The Palace of Labor and the Bolshoi Cinema - these names cannot be found on the map of the modern capital; they are preserved only in the archives. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all the plans were destined to come true.

Moscow is a city that has been actively built and rebuilt throughout its history. Each era brought something new to the appearance of the capital, sometimes trying to completely change its architectural concept. This is especially true of the Soviet period, when styles such as the famous Stalinist Empire style and constructivism appeared.

The architectural projects of that time are amazing. Some of them were brought to life, but many remained in the archives. However, some drawings of the pre-revolutionary period can only be seen on paper. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all the plans were destined to come true.

Pre-revolutionary subway

The first proposals to create a metro in Moscow appeared back in 1875. Then the idea arose to lay a line from the Kursky railway station through Lubyanskaya and Pushkinskaya squares to Maryina Roshcha. In 1902 A.I. Antonovich, N.I. Golinevich and N.P. Dmitriev compiled a revised project, which included the construction of the Circle Line running along Kamer-Kollezhsky Val, as well as Central Station in the Alexander Garden and four radial lines. Half of these pre-revolutionary lines were planned to be built on overpasses, and half to be carried out in tunnels. According to the project, the ring road was supposed to run along overpasses and earthen embankments.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Sparrow Hills

This temple was going to be erected in honor of the victory of Russia in the Patriotic War of 1812. Architect Alexander Vitberg proposed to build it between the Smolensk and Kaluga roads, on the Sparrow Hills, which Alexander I poetically called the “crown of Moscow.” Here are a few arguments that gave weight to the proposal: this is the emperor’s desire to build a temple outside the city, since in Moscow “there is not enough space required for an elegant building”; these are also references to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome located outside the city; this is lucky geographical location— after all, the Maiden’s Field, spread out at the foot of the Sparrow Hills, would allow one to see the temple from afar. And the last argument: Sparrow Hills located between the routes of the enemy, who entered Moscow along the Smolensk road and retreated along the Kaluga road.

The temple was supposed to be the tallest in the world: the height of its ground part was supposed to be 170 meters (for comparison: the height of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome is 141.5 meters). In 1823, stone procurement and work began to connect the upper reaches of the Volga and Moscow Rivers to deliver stone to the temple. The first experiment was successful, but large quantities were never transported because the water in the Moscow River could not be raised to the required level.

Construction of the temple never continued. Numerous springs on the mountain slope, indicating sandy soils, exclude the possibility of construction large structure not only on the slopes, but also at the top due to the danger of uneven settlement.

The Palace of Labor in Moscow is an unrealized project of 1922-1923. In the center of the capital, on the site between Tverskaya Street and the Sverdlovskaya, Revolution and Okhotnoryadskaya squares (on the site of the current Moscow Hotel), it was planned to build a grandiose complex.

The Palace of Labor was supposed to accommodate all the workers' organizations in Moscow, large proletarian libraries, a meeting hall for several thousand people, an auditorium for eight thousand listeners, a museum of social knowledge, a canteen with a capacity of six thousand people, sports organizations and much more.

The exhibition of projects “Palace of Labor” opened in March 1923. This major competition was to largely determine which path Soviet architecture would take. The project of the Vesnin brothers presented at it became the first building in the constructivist style. However, its construction never began, and in 1935 the Moscow Hotel appeared here.

Sukharevskaya Square

In 1931, a plan for the general reconstruction of Moscow was developed. It envisioned a complete change in the urban planning concept of the city. Wide transport routes and high-rise buildings were to appear in the center. To do this, they began to demolish historical buildings. In 1933, things came to the Sukharev Tower. Famous architects tried to protect the tower. The painter and restorer Igor Grabar, academicians of architecture Ivan Fomin and Ivan Zholtovsky wrote a letter to Stalin, pointing out that the decision was wrong: “The Sukharev Tower,” they wrote, “is an unfading example of the great art of construction, known to the whole world and equally highly valued everywhere... We... strongly object to the destruction of a highly talented work of art, tantamount to the destruction of a Raphael painting."

The authors of the letter proposed to develop a project for the reconstruction of Sretenskaya Square within a month, which would resolve the transport problem while preserving the Sukharev Tower. Architect Fomin soon presented this project - with a circular movement around the square. There were other options - to allow transport to pass to the west of the tower, to move it to another place, to build a tunnel for transport. All this, alas, was not destined to come true.

During the dismantling of the Sukharev Tower, one of the window frames on the third floor was preserved and moved to the Donskoy Monastery, where it was embedded in the monastery wall. The clock from the Sukharev Tower is now installed on the tower of the Front Gate of the Kolomenskoye estate. The foundations of the tower have also been preserved, but are hidden under the modern square.

In the 1980s, the Moscow Executive Committee decided to restore the tower. A competition for projects was announced, but none of them were accepted. Now the only reminder of the existence of the Sukharev Tower is a memorial sign in the park on the Garden Ring.

The Palace of the Soviets in Moscow was designed as a gigantic building 420 meters high, crowned by a 70 meter high statue of Lenin. Thus, the building was to become the tallest in the world. The site where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior previously stood was allocated for construction. The project was proposed by Boris Iofan, and the work on the monument to Lenin was entrusted to Sergei Merkurov. Construction was interrupted with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and was never resumed.

Zaryadye

In keeping with the new aesthetic, the Soviet government planned to double Red Square, and central squares- named after Nogin, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov and the Revolution to be reconstructed within three years. They wanted to free the territory of Kitay-Gorod from the existing small buildings, with the exception of individual large structures, and instead build several monumental buildings of national importance.

The eighth Stalinist high-rise building was supposed to be an administrative building in Zaryadye. The 32-story skyscraper, founded on the day of Moscow's 800th anniversary, was never completed. All erected structures were dismantled, and in 1964-1967 the Rossiya Hotel was built on the remaining foundation.

Zakrestovsky overpass

The decision to open the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition (VDNH) influenced the reconstruction of 1st Meshchanskaya Street and Yaroslavskoe Highway. Yaroslavka was separated from 1st Meshchanskaya by the tracks of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, through which an old overpass was thrown. Its width was so small that even tram rails could only be laid in one thread.

