The building of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the year of construction. Palace of the Soviets: why they couldn't build this grandiose building . Big academic cinema

The Palace of Labor and the Bolshoi Cinema - these names cannot be found on the map of the modern capital, they have been preserved only in the archives. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all the plans were destined to come true.

Moscow is a city that has been actively built and rebuilt throughout its history. Each era brought something new to the look of the capital, sometimes trying to completely change its architectural concept. This is especially true of the Soviet period, when styles such as the famous Stalinist Empire style and constructivism appeared.

The architectural designs of that time are amazing. Some of them were brought to life, but many remained in the archives. However, only on paper you can see some drawings of the pre-revolutionary period. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all the plans were destined to come true.

Pre-revolutionary subway

The first proposals for the creation of a metro in Moscow appeared as early as 1875. Then the idea arose to lay a line from the Kursk railway station through Lubyanskaya and Pushkinskaya squares to Maryina Roshcha. In 1902 A.I. Antonovich, N.I. Golinevich and N.P. Dmitriev drew up a revised project, which included the construction of the Circle Line, passing along the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val, as well as the Central Station in the Alexander Garden and four radial lines. Half of these pre-revolutionary branches were planned to be built on overpasses, and half to be carried out in tunnels. According to the project, the ring road was supposed to pass along overpasses and earthen embankments.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Sparrow Hills

This temple was going to be erected in honor of Russia's victory in the Patriotic War of 1812. Architect Alexander Vitberg proposed to build it between the Smolensk and Kaluga roads, on the Sparrow Hills, which Alexander I poetically called the "crown of Moscow". Here are a few reasons that gave weight to the proposal: this is the emperor’s desire to build a temple outside the city, since in Moscow “there is not enough space needed for an elegant building”; this and references to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, located outside the city; this is also a good geographical location - after all, the Maiden's Field, spreading at the foot of the Sparrow Hills, would allow you to see the temple from afar. And the last argument: Sparrow Hills are located between the paths of the enemy, who entered Moscow along the Smolensk road and retreated along the Kaluga.

The temple was supposed to be the highest in the world: the height of its ground part was supposed to be 170 meters (for comparison: the height of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome is 141.5 meters). In 1823, the preparation of stone began and work began on connecting the upper reaches of the Volga and the Moscow River to deliver the stone to the temple. The first experience turned out to be successful, but it was not possible to take out large shipments, because the water in the Moscow River could not be raised to the required level.

The construction of the temple did not continue. Numerous keys on the slopes of the mountains, indicating sandy soils, exclude the possibility of building a large structure not only on the slopes, but also on the top because of the danger of uneven subsidence.

The Palace of Labor in Moscow is an unrealized project of 1922-1923. In the center of the capital, on the site between Tverskaya Street and the squares: Sverdlovskaya, Revolution and Okhotnoryadskaya (on the site of the current Moskva Hotel), it was planned to build a grandiose complex.

The Palace of Labor was supposed to accommodate all the workers' organizations of Moscow, large proletarian libraries, a meeting room for several thousand people, an auditorium for eight thousand listeners, a museum of social knowledge, a canteen with a capacity of six thousand people, sports organizations and much more.

The exhibition of projects "Palace of Labor" opened in March 1923. This major competition was to largely determine which path Soviet architecture would take. The project of the Vesnin brothers presented at it became the first building in the constructivist style. However, its construction never began, and in 1935 the Moskva Hotel appeared here.

Sukharevskaya area

In 1931, a plan was developed for the general reconstruction of Moscow. He assumed a complete change in the town-planning concept of the city. Wide highways and high-rise buildings were supposed to appear in the center. To do this, they began to demolish historical buildings. In 1933, it came to the Sukharev Tower. Famous architects tried to protect the tower. The painter and restorer Igor Grabar, academicians of architecture Ivan Fomin and Ivan Zholtovsky wrote a letter to Stalin in which they pointed out that the decision was wrong: “The Sukharev Tower,” they wrote, “is an unfading example of the great building art, known to the whole world and equally highly valued everywhere ... We ... strongly object to the destruction of a highly talented work of art, tantamount to the destruction of a painting by Raphael.

The authors of the letter proposed to develop a project for the reconstruction of Sretenskaya Square within a month, which would solve the transport problem, while preserving the Sukharev Tower. The architect Fomin soon presented this project - with a circular motion around the square. There were other options - let the transport pass to the west of the tower, move it to another place, arrange a tunnel for transport. All this, alas, was not destined to come true.

