Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Under Stalin, a comprehensive urban plan was devised for Moscow. On paper, it appeared
as a neatly organised garden city; unfortunately, it was implemented with a sledgehammer.
Historic cathedrals and bell towers were demolished in the middle of the night.
New monuments marking the epochal transition to socialism went up in place of the old.
The first line of the marble-bedecked metro was completed in 1935. The enormous Cathed-
ral of Christ the Saviour was razed with the expectation of erecting the world's tallest build-
ing, upon which would stand an exalted 90m statute of Lenin. This scheme was later aban-
doned and the foundation hole instead became the world's biggest municipal swimming
pool. Broad thoroughfares were created and neo-Gothic skyscrapers girded the city's outer
ring.
In the 1940s the medieval Zaryadie district in Kitay Gorod was razed to make room for
Stalin's 'Eighth Sister'. The massive skyscraper was never built, and the foundation even-
tually became the base of the gargantuan Hotel Rossiya (now demolished). The area is
now slated for parkland.
THE BATTLE OF MOSCOW - 1941
In the 1930s Stalin's overtures to enter into an anti-Nazi collective security agreement
were rebuffed by England and France. Vowing that the Soviet Union would not be
pulling their 'chestnuts out of the fire', Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler
instead.
Thus, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Stalin was caught
by surprise and did not emerge from his room for three days.
The ill-prepared Red Army was no match for the Nazi war machine, which advanced
on three fronts. History repeated itself with the two armies facing off at Borodino. By
December, the Germans were just outside Moscow, within 30km of the Kremlin. Only
an early, severe winter halted the advance. A monument now marks the spot, near the
entrance road to Sheremetyevo Airport, where the Nazis were stopped in their tracks.
Staging a brilliant counter-offensive, Soviet war hero General Zhukov staved off the at-
tack and pushed the invaders back.
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