Palace of the Soviets

Palace of the Soviets
Дворец Советов Dvorec Sovetov
The definitive 1937 design on a postage stamp. Early design specifications required that the Palace should serve as a gigantic triumphal arch for the masses of demonstrants marching through the arena of the grand hall. By 1937 this requirement was dropped.
General information
Status	Never built
Type	Administrative and convention center
Architectural style	Art Deco, Neoclassicism, Stalinist architecture
Location	Moscow, site of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
Coordinates	55°44′40″N 37°36′20″E / 55.74444°N 37.60556°E / 55.74444; 37.60556
Groundbreaking	1933[1]
Construction stopped	1941[2][3]
Height	416 m (1,365 ft) (1937 variant)[4][5]
Dimensions
Diameter	130 m (430 ft) (grand hall, internal) 160 m (520 ft) (central core, external)[6][7]
Weight	1.5 million metric tons[8]
Technical details
Lifts/elevators	187[9]
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Boris Iofan, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich

The Palace of the Soviets (Russian: Дворец Советов, Dvorec Sovetov) was a project to construct a political convention center in Moscow on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The main function of the palace was to house sessions of the Supreme Soviet in its 130-metre (430 ft) wide and 100-metre (330 ft) tall grand hall seating over 20,000 people. If built, the 416-metre (1,365 ft) tall palace would have become the world's tallest structure, with an internal volume surpassing the combined volumes of the six tallest American skyscrapers. This was especially important to the Soviet state for propaganda purposes.^[10]

Boris Iofan's victory in a series of four architectural competitions held between 1931 and 1933 signaled a sharp turn in Soviet architecture, from radical modernism to the monumental historicism that would come to characterize Stalinist architecture. The definitive design by Iofan, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich was conceived in 1933–1934 and took its final shape in 1937. The staggered stack of ribbed cylinders crowned with a 100-metre (330 ft) statue of Vladimir Lenin blended Art Deco and Neoclassical influences with contemporary American skyscraper technology.

Work on the site commenced in 1933; the foundation was completed in January 1939. The German invasion in June 1941 ended the project. Engineers and workers were diverted to defense projects or pressed into the army; the installed structural steel was disassembled in 1942 for fortifications and bridges. After World War II, Joseph Stalin lost interest in the palace. Iofan produced several revised, scaled-down designs but failed to reanimate the project. The alternative Palace of the Soviets in Sparrow Hills, which was proposed after Stalin's death, did not proceed beyond the architectural competition stage.