During the dismantling of the Sukharev Tower, one of the architraves of the windows on the third floor was preserved and transferred to the Donskoy Monastery, where it was walled into the monastery wall. The clock from the Sukharev Tower is now installed on the tower of the Front Gate of the Kolomenskoye estate. The foundations of the tower are also preserved, but hidden under the modern square.

In the 1980s, the Moscow Executive Committee decided to restore the tower. A competition for projects was announced, but none of them was accepted. Now only a memorial sign in the square on the Garden Ring reminds of the existence of the Sukharev Tower.

The Palace of Soviets in Moscow was designed as a giant building 420 meters high, which was to be crowned by a statue of Lenin 70 meters high. Thus, the building was to become the tallest in the world. Under the construction was allotted a place where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior had previously stood. The project was proposed by Boris Iofan, and work on the monument to Lenin was entrusted to Sergei Merkurov. The construction was interrupted with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and was never resumed.

Zaryadye

In accordance with the new aesthetics, the Soviet government planned to double Red Square, and reconstruct the central squares named after Nogin, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov and Revolution within three years. They wanted to free the territory of Kitai-gorod from the existing small-scale development, with the exception of individual large structures, and instead of them to build several monumental buildings of national importance.

The eighth Stalinist skyscraper was supposed to be an administrative building in Zaryadye. The 32-story skyscraper, founded on the day of the eight hundredth anniversary of Moscow, was never completed. All erected structures were dismantled, and in 1964-1967, the Rossiya Hotel was built on the remaining foundation.

Zakrestovsky overpass

The decision to open the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VDNKh) influenced the reconstruction of 1st Meshchanskaya Street and Yaroslavskoye Highway. Yaroslavka was separated from the 1st Meshchanskaya by the ways of the Oktyabrskaya railway, through which the old overpass was thrown. Its width was so small that even tram tracks could be laid in only one thread.

The first draft of the architectural solution was completed in 1935 by the architect Mikhail Zhirov. The structure was supposed to have dimensions unprecedented for Moscow: its width was 40 meters. Zhirov's project was not approved, and further work on the overpasses was entrusted to a team consisting of engineer Yuri Werner and architect brothers Konstantin and Yuri Yakovlev. Construction started in 1936 was completed two years later.

House TASS

In 1934-1935, a competition was announced for the construction of the TASS building. It took place in three rounds, and a new place was chosen for the building - Pushkin Square. The author of one of the projects was Leonid Grinshpan, a well-known architect of the post-constructivism era. However, his plans never came to fruition. The current building of the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia was built in 1976 on Tverskoy Boulevard, designed by architects Viktor Yegerev, Anatoly Shaikhet, Zoya Abramova and Gennady Sirota.

Large Academic Cinema on Theater Square

The Bolshoi Academic Cinema is a large public building, which, according to the plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, was to be built on Sverdlov Square (the current Theater Square), opposite the Bolshoi Theater building. Since cinema was recognized as "the most important of the arts", the new cinema had to architecturally subjugate the building of the Bolshoi Theater. The cinema should surpass the Bolshoi in size: in the theater - two thousand seats, and in the Bolshoi cinema should have been four thousand (later, however, this figure dropped to three thousand seats).

The competition for the design of the Bolshoi Academic Cinema was announced in the autumn of 1936, but all projects were ultimately declared unsuccessful, all the proposed buildings suffered from megalomania, which they were just starting to fight hard. Despite the fact that the cinema never appeared on the square, we owe it to his project that we owe the creation of a combined lobby of the Ploshchad Revolutsii and Ploshchad Sverdlov stations.

Pantheon of Glory

The Pantheon in Moscow is an unrealized project of a memorial tomb, "a monument to the eternal glory of the great people of the Soviet country", where the sarcophagi of Lenin and Stalin were to be transferred, as well as "the remains of prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, buried near the Kremlin wall."

In 1953, immediately after Stalin's death, a competition for pantheon projects was announced, but its specific location was not specified. Numerous projects began to come to the central authorities, many of which echoed those that appeared during the competition for the construction of the Palace of Soviets.

Monument to the Chelyuskins

The return of the Chelyuskinites from the Pole, taken from the ice floe by Soviet pilots (by the way, they became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union), became a national holiday. Therefore, the Moscow City Council announced a competition for the design of the monument. The monument was planned to be placed on the spit of the Obvodny Canal (now there is a monument in honor of Peter I Zurab Tsereteli at this place).

