The view from the Vysotka

by Anne Nivat

"Completed shortly before Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the vysotkii, or "sky houses," still dominate the Moscow skyline today. Seven in all, they were the Soviet answer to the American skyscraper, transforming the Soviet capital from a feudal backwater into the city of the future. With their soaring towers and gothic architectural details, the vysotkas were intended to be enduring monuments to the workers state and to the glories of Communism - though they were built on the backs of slave laborers and, initially, the prerogative only of the Soviet elite. Now these imposing giants lie on the fault line between a world that has vanished and one still emerging from its ruins." "When she moved to Moscow several years ago, journalist and Russia expert Anne Nivat settled into one of the vysotkas, the one that happens to overlook the Kremlin. She became fascinated by the building and learned everything she could about its history.^ As she got to know her neighbors and fellow tenants, Nivat