was a type of building for every rank of Stalin's hierarchy. High-class buildings can be identified easily by tell-tale details like spacing between windows, penthouses and bay windows. Sometimes, the relative rank and occupation of tenants is represented by ornaments, sometimes by memorial plaques. Note that these are all Moscow features. In smaller cities, the social elite usually comprised just one or two classes; St. Petersburg always had a supply of pre-revolutionary luxury space. Volga-Don Canal (1948–1952) The construction of the present Volga-Don Canal, designed by Sergey Zhuk's Hydroproject Institute, began prior to the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, which would interrupt the process. During 1948–1952 construction was completed. Navigation was begun June 1, 1952. The canal and its facilities were predominantly built by prisoners, who were detained in several specially organized corrective labor camps. During 1952 the number of convicts employed by construction exceeded 100,000. Underground Metro (1938–1958) The first stage of Moscow Metro (1931–1935) began as an ordinary city utility. There was much propaganda about building it, but the subway itself wasn't perceived as propaganda. "Unlike other projects, Moscow Metro was never named Stalin's metro". Old architects avoided Metro commissions. Attitudes changed when the second stage work started in 1935. This time, the subway was a political statement and enjoyed much better funding. The second stage produced such different examples of Stalinist style as Mayakovskaya (1938), Elektrozavodskaya and Partizanskaya (1944). It required six years to complete the first post-war metro line (a 6.4 km section of the Ring Line). These stations were dedicated to "Victory". No more Comintern (the Comintern metro station was renamed Kalininskaya in December 1946), no more World revolution, but a statement of victorious, nationalist Stalinism. Oktyabrskaya station by Leonid Polyakov was built like a Classicist temple, with a shiny white-blue altar behind iron gates – a complete departure from prewar atheism. To see this altar, a rider had to pass a long row of plaster banners, bronze candlesticks and assorted military imagery. Park Kultury featured true Gothic chandeliers, another departure. Metrostroy operated its own marble and carpentry factories, producing 150 solid, whole block marble columns for this short section. The second section of Ring line was a tribute to "Heroic Labor" (with the exception of Shchusev's Komsomolskaya, set up as a retelling of Stalin's speech of November 7, 1941). April 4, 1953, the public learn that a 1935 stretch from Alexandrovsky Sad, then Kalininskaya,