Children's railway in the Park of Culture and Leisure named after I.V. Stalin (Izmailovsky Park)

In 1932-1933, a children's railway already existed in Moscow - in the children's town of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure. By the end of the 1930s, it was closed.

The site for the construction of the Moscow ChRW was then chosen as the Citywide Park of Culture and Leisure named after Stalin in Izmailovo (now Izmailovsky Park). The master plan for the development of Moscow provided for turning this park into the main recreation area for Muscovites. Near the northwestern entrance was to be located the Central Stadium of the USSR named after Stalin for 100 thousand spectators. It was planned to open the world's largest zoo in the eastern part of the park, and in the center of the park, in the floodplain of the Serebryanka River, to equip a huge pond with an area of ​​more than 110 hectares with well-groomed beaches for 10,000 people, a yacht club and a racing boat station.

The children's railway was supposed to connect all the cultural and entertainment facilities of the park and become the main mode of transport. When it was created, it was decided to abandon the practice that had developed in those years of designing children's roads by children or young professionals in their free time. A competition was announced for the best design of the children's road and all its facilities. According to its terms, the architecture of the station buildings had to stand at the qualitative level of the Moscow metro, the structures of the Moscow-Volga canal, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition and be a vivid example of "joyful Soviet architecture." Particular attention was paid to the diversity of styles, and therefore each of the participants prepared a project not for the entire road, but only for one of the stations. The results of the architectural competition were summed up in the spring of 1940.

In 1940-1941, Moscow children's technical stations and pioneer palaces recruited young railway workers into circles. From the very first day, they were distributed according to services (movement, traction, carriage, and so on). In the spring of 1941, having passed the initial theoretical course, the guys began practical exercises. But since the road had not yet been built by that time, classes were held at the enterprises of the Moscow railway junction. For example, young steam locomotives, under the guidance of experienced machinists, drove passenger trains from the Savyolovsky railway station.

On June 20, 1941, the final draft of the children's railway was submitted for approval. And two days later the Great Patriotic War began. After the war, attempts were repeatedly made to return to the issue of building a children's railway, but all of them were unsuccessful.

What would our streets look like?

Ambitious city reconstruction projects touched almost all central streets and squares of our city. Manezhnaya Square, Tverskaya Square, and Kursk Station could look completely different from what we are used to.

In the entire history of the existence of the USSR, Soviet leaders more than once came up with the most incredible plans to change the face of the capital. Particularly grandiose were the periodically emerging ideas for the construction of new buildings, designed to demonstrate the greatness of the socialist system in general and Soviet architecture in particular. However, for one reason or another, all these incredible buildings were never built, otherwise the center of Moscow would now look very different. We bring to your attention several such unrealized projects.

The project was designed by the famous architect of the Stalin era, Boris Iofan. The gigantic construction was supposed to be a tower-like building, decorated on the outside with sculptures and frescoes, on top of which a hundred-meter figure of Lenin would rise. The height of the structure, together with Ilyich, is more than 400 meters, which at that time would have been higher than the American skyscraper Empire State Building. Well, the weight is 1.3 million tons. It was assumed that the building-monument would symbolize the triumph of socialism.

It was planned to equip the Palace of Soviets with a modern climate control system for those years, elevators, and from the outside it was supposed to be illuminated by powerful searchlights. According to preliminary calculations, passers-by could see this structure from a distance of 35 kilometers.

It was planned to erect a megabuilding on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Immediately after it was blown up and the ruins were dismantled, the builders took up the preparatory work. However, things did not go beyond the manufacture of the foundation: the war began and the state was no longer up to the palaces. Steel structures prepared for the construction of the building-tower went to the needs of the defense of Moscow.

After the war, they did not return to the project. Well, its foundation was used for the Moskva pool, opened here in 1960. Three years earlier, the nearby metro station "Palace of the Soviets", named after the never-built memorial building, was renamed "Kropotkinskaya".

The building of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry

This building is a closed ring with a straight end body, four towers connected by passages, and a beautiful arch. The height of the building is 12-13 floors, and the towers are 24 floors. Through the openings of the main facade, the Mausoleum should have been perfectly visible.

It was planned to erect the building right next to Red Square, on the site of the shopping arcade (modern GUM). Since this building was supposed to be of enormous size, the implementation of the project also involved the expansion of Red Square itself, and almost twice. However, already a year later it was decided to build the building a little to the side, in the Zaryadye region.

In connection with the death of Ordzhonikidze and the dissolution of the Narkomtyazhprom subordinate to him, the need for such a project disappeared by itself.

