Architecture and Politics and how the former is influenced by the latter has always interested me. A random glance at a poster in the tube during my recent visit to London brought me to the Royal Academcy of Arts and its exhibition on early Soviet architecture.

The website says:
This exhibition examines Russian avant-garde architecture made during a brief but intense period of design and construction that took place from c.1922 to 1935. Fired by the Constructivist art that emerged in Russia from c.1915, architects transformed this radical artistic language into three dimensions, creating structures whose innovative style embodied the energy and optimism of the new Soviet Socialist state.

In the courtyard a model of the Monument to the Third International (or “Tattlin’s Tower”), a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern (the third international).

More Information:
Royal Academy Exhibition: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/building-the-revolution/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatlin%27s_Tower
Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P18XmwRKgM