The Soviet era is not a time remembered fondly - not in the Western world, nor in the countries that had been under Soviet influence. Sporadic nostalgia for military might occurs here and there, and those who have not been able to get accustomed to the Western - capitalist - way of life seem to yearn for the Communists to regain power. Yet, countries of the former Eastern Bloc have almost entirely shed their old coats for shinier new ones. Most of them have even made it into the rich European club of European Union, extending the reach of Western values to Russian borders.
With the demise of the Eastern Bloc and the assumption of capitalist shools of thought in Eastern Europe, countries of the region have also adopted certain other cultural cues; media has changed, eating habits have become different, travel and tourism has taken a new shape, and, most visibly perhaps, city planning and architecture has shifted. Cities that were once small scale replicas of Moscow built new skyscrapers to host the influx of foriegn private investment, and Soviet era housings left their place - at least for the lucky few - to Western style residential projects. Eastern Bloc countries moved fast to replace the structures left from the Soviet domination era with newer ones, hoping that it would help them usher in a new period.
Yet, there were a few buildings that seemed to deserve a second life and thus to be spared the wrecking ball. These monumental structures were definitely Soviet, but also architecturally significant and historically telling; they were testaments to a certain period of the country's history. Apart from the prohibitive cost of demolishing such a monumental building, what good would it do to erase part of the past entirely, when it could stand and remind people of the mistakes made?
That is probably why Poland chose to keep its Soviet behemoth - aptly named the Palace of Culture and Science - intact. The Palace of Culture and Science - or PKiN - is as of today still the tallest building of Warsaw, and indeed the eighth tallest in the entire EU. Originally named the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science but later renamed to its current title thanks to the destalinization (a term coined to denote the removal of Stalin references from Soviet sphere of influence after his demise, began by Khrushchev), the building was conceived as "a gift from the Soviet people to the Polish nation".
Architect Lev Rudnev, the mind behind many similarly themed buildings thoughout the Eastern Bloc - including the arguably more famous Moscow State University building - designed the building according to the then popular style of - you guessed it - Stalinist architecture. This style was an architectural abomination, in that it rejected excess in tems of decoration and opted for austere exteriors, while at the same time it embraced extremes in tems of scale. The result was usually huge concrete-grey structures with little to no decorative touches, with the only embellishments also serving a functional purpose for the building.
PKiN is no different in terms of its architectural standing. Built between 1952 and 1955 - peak of Stalinist architecture - it is a building that meant to symbolize the basic Soviet ideology: a building is supposed to look no better than the purpose of the building justifies, but its size is meant to shock and awe onlookers. It is a rather plain building, with majority of its decoration reserved for the pinnacles of the main tower and the four semi-pinnacles on each corner. In fact, the masonry on top of these pinnacles were copied from Renaissance era palaces of Krakow and Zamosc (two Polish cities with city centers listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List), making them the architect's only reference to Polish history and architecture. Otherwise, the overall architecture of the building is quite similar to its counterparts in Moscow and elsewhere.
The building was mostly loathed by Warsaw residents from its inception, as to them it symbolized Soviet domination of their country. In addition, due to its sheer size, towering a whopping 188 meters above the city - 237 meters if the spire is included - it is claimed to having destroyed the aesthetical proportions of a once beautiful medieval city. However, due to extensive damage to Warsaw during the World War II, most earlier architecture in the city had already been destroyed and the impact of the building to the skyline in this aspect has been relatively small. Thanks to all the negative feelings towards it, the structure has assumed many nicknames, including clown, Stalin's syringe, Russian wedding or elephant in lacy underwear.
The clocks at the top of the structure were not present in the original, austere design; they were added to the facade in 2000 for the millennium celebrations. For a two year period after that, the tower was the world's talles clock tower, thanks to these four clocks.
The tower covers a total area of 123000 square meters on 42 floors, and boasts a total of 3288 rooms. Among the occupants of the current form of the building, one can count cinemas, theaters, museums, as well as a large conference hall that seats 3000 people. A university, Collegium Civitas, occupies 11th and 12th floors of the building. A terrace on the 30th floor offers panoramic views of downtown Warsaw.
Times change, governments and governing ideologies come and go. With them, they usher in new architecture, and when they eventually do leave, they do not take their works with them. We people are left to live with the remnants of ideologies past, and remember them in order to learn from from them. That is the only way to not make the same mistakes again.