Big academic cinema

Three groups of architects worked on a strange idea, but none of their proposed projects was approved by the authorities. The buildings turned out to be too huge, besides, the problem of reconstructing Sverdlov Square (now - Teatralnaya) and changing the facade of the Moskva Hotel, which would have arisen during construction, was not solved by the architects.

Aeroflot Central House

The Aeroflot house was supposed to have an aerodynamic shape and be crowned with a sculptural group of several people, one of whom holds giant wings (the emblem of aviation). In front of the building, a light and majestic triumphal arch was conceived with figures of seven pilot-heroes, which the sculptor Ivan Shadr was supposed to make.

The idea of ​​building a giant memorial tomb, in which the bodies of great Soviet people and, above all, those who were already buried near the Kremlin wall, would rest, arose immediately after Stalin's death at a meeting of the funeral commission.

Among the projects proposed by the architects, the work of Nikolai Colli was considered the most suitable. The Pantheon with a total area of ​​500 thousand square meters (!), as conceived by the architect, was supposed to have majestic columns and be crowned with a huge female figure. Colli also offered to generously decorate the building with bas-reliefs, monumental paintings and mosaics. The inscription on the facade "Eternal glory to the great people of the Soviet Union" completes the picture of gigantic proportions.

It was planned to put the Pantheon close to Red Square, for which a number of historical buildings in Moscow would have to be liquidated. The sarcophagus with the bodies of Lenin and Stalin was to be transferred to this gigantic tomb along with the rest of the bodies of the "great Soviet people."

For what reasons the project was frozen - it is not known exactly. According to one of the assumptions, the coming to power of Khrushchev, known for his fight against excesses in architecture, played a role.

Text: Anna Belova

In 1931, work began on the creation of a master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow.

It was assumed that it would be based on the principle of preserving the historical appearance of the city. At the same time, the new plan contained ideas about the expansion of Moscow streets and the construction of new architectural objects. Its final version appeared in 1935 and covered many issues: the construction of the subway and the improvement of surface transport, the landscaping and watering of Moscow, and most importantly, the construction of the Palace of Soviets in the capital.

Palace on the site of the temple

For the first time, the construction of the Palace of Soviets was discussed back in 1922, during his lifetime. However, due to the need to rebuild the country afterward, no resources were found for this large-scale project. The idea came back again in the 1930s. The Palace of Soviets was to become the first Soviet skyscraper and a symbol of the prosperity of the socialist state.

Project Le Corbusier. Source: corbusier.totalarch.com

All organizational issues related to the Palace of Soviets were assigned to the Provisional Technical Council for Construction Management, which included not only architects, but also many prominent cultural figures - writers (), artists (I. E. Grabar), theater directors (K. S. Stanislavsky). The question of the construction site remained open. They offered Okhotny Ryad, Bolotnaya Square, Varvarka and, finally, Volkhonka. The latter option turned out to be the most preferable in the end, but for its implementation it was necessary to demolish the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was done on December 5, 1931.

Volkhonka was not chosen by chance. The fact is that the Palace of Soviets, as the tallest building in Moscow, was to become the architectural dominant of the city, in other words, its center. They were going to build a wide avenue and radiating highways to the Palace. The place where it was located looked ideal for these purposes.

Project selection

The competition for the design of the Palace of Soviets is considered the largest in the history of the architecture of the Soviet Union. Architects from all over the world and even people who, by the nature of their activities, are far from art and urban planning, were invited to take part. The Palace of Soviets was intended to become a people's building, so anyone could contribute to its creation.

"This building should be the emblem of the coming power,
the triumph of communism not only in our country, but also in the West” S.M. Kirov.
Source: Atarov N. Palace of Soviets. M., 1940.

The management outlined a fundamental point - the building must be high-rise. However, no specific technical task was given to the participants of the competition, so they could completely invent the appearance of the Palace themselves, based only on their own imagination. Despite the fact that the projects were sometimes strikingly different from each other, the height, as expected, won over the squat.

It was necessary not only to fit the monumental building into the environment, but to force it to dominate it. From the outside, the Palace of Soviets was seen as a huge skyscraper with an open area surrounding it for demonstrations and walks, and inside it was supposed to be a series of halls and halls for meetings of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as mass events.

Among the foreigners who presented their projects of the Palace of Soviets, the American architect Hector Hamilton distinguished himself. He won the second prize at the All-Union stage of the competition. In 1932, Time magazine emphasized that the Hamilton Prize was an important proof of the openness of the competition. The architect, not very well known at that time in the professional community, received the award due to his talents, and not a big name. Alas, the project, which bore the working title "Simplicity", was ruined by its simplicity. Hamilton, for example, overlooked such a detail as the square near the Palace of Soviets (it was not in the plan). But where, then, to hold demonstrations?

