Stalin built seven Moscow skyscrapers so foreign visitors would not sneer
In 1946 Stalin decided Moscow needed skyscrapers, reportedly fearing that visiting foreigners would compare it unfavourably with capitalist cities. The result was seven towers built between 1947 and 1957, and the Moscow State University building among them stayed Europe's tallest until 1990. They cost the city dearly in housing that was never built.
The first Soviet skyscraper plan, the Palace of the Soviets, stalled when Germany invaded in 1941; its steel frame was scrapped to strengthen Moscow's defences. Boris Iofan kept submitting fresh designs and kept being turned down. According to Nikita Khrushchev's recollection, Stalin argued that after winning the war the capital could not face visitors without tall buildings. An official decree followed in January 1947, and the sites were ceremonially launched that September.
Site selection and design review, carried out in 1947 and 1948, happened in secret. Veterans like Shchusev were passed over in favour of a younger generation, ranging from Vladimir Gelfreikh at 62 to Mikhail Posokhin at 37. The prize commission, the university tower on Vorobyovy Gory, went to Lev Rudnev after Iofan insisted on a spot at the cliff edge that risked landslides; Rudnev moved it 800 meters back. In April 1949 every design team received a Stalin Prize, graded by the status of its project rather than its merit.
Soviet builders had little high-rise experience and weak technology, yet were ordered to guarantee the towers would last, so they relied on enormous rigid foundations; the university's concrete slab is 7 meters thick. The buildings ended up far heavier than American skyscrapers. The university's main tower swallowed more than 40,000 metric tons of steel, rose 240 meters and opened on September 1, 1953, and several thousand Gulag inmates helped build it.
The price showed up in housing. In 1947 Moscow built 100,000 square meters of homes, rising to 270,000 in 1948 and 405,000 the year after, while the towers alone topped 500,000 square meters, every one of them dearer to build than a flat's, roughly halving the pace of housing construction. Yet factories set up for the project, such as Kuchino Ceramics, later underpinned Khrushchev's own housing drive. Khrushchev also mocked the Leningradskaya Hotel, claiming only 22 percent of its space could be rented.
Source: Seven Sisters (Moscow)
