Anyone who has been inside Moscow State University’s towering Main Building atop Lenin Hills (aka Sparrow Hills) has encountered a strange reality. First, there is the vast, dizzying open spaces of the external landscape. Then, there is the site’s gripping composition of architectural shapes. Next, there is the entrance with its impressive granite columns. Then, when you step inside, there is a narrow corridor, walls painted in unattractive colors, and perilously low ceilings – as if the interior were being crushed by the building’s colossal weight.
“That’s it?” you ask.
This dramatic tonal shift continues as you head to the dormitories: the largest part of the building is comprised of student living space. Here we encounter small, narrow rooms with unbelievably high ceilings, rooms where you literally cannot alter anything: the window can only be opened if the bookcase is in exactly its assigned spot. If you move it, nothing opens.
MSU’s Main Building is like a medieval city: a chaotic net of narrow streets that has been unexpectedly and rather formally frocked on the outside, while on the inside everything is subdivided into tiny squares. Or perhaps like a gigantic piece of swiss cheese, in which the inhabitants have constructed (chewed out) myriad dens and passages. And this reality is shared by all of Moscow’s Stalinesque skyscrapers (vysotki in Russian): few have visited the apartments in those buildings, yet most visitors have returned disappointed.
This feeling is no accident. Most likely, it offers a conceptual key to understanding Soviet architecture, and Soviet culture of the 1930s and 1940s more generally. The primary task given to the architects of Moscow’s tallest buildings (and their numerous copies in other Soviet cities) was political agitation: they were to be symbols of the times, symbols of an ideal government and ideal living. And one could just conveniently forget about designs that might better serve those living or working in a place. This was also the main characteristic of Soviet artistic culture from the 1930s to the 1950s: it acquired a statist tenor and played an educational role. Thus was architecture’s lyrical song transformed into a love song dedicated to the State.
Architects’ primary task was to create a powerful, expressive exterior, and only then consider problems related to the building’s primary function as living space, an office, etc. This tendency of form to trump function was characteristic not only of post-war architecture: one of the most famous projects of the 1930s, the Soviet Army Theater, was also built with a colossal imbalance tipped toward the symbolic. The building’s auditoria and workspaces were forced (albeit cleverly) into the shape of a star, the symbol of the Red Army. First, a star was planned, and only then a theater.
History knows many examples of changing a building’s function: one thing was planned and then a new goal was discovered. Thus, in the 1970s, near Moscow University’s Main Building on Lenin Hills, the First Building was built for the humanities departments. The discomfort of its cramped rooms – too cold in winter and too hot in summer – had a rather simple explanation. Legend had it that the blueprints were cribbed from a hotel intended for some seaside town in a neighboring country.
We find the same sort of functional mismatch in the teaching space at the country’s main pedagogical institute, in the southwest part of the capital, constructed in the 1980s. From the outside, it appears to be an expensive, rather presentable concrete and glass building. But inside there are narrow, poorly lit corridors and small rooms.
Locals explain away the microscopic apartments in the Khrushchev-era towers on the New Arbat with the same legend about a warm weather (Cuba perhaps?), hotel. Finding the truth of what actually happened is less important than the result: Soviet social consciousness was dominated by an absence of local roots and a sense that, like a hotel, housing can be temporary and have a foreign feel, making a well known song the ideal metaphor of Soviet life: “My address is neither a building nor a street.”
In fact, some of the Stalin highrises became hotels, such as the Leningradskaya and Ukraina. During perestroika, when archives were opened, it was revealed that the MSU building had originally been designed to be a hotel, but then the rector convinced Stalin to give the building to the university.
Even highrises planned as apartments (on Kudrinskaya square, Kotelnicheskaya embankment and Krasnye Vorota (Red Gates) square) were originally to be temporary, not permanent living space. At the end of the 1940s, a new wave of repression was being prepared and the highrises filled with the elite were to fill the same function which Iofan’s “House on the Embankment” played in 1937: a concentrated living space for well known figures, from which it was easier to cart them off to prison… Stalin’s death (or, as some historians aver, his murder) in March 1953, and related changes in the country’s political life, blocked this tragedy.
So life normalized even in these unusual buildings – unusual because it was difficult to understand why they had enormous marble lobbies, decorated with gigantic artwork and bronze chandeliers, but were filled with living spaces where two families shared five-square-meter kitchens. It is all clear when one realizes that the residential highrises were gilded cages that were not intended to hold anyone for long; just beyond the front gate, literally and figuratively, waited the GULAG. The buildings were constructed in large part by prisoners.
