A SOVIET PALACE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3941, 18 August 1937, Page 3

A SOVIET PALACE

TALLEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD. TO BE ERECTED IN MOSCOW. Inch by inch it is the aim of the Soviet Government of Russia to make Moscow a model city and an example to other countries of what Communism can accomplish. A vast town planning scheme has been prepared, and steps will be taken to carry it cut in the near future. The outstanding architectural feature of the model city will be the Palace of the Soviets, which will be the largest, tallest and most expensive building in the world. It will be 1350 feet high, and will be surmounted by a statue of Lenin measuring 260 feet. It was announced from Moscow in March last that work in connection with the erection of this great Palace of the Soviets had commenced. The object of the Communists is to erect a monumental building near the Kremlin, the ancient palace of the Czars, which will be representative of the new Russia. In 1923 the suggestion to erect this palace was officially sanctioned by the Russian All-Unions Congress, but it was not until 1931 that a Government commission authorised to select a suitable site chose that of the Cethedral of the Redeemer. The cathedral was pulled down, and a world wide competition for architectural designs for the Palace of the Soviets was announced. The competitors who submitted designs numbered 172, and three of them—two Russians and an American, named Hector Hamilton—were awarded prizes, but none of the designs was re-’ garded by the committee of judges as entirely satisfactory. Boris Yofan, one of the Russian architects whose design had been awarded a prize, was commissioned to prepare a design combining the best features of the three which had won prizes. MONUMENT TO LENIN. The palace is to be regarded as a monument to Lenin, and it is described as a “pedestal building” for the statue. The foundations will cover 24 acres. The grand hall, which will be circular in shape, will be the chief feature of the interior of the building, and will provide seating accommodation for 20,000 people. The hall will be completely free from columns, and the central part will be so constructed that it can be cleared of seats and converted into a raised central stage. In this vast hall, the dome of which will be 300 feet above the floor, mass meetings and mass spectacles will be held. The palace will be a tiered structure, something liße a vast wedding cake, of twelve layers of varying heights, surmounted by the statue for which it is a pedestal. On the ground floor there will be cloak rooms, general offices, service rooms and meeting rooms for the use of committees. Above the grand hall there will be a huge panorama of the Russian Revolution, and the upper floor rooms will be used as museu’ms. Each of the twelve tiers will be decorated witli large sculptural groups. There has been a good deal of opposition in Russia to the proposal to build this vast palace in view of the shortage of housing accommodation in Moscow and the conditions of overcrowding in which many thousands live. It has been contended that the materials and labour required to build the palace would be better employed in building flats for the people. TOWN PLANNING. Moscow, like most of the old world cities of Europe, has grown in a haphazard fashion in the course of centuries, and now presents some difficult problems in town planning. “Moscow, which for many centuries had developed in chaotic fashion, reflected even in the best years of its development the barbaric character of Russian capitalism,” writes Sir E. D. Simon, in “Moscow in the Making.” “The narrow and crooked streets, the districts intersected by multitudes of lanes and blind alleys, the uneven distribution of buildings between the centre and the outskirts of the city, the centre encumbered with warehouses and small enterprises, the low decrepit houses huddled together, the haphazard distribution ; of the industrial enterprises, railroads and other branches of economy and public service, hinder the normal life of the rapidly developing city, particularly in respect of traffic, and make imperative a radical arid planned reconstruction.” But Moscow offers two great advantages in town planning which make the task much less difficult than the I own planning of any other European capital. The first of these advantages is that private property in land and buildings in Moscow does not exist. Land and buildings belong to the State, and town planning schemes can be carried out on a vast scale without a penny having to be paid for compensation, and without any opposition from vested interests. Compensation and vested Interests are the great stumbling blocks in the way of town planning schemes of the chief cities of Europe, except those of Russia. Another advantage that Moscow enjoys is that there is no opposition to the town planning schemes laid down by the respoifsibile authorities. In political and municipal life in Russia there is only one party, and the authorities representing that party

can go ahead with their schemes without fear of being hampered in any way. A “MUSEUM” CITY. It was proposed to leave the present city of Moscow Intact as a museum city, and to build a new city outside it, but this proposal was rejected, and also one for demolishing the present city and building a new one on the site on a different plan. The authorities decided, after long consideration, to retain the historical outlines of the city, but to replan it radically by co-ordinating the network of its streets and squares. The replanning of the city provides for an increased population up to a maximum of £5,000,000. Beyond that limit the city will not be allowed to grow. An effective check oh its growth will be maintained by control of factories and by a passport system. No new factories will be built in Moscow, except those which are necessary for the production of goods for the population of the city, and which for reasons of transport cannot economically be made elsewhere. A passport system has been in operation since 1932; no one can live in Moscow without a special passport authorising him or her to do so.

