TO It seems that the communist ideology and the occult are incompatible, but few people know that literally from the first years of the existence of the Soviet state, research was secretly carried out on magic, witchcraft and other occult sciences. Even Stalin himself more than once resorted to the services of people who own magic and have superpowers.
ABOUT Stalin's attitude to magic, witchcraft, psychics, astrologers and telepaths was kept in the strictest confidence for a long time. And this is not surprising, because, as a real communist and materialist, he had to not believe not only in God, but also in all sorts of otherworldly forces and occult sciences. Meanwhile, some believe that Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was a real mystic.
B The future "leader of the peoples" studied at the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Having received a theological education, he was well aware of the existence of both light and dark forces. It is known that the famous occultist and magician George Gurdjieff studied at the seminary with Stalin, and they were closely acquainted. There is an assumption that Iosif Dzhugashvili could even be a member of the so-called Eastern Brotherhood, whose members were both Gurdjieff himself and his students.
M You can also find interesting information regarding the well-known party nickname of Stalin - Koba. It turns out that in translation from Old Slavonic "koba" means "sorcerer" or "prophet". By the way, in the 5th century, that was the name of the Persian king Kobades, who conquered Georgia, who advocated the elimination of social inequality and offered to divide all property between the poor and the rich. So, this king with communist ideas was a strong magician ...
W and having gained power in a vast country, Stalin sought to keep it by any means, even with the help of black and white magic. According to the writer and historian, author of the book "Occult Stalin" Anton Pervushin, when Stalin came to power, a special department appeared at the OGPU, whose employees were engaged in all sorts of anomalous things - shamans, sorcerers, witches, clairvoyants, telepaths, magic and magical artifacts, secret knowledge of distant ancestors and lost civilizations. In the 1930s, the parapsychologist Alexander Barchenko became the leading specialist of this secret department. He not only studied ancient esoteric science, but also examined magicians, witches, psychics, in general, all those people who could have superpowers.
WITH there was even a special secret black room for conducting communication sessions with spirits. It is possible that this department was created specifically in order to identify people capable of remote magical or other influence. Later, Barchenko and his colleagues were shot on charges of espionage, most likely, and all people with superpowers identified by the special department were repressed or destroyed. The leader was afraid of people before whom his guard was powerless and who could be used by the enemy to influence him remotely.
WITH talin held out in power for 30 years, it is believed that this would have been simply impossible if he had not relied on some otherworldly forces. What were these forces? Perhaps we will never know about this until the end.
IN fantasy novels often you can find scenes when the army of light and darkness converge in a battle that decides the fate of the world. And while the battle is going on, the magicians, whispering spells, send thunder and lightning at each other, exchange telepathic blows. Something similar, to a certain extent, was during the confrontation between the two great bloody dictators of the 20th century - Hitler and Stalin.
As a communist, Stalin was an atheist, although, for sure, in difficult moments he remembered the Lord God.
He also had an interest in the supernatural, especially since the fascination with mysticism is generally characteristic of the troubled times of wars and revolutions.
In addition, faced with many political, economic and social problems, the Bolsheviks often tried to solve them with the help of high-profile one-time actions - by finding, for example, a new gold deposit or taking away valuables from the population, churches, museums. So why not try some magic too?
Freemasons with membership cards
So, probably, one of the leaders of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD Gleb Bokiy (1879-1937) thought, who created and supervised a special department in his department that dealt with telepathy and the occult. The occultist, telepath and hypnotist Alexander Barchenko (1881-1938) worked in this special department, who gained some scientific fame in the early 1920s, after an expedition to the Kola Peninsula, where he studied phenomena that resembled sessions of mass hypnosis (a thing quite useful in applied policy).
On the initiative of Barchenko and with the assistance of the OGPU in 1927, an expedition of the philosopher and artist Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) was sent to Tibet, the task of which was to find the fabulous land of Shambhala, where sages supposedly live, possessing secret knowledge and having the ability to influence the course world history.
The expedition was positioned as a mission of Western Buddhists to the Dalai Lama, which made it possible to establish unofficial contact between the Kremlin and the spiritual leader of one of the world's largest religions. Contact, apparently, was established; and Roerich himself began to write works in which he gently but persistently pursued the thesis about the closeness of communism and Buddhism.
