Hotel Ukraina, Moscow

Domestic architects began to discuss the possibility of building high-rise buildings in Moscow after the 1917 revolution. Very shortly thereafter, there were interesting projects; for example, the skyscraper project of the Supreme Economic Council building on the Lubyanka Square, designed by Vladimir Krinsky in 1923.[7] In the same year, the Vesnin brothers proposed a project for the Palace of Labor, whose high-rise building was a tower 132 meters high.[8]

The government supported the desires of architects to rebuild the capital of the Soviet Union. In 1940, architect Dmitry Chechulin published a draft of a 24-story public building on the Dorogomilovsky Bend of the Moscow River - the hotel "Ukraine" subsequently appeared at this place. The sketches were published in Issues 11–14 of the magazine Construction of Moscow. All the preparatory work on this project progressed very slowly, and with the start of World War II, work was completely frozen.[9]

On January 13, 1947, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), Joseph Stalin, signed the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the Construction of High-Rise Buildings in Moscow". Clause 4 stated that a 26-story building with a hotel and residences was to be built on the Leningradskoye Highway near the Dynamo Stadium. [10] Mordvinov, as a representative of the Committee on Architectural Affairs, submitted the construction plan to the government for approval. Construction work was transferred to the Ministry of Construction of Heavy Industry Enterprises.

In the future, the government decided to transfer the construction to the Dorogomilovskaya settlement, which was built up with barracks and wooden houses. This was due to the desire to create a high-rise which would dominate the intersection of the Moskva River embankment and a promising major highway, Kutuzov Avenue. The designers took into account not only the location of the roads, a pier for the river fleet was also created near the hotel.[11]

Stalinist skyscrapers of the same time were not built in a separate area; they were distributed mainly in the historical center of the capital. New high-rises should serve as architectural dominants of the capital. Church belltowers and domes performed a similar role in pre-revolutionary Moscow. The chief architect of Moscow, Dmitry Chechulin, also took into account that future skyscrapers could “overlap” with each other.[12]

Like all skyscrapers built in the Stalinist era, the first stone of the hotel was solemnly laid on September 7, 1947, on the day of the 800th anniversary of Moscow, but work did not actually begin until 1953. The construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow was complicated by three circumstances. The first problem was weak Moscow soil (sandy loam), for which reason it was necessary to build strong foundations. The second difficulty was that the Soviet experts, except Oltarzhevsky and a few other architects, did not have the relevant expertise. Finally, the country lacked the necessary technical base.[13]

Considering Stalin's attention to the project, the necessary technologies and mechanisms were developed for high-rise construction from scratch or improved. Especially for Stalin's skyscrapers, an original “box foundation” was developed, which allowed the building to be erected without gigantic reinforced concrete massifs and vertical sedimentary joints. The workers received a concrete pump capable of pumping fresh mortar to a height of 40 meters, UBK tower cranes with a lifting capacity of 15 tons, capable of lifting themselves from floor to floor as the building grows. During the construction of the hotel, these cranes were used in the construction of walls and for the installation of large elements of reinforcement blocks. In addition, with the formwork of the bottom slab of the foundation, the crane pedestals were part of the reinforced concrete structure of the building and subsequently became part of the basement. In Lyubertsy and Kuchin, special factories for the production of reinforced concrete slabs were organized, and the use of a metal frame required the creation of new wall materials: “multi-hole” bricks and hollow ceramic stones. An enterprise was set up in the village of Kudinovo to produce these materials. Since the hotel was built later than other Stalinist skyscrapers, engineers and ordinary specialists took into account previous experience in order to optimize the workflow. At the construction site, most cargo delivery operations were mechanized from the moment they arrived at the facility until transportation to the workplace.[14] The building was erected in close proximity to the Moskva River, therefore, additional work was needed to drain the soil around the future foundation.

Long before the commissioning of the building, it became known that by order of Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the hotel would be called “Ukraine” and not “Dorogomilovskaya” (the design name is “Hotel building in Dorogomilov”) as originally intended. The reason was the desire to make a symbolic gesture in the context of the celebration in 1954 of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Russia and Ukraine [15]

The grand opening of the hotel on Dorogomilovskaya Embankment took place on May 25, 1957.[16] In early June, the newspaper “For the cultural trade” noted that in “Ukraine” – the largest hotel in Europe – there are 1,026 rooms. "Ukraine" was considered prestigious and was focused primarily on the placement of foreigners.

In 1964, a 10-meter monument to the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was erected in the square in front of the main facade of the building. Sculptors Mikhail Gritsyuk, Yu. L. Sinkevich, A. S. Fuzhenko and architects A. A. Snitsaryov, Yu. A. Chekanuk worked on the monument.[17]