The first architectural design project was completed in 1935 by architect Mikhail Zhirov. The structure was supposed to have dimensions unprecedented for Moscow: its width was 40 meters. Zhirov’s project was not approved, and further work on the overpasses was entrusted to a team consisting of engineer Yuri Werner and brother architects Konstantin and Yuri Yakovlev. Construction began in 1936 and was completed two years later.

TASS House

In 1934-1935, a competition was announced for the construction of the TASS building. It took place in three rounds, and a new location was chosen for the building - Pushkinskaya Square. The author of one of the projects was Leonid Grinshpan, a famous architect of the post-constructivist era. However, his plans were never put into practice. The existing building of the Russian Information Telegraph Agency was built in 1976 on Tverskoy Boulevard according to the design of architects Viktor Egerev, Anatoly Shaikhet, Zoya Abramova and Gennady Sirota.

Large Academic Cinema on Teatralnaya Square

The Big Academic Cinema is a large public building, which, according to the Moscow reconstruction plan, was to be built on Sverdlov Square (current Teatralnaya Square), opposite the building Bolshoi Theater. Since cinema was recognized as “the most important of the arts,” the new cinema had to be architecturally subordinate to the Bolshoi Theater building. The cinema should surpass the Bolshoi in size: the theater has two thousand seats, and Big cinema there should have been four thousand (later, however, this figure dropped to three thousand places).

A competition for the project of the Bolshoi Academic Cinema was announced in the fall of 1936, but all projects were ultimately considered unsuccessful; all the proposed buildings suffered from gigantomania, which they were just beginning to vigorously fight against. Despite the fact that the cinema never appeared on the square, it was to his project that we owe the creation of the combined lobby of the Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Ploshchad Sverdlova stations.

Pantheon of Glory

The Pantheon in Moscow is an unrealized project of a memorial tomb, a “monument eternal glory great people of the Soviet country,” where the sarcophagi of Lenin and Stalin were to be moved, as well as “the remains of outstanding figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state buried near the Kremlin wall.”

In 1953, immediately after Stalin's death, a competition for pantheon designs was announced, but its specific location was not specified. The central authorities began to receive numerous projects, many of which overlapped with those that appeared during the competition for the construction of the Palace of the Soviets.

Monument to the Chelyuskinites

Return from the pole of the Chelyuskinites, taken from the ice floe by Soviet pilots (they, by the way, became the first Heroes Soviet Union), became a national holiday. Therefore, the Moscow City Council announced a competition for the design of the monument. The monument was planned to be placed on the spit of the Obvodny Canal (now at this place there is a monument in honor of Peter I Zurab Tsereteli).

Children's railway in the Park of Culture and Leisure named after I.V. Stalin (Izmailovsky Park)

In 1932-1933, a children's railway already existed in Moscow - in the children's town Central Park culture and recreation named after Gorky. By the end of the 1930s it was closed.

The city-wide park of culture and recreation named after Stalin in Izmailovo (now Izmailovsky Park). The master plan for the development of Moscow envisaged turning this park into the main recreation area for Muscovites. The USSR Central Stadium named after Stalin for 100 thousand spectators was to be located near the northwestern entrance. In the eastern part of the park it was planned to open the world's largest zoo, and in the center of the park, in the floodplain of the Serebryanka River, to develop a huge pond with an area of ​​more than 110 hectares with well-groomed beaches for 10 thousand people, a yacht club and a racing boat station.

The children's railway was supposed to connect all the cultural and entertainment facilities of the park and become the main mode of transport. When creating it, it was decided to abandon the practice that had developed in those years of designing children's roads by children or young professionals in their free time. A competition was announced for the best project for a children's road and all its structures. According to its terms, the architecture of the station buildings had to be at the same quality level as the Moscow metro, the Moscow-Volga canal structures, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, and be a shining example of “joyful Soviet architecture.” Particular attention was paid to the variety of styles, and therefore each of the participants prepared a project not for the entire road, but only for one of the stations. The results of the architectural competition were summed up in the spring of 1940.

In 1940-1941, Moscow children's technical stations and pioneer palaces recruited young railway workers into circles. From the very first day they were distributed among services (traffic, traction, carriage, and so on). In the spring of 1941, having completed the initial theoretical course, the guys began practical training. But since the road had not yet been built at that time, classes were held at the enterprises of the Moscow railway junction. For example, young locomotives, under the guidance of experienced drivers, drove passenger trains from Savyolovsky station.

June 20, 1941 final version The children's railway project was submitted for approval. And two days later the Great Patriotic War began. After the war, attempts were made repeatedly to return to the issue of building a children's railway, but all of them were unsuccessful.

What the streets we are used to might look like

Ambitious city reconstruction projects have affected almost all the central streets and squares of our city. Manezhnaya Square, Tverskaya, and Kursky Station could look completely different from what we are used to.

You've probably heard a lot about unrealized pre-war architectural plans in Moscow. But let’s say if it weren’t for the war, we would now be seeing a lot of this on the streets of Moscow. Let's see what the most spectacular of them might look like.

The Moscow Palace of Soviets is one of the most famous unrealized architectural projects in history. A huge (the largest and tallest in the world) building, which was supposed to become a symbol of victorious socialism, a symbol new country and new Moscow. This project still amazes us today. This building, glorified in many creative works, was built so that after the victory of the World Revolution within its walls it would accept ... the last republic into the Soviet Union. And then the whole world will be one Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

From the pages of the books, a cyclopean infernal building appears before us - a three-hundred-meter multi-tiered tower that serves as a pedestal for a giant hundred-meter statue of Lenin. The statue is so huge that in its head there is a meeting room (the hall in which that very solemn ceremony will take place). At the same time, the giant Ilyich did not stand motionless - his giant hand always points to the Sun, for this purpose the largest statue in the world is rotated by huge electric motors...