The present area of Moscow is about 70,000 acres; it is intended to extend the area to 150,000 acres. This will provide for an average population of 33 per acre, when the city reaches its limit of 5,000,000. The present population of Moscow is about 3,600,000. In residential areas in the replanned city, the buildings will cover from 20 to 22 per cent of the land; in works areas from 30 to 40 per cent. There will be no cottages in the city; all the houses will be buildings of not fewer than six stories, and at “such points of the city as call for the most effective and imposing architecture” they will contain 10 to 14 stories. It is hoped to provide in this way for a population of 5,000,000 in a city with a radius of about eight miles, in which nevertheless there will be an ample provision of open spaces. There will be a forest belt three to six miles deep right round the city, and this belt will be kept almost entirely free from buildings.

APPALLING HOUSING CONDITIONS.

The Mossoviet, as the Moscow City Council is called, hopes that the replanning of the city will be carried out within ten years, but it will probably take longer than that to provide the existing population of the city with decent housing accommodation. Moscow is the most overcrowded city in Europe, due mainly to the fact that its population has more than doubled in a few years. This rapid increase in population followed the transfer of tiro capital of Russia from St. Petersburg to' Moscow after the Bolshevik Revolution.

“The overcrowding in Moscow is appalling,” writes Sir E. D. Simon in “Moscow in the Making,” which is a very sympathetic study: of the city government of Moscow, and the replanning proposals. “By far the biggest task facing the Mossoviet is the building of the houses necessary to provide reasonable living accommodation for the people. It is difficult for one accustomed to the housing standards of a successful and old established country like England to appreciate the conditions which prevail in Moscow. Walking along the streets in the lower parts of the town in the evening one could see something of the conditions in lighted basements, which were clearly very bad. I saw one barrack for workers, in which about twenty beds completely filled the two sides of the room, leaving only a narrow passage between them, and there seemed to be no ventilation whatever in the room.

I heard many stores: Of a washerwoman who shared a large room with twenty-eight other people; of a gardener who had to give up his job, which was outside Moscow, because it would have meant giving up his right to a bed in a corner of a medium sized room shared with six other people, and if he had given up that bed he would have lost his passport giving him the right to live in Moscow. But it did not seem important to find out particulars of specially- bad cases. If half the residents of Moscow are living in an average of three square metres per head of space, this means 30 square feet each, which might be filled by a. bed 6 feet by 3 feet, having a passage 6 feet by 2 feet. Apart from their small share of a kitchen, corridor and lavatory, that is the whole space that these unfortunate people have in which to sleep and eat and live. What life must tie like under such conditions is difficult to imagine, How it is possible for people to keep their temper and health under the constant irritation of such close quarters, how brain workers can show anything approaching their full effi: clency, is an insoluble riddle to the Englishman.” LIFE OF RUSSIAN WORKERS. Mr Andrew Smith, an American Communist who spent three years in Russia, gives in his book, “I Was a Soviet Worker,” some appalling pictures of the conditions under which Russian workers live. He visited the Cherkisovo barracks, a few miles outside Moscow, where about 550 men and women lived in a huge wooden structure about 800 feet long and 15 feet wide. “The room contained approximately 500 narrow beds, covered with mattresses filled with straw or dried leaves,” he states. “There were no pillows or blankets. Coats and other garments were being used as coverings. Some of the residents had no beds, and slept on the floor or in wooden boxes. In some cases beds were used by one shift during the day

and by others at night. There were no screens or walls to give any privacy to the occupants of the barracks There were no dosets or wardrobes, because each one owned only the clothing on his back.”

He visited a Russian machinist named Vassiliev, who lived in a four storey brick building, in which there were about 15 families, with one room each. "This group of fifteen families used one kitchen, and one toilet, at which there was always a long line waiting. In the kitchen was a coal and wood stove made of brick, which was not used because it was inconvenient. The tenants used kerosene or primus stoves. With a dozen of the latter in full blast there was a roar like that of a huge furnace, in which no conversation could be heard. These stoves were also the only means of heating. Vassiliev and his wife lived in a room about 20 or 25 feet square. There were six beds in the room to accommodate the couple, and four other tenants who lived in the room.”