Being away from Soviet Union, Nikolai Konstantinovich was safely able to avoid Stalin's purges. Although, in the "hedgehogs" Bokiy and Barchenko disappeared. But Bokiy died because he belonged to a group of Chekists hostile to Stalin, and Barchenko - because of his proximity to Bokiy and as one of the leaders of Freemasonry, i.e. structure, which the party, which claims to control all spheres of society, could not stand in principle.
Comrade messing
Barchenko took the vacant place as the main Soviet telepath (1899-1974). His closeness to Stalin has not been documented, although the version that the relevant materials were destroyed has the right to exist.
Theoretically, Stalin could well communicate with a telepath, but, of course, he did not need publicity of such facts. Firstly, as a leader and teacher, he himself had to be able to foresee the future, and secondly, telepathy, as a thing poorly compatible with materialism, existed in the Soviet Union in a semi-legal position.
In general, it remains to operate on the evidence of Messing himself, who, in his words, met with Stalin in 1940 in Gomel. However, when asked what the conversation was about, Wolf Messing answered vaguely: “About different things ... I don’t remember everything anymore.”
Wolf Grigorievich said that at the request of Joseph Vissarionovich he was constantly checked. Once they asked, having hypnotized the cashier of the State Bank, to give him a blank sheet and receive 100,000 rubles.
Another time, Messing was checked by Beria himself. The head of the NKVD called the head of security and warned: “Don’t let Messing out without a marked pass! Warn all posts about this! Wolf Messing left the office, went down from the third floor, and a few minutes later was at the foot of the monument to Dzerzhinsky ... All this, of course, is spectacular, but it is obvious that Messing had no political influence on Stalin. And this Soviet dictator was very different from Hitler.
Man in green gloves
He had a weakness for occultists and clairvoyants that went beyond all the limits of reason.
Passion for mysticism can be traced in the head of the Third Reich literally from the very beginning of his political activity. Bavaria - In the early 1920s, the Thule Society, also known as the Group for the Study of Germanic Antiquity, was very influential. It was engaged not so much in research as in theoretical construction, from which it followed that the Germans belonged to the highest, so-called Aryan race. Aryans, respectively, were the descendants of the inhabitants of Atlantis.
Such ideas at first did not arouse enthusiasm, but one of the leaders of the Thule Society, Rudolf von Sebottendorf, actually presented the Nazis with a weekly newspaper, which soon turned into the main party print organ, the Völkischer Beobachter (People's Observer).
Natives of the Thule Society were the main party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Rudolf Hess, who was Hitler's right hand for a long time. Another member of the Society, Professor Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), visited India, Korea, Manchuria, Japan, Russia before the First World War and, and there is evidence, became a member of the oriental mystical order "Green Dragon", which also claimed to possess the secret knowledge.
He also came up with the name "Thule", which indicated the northernmost fragment of the lost Atlantis, and he, apparently, invited Tibetans and Indians to Germany, who created small colonies in Munich and Berlin in 1926.
A certain mysterious Tibetan monk, who was nicknamed "the man in green gloves" and who appeared under the pseudonym Führer (?!), three times with amazing accuracy through the press called the number of seats in the Reichstag that the Nazis would receive in the next elections. True, in the early 1930s, the Fuhrer seemed to disappear from Tibet. And at the same time, relations between Hitler and Haushofer began to deteriorate. The professor insisted on concluding an alliance between Berlin - Moscow - Tokyo, but did not find understanding, retired from political activity and, after the fall of Nazism, committed suicide by making seppuku (hara-kiri).
In general, he did not pretend to be an occultist and clairvoyant, especially since these vacancies in the environment of the Fuhrer were never empty.
With the disappearance of the Tibetan Fuhrer, Hitler became infatuated with Erik Jan Hanussen (1889-1933; real name - Hermann Steinschneider) - a clever charlatan whose newspaper with prophecies of the future really influenced market quotes and at one time was considered the most popular periodical in Germany.
He was accustomed to living large, lending money to Nazi bosses who sent stormtroopers to smash the establishments of his competitors or shared confidential information.
In any case, Hanussen hardly made predictions about the fire of the Reichstag, with the help of insight. This prediction, apparently, ruined him. Nazi stormtroopers took out of the city and shot the too perceptive "clairvoyant".
Lone adventurers like him could no longer fit into the ideological system of the Third Reich, which demanded something more grandiose.
"Heritage of ancestors - Ahnenerbe"
At this time, the light was born ... "Ahnenerbe" - this was the name of a powerful organization, officially called the "German Society for the Study of Ancient German History and Heritage of Ancestors."