Being of sound mind and sober memory, none of the Soviet architects planned to place a meeting room in Lenin’s head and make the statue rotate around its axis following the sun. But the statue of Lenin was really supposed to be the largest statue in the world. And there was also a place for huge electric motors in the project - they were supposed to be installed in the hold of the Great Hall and with their help the venues in this hall for 22 thousand people would change. The dimensions of the building are also striking - the total height is 416.5 meters, the volume is seven and a half million cubic meters (three pyramids of Cheops!). The idea of ​​building the Palace was expressed on December 30, 1922 at the First Congress of Soviets by Sergei Mironovich Kirov (this congress is famous not only for this, it also announced the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Of course, such an idea could not help but find the broadest support among the delegates of the congress - of course, a new symbol of a new country!

But the implementation of this idea was started only almost ten years later - on June 18, 1931, an open competition for the best design of the Palace was announced in the Izvestia newspaper. In the same year, on December 5, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up - a symbol of old Russia, the place of which was to be taken by the symbol of the Land of Soviets. The temple was visible from almost anywhere in Moscow in the early thirties; the new architectural symbol was supposed to be visible from anywhere in the renewed Moscow of the near future. In 1931, a special government body, the Council for the Construction of the Palace of Soviets, was created (in order not to repeat the same word twice in one name, it was often called simply the Construction Council). This Council had a permanent architectural and technical committee, which included prominent cultural figures of those years - Gorky, Meyerhold, Lunacharsky. In addition, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I.V. Stalin, took an active part in the activities of the Council.

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The competition attracted 270 participants - from ordinary citizens with vague ideas about architecture to professional architectural bureaus. By the way, ordinary citizens accounted for 100 preliminary designs. And among the professionals, 24 were foreigners, among whom was the famous Le Carbusier. Most of the submitted projects either did not meet the presented requirements or simply did not withstand any criticism. As a result, five groups of architects reached the finals of the competition, among which was the group of Boris Mikhailovich Iofan. On May 10, 1933, the Council finally determined the winner. On this day the following resolution of the Council was issued:

1. Accept the draft comrade. IOFAN B. M. as the basis for the project of the Palace of Soviets. 2. Complete the upper part of the Palace of Soviets with a powerful sculpture of Lenin 50-75 meters in size so that the Palace of Soviets looks like a pedestal for the figure of Lenin. 3. Instruct comrade. IOFAN to continue developing the project of the Palace of Soviets on the basis of this decision so that the best parts of the projects and other architects are used. 4. Consider it possible to involve other architects in further work on the project.

Point 4 was adopted immediately - architects V. Gelfreich and V. Shchuko were involved in the project. Iofan’s project did not immediately take on the form that is familiar to all lovers of Stalin-era architecture. The very first sketch in 1931 looked like this:

As you can see, instead of one huge tower with Lenin on top, there is a whole complex of buildings. The tower, however, already exists. But she is crowned not by Ilyich, but by a liberated proletarian with a torch.

And this is no longer a sketch, but a more detailed version of Iofan’s project, dated back to the same 1931:

In 1932, the Palace of Soviets from Iofan becomes a little more similar to the final project:

Already almost the final version, dated 1933, but still without Ilyich, with the liberated proletarian on the roof:

The project is taking on an increasingly familiar form:

And finally, the final version, approved in 1939:

The idea to use the building as a giant pedestal for a giant statue of Lenin belongs to the Italian architect A. Brasini, one of the participants in the competition. Boris Iofan did not at all like the idea that his creation would be just a pedestal; he insisted that the statue be installed not on top of the building, but in front of it. But you can’t argue with your boss. The work on the giant statue, 100 meters high and weighing six thousand tons, was entrusted to S. Merkurov, who decorated the Moscow Canal with figures of Lenin and Stalin. In the future, we will tell you about what the Palace of the Soviets could have been like and what we managed to build. In the meantime, we present to your attention a gallery of Palace projects that did not pass the competition: Armando Brasini

I bring to your attention the projects that I managed to find on the Internet, as well as in the book by D. Khmelnitsky “Stalin’s Architecture: Psychology and Style”

2.Armando Brasini. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

3.Armando Brasini. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

4. G. Krasin, A. Kutsaev. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

5.Boris Iofan. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

6.Boris Iofan. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

7. Heinrich Ludwig. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

8. Alexey Shchusev. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

9. Hector O. Hamilton. Competition project for the Palace of the Soviets, 1931.

10.Ivan Zholtovsky. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

11.Karo Alabyan, Vladimir Simbirtsev. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

12.Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1931

13.Moses Ginzburg. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

14. Nikolai Ladovsky. Competition project of the Palace of Soviets 1932

15.Leonid, Victor and Alexander Vesnin. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

17.Ivan Zholtovsky, Georgy Golts. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

18. Karo Alabyan, Georgy Kochar, Anatoly Mordvinov. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

19. VASI brigade (leader Alexander Vlasov). Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

20.Vladimir Shchuko, Vladimir Gelfreich. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

21. Anatoly Zhukov, Dmitry Chechulin. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

22.Boris Iofan. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1932

23.Boris Iofan. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

24.Boris Iofan. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

25. Karo Alabyan, Anatoly Mordvinov, Vladimir Simbirtsev, Yakov Doditsa, Alexey Dushkin. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

26.Ivan Zholtovsky, Alexey Shchusev. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

27.Vladimir Shchuko, Vladimir Gelfreich. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

28.Leonid, Victor and Alexander Vesnin. Competition project for the Palace of Soviets in 1933

What was on the site of the future Palace? During Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Emperor Alexander I made a vow to erect a temple in Moscow in the name of Christ the Savior. The decree on the construction was signed in December 1812 in Vilna, when the last parts of the defeated Napoleonic army were expelled from Russia.

1903 In 1837, for the construction of the temple, the ancient Alekseevsky convent was blown up, the abbess of which cursed this place, prophetically declaring that nothing good would stand on it.

The first temple has been under construction for almost 40 years. In 1846, the arch of the main dome was erected, and three years later the cladding work was completed. In 1860, the scaffolding was finally removed, and the temple appeared before the eyes of Muscovites, but another twenty years after that were spent on painting and finishing. Despite all efforts, people consider the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to be a spiritually unspiritual place, an example of church bad taste.

