Sabir Rakhimovich Adylov

You are on Mustakillik Square, formerly Lenin Square. In 1973, the central fountain was being built here, and a century-old oak tree stood in the way of construction. The tree was about to be cut down. The city's chief architect, Sabir Adilov, insisted it be left alone, and along with it, as a book about him recounts, other old trees survived as well. At his insistence, the old bed of the Anhor canal was also preserved, which many had suggested simply filling in after a new one was dug. He brought this habit from Leningrad. As an intern student, he was marking out the layout of a neighborhood microdistrict, and the head of the workshop, architect Alexander Nikolsky, made a remark to him that Adilov would retell all his life: "Young man! With a single stroke of your pen, you wiped out three pines, each of which is older than both of us. We need to preserve these trees even during construction so they continue to purify the air and serve people." He was a local, unlike many of the characters on this map. He was born on March 1, 1932, in the Akhun-Guzar mahalla, into a working-class family. At school, he was the permanent editor of the wall newspaper, designed theater posters, and drew covers for children's magazines. In 1949, he entered the architectural department of the Central Asian Industrial Institute; among his teachers was Mithat Bulatov, whose card is also on this map. His diploma project in 1955 was a central park of culture and recreation for Tashkent with a restaurant seating two hundred and fifty. His career progressed quickly after that. At twenty-three, he became the chief architect of Almalyk and wrote building regulations for the city. From 1966 to 1970, he worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, and in 1970 he assumed the position for which he is remembered: chief architect of Tashkent. He remained in it during the entire period when the city was being built up most rapidly after the earthquake. In 1975, the team he was part of received the USSR State Award for the architecture of central Tashkent. In 1981, he became a People's Architect of the USSR, a rare title. And here it must be said what is absent from the Soviet book about him. The name of the city's chief architect stood first in the lists of authors for a great many buildings, and Tashkent's architectural community did not acknowledge this authorship behind his back. Architectural historian Boris Chukhovich writes about this directly: Adilov's role in the projects was more often fictitious and boiled down to the urban planning tie-in of the object. In 1975, the State Prize laureates for the center of Tashkent did not include most of the authors of the winning competition project, nor the architects who made the Panoramic Cinema, the CC building, and the Youth House, but nomenklatura figures did get in. The professional community could only respond with skits. For the anniversary exhibition of the Union of Architects of Uzbekistan in 1984, a caricature appeared: a two-headed centaur, Adilov and the director of TashNIIPIgenplan, Farhad Tursunov, while the centaur's belly was propped up by an "atlas", Adilov's deputy Lyon Adamov. The caption read: A familiar trio to all - Laureate-many-times-over, Had no misfortune befallen Him, he'd be many-times-over-er... But there is a third source where he speaks for himself. In 1982, Adilov published an article on the problems of planning and building Tashkent, and it is written in anything but a triumphant tone. Housing, writes the chief architect, is growing unacceptably slowly: in 1972, there were 8.8 square meters per person, and by 1982 only 9.6 are expected. Industry and population are converging on the capital beyond all measure, and the reason is that the city and regional executive committees "fail to show due principledness, permitting the placement of objects that violate the general plan of the city and suburban zone." This is the real job of the chief architect: not signing other people's drawings, but defending the master plan against those who violate it. His name in the lists of authors, therefore, proves nothing in itself. And the trees on the square that he prevented from being cut down do not end up in any author lists at all. He died in Tashkent in 2002.