Stalin’s Soaring Moscow Towers in desperate need of renovation

Most of the city’s so-called “Stalin high-rises” — both residential and government buildings — desperately need renovating. They are stuck in limbo, however, over who will foot the substantial bill. Since the residential apartments were privatized in the 1990s, the government considers the owners responsible. The residents, particularly the impoverished elderly who inherited apartments from the now deposed Soviet elite, believe that City Hall or the Kremlin should restore structures considered historical monuments. “In Russia, there is still no culture of owning real estate,” said Elizabeth Lihacheva, director of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture, noting that even people who spend $1 million for an apartment often don’t want to pay one kopeck toward cleaning its courtyard. Each tower comes draped in its own lore. The Moscow State University building, for example, was the biggest of the lot and at nearly 800 feet, was Europe’s tallest building until 1990. Besides various academic departments, its 6,000 rooms housed all students until the 1970s, with beds, desks and bookcases meticulously designed for small spaces. The federal government is paying for a gradual renovation of this building, due to be completed by 2026, with the massive hammer and sickle on the front to be preserved as a historical detail. The government buildings have fared better than the residential blocks. In the 1990s, for example, when factories bought scrap metal by the kilogram, thieves hacked the original bronze Art Deco handles off many apartments in the KrasnayaVorota tower. The Kudrinskaya Square tower, known as the House of Aviators, housed numerous air defense officers and scientists. Irina V. Pozdeeva, 84, and her late husband inherited an apartment there 14 years ago from her father-in-law, a lieutenant general who had helped develop missiles. The 13-foot ceilings accommodate shelves for about 20,000 books. But the collective spirit of the place has ebbed, she said, with rich, often absentee owners buying up the 450 apartments.