In fact, it took high rises quite some time to become part of Moscow’s landscape. By the end of the 1980s and perestroika, there was even talk about demolishing the buildings as monuments to Stalinism. Twenty more years passed, the epoch of repressions slipped further into the distant past, and these buildings – completely unexpectedly for most culturologists – not only set the outlines of Moscow’s silhouette, but began to dominate the city and become some of its main symbols. And yet, as recent events show, the now-beloved towers remain troublesome, especially in regards to the modern challenges of security and restoration.
The skyscraper is modern architecture’s key innovation and its most compelling symbol. Naturally, the USSR’s leader had to make his mark: as early as the 1930s, work was begun on the Palace of Soviets under Stalin’s personal leadership. Construction was halted because of the war, and then, at the end of the 1940s, it was decided (due to siting problems for the gargantuan Palace) in the place of one primary Palace of Soviets they would build a series of smaller buildings. For Moscow’s 800th anniversary in 1947, foundations were laid for a symbolic eight towers, emphasizing their importance for rebuilding the city.
Lavrenty Beria personally controlled all construction activity, which began with a government building at Zaryade. (Half-completed at the time Beria was executed, the building was torn down.) Seven other towers were built; in addition, Karo Alabian and Leonid Batalov designed a ninth for the Sokol area at the location of the former office of Soviet dam builder Hydroproject. Highrise projects were also planned and at least partially carried out in many cities of the Soviet Union and the “socialist camp” – in Riga, Warsaw and China. The booming 2000s even spawned a modern copycat: the Triumph Palace apartment tower in Sokol neighborhood.
Soviet highrise history began in the 1930s. The political centerpiece of the Soviet Union, the monumental Palace of Soviets, was assigned to architect Boris Iofan, who was given two neoclassicist assistants from Leningrad, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreykh. Underlying the primary image of the Palace were two of the seven wonders of the world: the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes. Igor Kazus, an expert in the history of architecture, believes that the composition and size of the Palace were worked out with Stalin’s active participation. By government decision, the tower’s height was set at 415 meters, which was 34 meters lower than New York’s already completed Empire State Building (449 meters) – then the tallest building in the world. The tower was to rise on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had stood 103 meters high and had been demolished in December 1931.
Of course, the Palace was never built. The main reason, it is now thought, was due to technical difficulties. The same thing happened with other grandiose projects: Liktor Palace in Mussolini’s Rome and Hitler’s Great Hall of the People, designed to hold 150 thousand Berliners. And yet, Soviet culture of the 1930s and 1940s acted as if the Palace of Soviets were already completed: it was included in Moscow guide books and its image was even included on films. From 1935 to 1957 the Moscow metro station now known as Kropotkinskaya was named Palace of the Soviets.
Apparently, no other architectural project gave Stalin such pleasure as Moscow’s highrises. The architect of each received a Stalin Prize even before construction began! Prizes followed a special hierarchy. Irrespective of their artistic contributions, famous architects received top level prizes, the less-famous received second level prizes, and so on. For the Hotel Ukraine, Alexander Mordvinov received a top level prize, while his collaborator, Vyacheslav Oltazhevsky, who was the principal consultant for all of Moscow’s skyscrapers, received a second level prize.
The first tower completed (1948-1953), this building was built for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, according to a design by Leningrad natives Vladimir Gelfreykh (one of the designers of the Palace of Soviets) and Mikhail Minkus. Its architectural inspiration included American gothic skyscrapers, primarily New York’s City Hospital. The small tower at the top of the building – similar to those on the Kremlin – was added upon Stalin’s personal “suggestion.” Legend has it that after Stalin’s death, Minkus requested that the tower be removed, but was refused. Later, a new building for the Ministry was built nearby – a rare example of successful harmony, in this case with the style of the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1980s, this ensemble was further developed with the construction of the Hotel Belgrade’s two symmetrical blocks.
Moscow State University’s Main Building was officially opened on September 1, 1953. This is the tallest highrise built in Moscow (including its decorative star, it stands at 249 meters), and occupies an important spot in the city’s panorama. The building’s wings hold professors’ apartments; the main tower has classrooms and university offices; there are a few large auditoria, five “delightful” cafeterias, a few sports rooms and a pool.
Alongside the main building are two additional elements of the initial design: the chemistry and biology buildings. At the start, the project was headed by Boris Iofan, who takes credit for the orientation and placement of the complex, reminiscent, on the one hand, of the famous temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and on the other hand, New York’s City Hall. However, Iofan soon got on Stalin’s bad side and work was handed over to a group headed by Lev Rudnev, also from Leningrad.
According to official Soviet sources, the building was constructed by volunteers from the Komsomol youth organization. In reality, the bulk of the work was done by GULAG prisoners. The university’s tower is decorated with the largest time piece in Moscow, with a diameter of nine meters. The scenic building has appeared often on the big screen.
