Flutterby™! : Meeting of the minds

I stumbled on this link from Paleofuture, a review of never-built projects for Moscow in the Stalin years. Most of them are the usual bloated gingerbread favored by the Party in those years. In particular, however, I was struck by this plan for a triumphal arch in Red Square. Considering it was designed while Hitler was still rampaging over the Ukraine it's pretty cheeky, if still ugly. However, it reminded me of this building, Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, the Palace of Italian Civilization, built in the mid 30s in Rome by Benito Mussolini, and considered the apotheosis of Fascist architecture. (The Romans also called it the Palace of Swiss Cheese.) What is interesting is that two political philosophies which claimed to illuminate and energize all realms of human thought and inspiration would come up with pretty much the same design forms. Maybe it's just that hysterical romantic despotisms actually reflect the same insane grandiosity, no matter which dialectic they follow.