After the work was completed, the temple existed for just over 50 years. On December 5, 1931, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is blown up.

Museum workers were allowed to remove fragments of the temple; thanks to this, several giant high reliefs were dismantled and transported to the Donskoy Monastery.

Let's continue about the Palace project.

Let's start with the main thing - with the foundation on which a 300-meter-high palace, topped with a 100-meter statue of Lenin, was supposed to stand. The total area of ​​the building was supposed to be 11 hectares, and the weight was one and a half million tons. But this enormous weight was not distributed evenly over this entire area. The most “weighty” part was supposed to be the central high-rise part - the tower in which the Great Hall was located for 22 thousand people. The hall had a round shape - in the center there was a stage area, above which the audience seats rose like an amphitheater. Adjacent to this huge hall were vestibules, foyers and other small (compared to the Hall) rooms. All these premises as a whole received the name “stylobate” (in ancient Greek architecture this was the name for the upper part of the base of the temple, on which the colonnade was installed). This gigantic tower was supposed to cover an area of ​​a hectare and weigh 650 thousand tons (one fifth of the weight of the entire building). Columns of the frame of the New York skyscraper "Empire State Building" (383 meters, the most high building in the world at that time) pressed on the ground with a force of 4,700 tons, and the columns of the tower of the Palace of the Soviets had to bear a load of 8 to 14 tons each.

Builders have never encountered such loads on the ground before. So, special requirements were placed on the soil and foundation on which the building, a symbol of the new era, would stand. To study the soil, for the first time in the Soviet Union, so-called large-core drilling was used - the soil was lifted in the form of cylinders 1 meter long and 10-12 centimeters in diameter. More than a hundred wells with a depth of 50-60 meters were drilled. In the very center of the future construction site there was a rocky area - a kind of peninsula jutting into the soft ground. At a depth of 14 meters, strong rocks began - first a ten-meter layer of limestone, then a six-meter clay-marl layer followed, then another layer of limestone began, but more dense than the first. Then again clay and again limestone. A kind of sandwich. These rocks were formed millions of years ago during the Carboniferous period, and then they withstood the weight of glaciers, incomparably heavier than the Cyclopean building of the Palace. So, the underground rocky peninsula was ideal for construction - it was here that the tallest tower in the world was to rise.

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The foundation of the tower consisted of two concentric concrete rings with a diameter of 140 and 160 meters. They were located on the second limestone layer at a depth of 30 meters. But before pouring concrete, the builders dug a huge pit. In order to prevent the walls of the pit from collapsing under the influence of groundwater, the USSR was the first to use the so-called “bituminization” of the soil - 1,800 wells were drilled around the pit. A pipe with small holes in the walls was inserted into each well. Bitumen, heated to a temperature of 200 degrees, was pumped into these pipes under high pressure. Through the holes in the pipes, bitumen seeped into the ground, filled all the cracks and cavities and froze. A waterproof curtain was formed around the pit. Or rather, almost waterproof. But the pumps successfully dealt with the water that did seep into the pit. To solve the problem with groundwater once and for all, a kind of “bowl” of four layers of asbestos cardboard impregnated with bitumen was built under the future foundation. Now it was possible to begin laying the Cyclopean foundation. Especially for this purpose, a concrete plant was built near the construction site, equipped with the latest technology from the late thirties. The last word in technology at that time were huge automatic concrete mixers. Concrete was delivered to the construction site in metal “buckets” into the pit. Each tub contained 4 tons of concrete. Using a crane, the “tubs” were lowered into the pit, and the worker knocked out the latch holding the bottom.

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The spilled concrete was compacted with so-called vibrators - metal pins that vibrate under the influence of eccentrics rotating inside. As concrete hardens ("sets" in construction slang), it decreases in volume (so-called "shrinkage"). Given the enormous size of the foundation, shrinkage could lead to the formation of cracks. But the builders easily solved this problem - the foundation rings were not made solid, they consisted of concrete blocks with gaps between them. Once the blocks hardened, the gaps were filled with fresh concrete. The result was a monolithic concrete ring. Both rings are connected by 16 radial walls. And two more reinforced concrete rings were installed on top of the foundation rings. These rings are also connected to each other by 32 reinforced concrete beams.

The foundations of the remaining, not so massive, parts of the building were simply concrete pillars with a diameter of 60 meters. Since the load on them was not so huge, these concrete pillars were installed on the top layer of limestone. In total, the construction of the Palace’s foundations required 550 thousand cubic meters of concrete. Above the foundation of the tower there would be basement floors that would house technical services - heating, lighting, plumbing, sewerage, etc. To lay countless pipes and wires in the concrete walls of the basement, it was necessary to lay special channels so large that people could walk in them without bending over. Most deep point the basement was to become the hold of the Great Hall - 10 meters below the groundwater level. The floor of the hold, according to the project, was supposed to be a concrete slab 8 meters thick; one square meter of such a floor would weigh 18.4 tons.

Before the war, they managed to build the foundation of the high-rise part of the Palace and began to install the steel frame of the building. Alas, after June 22, 1941, concrete, granite, steel, and reinforcement were required for completely different purposes. After the war, other skyscrapers, more modest in size, rose above Moscow. The Palace's foundations were used to build the world's largest swimming pool. And in the nineties, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, demolished in December 1931, was restored on the same foundation.

Frame

Now let's talk about the steel frame, the basis of the three-hundred-meter Palace, topped with a hundred-meter statue of Lenin. For the construction of this frame, a special high-strength steel grade was developed - DS.

The frame was to be mounted on two ring-shaped concrete foundations. The diameter of the inner ring was 140 meters, the outer one - 160. Each of the rings had 34 steel columns, each of which had to withstand a load of 12 thousand tons - this is the weight of a freight train made up of six hundred cars. The cross-sectional area of ​​each column is 6 square meters; a passenger car can easily fit in such an area. The columns rested on a riveted steel shoe, under which 4-5 cast steel slabs were laid directly in the ring foundation.

