STALIN’S SEVEN SISTERS

Description

Essentials about Stalin’s Seven Sisters in brief

Stalin’s Seven Sisters are not the siblings of the former head of state of the Soviet Union (Stalin grew up as an only child), but seven skyscrapers built by order of Stalin between 1947 and 1957 in the style of Socialist Classicism. Because of their monumentality, the Seven Sisters are among the most striking buildings in Moscow. Sometimes they are therefore also called “Stalin’s cathedrals” or “Stalin’s fingers” (the Muscovites themselves usually just soberly call them the “Stalin skyscrapers”).

The history of Stalin’s Seven Sisters

Historically, the Seven Sisters date back to the 1930s. At that time, Moscow was experiencing a veritable population explosion. From 1926 to 1936, the population of the Russian capital rose from two to over 3.5 million. This necessitated extensive expansion measures in the city, which included the demolition of numerous old buildings in the historic city center and the construction of large, monumental buildings along the main thoroughfares. This was to include a certain number of particularly tall buildings in the city’s most important squares, which would architecturally dominate the remaining buildings.

The central role in this new architectural landscape of the capital was originally to be played by the Palace of the Soviets on the left bank of the Moscow River west of the Kremlin, a 415-meter skyscraper crowned by a towering statue of Lenin. For the realization of this building project, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was demolished. However, due to the complexity of the construction project, the construction progressed very slowly, so that by the beginning of 1941 only the foundations of the future palace were ready. Due to the attack of the German Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the works were completely stopped and were originally supposed to be resumed only after the end of the war.

However, after the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II in 1945, the priorities of the city’s architects shifted to the disadvantage of this major project. Instead, the new urban development plan called for the construction of an initial eight skyscrapers at various important locations in the city, which were to shape Moscow’s cityscape. Even head of state Josef Stalin, who closely followed all Moscow city building plans, no longer seemed interested in the realization of the Palace of Soviets, but immediately spoke out in favor of the construction of the eight skyscrapers.

In 1947 during the celebrations of the 800th anniversary of the founding of Moscow, the foundation stone was laid for the first Stalin skyscraper, the Lomonosov University building. The construction of the Palace of Soviets was initially postponed and finally discarded shortly after Stalin’s death.

The locations of Stalin’s Seven Sisters

Very representative locations were chosen for the eight skyscrapers. For example, the Lomonosov University building was built high on the Sparrow Hills, one of the highest elevations in Moscow, which made the building visible from many other places in the city. Three of Stalin’s sisters were built directly on the Garden Ring, that traffic axis that forms the border between the historic city center and the New Town. The eighth skyscraper, which was not realized, was to stand in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin and visually tower over it. In total, the construction of all seven realized high-rise buildings took ten years. The first to be completed was the residential building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in 1952, and the Hotel Ukraine, the last of Stalin’s Seven Sisters, was completed in 1957.

The Seven Sisters of Stalin are in detail:

Main building of Moscow State University

The central campus of the Lomonosov University on the Sparrow Hills is the highest of the Seven Sisters with a height of 235 meters. The central tower houses various faculties of the university. The symmetrically arranged side wings house not only university rooms, but also student dormitories and apartments for the teaching staff.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia main building

The building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stands at the western end of Arbat Street has a height of 172 meters. The headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry was already home to the USSR Foreign Ministry in Soviet times.

Hotel Ukraina

The 198-meter-high Hotel Ukraine building (now the Radisson Royal Hotel) is located north of the important arterial road Kutuzovsky Prospekt and south of the Moskva embankment. While the main part of the building serves as a four-star hotel with more than 1,000 rooms, some of the side wings contain residential units.

Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building

The representative residential building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment to the east of the historic Kitai-gorod district, directly at the confluence of the little river Yausa with the Moskva, has a height of 176 meters and houses about 700 apartments. The complex was and still is a purely residential building, and at the time of its completion and for a long time afterwards, it was considered one of the most luxurious residential buildings in the Soviet Union at the time, with spacious multi-room apartments that not only had all the technical innovations available at the time, but also an exclusive ambience. Accordingly, the privilege of living there was due only to particularly deserving citizens.

Red Gate Building

The house at the Red Gate is 110 meters high and housed the Soviet Ministry of Transport Construction in Soviet times. Today, the house houses both offices and apartments.

Leningradskaya Hotel

Today’s five-star Hotel Leningradskaya (now the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya) is 132 meters high and is one of the most famous hotels in Moscow. Thanks to its location in the immediate vicinity of Komsomolskaya Square, where three main railway stations and two metro stations are located next to each other, it is also one of the hotels most frequented by travelers.

Kudrinskaya Square Building

Similar to the building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, the building on Kudrinskaya Square on the west side of the Garden Ring is a purely residential building and was considered an extremely distinguished residential address at the time. At a height of 156 meters, the building houses over 450 apartments.