the people's albatross

of all the crackerjack things the soviets did over the years, this has got to be one of the most crackerjack ones. in an apparent attempt to impress everyone with the architectural splendor of communism, plans were drawn up in the 1930's to construct a gigantic "palace of the soviets" in the heart of moscow larger than the empire state building. capped off with a likeness of none other than lenin himself (chubby edition of course), 100 meters high. each of his legs would have been the same size as the statue of liberty and the entire structure would have been the tallest structure in the world. i hope that they were planning on having that plane fly circles around the thing all day long, with moving spotlights pointing up at it from the base.

of course, like everything else the communists did, this worked out exactly according to plan. after blowing up some famous church to lay the foundation, the builders discovered that the land was too marshy to construct a stupendously large monument. as they were about to fix it, world war two started and they gave up, turning the left-over cement basin into a glorious "swimming pool of the soviets" instead:



it just goes to show you: if you ever want to erect a scary-looking palace of ridiculous proportion, make sure that you're truly committed to building it, or you'll end up with a big ditch full of wet commies. and nobody wants that.