title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The Palace of the Soviets (, "Dvorets Sovetov") was a project to construct a political convention center in Moscow on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The main function of the palace was to house sessions of the Supreme Soviet in its wide and tall grand hall seating over 20,000 people. If built, the tall palace would have become the world's tallest structure, with an internal volume surpassing the combined volumes of the six tallest American skyscrapers.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Boris Iofan won a series of four architectural competitions held in 1931–1933 marking the beginning of a sharp turn of Soviet architecture from 1920s modernism to the monumental historicism of Stalinist architecture. The individuals behind these events and their motives remain a matter of conjecture and debate. Recent research supports the hypothesis that Iofan had been the chosen architect from the very start and manipulated the competitions to his own benefit.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The definitive design by Iofan, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich was conceived in 1933–1934 and took its final shape in 1937. The staggered stack of ribbed cylinders crowned with a statue of Vladimir Lenin blended Art Deco and neoclassical influences with contemporary American skyscraper technology. Work on the site commenced in 1933; the foundation was completed in January 1939. The German invasion in June 1941 ended the project. Engineers and workers were diverted to defense projects or pressed in the army; the installed structural steel was disassembled in 1942 for fortifications and bridges.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: After World War II, Joseph Stalin lost interest in the palace. Iofan produced several revised, scaled-down designs but failed to reanimate the project. The alternative Palace of the Soviets in Sparrow Hills, which was proposed after Stalin's death, did not proceed beyond the architectural competition stage.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: On 30 December 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets announced the creation of the Soviet Union. On the same day Sergei Kirov proposed construction of a new national convention center, which was duly approved by the congress. This, according to the official Soviet narrative, was the beginning of the story of the Palace of the Soviets. Before the congress, in January–May 1919, Petrograd had held an architectural competition for the "Palace of Labor"; in October 1922 the launched a competition for a different "Palace of Labor", endorsed by the same Sergei Kirov. Both projects were large enough to seat any conceivable convention, and none of them could materialize in a country devastated by wars and revolutions.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In post-revolution Soviet language the word "palace" () denoted a multi-role public building that shared entertainment and administrative functions; as time went by, the administrative side predominated. The word was never applied to residences of political leaders: their private affairs remained a closely guarded secret. During the 1920s, the meaning of the word devalued as smaller, modest "palaces of labor" or "palaces of culture" were actually built. The coveted national palace had to be exceptionally large, impressive and technologically advanced to stand above the crowd. The idea of placing a giant statue of Lenin on top of the national administrative center (originally, the Comintern building) goes back to a 1924 proposal by Viktor Balikhin, then a graduate student at Vkhutemas: "Arc lamps will flood the villages, towns, parks and squares, calling everyone to honor Lenin even at night...". The proposal was later popularized by Balikhin's rationalist movement, the ASNOVA but gained little recognition.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The decision to build the "House of Congresses" () was made at the end of 1930 or in early 1931, and announced in February 1931. The influences behind the decision cannot be reliably ascertained. claims Stalin was the project's sole initiator; Sergey Kuznetsov counters that the idea was pitched by Alexei Rykov. The "House of Congresses" was, chronologically, the first of the three megaprojects launched in Moscow in 1931, months before the Moscow Canal and the Moscow Metro. Its initial scope was modest; the architects and the politicians believed that building could be topped out in 1933. However, the unchecked ambitions of both groups soon caused a multifold increase in size, scope and cost. In the summer of 1931, the already bloated project was renamed the "Palace of the Soviets".


