Seventy-eight years ago today, on July 10, 1935, the Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnarkom, adopted a plan for the socialist reconstruction of Moscow. The plan involved straightening and widening the main streets leading into the city center and many old buildings and churches were destroyed in the process. It was widely thought that the plan was intended to distract from the construction pofr the Palace of the Soviets, which was still not under way.
