Model Forum / General / Models / March 2008

I went swimming in the giant heated swimming pool they made out of the
foundation of this thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Soviets
It served as the cooling system for the central Moscow power plant's
steam turbines, to recondense their steam into water.
Swimming around in fog at around -20 F is a odd experience, particularly
since you couldn't see anything more than around ten feet away, so even
finding any wall of the pool was a major problem once you were in the
middle of it, much less where the exit was. Russians would appear out of
the fog and vanish into it again, in a truly surrelistic manner worthy
of a Dore etching from "Worker's Paradise Lost".
Pity they didn't finish it.
The perfect way for the Soviet Union to end would have been by the
structural failure of the rusting supports under the giant Lenin statue
on the top, and the statue descending through the interior of the
building to crush everyone inside of it under its immense feet.
Rarely would a failed political system have such a well-demarcated
historical end.
"The Soviet Union existed from the October Revolution of 1917 till  
3:18:37 PM on December 12, 1991." :-D

Pat