were large enough to seat any conceivable convention, and none of them could materialize in a country devastated by wars and revolutions. In post-revolution Russian language the word palace () denoted a multi-role public building that shared entertainment and administrative functions; as time went by, the administrative side predominated. The word was never applied to residences of political leaders: their private affairs remained a closely guarded secret. During the 1920s, the meaning of the word devalued as smaller, modest "palaces of labor" or "palaces of culture" were actually built. The coveted national palace had to be exceptionally large, impressive and technologically advanced to stand above the crowd. The idea of placing a giant statue of Lenin on top of the national administrative center (originally, the Comintern building) goes back to a 1924 proposal by Viktor Balikhin, then a graduate student at Vkhutemas: "Arc lamps will flood the villages, towns, parks and squares, calling everyone to honor Lenin even at night...". The proposal was later popularized by Balikhin's rationalist movement, the ASNOVA but gained little recognition. The decision to build the "House of Congresses" () was made at the end of 1930 or in early 1931, and announced in February 1931. The influences behind the decision cannot be reliably ascertained. claims Stalin was the project's sole initiator; Sergey Kuznetsov counters that the idea was pitched by Alexei Rykov. The "House of Congresses" was, chronologically, the first of the three megaprojects launched in Moscow in 1931, months before the Moscow Canal and the Moscow Metro. Its initial scope was modest; the architects and the politicians believed that building could be topped out in 1933. However, the unchecked ambitions of both groups soon caused a multifold increase in size, scope and cost. In the summer of 1931, the already bloated project was renamed the "Palace of the Soviets". The architect In February 1931, the government set up a three-tier project management structure. The Construction Council was a decorative political committee chaired by Kliment Voroshilov and later Vyacheslav Molotov; it served as a proxy for announcing decisions made by Stalin and the Politburo. The subordinate Construction Directorate (USDS) was the actual project management team of (chair), Boris Iofan (chief architect), Hermann Krasin, and Ivan Mashkov. The USDS appointed and supervised the Technical Council, that included dozens of experienced architects, artists and engineers. Boris Iofan, the second in command in the USDS, immediately assumed the