Moskovsky District, Saint Petersburg, Russia

House of Soviets

Moskovsky District, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Access unknown

We could not determine this from the source data.

Find out more

ReferencearchINFORM↗

The House of Soviets is a Stalinist monumental office building designed by Noi Trotsky and completed in 1941 in the Moskovsky District of Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad). Built on the undeveloped southern outskirts to escape the flood-prone downtown, it was intended to house the administration of the Soviet city government but never served that purpose. Completed just before the Nazi invasion, the structure was fortified and converted into a Red Army command post during the Siege of Leningrad, with reinforced concrete bunkers still visible at its corners. Subsequently it housed a Soviet research institute specializing in electronic components for military applications, where notable postwar American defectors Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr worked. Described as "the purest form of totalitarian monumentality," the building now rents office space to commercial tenants. It stands as a federal cultural heritage site near Moscow Square, which features Mikhail Anikushin's Lenin monument and was remodeled during the 1970 construction of the Moskovskaya metro station.