First announced in 1931, the project for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow evolved into a staggeringly vast and bizarre proposal which stalled during WWII when only the foundations had been completed. A 400m tall neoclassical fantasy topped with a vast statue of Lenin; the Palace would probably, if completed, have still been the tallest building in the world in the year 2000. Forming a counterpart of sorts to our discussion of the Chicago Tribune — the Palace is another worldwide competition of the interwar period in which the battle over architectural style and ideology played out in the process of selection and development, as the old 1920s avant grade felt the ground shift under them and the ideology of Stalinist architecture began to solidify.

A couple of helpful listener corrections (here)[https://www.instagram.com/p/BbUxAq2FLaj/] (and here)[https://www.instagram.com/p/BbUxB0vlmnJ/]

We discussed —

Joze PleçnikEdwin Lutyens (neither in the competition)

Russian Avant-gardists —

Ivan LeonidovKonstantin MelnikovMosei Ginzburg

The League of Nations Competition entries of Le Corbusier & Hannes Meyer

Foreign modernists in Russia

Ernst May

And the entries of — 

Le CorbusierWalter GropiusErich Mendehlson Hans PölzigAuguste Perret

The winners — 

Boris IofanVladimir ShchukoHector Hamilton

Plus the later designs of —

Ilya Golosov’sVladimir Shchuko and Vladimir GelfreikhAlabian, Kochar and Mordvinov’s Simbirtsev

Alexander Brodsky’s Reminiscences

Anatole Kopp ‘Foreign architects in the Soviet Union during the first two five-year plans’

Sonia Hoisington ‘Even Higher: The Evolution of the Palace of the Soviets’

Music — 

‘A1’ from the album ‘ΝΕΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΚΟΚΚΑΛΑ’ by Kοκκαλα, from the Free Music Archive‘Bolshevik Leaves Home’ (1918) by D. Vasilev-Buglay, Demyan BedniySoviet National Anthem, Stalin version

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