Stalin’s blueprint for a perfect Soviet city
Published 17 May, 2008, 17:12
A new show has opened in the Russian capital dedicated to Stalinist architecture. The exhibition, called 'The Unfulfilled Architectural Projects of the Stalinist Epoch', is on at the Skazka Gallery in Moscow until May 26.
It reveals the Soviet vision of an ideal Moscow, as laid out in a general plan for the city.
Stalinist architecture aimed to reflect the ideas of a homogeneous socialist unity and the grandiosity of communism.
It produced dozens of mighty projects, such as the Anti-religion Museum, Stalin's Mausoleum and the Palace of the Soviets. All were built between the 1930s and the 1950s – the most ambitious period of Stalinist town planning.
This mission for mightiness sometimes appeared to be absurd and funny, as in the project of the All-Union Sobering-up station, designed by a ten-year-old boy.
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