Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ive Building on Kirovskaya pl and the incredibly odd Communication Workers'
Palace of Culture on the Moyka Canal.
Stalin considered the opulence of the imperial centre of renamed Leningrad to be a
potentially corrupting influence on the people. So, from 1927, he began to relocate the
centre to the south of the city's historic heart. His traditional neoclassical tastes pre-
vailed. The prime example of Stalinist architecture is the vast House of Soviets (
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), which was meant to be the centrepiece of the new city centre. Noi
Trotsky began this magnificent monstrosity in 1936, although it was not finished until
after the war (by which time Trotsky had himself been purged). With its columns and
bas-reliefs, it is a great example of Stalinist neoclassical design - similar in many
ways to the imperial neoclassicism pioneered a century earlier. The House of Soviets
was never used as the Leningrad government building, as the plan to relocate the
centre was shelved after Stalin's death in 1953.
WWII and Stalin's old age saved many buildings of great importance: the Church
on the Spilled Blood, for example, was slated for destruction before the German inva-
sion of the Soviet Union intervened. Many other churches and historical buildings,
however, were destroyed.
During the eras of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, St Petersburg's imperial heritage was
cautiously respected, as the communist leadership took a step back from Stalin's ex-
cesses. Between the 1950s and 1970s, a housing shortage led to the construction of
high-rise Soviet apartment buildings, which would cover huge swathes of the city out-
side the historic centre. For many visitors, this is their first and last view of the city.
Examples of archetypal post-Stalinist Soviet architecture include the massive Grand
OKHTA CENTRE
No urban development project has caused as many concerns as the notorious
Okhta Centre, originally to have been called Gazprom City. At the suggestion of
public relations consultants, no doubt, Russia's largest gas company changed