All 64 columns are connected horizontally with I-beams every 6-10 meters. The same beams connect every two columns located on the same radius.

Up to a height of 60 meters, the columns went vertically upward, then for 80 meters they went at a slight angle. And from a height of 140 meters the columns again went vertical. At a height of 200 meters, the columns of the outer end broke off, and only the columns of the outer row stretched upward. In those places where the columns had to move from a vertical position to an inclined one, so-called spacer rings had to be installed. The surface of such a ring formed an entire avenue 15 meters wide.

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In addition to the main frame, the Palace had to have an auxiliary one. The huge columns of the main frame would be located at a considerable distance from each other; their strength would not be enough to withstand the weight of the walls and interfloor ceilings of a huge building. The purpose of the secondary frame is to “collect” loads and transfer them to a powerful main frame. The secondary frame also consisted of beams and columns, but all its elements were made of steel less strong than DS. But this steel differed from ordinary construction steel by the addition of copper. This additive does not add strength, but increases rust resistance. The beams of the auxiliary frame would be located where they are needed, complementing the main frame.

Floors were to be installed on top of the beams of the secondary frame - reinforced concrete slabs 10 centimeters thick. Floors are laid on these floors. The thickness of the floors also had to be large - after all, pipes and electrical wiring must run through the floors. The total weight of the steel frame of the Palace of the Soviets was supposed to be 350 thousand tons. A number of factories in Moscow and beyond worked to produce the cyclopean steel structure. They were used to produce the so-called “mounting elements” - sections of columns, beams and rings. The length of each such element should not exceed 15 meters - otherwise it would be impossible to transport them across railway and lift with cranes.

In Moscow, not far from Lenin Mountains A special plant was built where all these elements were prepared for installation - holes for rivets were drilled, and the ends of the columns were turned on special machines. After such processing, the frame parts were sent to the construction site. For installation, 12 cranes were used, each with a lifting capacity of 40 tons. Once the frame reached a height that the cranes could not reach, 10 cranes had to be mounted on the beams of the outer ring of the main frame. The remaining two cranes were supposed to transfer loads from the ground to them. In the future, it was planned to reduce the number of cranes on the “top tower”, and the installation of the statue was to be carried out by only one crane.

The installation of the frame began in 1940. By the beginning of the war, it reached a height of 7 floors. During the war, DS steel was used to make anti-tank hedgehogs, and when supplies came to an end, the already built part of the frame was dismantled. The apotheosis did not work out, and then, having cleared the site of construction junk, an open-air swimming pool "Moscow" was built on this site, in which Muscovites have been swimming serenely in winter and summer for about 30 years.

Well, what do you all know in this place now...

Medieval cathedrals, built with the money of burned Templars, knights' castles - guardians of atrocities and treasures, the twin towers of New York, destroyed in such a mysterious way - all these are monuments of their time. Moreover, they were and are, and we know that once people had the strength, means, and money to build it.

But there are structures almost as huge, about which we know either very little, or... we know almost everything, but nevertheless they were not embodied in steel and concrete. Today we can only guess - what would it be? One of these grandiose structures that amazes every imagination was supposed to be the famous Palace of the Soviets in Moscow, which, however, had already begun to be built, but was never completed. This would be a truly impressive structure, which in terms of its height would still be among the six tallest buildings in the world today.

So, what kind of building was this supposed to be and why is there so much debate and talk about it even today? And it so happened that the idea to build the Palace of Soviets was born back in 1922 at the First Congress of Soviets, and although the idea remained an idea, it subsequently “sprouted” into the “sprouts” of corresponding projects. At the 1931 competition, these came from 270 creative teams and individual citizens: 160 works were submitted by professional architects, 100 came from ordinary citizens, often at a level that does not stand up to any criticism, and 24 came from other countries! As a result, the design of the architect Iofan B.M. was adopted as a basis - but only as a basis, no more - according to which this palace was supposed to resemble an ancient Babylonian ziggurat, but only composed not of quadrangles, but of cylinders, which was connected with the need to place a huge round hall with a dome inside it. It was also decided to crown the upper part of the building with a huge sculpture of V.I. Lenin 50-75 meters high - so that all placed one on the same step would be perceived as its pedestal. To help Iofan, who, by the way, strongly opposed installing the figure of Lenin on the roof of his building, rightly believing that then everyone would look at it and not at his palace, architects Gelfreich V. and Shchuko V. were selected - and the work, like it was customary to say then, “it was boiling”!

The 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to complete the Palace of Soviets by 1942, but the work itself, including preliminary work, began in 1931, when on December 5 the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up and a completely empty space appeared in its place. It was there that it was decided to build this super building, and another competition was held in February 1933, where the most impressive five projects were selected (including the work of the architect Iofan).

The building of the Palace of Soviets was supposed to house: the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, State Archives, library, museum of world art, halls of both Chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, halls Civil War, Construction of socialism, while outside it was planned to arrange a parking lot for five thousand cars, because of which Volkhonka Street would have to completely disappear, and the museum named after. Pushkin was planned to be moved 100 meters to the side! The sculpture of Lenin was to be made by the sculptor S. Merkulov, and this very idea - to crown the palace building with a statue of Lenin - did not belong to “our” person, but to the Italian A. Brazini, but, as they say, “came to court.”

Later, the architect Le Corbusier wrote to Stalin that this building represented a “decline of spirit”, “an absurd thing”, and asked to abandon its construction in the form in which it was planned, but, of course, our leader could not approve any other projects . Be that as it may, the design of the Palace of the Soviets itself was so unique that it is worth getting to know it in more detail. After all, even the famous American skyscrapers of those years would have been inferior to it in height, in their complexity, and even more so in the originality of their design. The internal volume of the Palace was such that it could accommodate as many as three pyramids of Cheops - a structure, as we know, which is far from small! Wherein total area the development of the site for the Palace was supposed to be almost 110 thousand square meters. m.

