Lubyanka Building, Moscow 2012
Moskva Hotel, Moscow 2012
© Leslie Hossack
The Lubyanka Building was the headquarters of the KGB, the Soviet Secret Police. During Stalin’s purges, thousands of citizens were arrested as enemies of the people and imprisoned in the basement of Lubyanka. There they were interrogated, tortured, executed, or exiled to Siberia. The celebrated book The Gulag Archipelago, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, described the system of Soviet prisons and labour camps.
In 1935, the Moskva Hotel was one of the first to be built in Stalin’s Soviet Moscow. The hotel’s second phase became operational in 1977, the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution. This historic hotel was demolished in 2004. The new hotel, shown above, is a replica of the original and is scheduled to open in 2014.
The Moscow Photographs, a collection of limited edition fine art prints by Leslie Hossack, examine Joseph Stalin’s architectural legacy in Russia’s capital. The structures are linked to Stalin by era, architect and anecdote. Hossack painstakingly deconstructs these historic landmarks, revealing them as they appeared when the architects first put their designs on paper.
The Moscow Photographs include: Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow’s 1980 Olympic Stadium; the Small Arena and Swimming Stadium also located at the Luzhniki Olympic Sports Complex; Lenin’s Tomb and Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square; Bolshoi Theatre and Red Army Theatre; Moscow City Hall and Dinamo Metro Station; Gorky Park and Ukraine Pavilion; Lubyanka Building and Moskva Hotel; Russian White House and Kotelnicheskaya Apartment Building, one of Stalin’s high-rises known as the Seven Sisters.
These images are part of Leslie Hossack’s larger body of work that explores Nazi architecture in Berlin, sacred sites in Jerusalem and a Cold War bunker in Ottawa. To view more images, please visit her website. lesliehossack.com
HAUTE VITRINE 