At 136 meters and dominating the capital’s “Three Stations”, or Komsomolskaya Square, the Leningradskaya Hotel was built between 1949 and 1953 by the Leningrader and neoclassicist Leonid Polyakov (aided by Alexander Boretsky). Polyakov was influenced by the old Russian architecture of neighboring buildings, as well as the nearby Kazansky and Yaroslavsky Rail Stations.
The rich interior of the main lobby is reminiscent of seventeenth century themes found in the Kremlin and Moscow’s wealthier homes. Notable elements include the world’s longest light fixture, which illuminates ten stories of a staircase and, according to the hotel’s management, is a record worthy of Guinness. Yet the opulent interiors ended in tragedy for the architects: a month after the building was opened, their Stalin Prizes were revoked due to cost overruns. In 2009, the Leningradskaya was restored and reopened as a Hilton Hotel.
The multifunctional building at the Red Gates was built from 1949-1953 for the Ministry of Railroads. Construction of the highrise required demolition of the home where the poet Mikhail Lermontov was born. The building was designed by Alexei Dushkin, then head architect for the Ministry of Railroads. Later, Boris Mezentsev, without Dushkin’s consent but at the recommendation of head Moscow architect Dmitri Chechulin, was asked to join the effort. In the opinion of architectural historian Natalya Dushkin, the model for the building was New York’s famous Woolworths’ (1913), designed by Case Gilbert, which until 1930 was the tallest building in the world.
The tower portion is office space and the wings hold modest two-, three- and four-room apartments intended for ministers and other government officials, including, for the last 20 years of his life, Alexei Dushkin himself. The office space has retained a colonnaded formal entrance hall decorated with stainless steel (similar to the Mayakovsky metro station), and a reception hall, the White Room. Also preserved are remarkably contoured, arched steel gates.
The history of the building’s construction is unique: it stands on mixed soils and gravel, so it was built with a slight lean and allowed to settle into a level position (Viktor Abramov, the chief of the Bureau for the Construction of Tall Buildings designed this engineering solution). During perestroika, the building was rented by the USSR’s first currency exchange; today the space is occupied by Transstroy.
According to my own informal poll, present residents are dissatisfied with the small bathrooms and kitchens. Until the 1950s, the building was surrounded by small wooden homes. When they were demolished, bedbugs moved into the tall building. After trying a number of methods to remove them, the head of the USSR’s Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, then living in the building, solved the problem with help from Academy chemists.
At the end of the 1930s, Andrei Rostovsky built a nine-story apartment building (today located at 1/15A) on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. Ten years later, working with Dmitri Chechulin, he added a wing and crowned it with a magnificent tower. The huge ensemble obstructed views across the Moscow River, blocking Shvivaya Hill and its magnificent churches and gardens. From the 1950s until three years ago, the building contained a famous bakery, and it still houses the movie theater Illusion. During the Soviet era, Illusion was one of the few places in the city to see a foreign film (with some contemporary exceptions, it played primarily older “trophy” films, taken back to Moscow from defeated Germany). A huge crowd formed here almost every evening. A famous Moscow philatelist shop was also located here.
The building’s notable residents included the actors Faina Ranevskaya and Mikhail Zharov, ballerina Galina Ulanova, historian Mikhail Tikhomirov, the poets Alexander Tvardovsky and Andrey Voznesensky, and composer Nikita Bogoslovsky. It was here, in a sublet apartment, that Lyubimov, Shemyakin, Voznesensky and Mitta gathered for the wedding of Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi. The building’s architect, Rostovsky, also lived there (he also built the Library of Foreign Literature across the street, so surely enjoyed the views). One other famous tenant, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, dedicated his poem Cockroaches in a Highrise, to the building. As a result, the actor Mikhail Shirvindt received a parking space that the poet had sought.
The 22-story, 156-meter apartment building at Uprising Square was built in 1949-1954 by students and colleagues of Alexey Shchusev – Mikhail Posokhin (who soon became the capital’s main architect) and Ashot Mindoyants. The luxurious appearance of the building’s entrances and stairway landings stand in sharp contrast with its cramped, uncomfortable living quarters, mostly communal apartments (eliminated at the end of the 1990s). In the Soviet era, the four corners of the main building housed the four departments of a food shop on par with the famous Eliseyev store on Gorky (now Tverskaya) Street. The baked goods were among the best in the city.
The building was constructed by the Ministry of the Aviation Industry. Among the top secret and classified engineers, designers, and pilots who lived in the building were Oleg Antonov (famous for the AN series aircraft), first deputy minister Vasily Pavlovich Mishin, and hero of the Soviet Union Sergei Anokhin. World Chess Champion (1957-1958) Vasily Smyslov (a graduate of the Aviation Institute) also lived here, as did Soviet film stars Mikhail Tsarev, Elina Bystritskaya and Pyotr Oleynikov.