The geological structure of the building site turned out to be very complex: the top layer consisted of sand, loam and sandy loam, or the so-called alluvial materials of Quaternary period sediments. Below lay layers of bedrock - clay, marl, limestone. Groundwater is very abundant and aggressive - it has a destructive effect on concrete! Therefore, the technical design primarily included combating water, which was to be carried out using soil bituminization. The essence of the method was to drill hundreds of wells around the future foundation, through which combustible bitumen was pumped into the limestone under high pressure at temperatures up to 200°. Along its entire path through the pipes, it still had to be heated by electric current, which would make it possible to fill all the cracks in the limestone with it and thereby close the path of water both into the construction pit and to the future concrete walls of the foundation.

The very foundation of the high-rise part of the Palace of the Soviets had to withstand a load exceeding 500 thousand tons! With such a colossal weight, the stability of the foundation had to be ensured by its deepening more than 21 m below the level of the Moscow River and 27 m below the surface of the then existing embankment. This main foundation consisted of two concrete rings with a diameter of 140 and 160 m, having a height of 20.5 and a thickness of 3.5 m, and only for the construction of the foundation of the central part of the building it was necessary to lay 100 thousand cubic meters of concrete in it.

The lower parts of the building had to rest on foundations buried 10-15 m with wells and caissons to the level of the first layer of limestone. In total, it was planned to build two thousand foundations for the stylobate with a total volume of 250 thousand cubic meters of concrete!

Like all super-tall buildings, the Palace of the Soviets had to have a metal frame that transferred its entire weight to the foundation. The problem of creating this structure was complicated by the need to fit into it the domed vault of a large hall, which according to the plan had a diameter of 130 m and a height of 100.6 m. It was planned that the lower part of the frame of the building, 77.5 m high, would consist of 32 pairs of powerful columns arranged in a circle and resting on steel plate shoes. All these columns formed a cylindrical frame from which hung a gigantic dome covering the hall. In this case, the columns had to consist of T-beams with a section of 1.5x1.5 m.

They were connected to each other by sheets of steel 24 mm thick, so that the total weight of the metal frame of the Palace of Soviets according to the project reached 228 thousand tons, of which 100 thousand tons were high-grade special grade of high-strength steel, which even received a special designation - “SDS” ( "Steel of the Palace of Soviets")!

The chemical composition of this steel was developed by the Central Institute of Metals in Leningrad, and the technological support for its production was entrusted to the Ukrainian Institute of Metals in Kharkov. Accordingly, its production was organized at the plant named after. Petrovsky in Dnepropetrovsk, as well as at the plant named after. Dzerzhinsky, Mariupol plant named after. Ilyich and the Voroshilov plant. The new steel was 15% more expensive than conventional construction steel, but at the same time had increased strength and high corrosion resistance.

The weight of the frame of the high-rise part of the building was supposed to be 175 thousand tons, which is four times more than the frame of such a skyscraper as the American Empire State Building. This, of course, was immediately calculated by journalists - lovers of sensations, who at any cost sought to “catch up and overtake”, even if only on paper!

Due to the enormous size and great complexity of the structure, the assembly of the Palace of the Soviets frame had to be carried out in four operations, with intermediate verification of the already completed installation. Ceramic hollow blocks were chosen as the main material for filling the voids of the palace walls, rather than brick, as they provided a significant gain in weight and at the same time good heat and sound insulation. The thickness of the wall filling in all parts of the building was the same and amounted to 0.3 m.

The Great Hall of the Palace of the Soviets looked like an amphitheater with a round arena and was designed for 20 thousand seats. Area - 12 thousand square meters. m, and the volume is 970 thousand cubic meters. m. Thus, its volume was approximately equal to the volume of all the auditoriums of theaters and cinemas of the then Moscow. Of course, the accumulation of such a large number of people in one place required powerful artificial ventilation, which was designed for a capacity of 800 thousand cubic meters. m of air per hour in winter and 1200 thousand cubic meters. m in the summer. Warm and polluted air in the hall had to rise under its dome, from where it was removed by powerful exhaust fans. Accordingly, an air conditioning system was provided, which would ensure constant temperature and normal humidity in the hall.

Part of the circumference of the Great Hall, according to the project, was allocated for the seats of the presidium, diplomatic boxes, press representatives, etc. It was assumed that the round arena in the center of the hall would be occupied by the stalls during conventions, congresses and meetings, but if necessary, during circus or theatrical performances or sports performances, it would be cleared of seats by lowering the stalls area into a specially provided hold underneath. Accordingly, a ring-shaped foyer was provided around the hall, formed by two rows of metal frame columns supporting the central part of the building. In addition to the foyer, the Great Hall was to be adjacent to the antechambers, smoking rooms and lobbies.

The small hall was designed for 5,775 seats, with an area of ​​about 3,500 sq.m., and a volume of 84 thousand cubic meters. m and a height of 84 m. It turned out that even this “small hall” would become the greatest theater room in all of Europe. The seats in it were located in an amphitheater and on a small balcony. Stage area - 1200 sq. m. Along with this hall, the following premises were provided: two auditoriums with 500 seats each, two auditoriums with 200 seats each and another library for 500 thousand volumes with reading rooms and study rooms.

In the underground part of the palace there were supposed to be technical rooms - heating, ventilation, water supply and electricity services, medical services and other life support systems. There should also be hold-arenas of the Big and Small Halls. During the design, special attention was paid to the convenience of internal movement around the palace, since its capacity was designed for 30 thousand people, and, of course, it was necessary to make sure that they could quickly get to any point of this huge building. Not counting fire and utility lifts, it was planned to install 62 escalators and 99 elevators inside the building, thanks to which, for example, the evacuation of the Great Hall could be carried out in literally 10 minutes!

Much attention was paid to the decoration of the premises, because the area of ​​the high-rise part of the building alone was 78 thousand square meters. m.

As for the external design of the Palace of the Soviets, it was entirely subordinated to the idea of ​​​​creating a worthy pedestal for the statue of Ilyich. The metal used to decorate the facade was connected with the statue by the unity of the material, which is why both the building itself and the sculpture crowning it should have been perceived as a single whole. The full height of Lenin's figure would have reached 100 m, which was something completely exceptional in the history of architecture. The height of the head is 14 m, the length of the arm, traditionally extended forward, is almost 30 m, while the figure would have only two points of support - in the legs!