The scheme of the frame of the statue of Lenin.
Source: Atarov N. Palace of Soviets. M., 1940

The project of the eminent French architect Le Corbusier (later known as one of the founders of the brutalist architectural style) also did not fully meet the task. The building designed by Le Corbusier was called either a hangar, or a stadium, or a huge factory building - anything but a palace.

In February 1932, a decree was issued in which architects were again urged not to be afraid of heights. Finally, in May 1933, the Construction Council approved the project of the Soviet architect B. M. Iofan. The final plan, in the development of which, in addition to Iofan, V. A. Shchuko and V. G. Gelfreikh took part, was as follows: the building of the Palace of Soviets is the tallest in the world, higher than the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. Its height is 415 meters.

B. M. Iofan, L. V. Rudnev (later the architect of the main building of Moscow State University) and D. N. Chechulin (architect of the house on Kotelnicheskaya embankment) proposed the construction of several high-rise buildings to smooth out the scale of the Palace of Soviets. A. V. Shchusev concretized the idea: the architect spoke in favor of building eight new skyscrapers and called for them to be located in places whose names contain the epithet “red” - the vicinity of Red Square, Red Gate, Krasnaya Presnya.

Communism symbol

Initially, in Iofan's project, an 18-meter sculpture of a worker with a torch in his hand called "The Liberated Proletarian" towered over the building. But, according to , the Palace of Soviets was supposed to become a monument to Lenin and his achievements. Thus, a new task was identified: to crown the Palace with a 100-meter sculpture of Ilyich. In clear weather, it could theoretically be seen at a distance of seventy kilometers from Moscow. The statue of Lenin was supposed to be three times taller and twice as heavy as New York's Statue of Liberty. One of its heads was only slightly inferior in volume to the columned hall of the House of the Unions on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.

Great Hall of the Palace of Soviets. Source: techne.com

What does the Palace of Soviets look like "on paper"? Its main entrance, near which there are monuments to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, faces the Kremlin. Inside the building - the interaction of all kinds of art. Frescoes, for example, were supposed to occupy about 20 thousand square meters of walls (when compared, it turns out that these are six Red Squares). In addition to them - sculptures, busts, bas-reliefs and canvases in the style of socialist realism.

Of greatest interest is the Great Hall, located in the center of the Palace. It would be possible to place in it the bell tower of Ivan the Great, or any building with a height of 25 floors. The parterre of the large hall could be transformed into a stage, a water pool and even an ice arena. Such transformations had to take place within a few minutes using an electric lift. The round shape of the Great Hall made it difficult to hold screenings, and the creators of the project found an original solution to the problem. It was necessary to install four screens at once, the side faces of which would fold into the shape of a cube. Three of them face different sides of the amphitheater, one - to the presidium sector.

Hall of Heroics of the Civil War.

The Soviet Union is building a cyclopean building in the center of Moscow at a colossal pace - the Palace of Soviets. The total height of the structure will have to be 415 meters (excluding the huge figure of Lenin on top).

It is taller than the Empire State Building, the tallest structure of the time. The 100-meter figure of Lenin, according to the original idea, was supposed to point to the sun, while constantly moving, but later this idea was abandoned. The monument was supposed to become the number 1 skyscraper both in Moscow and in the world - the main giant of the USSR.

In the head of the giant figure of Lenin, it was supposed to make a meeting room. Here, in a solemn atmosphere, new republics and states will be accepted into the ranks of the USSR. The start of the colossal construction was laid at the first Congress of Soviets (at the same time the creation of the Soviet Union was announced) in 1922. The building was to become a symbol of the Great Country. Therefore, the old symbol, tsarist Russia, was destroyed with a huge amount of explosives.

In total, almost 300 projects applied for the best building in the competition. Initially, instead of one huge tower with Lenin on top, several buildings were supposed to be part of one large complex. Such an ambitious and grandiose building was designed by the best architects of the Union for 8 years.

The total weight of the building would be 1.5 million tons, but this enormous weight is distributed unevenly over the area of ​​the building. Not a single type of steel was suitable for the construction of such a powerful structure, therefore, a new steel grade called DS was specially developed for it.

