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Unbuilt Moscow

The Palace of the Soviets has always somewhat fascinated me- it seems to sum up the whole history of the Soviet Union, from the dramatic anti-clericalism and desire to sweep away the past, the over-the-top glorification of Lenin (a giant statue with lasers for eyes!), the disruption of the war years bringing Stalin's grandiose plans to a close, and then several decades of everyone really awkwardly not really knowing what to do about it before eventually the new Russian Republic just puts the old cathedral back.
 
No Russian constructionist proposals? That whole 5 year post revolution period was rather interesting, at least till it all went back to classical design.

A lot of the best Constructivist stuff, like Tatlin's Tower, was designed for Petrograd, not Moscow.

Do concur that it's interesting how the Soviets preferred giant pseudo-Roman wedding cakes over the modernist and "revolutionary" stylings of Le Corbusier or Rodchenko. You could argue that this speaks to a desire for legitimacy by wearing the clothes of older states, but there's probably more mundane reasons ultimately--Modernist architecture is quite hard to sustain in an agrarian nation.
 
A lot of the best Constructivist stuff, like Tatlin's Tower, was designed for Petrograd, not Moscow.

Do concur that it's interesting how the Soviets preferred giant pseudo-Roman wedding cakes over the modernist and "revolutionary" stylings of Le Corbusier or Rodchenko. You could argue that this speaks to a desire for legitimacy by wearing the clothes of older states, but there's probably more mundane reasons ultimately--Modernist architecture is quite hard to sustain in an agrarian nation.
The Ministry of Labor by the Vesnin Brothers was designed for Moscow, though i was surprised that the Pravda building wasn't

Generally when a country wants to project a element of imperialist legitimacy they will default to borrowing that legitimacy off the Romans/Greeks. So once you lose that original revolutionary spirit, modernism dies.
 
I'm curious about Moscow Metro and other infrastructure plans that never came to fruition. A cursory glance at Wikipedia suggests that the most noticeable impacts of the Second World War were the delaying of the third of four initial construction stages and the recommissioning of U-Bahn trains taken from Berlin, but I'm sure there's more. I also wonder if any other events besides the fall of the Soviet Union had repercussions for Metro expansion that saw extensions, lines, or stations cancelled.
 
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