The impetus for its appearance was the book by Hermann Nirt, The Origin of Humanity, published in 1928, which dealt with two races - the noble "Nordic" race of the Hyperboreans and the race of man-beasts that came from the south, from the mainland Gondwana, covered by base instincts.
After 7 years, Wirth organized the exhibition "Heritage of German Ancestors" in Munich. As a result, the Ahnenerbe was born with President Heinrich Himmler and supervisor Walter Bust. Active participation the Minister of Food, Richard Darre, who was interested in the prospects for the agricultural development of living space in the East, also took part in its work.
What is the mystic here? "Ahnenerbe" studied the history and beliefs of the ancient Germans, sometimes coming to very extravagant conclusions. For example, in order to develop southern Ukraine, it was necessary to plant oaks more actively - trees, according to the ancient Germans, accumulating miraculous powers.
Of course, they were equipped for (in 1938-1939), as well as Scandinavia, Karelia, the Middle East, and Iceland. "Ahnenerbe" has become a powerful structure, which included more than a dozen research institutes and consuming a lot of money.
With the outbreak of war, Hitler apparently began to guess that the funds could be used more rationally, but those who were used to dealing with runes, measuring skulls and archaeological finds were difficult to reconfigure to serve military needs, and if they were reconfigured, they were engaged in , for example, experiments on prisoners, finding out the limits of the survival of the human body and turning from scientists (even with the prefix "pseudo") into war criminals.
Mystical Datura
The Fuhrer, although interested in the activities of the Ahnenerbe, but with higher powers he preferred to communicate directly.
Confidence in his special destiny, apparently, came to him in 1909, when he, having failed in the exams at the Academy of Fine Arts, wandered around the Viennese museums and second-hand bookshops without any special goals.
In the Hofburg Museum, his attention was attracted by the so-called, with which, according to legend, the Roman legionnaire Longinus dealt a mortal blow to the crucified Christ. Legends say that Joshua Nun, King Herod, Emperor Constantine the Great, the Gothic kings Alaric and Theodoric, Charles Martell, Charlemagne and the creator of the Holy Roman Empire Otto I owned this spear.
Being an exalted being, Adolf Hitler, "having talked with a spear", imagined himself as something like a generalized reincarnation of the rulers listed above and was filled with awareness of his special mission.
This became clear to Churchill earlier than others, who in 1938 urged British politicians to severely suppress German claims to Austria. Failing, he said, “The sheep of our government do not understand that this man wants to possess the Spear of Destiny. And as soon as he masters it, he will untie the most bloody war". And so it happened...
After the Anschluss of Austria, the spear was transported to the unofficial fascist capital of Nuremberg, and Hitler went all out in the foreign policy arena.
The spear undoubtedly gave him self-confidence and impudence. In the same 1938, he, acting on the verge of a foul, forced England and France to surrender Czechoslovakia to him.
Breaking through the knee of the Wehrmacht generals, Hitler insisted on his own, referring to "insight", "intuition", "special mission". The leader of the Third Reich was increasingly losing its adequacy.
There is a well-known episode when, on the eve of the invasion of Russia, to proposals to work out the issue of winter uniforms, he replied that "he would warm the soldiers with his warmth in winter."
How he warmed - is known.
Hitler again became interested in the search for Shambhala, began to rely on a "miracle weapon", and to this day it is not clear what he meant by this, some new missiles, nuclear bomb, time machine or even something mystical.
Tibetan monks appeared again in his entourage. During the capture of Berlin, our fighters allegedly found several hundred corpses of Mongoloid people dressed in black SS uniforms. Well, something similar could have taken place, because representatives of Asian peoples were also recruited in the Waffen-SS unit. Another testimony is interesting - about the dead men in the clothes of Tibetan monks found near the ruins of the Reich Chancellery. They lay in a circle, and in the center lay their leader - the same "man in green gloves."
The question is to what extent prayer and religious processions were able to help defend Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad - this is exclusively a matter of faith, but it is obvious that the calls of the Orthodox clergy played a huge and very specific role in mobilizing the people to repel the aggressor.
What creed did Hitler offer the Germans at the critical hour? Poorly absorbed by the body common man a cocktail of paganism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, gothic novels and non-science fiction.
