The Palace of the Soviets: the Project of the Country’s Main Building

The idea of erecting the “country’s main building” was started up at the dawn of the Soviet power. In 1922 a Decree on the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted at the first Congress of the Soviets. The idea of creating an architectural symbol of the Union was offered by Kirov: “A more spacious, wider room will be required soon for our meetings, for our exclusive parliaments. I think that we are going to discover that the great sounds of “The Internationale” no longer fit under this huge dome. I think that the time will come soon when there will not be enough room on these benches for the delegates of all the republics united into our Union. Therefore, on behalf of the workers, I would suggest that our CEC should start construction of such a monument in the nearest future, which would be able to gather representatives of labor.” So, it was decided to build an impressive Palace of the Soviets in Moscow to embody the emergence of a new Union state, designed to become “the emblem of the coming power, the triumph of communism, not only here but also there, in the West” and the greatest monument of its era.

Initially the idea of constructing a landmark building arised in 1918, when in honor of the victory of the proletariat it was planned to build a giant palace of new advanced architecture, which, according to the famous researcher of the Russian avant-garde architecture S.O. Khan-Magomedov, was to become a “grand monument of the Great Revolution.” Tatlin’s “III Internationale Tower” in Petrograd (1919) was designed in this way, however, financial obstacles and faded interest of the government towards the avant-garde architecture did the project a disservice, and it was decided to refuse the construction. The Palace of the Soviets that replaced it was intended to reflect not the rebellious spirit of the October Revolution, but the bright ideals and greatness of the new state.

The political and cultural significance of the planned building was enormous. The Palace was compared with the largest creations of the world architecture, which had to give way to the symbol of socialist construction both in scale and height, and, of course, in value. Several competitive stages of preliminary selection resulted in a lot of interesting projects and had a significant impact on the work of not only domestic but also foreign architects.

In 1931 after the architectural competition intended to establish a general concept of the future building, an all-Union open competition was organized, which actually turned out to be a worldwide one. 24 projects out of 160 projects submitted for the competition belonged to foreign architects and 112 projects were compiled from the workers’ proposals. The competition clearly identified three main architectural trends where leading architects of that time got their inspiration. The Constructivism was introduced by the projects of the Vesnin brothers, M. Ginsburg, I. and P. Golosovye.  I. Zholtovsky and his followers focused on the development of the classical architecture principles. The third architectural trend was fully expressed in the project of Boris Iofan. 

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Text by Nina Konovalova