Geodetic studies have shown that the place for construction was chosen well - the foundation will be based on a thick layer of limestone. The base of the tower is two concrete rings, each with a diameter of 140 and 160 meters. Groundwater stopped asbestos shields impregnated with bitumen. It was planned to place technical and utility services in the basement floors.

Already built 7 floors of this gigantic and ambitious project. The Land of the Soviets proved that even such crazy projects are up to it.

The Palace of Soviets in Moscow began to be built in accordance with the typical tradition of those times, with the establishment of the Construction Department of the Palace of Soviets. The management used the design of the Palace of Soviets in Moscow, developed by Boris Iofan.

Fierce disputes were waged around the choice of a place to build the building - scientists and architects made proposals to build the Palace in the area of ​​Kitay-gorod, Okhotny Ryad, on the Lenin Hills (Vorobyovy) and on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It is noteworthy that this building could be located on the territory now occupied by Lomonosov Moscow State University.

It so happened that Comrade Stalin, it seems, is forcing the members of the commission to choose exactly the territory under the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It is surprising how quickly the shrine was blown up: less than 6 months have passed since the decision was made. The leader's ill-wishers did everything possible to make it look as if Stalin single-handedly decided to demolish the cathedral, but this is not so.

At one time, the future leader of the Bolsheviks planned to become a priest and studied at a theological seminary. From the declassified documents it follows that Stalin was not an opponent of the church. The decision to demolish it was made without much thought and, most likely, it was made by political opponents of the Father of Nations, such as N. Bukharin, known for his anti-religious antics, or the same “clown” Khrushchev.

He was the “chief executioner of the USSR”: he destroyed dozens of churches, repressed clergymen, prepared execution and repressive applications, in which there were tens of thousands of names, and Stalin, in turn, rejected some applications, reduced others.

Building project requirements

The all-Union competition announced in 1931 for the development of drawings was most likely a cover for the decision already taken by the leader in favor of the Iofan Palace of Soviets. His drawings met all the requirements: the building in Moscow must be placed in a large open space, fencing with colonnades or other structures is not allowed, the height of the council building must be many times greater than the city landscape, avoid temple motifs, display all the monumentality and integrity of the new building.

Having chosen the project of Boris as the winner, the Father of Nations made a number of remarks, one of which was to complete the Palace in Moscow with the top in the form of a high column. And the column must be crowned with a sickle and a hammer, illuminated from the inside with the help of electricity. Considering the skyscraper as a monument to Lenin, the architects decided to complete the Moscow Palace of Soviets with a monumental sculpture of the Bolshevik leader.

The monument to Ilyich was planned as a Soviet version of the Colossus of Rhodes. The final version of the construction was approved in February 1943. On it, the building of the Soviets looks like the largest building on earth. The height of the building was 415 m, the height of the Lenin monument was 100 m, and the volume was 7,500 thousand m3, as a result, it was the tallest building in the world at that time.

It is hard to imagine, but the monument to Lenin could be seen from a distance of 70 km. The architects faced a difficult task: to express in Colossus the idea of ​​a new state that guaranteed prosperity and well-being, and, above all, the building of socialism.

Construction race between Moscow and Berlin

Simultaneously with the implementation of the idea of ​​the Palace of Soviets in Moscow, a no less monumental building was erected in Berlin - the Domed Palace (House of Assembly). Adolf Hitler, as well as Joseph Stalin, was engaged in the reconstruction of the capital. Monumental buildings were to appear in the plans: the Reich Chancellery, the Wehrmacht High Command, the Party Chancellery, the palace of Hitler himself and the Assembly House.

Unlike the Bolsheviks, the Fuhrer refused to demolish buildings with historical significance - the old Reichstag, here they offered to start a large-scale construction. He suggested that the old building be used as a library. The new parliament building was supposed to accommodate a much larger number of deputies.

The dimensions of the Domed Palace were colossal - 21 million m 2. Hitler was indescribably delighted with the idea of ​​erecting a monument of this magnitude. It should be noted that the German dictator was very upset when he found out the height of the Palace of Soviets, since the House of Assembly was significantly inferior in this indicator. At that moment, a kind of competition began between the leaders: who could build the future symbol of the country's prosperity higher and more expensive.

The Fuhrer, trying to come to terms with the idea that the Domed Palace could not surpass the Stalin skyscraper, decided for himself that his palace would be a unique creation of the architects of the thousand-year-old Reich. During the war years, Hitler temporarily abandoned the implementation of his architectural ideas, but never forgot about the competition with the Palace of Soviets of the USSR. The plans of the German dictator included the destruction of the skyscraper after the capture of Moscow.