But most importantly, instead of irrational hopes for a "miracle weapon", Stalin and his team made maximum organizational efforts, acting in different directions - purely military, economic, social, ideological.
culture
Occult background Soviet power was discussed no less actively than the occult background of the Third Reich. What role did Joseph Stalin play in him, who ruled the country of "victorious socialism" for almost 30 years? Was he an ordinary tyrant, or were unknown forces behind him? Unfortunately, we have only a few random facts at our disposal.
It is known, for example, that Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where the future famous magician, philosopher and occultist George Gurdjieff also studied, at one time they were even friends. There is also a theory that Iosif Dzhugashvili was part of an occult "eastern brotherhood" that consisted of Gurdjieff and his followers.
Sources say that Gurdjieff often mentioned the mysterious figure of Prince Nizharadze. It was the pseudonym of a person whose "essence" was changed at the energy level, which made him a zombie. Gurdjieff describes an expedition in the Persian Gulf which included him and Prince Nizharadze. He says that the “prince” fell ill with a fever on the way, due to which the travelers were forced to stay in Baghdad for a month. It is known that in 1899-1900 Dzhugashvili worked in Tiflis in a geophysical laboratory, so in theory he could well take part in the expedition. The leader's face was covered with pockmarks, maybe this is a side effect of the "Persian" fever?
The party leader's nickname, Koba, also raises some questions. Translated from the Old Slavonic language, this word means "sorcerer" or "prophet". This was the name of the Persian king Kobades, who conquered Eastern Georgia at the end of the fifth century. The Byzantine historian Theophanes says that Kobades was a great magician and the head of a sect whose ideals were close to the ideals of communism, for example, they considered it necessary to divide property into equal parts in order to eliminate the difference between rich and poor.
Service in the era of Stalin state security created a whole department that was engaged in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations and ancient cultures. The Bolsheviks needed knowledge and technology that could make their power invincible.
They also say that in 1941, Stalin secretly visited the famous Moscow Blessed Matrona (Matrona Dmitrievna Nikonova). According to one version, Matrona told Stalin: "The Red Rooster will win. Victory will be yours. You are the only leader who will not leave Moscow."
The government at that time often resorted to the services of the hypnotist Wolf Messing. They say that once Stalin called him and ordered him to receive 100,000 rubles from the bank using blank paper. He had to convince the banker that he was seeing a check for 100,000, but when the experiment was completed and the cashier saw a blank sheet instead of a check, he suffered a heart attack. Another task of Messing was to get into Beria's office without a pass, bypassing security. He easily coped with this task.
There is also evidence that the "leader of the peoples" possessed magical knowledge and extraordinary abilities. Parapsychologists say that in most portraits Stalin was depicted with a pipe, and all because of the fact that tobacco smoke gave him magical protection.
Daniil Andreev in his "Rose of the World" claimed that Stalin could enter a special state of trance, which allowed him to see the deepest layers of the astral world. The leader, as a rule, went to bed before dawn, because he had access to his "astral body" only when the night was running out. At these moments, even Stalin's appearance changed: wrinkles disappeared, the skin smoothed out, and his cheeks were covered with a blush.
Stalin needed to go into a trance to get energy, as well as to predict future events. Thus, Stalin found out what troubles and dangers could threaten him and tried to prevent them. According to Andreev, Stalin also communicated with spirits and demons. The mass executions were nothing more than victims of this astral being. That is why Joseph Stalin managed to stay in power longer than any other Soviet ruler.
On September 7, 1947, on the day of the 800th anniversary of Moscow, at exactly 13 pm, eight high-rise buildings were symbolically laid in different parts of the Soviet capital, later called "Stalin's skyscrapers". And although this act was preceded by a January resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, directly linking the construction of houses with the proposal of Comrade Stalin, construction began only two years later.
Over the six decades that have passed since Moscow acquired such striking architectural landmarks, skyscrapers have acquired legends, they are credited with some sacred meaning, they are even seen as Masonic symbols. Experts are still arguing what formed the basis of the projects and who actually was their main architectural leader.
The first, perhaps the main and certainly significant difference between the constructed buildings and the published projects is the presence of spiers. On the drawings, the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Smolenskaya Square was crowned with a flat roof. At the top of the Moscow State University building, a 40-meter statue of Mikhail Lomonosov was supposed, and on the high-rise, on Vosstaniya Square, a cylindrical octahedron, and it itself was intended not for people to live, but for officials of certain departments. No platform with fountains in front of the temple of science on Lenin mountains was not in sight. And Lomonosov appeared already after they decided to build a new building for the university instead of the previously planned hotel.
The decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR recorded the construction of "one 32-storey building, two 26-storey and five 16-storey houses." Thirty-two floors, of course, should have had a skyscraper on Lengory. One of the 26-storey buildings was supposed to be located in Zaryadye, the other - with a hotel and a residential sector - in the area of the Dynamo stadium. Initially, according to the project, 16-story buildings grew where it was planned, only now their number of floors is very different from the announced one. The tallest, 240-meter building of Moscow State University has been transformed into a 36-tier building. The 32-story houses that were never built in Zaryadye and near Dynamo disappeared into oblivion. And as a result, none of the capital's skyscrapers is lower than 24 tiers.
However, playing with floors and the purpose of buildings is, as they say, an everyday thing. But the story of the spiers is really full of mysteries. Because, according to the general opinion of the architects themselves, many of whom left memories, only one person could order them - Stalin. Mikhail Posokhin, a young specialist at the time of work on skyscrapers, one of the authors of the project for the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, later the chief architect of Moscow, wrote: "His tastes were especially clearly manifested when designing high-rise buildings in Moscow, topped with gabled ends at his request."
According to one version, the leader corrected the projects after he saw the almost completed house of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, driving at night along the Arbat to the Middle Dacha. Allegedly, I caught some incompleteness in the stepped silhouette. Of course, a turret with a spire was built, but unlike other skyscrapers, it is the only one not topped with a star. It is argued that a hastily installed light metal pommel would not have withstood either the enormous weight of the decoration or the wind load.
But was the “best friend of architects” really guided only by an instinctive sense of incompleteness? Trying to answer this seemingly simple question, we must inevitably figure out what exactly is the "Stalinist style" in architecture?
Stumbling Spire
An interesting report was made on international conference in Belgrade, a former Russian, and now a German citizen Dmitry Khmelnitsky. The architect, who is still building houses in Germany, analyzed the socio-political origins of the phenomenon called "Stalin's Empire".
According to Khmelnitsky, the Stalinist ideology, which had nothing in common with Marxism, served the despotic feudal society in its most extreme form. However, she used Marxist vocabulary, which lost its original content. But architecture - all civil and industrial construction - expressed the real social structure of society. And clearer than any other sphere Soviet culture, issued true intentions leader, but contradicted the official Stalinist ideology.
According to the architect, no programs intended to solve the housing problem in the USSR were developed either in the 1920s or in the 1930s. After about 14 million people moved to the cities under the Stalinist plan for accelerated industrialization, the average and, it should be emphasized, the planned norm of housing provision stabilized at four square meters per person. And it didn't change until the 1950s. The new industrial cities built in the first five-year plans are barrack settlements for workers and apartments for a very narrow section of the leadership. And Khmelnitsky illustrates this alignment with the unfinished works in Soviet Russia in the early 1930s by foreign architects. For example, the German Ernst May, a specialist in mass construction from Frankfurt am Main.
May's group created master plans for several new cities, including Magnitogorsk. Its population in 1931 was about 200 thousand people, mostly peasants who fled from the village, dispossessed, exiled, former prisoners. The architect managed to build only one block of two dozen stone buildings with communal apartments without kitchens and bathrooms. By the late 1930s, they housed about 15 percent of the city's population, with a few people per room. The remaining one hundred and fifty thousand are in barracks and dugouts. In which, Khmelnitsky clarifies, then more than 95 percent of the population of all new industrial cities lived. Even earlier, the authorities, who decided that such housing was too expensive, refused May's services. And they themselves have built a closed village for the top authorities - for two or three percent of the population of Magnitogorsk.
Probably the apotheosis of this approach to urban planning is the project of the Palace of Soviets. According to Khmelnitsky, the only Soviet building that can be regarded as an ideological symbol of society. But that old idea is of interest to us primarily because it is the forerunner of all Stalinist skyscrapers, not only in terms of their socio-political purpose, but also in terms of purely architectural solutions.
Volumes have been written about the never built building, whose height was originally supposed to be 420 meters. And therefore it is worth citing only some facts and figures characterizing the swing of the authors of the construction and the main customer, Stalin. According to the final project, selected in 1939 from several dozen, the construction volume was 7 million 500 thousand cubic meters. The large hall of the palace with a height of 100 and a diameter of 160 meters was intended for 21 thousand people, and a small one for six thousand. Above the large hall - the chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and its Presidium. It was supposed to use 300 thousand square meters of granite for the facing of the building. Volkhonka Street and a number of others adjacent to the construction site should be covered with earth, and the Museum fine arts move back 100 meters. The territories around will be asphalted and converted into a parking lot for five thousand cars.
