Owen Hatherley takes an architectural tour of Moscow and St Petersburg, focusing especially on the Constructivists:
What is so striking about Moscow Constructivism is how intimate and small-scale it all is, in the context of generations of soaring gigantism — whether Tsarist onion domes and neoclassical office blocks, Stalinist skyscrapers and hulking apartment blocks, or Brezhnev-era attenuated modernism. Even the most brutally powerful buildings — like that ur-brutalist masterpiece, the Rusakov Club — refuse to dominate their users. Perhaps this is why they’re so neglected — just not Bolshoy enough.
That would certainly explain why the “delicate lattice structure” of the Shukhov Tower has been allowed to decay. As the Russian press put it, “Only foreigners care about its destiny.” Tragic.