The construction of the Palace of Soviets in Moscow has become an independent branch of science. Within the framework of the project, specialized research was carried out, experimental laboratories were functioning, entire factories were created for the production of building materials. By the beginning of 1940, an incredible pit was dug, and special steel reinforcement was installed in the ground.

In the USSR, they did not save money on the construction of their main symbol. It was even surprising that the construction began without any financial and technical calculations. The interior decoration of the interior was measured only by a quantitative indicator, without conversion into rubles. For example, paintings alone were supposed to be 18 thousand m 2.

The war disrupted all the plans of architects and artists. In 1941, the construction of the Palace was stopped and never resumed, despite all Khrushchev's "attempts". The ancestor of the ugly 5-storey buildings for demolition held a deliberately losing competition for the placement of the Stalin Palace of Soviets on the site now occupied by Moscow State University on Sparrow Hills. The task of the competition was to harmoniously fit a monumental building 415 meters high into the face of the city. Naturally, this was impossible to do, as a result of which the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bbuilding a giant was “hacked to death”.

Construction after the Great Victory

On paper, the work did not stop even during the Great Patriotic War. Iofan, while in evacuation, continued to hone the Palace of Soviets on paper, and also put forward proposals to use a separate element of the building for the construction of a skyscraper in Sverdlovsk.

During the war, all the construction capacities of the Office of the Palace of Soviets were transferred to the second most important project for Stalin - the Moscow Metro. The metro was built at an accelerated pace and the next station was introduced exactly on time.

After the end of the war, the leader caught fire with a new idea - the construction of skyscrapers, the appearance of which was borrowed from the drawings of the Palace of Soviets by Boris Iofan. According to Stalin's plan, the main city of the country was planned to be filled with skyscrapers in order to amaze foreigners with their grandeur and confirm the status of a superpower.

The architectural concept of the Soviet building in Moscow was supposed to be supported by Stalin skyscrapers. They echoed with him, now moving away, now bringing closer the architectural perspective of the center of the capital.

The proportions and silhouette of the buildings had to be original and their architectural and artistic composition should be in harmony with the historical buildings and the silhouette of the future Palace of the Soviets. In fairness, it must be said that it was extremely problematic to do this, because the Moscow Kremlin against the background of such a monolith would have looked at least strange.

The construction of the Palace of Soviets in Moscow was pushed back with each new party congress. For some reason, Joseph Stalin constantly delayed the construction of the giant, while there were no obvious reasons for this. But here's the amazing thing - the leader is forcing the construction of skyscrapers in every possible way.

Despite the fact that the Palace of Soviets in Moscow was never erected, the work on its construction gave very positive results in the future. The Construction Department of the Palace of Soviets gained vast experience throughout the design of the building and later became a kind of elite construction unit. This department was entrusted with the construction of a strategically important object - the Ostankino tower.

"Clownery" Khrushchev

“Strength always attracts people with low morals, brilliant dictators are invariably replaced by scoundrels. This has its own pattern” - A. Einstein.

After the death of the leader of the peoples, in some random way the country was headed by the “chief executioner of the USSR” N. S. Khrushchev. In vain attempts to get rid of the Stalinist past and at least somehow look like a not so miserable leader against his background, he prepared a report “On the cult of personality and its consequences”, in which he accused Joseph Stalin of disrespect for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin because, as the Palace of Soviets in Moscow, planned 30 years ago, was never built and this must be corrected. In his worthlessness and meanness, Khrushchev can only yield to Gorbachev. If the first destroyed the country out of stupidity, then the second did it purposefully, for money.

Naturally, Khrushchev did not intend to erect a monumental structure. The appearance of the giant would mean the victory of the Stalin era and would be the culmination of all its architectural transformations. Khrushchev, on the other hand, condemned Stalin and therefore could not allow this to happen. He found the solution to this issue, as befits such a person, extremely cynical. A competition was announced for the design of the new Palace of Soviets, but with very interesting criteria.

It suffices to quote a brief excerpt from the description of the competition: “free from formalist, restoration, eclectic tendencies and imitation of modern capitalist architecture.” Everything is vague and abstract. Of course, thanks to such formulations, one can say to any project: “You are not suitable for us!”.

Despite this, many famous architects took part in the competition: B. Iofan, D. Chechulin, I. Zholtovsky and others. Now, all their drawings and works did not pass the "competitive" selection. Not surprisingly, no projects were selected that could meet such criteria.

