The Lost Vanguard:Russian Modernist Architecture 1922–1932, the title of a recent exhibition of Richard Pare’s photographs at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a sumptuous book from Monacelli ($85), intensified my regrets that I didn’t sneak off one evening in Moscow and summon a taxi to savor these forbidden fruits. A few greenbacks would have taken me anywhere— though I hadn’t a clue about addresses. Pare spent 10 years traveling through Russia and the former Soviet republics, documenting what survives from a decade of idealism and experimentation. Many of the buildings have been despoiled, neglected, or, in recent years, demolished.

Oil wealth has sparked a construction boom. Moscow is being redeveloped on a grand scale, and ordinary Russians want to erase bitter memories of the past. Why save a rumbling block of workers’ apartments when big money can be made on a glittering mall? Who cares about the trophies of a revolution that led straight to the gulag and three quarter’s of a century of hardship and oppression?

Pare shows why Russians and everyone else should care. His images make me want to take the next flight to Moscow. The best of these buildings are even more inventive than those of the West European avant-garde. Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn built in the Soviet Union and came away with fresh ideas. Zaha Hadid—one of the most exciting talents working today—was inspired by the Constructivists to forge a new language of architecture.

There’s an urgent need to cherish and restore these modern landmarks, and at least one Russian has promised to set the lead. Sergey Gordeev, a young billionaire developer, bought the Melnikov house and is restoring that fragile composition of two interlocking cylinders in the hope of opening it as a museum. It’s the least typical and, arguably, the most significant work of its era. Konstantin Melnikov was the golden boy of the 1920s, designing a succession of adventurous workers’ clubs (Gordeev has saved one of those, too) and the giant cylinder of the Gosplan garage. He was allowed to spend months in Paris in 1925, designing the brilliant Soviet pavilion for the legendary decorative arts exposition. The organizers were as shocked by its undecorative wood skeleton as they were by Le Corbusier’s white cube. Melnikov was tempted to stay on and build a bridge–cum– parking garage over the Seine but chose to return to Moscow. In gratitude, the authorities permitted him to build a house studio for his family in the Arbat district at a time when everyone else lived collectively in well-policed apartment blocks.

Preservationists are praying that Gordeev will follow through on his pledges and buttress floundering efforts to save more buildings. Meanwhile, I’ve got my trip all mapped out. Pare’s book includes addresses and shows me what to expect. Standouts include a radio tower that was the first major structure completed after the revolution. From within, it resembles a spider web of steel and cables, a dizzying sculpture that any museum would covet. Then the Rusakov Workers Club, with its auditorium made up of three jutting bays of seats, and the MOGES power station across the river from the Kremlin, with its faceted glass bays and flared chimneys. And much more. “On my quest, the sense of discovery was always present and vivid” is how Pare describes his 10-year odyssey, and I can only hope for a taste of that in a crowded week.

For a complete list of articles from Culture+Travel available on ARTINFO, click here.