DESTRUCTION (1931-1990)

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL CATHEDRAL

VIDEO

THE PROJECT OF THE PALACE OF SOVIETS

THE SWIMMING POOL "MOSCOW"

The site of the Cathedral is a very important one for urban developers. After the revolution this, along with ideological principles, became the reason for the decision to destroy the Cathedral. The plan entailed constructing a grandiose Palace of Soviets on the site of the Cathedral. This palace was meant to be the largest building in the world - a monument to victorious socialism and Lenin - the leader of the world proletariat. A new Moscow, with no vestiges of the "cursed past and its' monuments" was to arise around this Palace. A massive wave of propaganda preceded the actual destruction. The newspapers wrote, "the Cathedral is grotesque and totally inartistic", that "the Cathedral is a poisonous mushroom on Moscow's face" and that it was "a source of slothfulness" and so forth.

The first explosions rocked the Cathedral at noon on December 5, 1931, as per the decision of Stalin's politburo. The memorial to military glory and the most important church in Russia was brutally vandalized and destroyed.

During those horrible days it seemed as if the Lamp of Faith, that had burned in the cathedral through the efforts and prayers of the cream of the nation was extinguished forever.

Russia sank ever deeper into the destructive gloom of atheism…

…An enormous cavity gaped on the site of the Cathedral for many years. During the so-called Khruschev thaw, the city built an enormous swimming pool instead of the Cathedral. The pool replaced the Cathedral and became a monument to forgotten and obliterated national history and glory, which had no place in the plans of the "builders of communism".