Khrushchev's "clownery" ended with a planned farce, and the media were already struggling with their own - Soviet architecture. As a result, the Palace of Soviets in Moscow remained the main giant of the USSR, but only on paper.

Blogger Maxim Mirovich writes:

I have long wanted to write a post about the Palace of Soviets - an unrealized utopian project of a colossal administrative building that was supposed to be built in Moscow and was supposed to symbolize the victory of socialism in a single state. According to the plan of Soviet architects, the Palace of Soviets was supposed to be the tallest building in the world at that time - taller than skyscrapers in New York.

For the construction of the Palace of Soviets, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was destroyed - the Bolsheviks blew it up in 1931, and in 1932 they began preparatory work for the construction of the Palace of Soviets. The foundation of the colossus was completed by 1939, but due to the outbreak of World War II, the project was completely frozen.

To start, a little history. The idea of ​​building a colossal palace arose as early as 1922 - it was voiced by Sergei Kirov at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets - it seemed to him that "the sounds of the international no longer fit in old buildings and in place of the palaces of bankers, landlords and tsars, a new palace of working peasants should be erected."

The fact that it would not be a “palace of peasants” at all, but a palace for meetings of the Soviet nomenklatura, to which peasants would not be allowed even a cannon shot, was modestly silent in a fiery speech. But Kirov did not hide the expansionist plans of the Bolsheviks regarding Western countries - "the majestic building will become the emblem of the coming power, the triumph of communism, not only here, but also there, in the West!"

These are the articles published in the Soviet press of those years. For comparison, it was drawn how exactly the Palace of the Soviets will become higher than the famous skyscrapers, the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

To select the final project, a competition was held, the requirements for the building of the palace were as follows - inside there should be two halls, Large and Small, each of the halls should accommodate several thousand people. Among the competitive works, the project of Dmitry Iofan (as "restoration-eclectic") and the project of German Krasin ("the upper part resembles a church dome") were rejected. In total, about 160 projects were considered - they were considered in two stages, and as a result, the work of Boris Iofan won.

According to the plan of the designers, the Palace of Soviets was to become the tallest building in the world, the top of the building was to be crowned by a giant 100-meter statue of Lenin - thus, the Palace of Soviets itself was both a building and something like a colossal pedestal for a monument. The mass of a full-size statue of Lenin was supposed to be 6,000 tons, and the length of his index finger would be 4 meters.

By the way, for the construction of the Palace itself, it was also planned to completely rebuild the center of Moscow, destroying the old quarters - something similar was later done by conductor Ceausescu in Bucharest. Between Red Square and Sverdlov Square (now Teatralnaya) it was planned to lay a wide highway. The authors of the project noted that "the idea invested in the architectural solution of the Palace of Soviets squares is the idea of ​​open, widely inviting squares that personify socialist democracy." I don't know what is so "democratic" in open areas - most likely, they would have turned out to be gigantic, not corresponding to the scale of a person and overwhelming areas in which a person feels like an insect.

This is how the Palace should look like in modern Moscow, if it were built.

Little information has been preserved about the interiors of the planned palace - it is only known that they were to be finished with polished granite and decorated with sculptures. Seats for spectators in the Great Hall were planned to be covered with leather, the height of the Great Hall was to be 100 meters with a diameter of 140 meters. The Small Hall was supposed to be 32 meters high, and the foyer of the Palace was to be called "the hall of the Stalinist constitution."

Estimated view of the interior of the Great Hall:

Foyer, Hall of the Stalinist Constitution:

In 1939, they finished building the foundation - it took so long to build because the proposed palace was supposed to have a gigantic weight - about 1.5 million tons. The head of the construction of the Palace, Vasily Mikhailov, was repressed and shot by the end of the construction of the foundation. Reality knocked on the doors of Soviet projectors with the outbreak of World War II - anti-tank hedgehogs had to be made from metal blanks for the foundation for the defense of Moscow, and the rest of the metal was used to build bridges on the railway.

In the post-war years, the USSR did not leave the idea of ​​​​finishing the Palace of Soviets - however, the project was significantly compressed and seriously blown away - the height of the building should have been no longer 415, but 270 meters, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe internal halls and their decor were significantly cut down. In 1947, the famous "Stalin skyscrapers" began to be built in Moscow, and the Palace of Soviets was completely forgotten.

In my opinion, the Palace of Soviets was originally a utopian project, which shows what happens when the authorities are in complete control of the country's finances - instead of such a giant expensive structure, it was possible to completely modernize the infrastructure of several Soviet cities.

What do you think about this?