In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin was remaking Moscow from scratch. Old churches? Dynamited. Monasteries? Flattened. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior — the largest Orthodox cathedral in the world — was blown up to make room for a “Palace of Soviets,” a massive government tower that never actually got built. The crater sat empty for decades until they finally just turned it into a swimming pool. That was the mood in Moscow: erase the past, start over.
0%
Crowns & Conquests·2/2·1′
The place
Saint Basil's Cathedral
Stalin: "Put It Back"
The three words that saved Russia's most famous building
1930sSaint Basil's Cathedral
Moral of the Story
“You can control a country, but you can’t erase its soul. Some things are so deeply woven into who a people are that even absolute power stops at the door.”
Characters
J
Joseph StalinL
Lazar KaganovichP
Pyotr Baranovsky (architect)Source
Various accounts, some disputed; Baranovsky's arrest is documented