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Stalinist
Skyscrapers
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Moscow
State University
The MSU building back in
1956, with some pretty power lines stretching across the sky.
If you stand on
Смотровая
площадь, gazing over
Moscow, and turn to the left and look along the road, you can
see the church on this picture.
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During the four
months I spent in Moscow, I lived in sector "E" of the
students' dorm in the main building of Moscow State
University. It is quite a fascinating building - The enormous
size and the perfect symmetry make it very easy to
get lost in. (Something I spent a lot of time doing
during my first days there ...)
In this vast
building, 240 meters and 36 storeys high, the largest of the
Stalinist skyscrapers, you could basically live all your life
without ever going outside it. There are all kinds of stores,
cafés and repair shops, a bank, a gigantic library, used-book-stores, a cinema
and a post office, which can serve any need that could suddenly appear to
one. There are even rumours that there is a
swimming pool somewhere in the basement ... |
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Like all
universtities built in the 50's, its structure resembles
that of a fortress. A complicated system of guards and дежурные
(the 'ladies (sometimes gentlemen) behind the desks') can
sometimes make one feel like a prisoner. Especially in the
mornings, when the kitchens, as well as the lift and the
doors to the staircase are locked until seven o'clock, the дежурная
is snoring on the sofa, you are hungry and in a hurry to get
some time in an internet café before your classes, and
either don't dare to wake her up, or feel sorry for her,
since she works 24 hours every other day. |
The head of each of the
four wings is made to look like a Greek temple.
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It can be this cosy inside
one of MSU's about 5000 student rooms ... (Note the window
doubling as
fridge.)
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To perhaps make it all
worse, the doors to all staircases are locked all the time, to avoid
burglars and boyfriends or girlfriends to sneak inside. In case of
fire, the дежурная
is supposed to run around and lock up all the doors on the floor in question. What
happens if the fire is between the дежурная
and the staircase is another story ...
The MSU building was erected in
1949-1953, sprojected (sorry, but I just adore Russian verbs
with prefixes ...) by L. Rudnev, s. Chernyshev, P. Abrosimov, A.
Hryakov and V. Nasonov.
There are 68 lifts in
the whole main building (only very few of them were used by myself
...). On the side walls of the middle part, there are clocks,
thermometers and barometers. Particularly the clocks (which glow in
the dark, as does the whole building) are very handy for the |
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late-night-hang-
around-with-russian-
boyfriend-student,
as you can always find out whether it is 12 o'clock yet (in which case you must
climb the stairs all the way up to the 7th floor, as the lift
has been closed for the night).
The
hands on one of the clocks can be seen glowing eerily yellow
on the MSU building, looming behind the little Podmoscovite
posing in the
front. |
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An overview of the vast MSU
complex, with Moscow spreading out behind it.
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Written by Tinet Elmgren
in 2002.
All pics at which there is no particular indication about
where I might have stolen them from, are taken by yours
truly. |
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