Miron Merzhanov

Miron Ivanovich Merzhanov, born Meran Merzhanyantz (Russian: Мирон Иванович Мержанов, Меран Оганесович Мержанянц, September 23, 1895 – December 1975), was a Soviet architect of Armenian descent, notable for being the de facto personal architect of Joseph Stalin in 1933–1941. Arrested in 1942 on political charges, Merzhanov continued professional work as a sharashka architect, designing numerous public buildings in the Black Sea region, Krasnoyarsk and Komsomolsk-na-Amure.

Meran Merzhanyantz was born to a middle-class Armenian family in Nor Nakhichevan (today the district of Rostov-on-Don). On the eve of World War I he graduated from high school and was admitted to Saint Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers. Merzhanyantz was eventually drafted into the Russian Army and served in deep rear training units. After the Russian revolution of 1917 he deserted and returned to Rostov. When faced with mandatory draft into Denikin's front-line troops, he preferred to volunteer with the military engineers, again escaping combat service. With the fall of the White movement, Merzhanyantz relocated to Krasnodar. There, in 1920–1923, he completed engineering training at a local college and married Elizaveta Khodzhaeva, daughter of a successful architect from Kislovodsk.

Throughout the 1920s Merzhanov (using a Russian version of his surname) was active in the Mineral Waters area (Essentuki, Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk). His designs of the 1920s belong to the constructivist architecture school with a neoclassical monumental impact and visual "dematerialization" of load-bearing structures. Merzhanov's trademark details were corner balconies and setbacks breaking through otherwise flat-wall surfaces. Later, he cited Ivan Zholtovsky and Frank Lloyd Wright as his principal sources.

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