Palace of Soviets

The Palace of the Soviets (Russian: Dvorjez Sovjetov / Дворец Советов) was a building project planned by the government of the Soviet Union. A contest was held for the architectural design of the building from 1931 until 1933. Construction was started on the building in 1933, but was stopped in 1941 because of World War II. The building was going to be used as a administrative center and meeting place. It was to be built in Moscow near the Kremlin. The palace would have had a height of 415m. This would have made it the largest building of the world at that time.

The definitive 1937 design on a postage stamp.

The building was designed by the architect Boris Iofan. During its design, there were many changes to how it would look and to the location of the palace in Moscow.

Palace Of Soviets Media

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  Boris Iofan with his Udarnik cinema building. Soviet postage cover, 1990

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  The Minsk Opera building by Iosif Langbard was laid down in 1934 and completed in 1938, and is conspicuously reminiscent of Iofan's 1933 proposal. The combination of stacked cylinders and "ribbed style" was not unique to Iofan: Langbard developed similar structures as early as in 1928.

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  Structural frame of the palace. The office tower contains very few floors for its height, because each floor is unusually high, 10–12 metres (33–39 ft).

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  1940 as-is situation and approved redevelopment plan. Area size 2 by 2 kilometres (1.2 mi × 1.2 mi). Legend: A: Palace of the Soviets (foundation of the core and the northern wing of the stylobate), B: Pushkin Museum (to be relocated), C: House on the Embankment, D: Aviators' Memorial, E: Reflective pool. Note the absence of Lenin's Mausoleum on the plan.

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  Comparison of the definitive 1937 version (red) with scaled-down 1948 (yellow) and 1956 (blue) designs and the main building of Moscow State University (green), superimposed on the 2019 outline of the Moscow International Business Center (grey)

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  The Palace of Congresses in the Moscow Kremlin was built in 1961. It followed the template developed at the 1958–1959 competitions, and inherited the intended role of the canceled Palace of the Soviets, albeit at a much smaller scale.