It is curious that in the first drafts, one of the authors, Boris Iofan, proposed to crown the building with a tower with a sculpture of a worker with a torch in his hand, but his teacher, the Italian architect Armando Brazipi, suggested putting up a statue of Lenin. And although Iofan had not ideological, but purely professional objections to this, he had to agree with the idea. And, contrary to his reasoning, the building with the sculpture at the top turned into a giant pedestal for the figure. A 100-meter 6000-ton rotating sculpture, with only one index finger stretching for six meters, visually pressed on its pedestal.
When the idea of skyscrapers arose in the 1940s, the Palace of Soviets had not yet been finally put to rest. But architectural solutions have already begun to be taken away - fortunately, almost the same people were involved in both projects. And they knew perfectly well how the main customer relates to the stepped pyramid-ziggurat. But where did the spiers come from?
A bit of Gothic and Orthodox churches
Although formally, according to American standards, only Stalinist skyscrapers with at least 30 floors can be called skyscrapers, Manhattan giant houses undoubtedly became their prototypes. But not those rectangular and crowded on the New York island, but pyramidal, stepped, with a relatively wide base.
The Soviet press tirelessly stigmatized overseas high-rise architecture and, oddly enough, in some ways they were absolutely right. Thus, the yearbook "Soviet Architecture" wrote in 1951: "The high-rise buildings of Moscow are erected according to principles that are directly opposite to the" principles "of the construction of American skyscrapers, generated by the conditions of capitalism with its land rent and furious competition, which only exacerbated the contradictions of the capitalist city."
Only the powerful granite foundation of cramped Manhattan made it possible to build skyscrapers despite the imperfection of building technologies of the 1910-1930s. And only tightness dictated their shape - rectangular, with a narrow base: the earth is really expensive. As a rule, there are no pronounced spiers, only sometimes the stepped form of buildings is emphasized in those cities of America where the problem of land allocation was not so acute. In this regard, Soviet architects could take a swing. And they swung: the perimeter of the base, for example, the skyscrapers of Moscow State University is more than three kilometers.
In their memoirs, the fathers of the capital's skyscrapers claim that both the design and construction of palaces was a completely new thing for them. And this means that both architectural and construction solutions must be borrowed. But at the same time, to hide the borrowing, especially after the victorious war, which not only made the USSR a world military leader, but also injected an injection of imperial self-consciousness into a poor country. And instead of the triumph of the victorious proletariat and gratitude to Lenin, captured in the Palace of Soviets, there are motives for the universal superiority of a powerful state. Ready to teach mind-reason to the rest of the world, controlling Eastern Europe, menacingly closed with China.
As the same Mikhail Posokhin wrote, "then we could not use foreign magazines by order in designing: this excluded borrowing and the influence of the West." To which a modern critic notes that Posokhin is disingenuous, rather the ban on using foreign magazines had the opposite goal - to hide from as much as possible more people the fact of explicit architectural borrowing. In addition, back in the early 1930s, Soviet architects visited New York, and Boris Iofan a little later.
It is still unknown how exactly the mechanism for coordinating projects and such details as the notorious spiers worked between the architects themselves and Stalin. Either the leader really drew the tops of the pyramids on the drawing sheet, or the specialists who knew about his commitment to the Gothic themselves proposed such a solution. Perhaps Stalin's wishes to give the buildings a purely Russian, Moscow motif, inspired by the Kremlin towers and classical Orthodox churches, played a role.
It is possible, however, that the spiers simultaneously served as elements that fundamentally distinguish Soviet skyscrapers from American ones. And as a result, according to experts, in the house on Vosstaniya Square ancient roman sculptures on the risalits they happily coexist with vestibules decorated with Gothic stained-glass windows, marble columns and candelabra lamps, as well as with "Orthodox" pointed turrets around the spire. In a word, what a certain German architect called "Joseph Stalin's cathedrals" turned out to be.
When both the architects and Stalin had their say, it was necessary to take on a completely prosaic construction. And this despite the fact that the country had no experience in erecting buildings above 9-12 floors. That, unlike New York, Moscow stands on loose, sometimes swampy soils, on karst cavities and underground rivers. That only one foundation for a high-rise building took as much concrete and metal as was required for seven ten-story buildings. That, finally, in those years there were not even building codes regulating strength and fire safety standards, the use of materials, the design of heating and ventilation of buildings, high-speed elevators and much more. As well as there were no special cranes capable of operating at heights of over 200 meters, as well as pumps that deliver concrete from the ground almost beyond the clouds.
