Stalin’s sisters live forever

The ‘Soviet baroque’ skyscrapers that adorn a number
of the cities of ceE are still capable of taking our breath away – and for a variety of reasons: out of fascination, surprise, disbelief and even outright disgust. However, these buildings are now under preservation orders,
and their tenants remain loyal, appreciative of their good locations and – despite everything – their cachet

Emil Górecki

The idea was born before the Second World War, but construction work on the first of these buildings only got underway after hostilities had ceased. Stalin, who gave these projects his personal support, worried that: “We won the war ... foreigners will come to Moscow, walk around, and there are no skyscrapers. If they compare Moscow to capitalist cities, it would be a blow to our morale.” This was why a decree approving the development of what has become known as the Seven Sisters – the seven distinctive Moscow skyscrapers – was passed as early as September 1947. The design work was entrusted to a new generation of architects, chief among which was Lev Rudnev. The entire scheme was completed according to plan. Moscow today has the largest number of high-rise buildings of any city in the world – in all, a staggering 1,777.

Large country, large offices

One of the most important of the Stalinist skyscrapers is the Lomonosov University. Built between 1949 and 1953, it constitutes the greatest achievement of Rudnev and his team. For years it was Moscow’s tallest building, reaching a height of 235m, with a 36-storey central section. The whole complex is occupied by the university and contains almost all of its faculties, the administrative section, a museum, a library, a students’ hostel and apartments for university employees. The complex has its own service infrastructure and includes
a cinema, a post office, shops, a medical clinic and other necessary services.

The best known of these monuments to Soviet architecture is the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is not the tallest of the buildings, at 172m with 27 storeys, but it is excellently located near the city centre, in the neighbourhood of its sister buildings: the Ukraine hotel and a residential tower building on Kudrinskaya Square.

The Ministry of Transport is housed in a much smaller building – the 133m Krasniye Vorota (Red Gates), which is connected by tunnels to the underground railway station of the same name. Two wings of the building contain around 270 flats. Moreover, the building has had a pleasant light colour since it was given a facelift in 2000.

Hotels with a history

Another of Moscow’s towers is the Hotel Ukraina, the tallest hotel in Europe at 198m, which offers 1,600 beds on 34 storeys. The Ukraina, which welcomed its first guests in 1957, is excellently situated opposite the Russian parliament and near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It has been closed since March 2007 for renovations, during which, last autumn, one of the side towers collapsed and is now being reconstructed. The owner is Gostinica Ukraina – a company which a few weeks ago was ordered by the public prosecutor’s office, the immigration service and work safety department to pay a fine of RUB 30,000 (around EUR 800) for employing foreigners without work permits and for violating work safety regulations.

In contrast, the Hotel Leningradskaya on Komsomolskaya Square is relatively small, only 136m tall (26 storeys), and has what is surely the most modest profile of all the sisters, even though the standard of the rooms infuriated Nikita Khrushchev himself. In 1955, he thundered that: “Instead of those 354 hotel rooms there could have been a thousand others. Only 22 pct of the space is being used and the cost of maintaining one bed is half as much again than in the Hotel Moskva (in Moscow).” Considering the golden chandeliers, cherry wood floors and black granite pillars, he may have had a point. And when you also take into account its prime location, the Hilton Group had good reason to turn it into 5-star hotel with 273 beds. The first guests are expected in July 2008. Thirty pct of the building, which has
a total area of 25,000 sqm, belongs to the city, and the remainder to Sadko Hotel, the hotel operator.

Apartments for communists

The shape of the Kotelnicheskaya Nabierezhnaya building is the complete opposite of the Leningradskaya hotel. Its base is wide, consisting of several adjoining towers – the idea seems to have been the creation of a pseudo-Gothic crown, with apartments for the most luminous celebrities. The main tower of the building, which was completed in 1952, is 176m tall with 32 storeys. Galina Ulianova, Russia’s most famous ballerina, lived there, as well as Yuriy Liubimov (the renowned actor and director of the famous theatre on Taganka), comic actress Farina Renevskaya and Andriey Woznienski, the poet and writer. The residential building on Kudryskaya Square is similar, with a main section 156m in height, with 24 storeys and a total of 450 apartments. Only the most well-connected in the Soviet establishment were allowed to live there. Today, the land on which the buildings stand is municipal property, while the buildings themselves are classified as historic monuments belonging to the state; however, if individual apartments have been purchased, then their residents are the owners.

Maria Skalkina, who lives in one of the tower buildings, is the public and external communications manager of Cushman & Wakefield Stiles & Riabokobylko. She comments that: “I have been told that the building on Kudryskaya Square is of the same depth as its height, although no one has ever confirmed this. The fact remains that apartments in it are twice the price of those in new tower buildings also in excellent locations. The building is guarded, in an ideal location and is one of the city’s most prestigious. More importantly, the view from the top floor is absolutely breath-taking.”

There were to have been eight sisters, the last to have been the parliament building. The plan was to build this on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, one of the world’s largest and most beautiful, and which the Soviet government blew up in the 1930s. Le Corbusier himself took part in the competition, but his plans did not win the approval of this very specific investor, even though it was generally regarded to be the best design. The winner was Boris Iofan’s heavy building, a tower crowned by an 80m statue of Lenin. The building was never constructed, as the project was interrupted by the Second World War and was later abandoned altogether in 1961, with a swimming pool built in its place. The Orthodox Church was reconstructed in the 1990s and is today popularly called the ‘Church on the Pool’.

