The publication presents the text of a lecture by the prominent russian art historian and art theorist F.i.Schmit “Semantics of architectural Forms of St. isaac’s Cathedral”, delivered on January 23, 1933 to staff of the anti-religious museum, opened in the building of St. isaac’s Cathedral. This source may be of interest in the context of the “Soviet antiquity” problem, because Schmit proposes to take the evolution of the architectural forms of the monument as the main object of the museum exhibition. he traces the history of the formation of types of temple buildings and offers the socio-political determination of this process. Schmit’s project can be considered as one of the aspects of the reception of antiquity in the current discourse of the USSr of the 1920-1930th.