Thus, according to the project, the full height of the Palace of Soviets from ground level to the top of the head of the figure of V.I. Lenin was 420 m, i.e. 13 meters higher than the then leader among skyscrapers - the Empire State Building! The total weight of the palace, with a volume of 6.5 million cubic meters. m, would have reached a completely grandiose figure of 1.3 million tons.

The construction of this monument to the era when it seemed that nothing was impossible for the Soviet people began in 1937, and before the start of the war they managed to assemble the “cage” of a building the height of a ten-story building. But then, with the outbreak of the war, construction had to be abandoned, and all metal structures, both those that had already been assembled and those prepared, had to be used for the construction of strategically important bridges, which at that time were much more important. They wanted to complete the building after the war, but then they had to spend huge amounts of money on creating atomic bomb, then Stalin died, then... then... then - in a word, the capital never saw this grandiose structure, although the rectangle of the Palace of Congresses was built in the Kremlin. Subsequently, the project of the Palace of Soviets was repeatedly criticized for its lack of scale in relation to other historical buildings of the Moscow Kremlin, for its inconsistency with the historically established architecture of the city center, for the “super-monumental forms” and so on, but only Egyptian pyramids in this regard, they are even more “super-monumental” - and nothing. Just to look at them, people spend a lot of money, and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, restored on the site of the Palace of the Soviets, for all its beauty, is still nothing more than an ordinary domed church!

For many years, a summer garden functioned in the round recess of the Palace’s foundation. open pool“Moscow”, on the site of which the temple that was blown up in 1931 was later recreated.

Today we can talk a lot about the fact that there were things at that time that were more important than the construction of this pompous building, that people in the country were starving, languished in camps, that they lacked a lot of things, and since all this is so, then and it’s good that it wasn’t built. But... people always lack something, the majority generally languish from idleness, while for everyone else, no matter how much you give, it’s always not enough. Be that as it may, we would get as a souvenir not a paper project, but a very real wonder of the world, capable of attracting tourists from all over the world. But personally, I still regret that the Palace of the Soviets was never built!

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In 1931, work began on creating a master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow.

It was assumed that it would be based on the principle of preserving the historical appearance of the city. At the same time, the new plan contained ideas about expanding Moscow streets and constructing new architectural objects. Its final version appeared in 1935 and covered many issues: the construction of the metro and the improvement of ground transport, landscaping and watering of Moscow, and most importantly, the construction of the Palace of Soviets in the capital.

Palace on the site of the temple

People first started talking about the construction of the Palace of the Soviets back in 1922, during his lifetime. However, due to the need to rebuild the country afterward, there were no resources for this large-scale project. The idea was returned to again in the 1930s. The Palace of the Soviets was to become the first Soviet skyscraper and a symbol of the prosperity of the socialist state.

Le Corbusier project. Source: corbusier.totalarch.com

All organizational issues related to the Palace of Soviets were entrusted to the Temporary Technical Council for Construction Management, which included not only architects, but also many outstanding cultural figures - writers (), artists (I. E. Grabar), theater directors (K. S. Stanislavsky). The question of the construction site remained open. They suggested Okhotny Ryad, Bolotnaya Square, Varvarka and, finally, Volkhonka. The latter option ultimately turned out to be the most preferable, but to implement it, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior had to be demolished, which was done on December 5, 1931.

Volkhonka was not chosen by chance. The fact is that the Palace of Soviets, as the tallest building in Moscow, was supposed to become the architectural dominant of the city, in other words, its center. They planned to build a wide avenue and radiating highways to the Palace. The place where it was located seemed ideal for these purposes.

Project selection

The competition for the design of the Palace of the Soviets is considered the largest in the history of architecture of the Soviet Union. Architects from all over the world and even people whose occupations were far from art and urban planning were invited to take part. The Palace of the Soviets was intended to become a people's building; accordingly, anyone could contribute to its creation.

“This building should be an emblem of future power,
the triumph of communism not only here, but also in the West” S.M. Kirov.
Source: Atarov N. Palace of Soviets. M., 1940.

The management outlined a fundamental point - the building must be high-rise. However, the competition participants were not given any specific technical specifications, so they could completely come up with the appearance of the Palace themselves, based only on their own imagination. Despite the fact that the projects were sometimes strikingly different from each other, height expectedly won out over squatness.

It was necessary not only for the monumental building to fit into the environment, but to make it dominate it. The Palace of the Soviets from the outside was seen as a huge high-rise building with a surrounding open square for demonstrations and walks, and inside there was supposed to be a series of halls and halls for meetings of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as for holding public events.

Among the foreigners who presented their designs for the Palace of the Soviets, the American architect Hector Hamilton distinguished himself. He was awarded second prize at the All-Union stage of the competition. In 1932, Time magazine emphasized that the Hamilton Prize was an important proof of the openness of the competition. The architect, not very well known in the professional community at that time, received the award thanks to his talents, and not his big name. Alas, the project, which bore the working title “Simplicity,” was ruined by its simplicity. Hamilton, for example, lost sight of such a detail as the square near the Palace of the Soviets (it was not in the plan). But where then to hold demonstrations?

Diagram of the frame of the Lenin statue.
Source: Atarov N. Palace of Soviets. M., 1940

The project of the famous French architect Le Corbusier (later known as one of the founders of the brutalist architectural style) also did not quite meet the task. The building, designed by Le Corbusier, was sometimes called a hangar, sometimes a stadium, sometimes a huge factory building - anything but a palace.

In February 1932, a decree was issued in which architects were again strongly advised not to be afraid of heights. Finally, in May 1933, the Construction Council approved the project of the Soviet architect B. M. Iofan. The final plan, in the development of which, in addition to Iofan, V. A. Shchuko and V. G. Gelfreich took part, was as follows: the building of the Palace of Soviets is the tallest in the world, higher Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. Its height is 415 meters.