Foreign cousins

Stalin’s towers were intended to be a very visible sign that the Big Soviet Brother was keeping an eye on everyone, hence the decision to export this type of skyscraper to other states in the communist bloc. In Bucharest, the construction of Casa Scînteia – the communist party newspaper building – took place between 1952 until 1956. It was here that all of Bucharest’s newspapers were to be published under the party’s watchful eye, and it was also where the state radio was broadcast from. The 91.6m building (104m with the TV antenna and with an area of 32,000 sqm) was designed by Horia Maicu. It performs a similar role today, although the statue of Lenin in front of the entrance is no more and it is now called the Free Press House. According to Sorin Kosz, who publishes the ‘Gandul’ newspaper in the Free Press House: “It is a brilliant place for a press editing office, which is why journals and media companies are almost the only tenants. The building has a great location, but is in a poor technical condition. Tenants have to carry out their own renovations. But it is not an expensive building, we pay around EUR 3 per sqm.”

Poor Ukrainian cousin

The Hotel Moskva in Kiev was built between 1954 and 1961, when the good times of Soviet architecture had already come to an end, after the death of “first architect” Stalin. Construction lasted a long time, under a budget subject to regular cuts. The building finally appeared, but in a truncated shape, without a tower, a spire or any ornamentation. It now houses a rather expensive 3-star hotel, due to its city centre location. In 1991, its name was changed from ‘Moscow’ to ‘Ukraine’, as a result
of Kiev’s changing priorities. The fittings of its rooms reflect the late-Brezhnev period at its best. The most expensive 3-room apartment costs UAH 1,800 (around EUR 245) per day. Several rooms are under a long-term tenancy contract to TV companies, attracted by the splendid view of the city centre.

Dream of a drunken confectioner

Warsaw was luckier than Kiev, in that it received the Palace of Culture and Science as a present from Poland’s Soviet brothers. Although it was named after Stalin, the great dictator never actually saw it, as construction work was only completed in 1955, two years after his death and three years after the beginning of the project. The new building failed to win the hearts of most Poles, and is still called by some “the dream of a drunken confectioner”. It remains Poland’s tallest building, although a number of investors have already laid down the gauntlet and are developing taller towers in the city. Often called Pekin (PKiN) for short, the Palace is one of Lev Rudnev’s two foreign designs. On its 50th birthday three years ago, it became a listed building, which put a stop to the unrealistic proposals to demolish the tower and reconstruct the pre-war tenements that had once stood there. The Palace in its entirety now belongs to the city, which occupies most of the available office space (almost 5,500 sqm), despite not being the city hall’s main building. The total space of the Palace comes to almost 124,000 sqm: 75,000 sqm is leased office space and 10,000 sqm is exhibition space. It houses more than 3,200 office rooms, with the largest tenants being the Polish Academy of Sciences (5,100 sqm), private colleges Collegium Civitas (2,400 sqm) and Wszechnica Polska (3,400 sqm), as well as the TP EmiTel company – a radio-TV operator (2,700 sqm). The rent is determined by storey level and varies between EUR 12 and 28 per sqm.

Jolanta Motylewska, the Palace’s deputy director for sales and marketing, believes that: “All the palace premises are in excellent condition, but they cannot be classified as office and exhibition space of outstanding quality. There is no air conditioning in the building and it lacks super-modern installations. And it will have to be adapted to the new fire protection regulations. But it has three highly advantageous features: location, location and location.” Existing plans include modernizing the largest entertainment hall in Poland, which forms part of the building’s Congress Hall. The design and tender for a general contractor should be ready by 2009.

Letts have one too

Riga, the capital city of Latvia, was also given
a Soviet momento. It was built in 1953-1956 and is one of modest structures in comparison with those of Romania, Poland, and the Ukraine at only 108 metres tall. With minimal ornamentation of Latvian folklore motifs interlaced with the standard hammer and sickle insignias, the interior décor is basic. Luckily, Khrushchev’s report on Stalin’s atrocities precluded any possibility of adorning the façade with a huge image of Stalin. However, the Latvian Academy of Sciences is now based there.

Retro reproductions

It seemed that the ‘high-rise’ period had come to the end with Khrushchev’s 1955 decree: “On the liquidation of architectural excesses”. But Stalinist classicism, pseudo-Gothic, and Russian baroque
– however you characterize the style – remained
a strong influence on those who followed. An apartment building was constructed in Chapayevski
Lane in Moscow between 2001 and 2005, which is a carbon copy of the Kotelnicheskaya Nabierezhnaya tower building, although considerably exceeding it with regard to size and furnishings. This Tryumf Palace, as it is called, has 57 storeys and is, at more than 264m tall, one of the highest residential building in Europe, housing 987 deluxe apartments between 105 and 400 sqm in size. It has a total surface of more than 163,000 sqm, and was developed by Don Stroy of Moscow. Yeketarina Bartnieva, Don Stroy’s PR manager, claims that: “The architecture of the Tryumf Palace is in the best traditions of the monumental style, which is associated with the high rise buildings of the Stalinist era. Its architects, the Tromos studio, claim that such a style fits the surroundings of Leningradzky Prospect best, where most buildings date back to the 1950s. At one time, the plans for an “eighth tower building” generated great controversy, but were finally approved by the city authorities, and personally by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.”

Whether attractive or ugly – they are all architectural listed buildings that have existed for more than
50 years. They will remain attractions for western tourists, since such architecture cannot be found in any other location. But will there continue to be potential tenants for the office space they provide? And will the apartments they hold continue to be popular? Quite probably – if only for their attractive locations. ν