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In December 1931,
the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour - with its
monuments to tsarist military glory inextricably linked with
the old tsarist authority - was blown up, to make way for the
glorious Palace of the Soviets. This monumental building was
to outshine everything the old Russia had had to offer, and
bring out the true Soviet splendour.
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In the
beginning, the drafts for the Palace were relatively
modest in a modernistic and anti-monumental way, but as
work went on, it started to take on more and more
massive and hierarchic proportions. As the project
evolved, a 100-meter lenin was to be added on the top,
and the building itself was, in the 1934 final design,
to be 389 meters tall - higher than the Empire State
Building. At this point, the project started taking on
mythical dimensions ...
However, the
plans were never realised higher than a few ground
floors. In 1937 its building was begun, but with WWII
breaking out in 1941, work was suspended, as the
materials found considerably more urging needs in the
war effort. |
Another draft
version.
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After the war,
Stalin seemed to have lost interest in the Palace of the
Soviets, and redirected resources to the other six
skyscrapers.
Instead, the
building site was, in Chruschev's times, made into the world's
biggest outdoors swimming pool, "Москва".
The
swimming pool, in turn, was demolished in 1997, when Moscow's
mayor Yury Luzhkov initiated the rebuilding of the Cathedral
of Christ the Saviour. (Which, to be frank, turned out a bit
vulgar in the end - too big, too many tons of gold all over it
... The Palace of the Soviets would at least have been
interesting
...) |