B. M. Iofan, L. V. Rudnev (later the architect of the main building of Moscow State University) and D. N. Chechulin (architect of the house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment) proposed building several high-rise buildings to smooth out the scale of the Palace of the Soviets. A.V. Shchusev concretized the plan: the architect spoke in favor of the construction of eight new high-rise buildings and called for their location in places whose names contain the epithet “red” - the vicinity of Red Square, Red Gate, Krasnaya Presnya.

Symbol of communism

Initially, in Iofan’s project, an 18-meter sculpture of a worker with a torch in his hand, called “The Liberated Proletarian,” rose above the building. But, according to the words, the Palace of Soviets was supposed to become a monument to Lenin and his achievements. Thus, a new task emerged: to crown the Palace with a 100-meter sculpture of Ilyich. In clear weather, it could theoretically be seen at a distance of seventy kilometers from Moscow. The Lenin statue was supposed to be three times taller and twice as heavy as New York's Statue of Liberty. Its head alone was only slightly smaller in volume than the columned hall of the House of Unions on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.

Great Hall of the Palace of the Soviets. Source: techne.com

What does the Palace of Soviets look like “on paper”? Its main entrance, near which there are monuments to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, faces the Kremlin. Inside the building there is an interaction of all types of art. Frescoes, for example, were supposed to occupy about 20 thousand square meters of walls (when compared, it turns out that these are six Red Squares). In addition to them - sculptures, busts, bas-reliefs and canvases in the style of socialist realism.

Of greatest interest is the Great Hall, located in the center of the Palace. It could accommodate the bell tower of Ivan the Great, or any building 25 floors high. The stalls of the large hall could be transformed into a stage, a water pool and even an ice arena. Such transformations had to occur within a few minutes using an electric lift. The round shape of the Great Hall made it difficult to hold film shows, and the creators of the project found an original solution to the problem. It was necessary to install four screens at once, the side faces of which would form the shape of a cube. Three of them are facing to different parties amphitheater, one - to the presidium sector.

Hall of Heroics of the Civil War.

We will take a short excursion around the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow. The grandiose and majestic building was never destined to come true. On the Internet you can find illustrations from the sketch and design documentation of the Palace of the Soviets, and the set of these illustrations is limited. The idea arose to restore one of the versions of this building in 3D, describe the history of the Palace of Soviets and walk around the territory of the virtual building. At the end of the post is the evolution of the winning competition project for the Palace of Soviets by Boris Iofan, starting in 1933. The 1934 version is implemented in 3d

As a guide, I would like to ask visitors to the virtual exhibition a few questions:

• 1. Would you like the Palace of Soviets project to be implemented?


• 2. How would this building be operated in modern conditions if it were implemented?


• 3. In the USSR, the Palace of Soviets was given the place of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. What place, in your opinion, would be the most reasonable to allocate for the construction of the Palace of Soviets? Where would it fit best?


• 4. Did you like/dislike the excursion? Feel free to criticize.

The idea of ​​building the Palace of the Soviets will be 90 years old next year. In 1931, an open competition for the design of the building was announced. According to the plan, the Palace of Soviets was supposed to embody the greatness, power and successes of the young Soviet state, to become a visible embodiment of the idea of ​​​​the victory of communism, a bright future prepared for everyone. About 160 projects were submitted to the competition, both from foreign architects and, for the most part, from Soviet ones. By that time, the dominant element of architecture was constructivism. Constructivism is based on strict, laconic forms, and the space of the building should be as functional as possible. Quite a few of the projects for the construction of the Palace of the Soviets were designed in a constructivist spirit. But for a building-symbol, the laconic and rational form did not fit well with the changing “proletarian aesthetics”. At least that's what Joseph Stalin thought. The simplicity and ascetic design of the structures were to be replaced by pompous, richly decorated facades. Architects based on the development of classical forms increasingly made themselves known. Boris Iofan kept himself apart from the other architects. A student of the Italian architect Armando Brasini won the competition for the design of the Palace of the Soviets. By the way, Brazini also took part in the competition. The influence of the teacher was great, one might even say that Italian blood was supposed to flow in the Palace being prepared. Following the Italian Kremlin, which became the sacred center of Russia, the significant influence of the Italians in Orthodox church buildings came the time of architectural influence on the country of the Soviets.

In 1933, architects V. Shchuko and V. Gelfreich were involved in the work of B. Iofan. According to the upcoming revised project, the height of the Palace was to be 420 meters, and the building was to be crowned by a 100-meter monument to V.I. Lenin - the work of the sculptor S. Merkurov. The cubic capacity of the building would be 7,500,000 cubic meters. The large hall of the Palace was designed for 21,000 people, had a height of 100 m, the small hall was designed for 6,000 people. The high-rise part of the Palace was supposed to house the Presidium, chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and some other halls.

The construction of such a building would require the reconstruction of Volkhonka and other adjacent buildings. In other words, everything historical Buildings, the mansions would be demolished. The huge areas around were supposed to be paved and equipped with parking lots for 5 thousand cars. The building of the Pushkin Museum named after. A.S. Pushkin had to be moved 100 meters.

Construction of the Palace began at the end of the 30s on the site of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But the truly ambitious plan of the Bolsheviks was never destined to come true. The war made its own adjustments. Construction was stopped at the stage of laying the foundation. It is interesting that during and after the war the design of the Palace of Soviets underwent changes; the hope for the implementation of the project did not leave Stalin for a long time. Post-war devastation, the death of the leader, the exposure of the cult of Stalin, the adoption of a directive on “condemning decoration and architectural excesses” finally buried the idea and project of further construction. Then there were many other programs and projects, attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to oppose the USSR and the socialist camp to the world of capital and the market economy. But such beautiful project there was no more in architecture.

The project of the Palace of the Council of Boris Iofan played a big role in the formation and further development and flowering of Soviet architecture of the 30s - 50s, called the “Stalinist Empire style”. Formed at the intersection of different cultures and styles, from classicism to post-constructivism, the talented synthesis of architecture, the eclecticism of the Soviet imperial style is a significant milestone in the architecture of the world.