The January decree of the Council of Ministers of 1947 ordered the ministries of internal affairs, the construction of military and naval enterprises, communications, and the aviation industry to lead the construction. The work was supervised by the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, who looked after the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, Lavrenty Beria. Something could be borrowed from the Americans. For example, frame technology, that is, the use of a steel structure as the supporting foundation of a building. Facing of houses with terracotta, ceramic tiles. But they covered the main masonry with it, and if it was deformed from mechanical or thermal loads, the tile fell off almost everywhere.
Who is in charge of the skyscrapers
Here is just a single example illustrating what purely Russian problems related to our climate had to be solved. It seems to be a simple matter - windows. But first, they are huge. Secondly, they must save the inhabitants of the building from frost, heat and drafts, gaining hurricane strength in a tall structure. Here is what one of the authors of the project suggested: “It will be necessary to create a new, hermetic metal cover. On the other hand, the complex design of the cover can increase the total cost of the wall. non-opening windows and special openings for individual ventilation of rooms. That is, 60 years ago, a Soviet architect came up with the idea of double-glazed windows. It, for the sake of economy and due to the lack of industrial technology, was not implemented, but what a visionary!
However, not only technical problems tormented the builders. They say that even at the time of work on the project of the Palace of Soviets, Stalin visited the special construction department. It is clear that at first he was introduced to just the builders, and then the architects. The leader pointed his finger at the architects and said: "Here are the builders, and those are their assistants." The lesson was remembered, and the "builders", taking care of high art, sometimes did not really go into purely engineering details.
Remember the fountains mentioned in passing in front of the Moscow State University building, which were not in the published projects? So, they appeared as a disguise for giant air intakes, part of the vast ventilation system of the main building. The architects simply did not think about them, and the builders and their professional subcontractors had to hastily figure out where to suck in air from. It turned out that only outside the skyscraper itself and only on a large platform in front of it. Under the fountains and flower beds there are concrete ceilings, and below them are tunnels converging in special rooms for cleaning and heating the air.
"Monuments of Stalin's stupidity"
When Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed a fight against architectural excesses in the mid-1950s, architect Mikhail Minkus, one of the designers of the MFA high-rise building, wrote to him with a proposal to dismantle the spire from the building. It must be clarified that the architect had a hard time surviving Stalin's instructions about this top, but not at all because of the high cost, but simply because it injured the creator's aesthetic sense. The General Secretary refused the request with the words "let the spire remain a monument to Stalin's stupidity."
Were the "Stalin skyscrapers" expensive? Yes very. As another of their creators, Dmitry Chechulin, wrote, "instead of one high-rise building, like the one on Smolenskaya Square, it was possible to build more than a dozen typical five-story houses with the same funds."
I happened to be in a residential building on Vosstaniya Square. Two outstanding aviators, test pilots, Heroes of the Soviet Union Sergei Anokhin and Mark Gallai. These were not those visits when the owners introduce the guest to the apartment, and therefore I have nothing to say about its amenities and comfort. But then he came to the same house to a friend and colleague, and he showed me housing. Nothing special: two small rooms, a cramped kitchen in the style of "Khrushchev", a tiny entrance hall. Everything became clear when the owner invited, as he put it, to the balcony. He opened the door, and before us appeared an open space the size of a mini-football field with giant sculptures around the edges. That is, the apartment was located at the level of one of the steps of the building, and it was under this purely external factor of the golden section that the internal structure of the housing was planned. It is also possible that this ugly two-room "vest" was formed after the alteration of the design of the administrative building into a residential one. And I am sure that in all houses of this purpose there are a lot of awkward apartments, whose layout is subject to the high canons of architectural art. But still...
As the then Soviet elite moved into residential skyscrapers, so to this day they are a symbol of prosperity and prosperity. Moreover, Muscovites, who did not immediately fall in love with these pompous eclectic buildings, have long considered them inalienable dominants of the aesthetic appearance of the capital. You can't even imagine her without them. What is it, a metamorphosis from the region will endure - will fall in love?
