Stalinist Architecture

Stalinist architecture, known in much of the former Eastern Bloc as the Stalinist style or socialist classicism, was a leading movement in architecture and monumental and decorative art in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. It developed under the conditions of a totalitarian state as a visual embodiment of the triumph of the socialist system, combining elements of classicism, baroque, the Napoleonic Empire style and Art Deco. Its main features are emphatic monumentality, strict symmetry and the use of a system of classical orders, combined with abundant decoration that paired classical forms with Soviet symbols such as five-pointed stars, ears of corn and the hammer and sickle.