Stalin’s Architect by Deyan Sudjic review – a momumental life

His work helped define the grand style of Soviet buildings, but was Boris Iofan a stooge, a propagandist or a victim of circumstance? His story makes for fascinating readingIn March 1976, when doing the rounds of the Barvikha sanatorium outside Moscow, a doctor found the once-celebrated architect Boris Iofan unconscious in his armchair. He was holding a drawing of a statue, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman by Vera Mukhina, that had surmounted Iofan’s most famous built work, the Soviet pavilion at