The USSR not only built analogues of Moscow skyscrapers in Leningrad, Kyiv and Riga, but also exported the highest approved architectural solution to Poland. It is clear how the Varsovians treated the imposed Palace of Culture and Technology. They perfectly remembered the long standing in front of the Polish capital in 1944-1945 by the Red Army, waiting until the Nazis killed the rebels - fighters of the Home Army. There was no doubt that, contrary to Soviet propaganda, the captured Polish officers were shot by the NKVD. And they had no illusions about the socio-political system that the Soviet Liberation Army brought to them on bayonets.
When the USSR ordered to live long, the Poles, who rightly believed that Stalin was a co-author of architectural academics, and the Warsaw DKiT was a legacy of totalitarianism, decided to turn the building, if not demolished, then turned into a parody. It was proposed, for example, to build a really modern skyscraper made of glass and concrete next to it, so that against its background the massive pyramid would look like a miserable house. Arrange rides inside, convert the congress hall into a music hall. And much more, designed to morally overthrow an alien skyscraper.
In 1997, at a discussion of historians, architects and public figures The Poles decided that nothing of the kind should be done with the building, but that it should be put under state protection. Ten years later, the house was included in the list of objects of historical and cultural value. It seems to be an undeniable, time-tested value. They have and we have.
Skyscrapers in rumors and legends
As soon as the Soviet man was allowed to consider the world not only through the prism of materialism, he immediately peered both at the Stalinist skyscrapers and at the places where they were erected.
They say that the future dictator studied not only at the seminary, but also at the Alexander Jesuit College. And his classmate and close friend there was the future occultist and creator secret societies George Gurdjieff. Already adults, they met repeatedly.
Well, what of it? Otherwise, supporters of esoteric versions of the construction of skyscrapers argue that Stalin was an expert in the occult and embodied some symbols of the teaching in stone. In general, in order to preserve and increase his power, the master of the country, when laying skyscrapers, was guided by certain energy lines concentrating around the Kremlin and leaving like a web into the depths of Russia.
There was allegedly another circumstance that was important when choosing a place for skyscrapers: a lot of blood must have been shed there in the past. Kotelniki in ancient times were the place of mass executions. In November 1917, the Kremlin was shelled from the Sparrow Hills for three days, and on the square of three stations, where the Leningradskaya hotel rises, in 1905 there were fierce battles with the Cossacks, as well as on Presnya with its Uprising Square.
Together with the giant dominant of the city, the Palace of Soviets, the Stalinist skyscrapers, built just in places of the most powerful concentration of sacred energy, esotericists are sure, create a magical space of great power. If we also take into account that the 100-meter figure of Lenin also had to rotate around its vertical axis, then here it is, the so-called torsion generator, whose power can even revive the dead. It was this wonderful property of the Palace-high-rise link that Stalin intended to use to extend his life or be reborn from the dead if the project was realized after his death.
Supporters of the theory of Masonic conspiracies saw their own, native in Stalin's skyscrapers. Like, if you look at Moscow from a height, in the geometry of avenues, streets, squares you can see compasses, squares, stars, so revered by the Masons.
Do you know why the laying of skyscrapers took place on the same day and hour? Astrologers have calculated the right time. And in general, each of the buildings has its own patron planet. At the house on Kotelniki - Venus. Mars is near the house on Vosstaniya Square, and it is no coincidence that there are so many military test pilots and aviation industry figures there. Jupiter is responsible for the high-rise of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mercury is responsible for Moscow State University, and so on.
Such a large-scale construction, which changed the face of Moscow before our eyes, could not but give rise to conjectures and legends. This is almost the first one, chronologically connected with that vast contingent of builders who came here not of their own free will, with prisoners. The working day is over, everyone left the construction site in formation, except for five. They searched all the not small building of Moscow State University - no one. When the guards and the free leadership mentally said goodbye to freedom, they remembered that today work was also being carried out in the star itself on the spire. They rushed there - the prisoners were in place. It turned out that towards the end of the shift, the peasants relaxed, decided to play cards, but they didn’t hear the signal to build because of the distance and height.
The prisoners are also credited with the original escape attempt. On some makeshift wings, desperate guys jumped from the height of the university skyscraper, but were met on the ground by vigilant guards.
Another legend of the engineering and construction plan. The soil under the Moscow State University building was so loose and fluid that for the construction of a skyscraper, it was necessary to freeze the ground in the foundation area through and through. The giant freezer under the house is still in operation, and if not for it, the building would have long since slipped into the Moscow River.
