named after Voroshilov, Narcomvnudel, and Narcomvoenmor by M. Merzhanov, the first version of the "Artek" pioneer camp. The publication is equipped with a large number of photographs and drawings, a biography, and a list of works by Igor Vasilevsky, with the text provided in both Russian and English. The book is intended for specialists in the history of Soviet architecture and readers interested in modernist monuments in the territory of the former USSR.