Abstract

One of the most ambitious project of Moscow’s General Plan was the towering Palace of Soviets, a grandiose symbol of the new ruling power, designed to be the largest building in the world and the Soviet response to the Empire State Building. The winning design by Boris Iofan at the 1933 architectural competition had included an eighty-meter-high Lenin statue on its apex. The master plan was approved in 1934, construction began in 1937, and in 1938 the colossal foundations were laid. This Palace was never actually built, but it haunted the Moscow panorama just by virtue of its absence and left profound traces in the history of Soviet architecture, marking a tragic eclipse of Modernism.