ne of the more intriguing recent conspiracy theories centres on the putative suppression of a global ‘Tartarian Empire’, which, before it was destroyed either by the world wars or by a tidal wave of mud, went in for an opulent, gigantist architecture of domes and spires, encompassing everything from St Paul’s in London to St Basil’s in Moscow. Once the empire was gone, the world was rebuilt by a technologically inferior civilisation that preferred a mass-produced architecture of boxes, without ornament or craft. To my knowledge Tartarian theorists haven’t yet included in their system the seven skyscrapers – or vysotki, ‘high buildings’ – that have dominated the skyline of Moscow since the early 1950s. Yet the vysotki fit the bill in every respect. Enormous, luxurious and encrusted with spires and crenellations, when seen from a distance flanked by the more mundane high-rise architecture built since the 1960s they look like they belong to a totally different civilisation.
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