In the 1990s, the building became famous for its entertainment venues: a Soviet-era movie theater, Plamya (Flame), was replaced by the Firebird nightclub. Later in the 1990s, the Chuck Norris Club, owned by the actor, whom residents often saw, boomed for a few years. Today the space is occupied by the Kruzhka (Mug) cafe. A bowling alley, Vysotka, featuring a crocodile pool, was added. And, since the end of the 1990s, the building has been lit up by the wild dance club Real McCoy. The building appeared in the first Russian film to receive an Oscar, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. Yet, the luxurious apartment shown in the film was not in this building, but in the other Stalin highrise, on Kotelnicheskaya embankment.
The Ukraine was built from 1950-1955, according to a design by Alexander Mordvinov, architect of Tverskoy Boulevard, and Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, designer of Moscow’s gargantuan Park of National Economic Achievements (VDNKh, see Russian Life, Mar/Apr 2005). When planning commenced, Oltarzhevsky had been in exile for ten years, but he was quickly returned to the capital: in the USSR, he was considered the leading expert on highrise construction, since he had worked on skyscrapers in the United States in the 1930s.
The building’s central tower held the hotel. The wings were dedicated to residential quarters, including some apartments that are communal to this day. The hotel was completed in time for the 1957 Youth Festival and named in honor of the home republic of the country’s leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1964, on the 310th anniversary of the unification of Russia and Ukraine and the 150th birthday of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, a monument to Ukrainian literature was placed at the main entrance (sculptor: Mikhail Gritsyuk et al). The riverfront was named in honor of Shevchenko, and an ensemble of toponymic landmarks formed with the nearby Ukraine Boulevard and Kievsky Rail Station. The highrise fits beautifully into the landscape, especially when viewed from the side and from the Presnya neighborhood.
In Soviet times, the building was known for its restaurant famous for its Chicken Kiev. In the 1990s, the Ukraine was popular for its low prices and its nostalgic atmosphere. For a time, the world-famous Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid stayed here. In 2006, the restaurant was closed for restoration; in 2007, one of the decorative towers crumbled. In the spring of 2010 the Radisson Royal Hotel Moscow opened in the building.
Demolished in 2007, Moscow’s Russia Hotel had set on a mighty pediment covered with red granite. This was the final reminder of what for a time was intended to be the tallest building in the city.
The building was designed for the Ministry of State Security, which at the time was headed by “people’s commissar of torture, prison camps, and bombs,” Lavrenty Beria. Yet its construction was delayed. According to legend, Beria and the architect (Dmitry Chechulin) could not agree on the height of the build​ing, so at the time of Beria’s downfall and execution in 1953, only a multi-floor metal skeleton had been completed. It was demolished and later used in construction of the sports arena at Luzhniki. Nonetheless, like designers of other tall buildings, Chechulin received a prize prior to construction, in 1949.
A few years back, the historian of Soviet architecture Natalia Bronovitskaya found a ninth highrise. This ninth tall building was intended for Hydroproject, led at the time by Beria. Karo Alabian and Leonid Batalov designed the building. Their design was inspired by seventeenth century Moscow baroque style, which accounts for the red and white color scheme proposed for the façade.
Design work on the building started later than the rest of the city’s historic towers, and construction was never begun. Nonetheless, a highrise did appear in this spot, but in another style: the 27-story modernist Hydroproject was designed by Yakovlev and Dzhevanshirov and constructed by V. Khandzhi.
In the early 1950s, the highrise as symbol of state power and victory in the Second World War became a leading architectural image for the USSR and the new socialist countries in its orbit. Where the financial means or location did not allow for a larger building, a smaller building with a stepped profile and a spire topped with the state seal was built. Despite their low height, these buildings (like Beijing’s museum or the residential building at 25 Kreshchatic square in Kiev) clearly reflected the influence and reach of the imperial center.
Built in 1952-1954 as “a gift to the people of Poland from the USSR,” this building was a collective work led by architect Lev Rudnev. Warsaw’s residents for a long time refused to recognize the gift and in the 1980s and 1990s many politicians and intellectuals called for its demolition as a monument to the “Soviet occupation.” The palace survived and recently was placed on the list of architectural monuments, helped in part by a wave of highrise construction at the turn of the new century.
This project, originally billed as Latvia’s Collective Farmers’ Hotel, was built in 1951-1957 and financed by collective farms. It opened, however, as the House of Scientists. The people of Riga never liked the building and purposely used the misnomer Collective Farmers’ Hotel. The plan designed by Oswald Tilmanis was built with the participation of Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky; the spire is reminiscent of Riga’s Saint Peter’s Church.
The silhouette of Moscow’s towers inspired Chinese architects, and this building it the only truly striking building among the ten constructed in 1959 for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Republic. It is striking not for its height but its footprint – a sprawling sixty thousand square meters. RL
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