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In February 1931, the government set up a three-tier project management structure. The Construction Council was a decorative political committee chaired by Kliment Voroshilov and later Vyacheslav Molotov; it served as a proxy for announcing decisions made by Stalin and the Politburo. The subordinate Construction Directorate (USDS) was the actual project management team of (chair), Boris Iofan (chief architect), Hermann Krasin, and Ivan Mashkov. The USDS appointed and supervised the Technical Council, that included dozens of experienced architects, artists and engineers.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Boris Iofan, the second in command in the USDS, immediately assumed the title and role of chief architect. A recent repatriant from Italy and a long-time student of Italian architect Armando Brasini, Iofan was a maverick within the Soviet architectural community and had no obligations to any group. He was also a trusted insider of the party elite, with particularly strong ties to Alexei Rykov and Avel Yenukidze. His career with Soviet state clients began in 1922 in Rome and proceeded through the 1920s at an unprecedented and so far unexplained pace. By 1931 he had a proven record of completing high-profile projects, including the enormous House on the Embankment with its —the largest modern auditorium in Moscow. Stalin certainly endorsed Iofan's appointment, probably on Yenukidze's recommendation.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Iofan was difficult to work with soon forcing Kryukov to resign. In the autumn of 1931 the chair of the USDS passed to party apparatchik , the architect's former superior at the House on the Embankment project. Kryukov, Mikhailov, Rykov, Yenukidze and Iofan's colleagues at the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee would be killed in Stalin's purges, but the unsinkable architect would survive unharmed and retain his office, despite the incriminating connections.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Iofan prepared the terms of architectural competitions and controlled all the USDS's paperwork, giving him an advantage over any potential competitor. This obvious conflict of interest provoked speculation that the competitions were rigged in Iofan's favor, or that he was the chosen architect from the very start and the competitions were merely a ruse. In the 2010s archival research by Igor Kazus confirmed this hypothesis, which was afterwards supported by Iofan's biographers Maria Kostyuk, Dmitrij Chmelnizki and Sergey Kuznetsov. As early as 6 February 1931, Iofan devised a three-step, nine-month consultation schedule with a predetermined outcome. The plan was soon implemented in a series of architectural competitions, where Iofan acted as "primus inter pares" (first among equals) in public and the "éminence grise" (powerful decision maker) behind the scenes. According to Kuznetsov, Iofan initiated and managed the competitions for his own benefit, to harvest free ideas from his unsuspecting colleagues. He never agreed to be a temporary placeholder and did not intend to give up his lead to anyone.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In March 1931, the Construction Council chose a compact site in the former Okhotny Ryad Street market, just a few hundred meters north-west from the Kremlin and Red Square. There were no large or otherwise valuable buildings to raze; demolition of existing low-rise buildings and the relocation of their inhabitants required little time or effort.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Left-wing architectural factions immediately disputed this economically sound choice. In April–May the Technical Council reviewed various alternatives and confirmed the selection of the Okhotny Ryad site.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Molotov and Voroshilov thought differently. On 25 May, the Politburo, advised by Molotov and Voroshilov, voted in favor of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour site. Hannes Meyer and the ASNOVA supported this option. Iofan had secretly studied all the alternatives beforehand and was quite comfortable with the cathedral site. It required extensive demolition and presented so far unknown technical challenges, but it was the largest site and it formed a tight visual ensemble with Iofan's House on the Embankment. Most of the Technical Council disagreed. On 30 May, they recommended the sites in Zaryadye or Bolotnaya Square as second-best alternatives; the cathedral site was ranked least acceptable. Tired of insubordination, Voroshilov invited the stubborn professionals to a meeting with Stalin. On 2 June 1931, Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Meyer and eight selected architects from the Technical Council convened in the Kremlin, where Stalin presented his arguments in favor of the cathedral site. Kaganovich feared the destruction of an Orthodox shrine would spark an antisemitic backlash and suggested a site in Sparrow Hills, but Stalin's viewpoint prevailed.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Historians disagree over the interpretation of this meeting. According to Kuznetsov, the decision had not yet been finalized, and the architects could still propose other sites. Sona Hoisington claims the decision was final, but its main objective was not the palace but the destruction of the cathedral. It was a purely political statement, made without prior feasibility studies and completely disregarding the economics. According to Chmelnizki, the decision was final; it was the first step in the development of Stalinist architecture, while the destruction of the cathedral was incidental. On 5 June 1931, the outcome was sealed by the Politburo. In December the stripped hulk of the cathedral was publicly blown up. The Okhotny Ryad site was also demolished for the construction of the (1932–1935) and Arkady Mordvinov's residential block on Tverskaya Street (1937–1939).


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In April 1931, the chosen architects and architectural groups received terms of the first, preliminary competition. The brief, prepared by Iofan and signed by Kryukov, reiterated the "monumentality" and emphasizing the "uniqueness" of the future palace: it should be radically different from any existing public building. It sent a clear message that the entries would be judged not by professionals but by politicians, who do not and would not align with any existing professional faction.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: By the end of June, the USDS had collected 15 entries representing all active movements, as well as Iofan and his brother Dmitry. Most, including the Iofans, leaned toward modernist architecture. Iofan had considered various alternatives, and ruled out compact centric floor plans in favor of a sprawling group of buildings aligned along the north–south axis of the cathedral site. The two halls were placed at the ends of the axis, with spacious inner courtyards and a lean, tall tower in between. The draft did not impress contemporary observers. The USDS did not name a clear winner but cautiously praised an entry by Heinrich Ludwig, an enormous pentagonal enlargement of Lenin's Mausoleum devoid of any stylistic cues.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: On 18 July 1931, the USDS announced a public, open, international competition, with entries due by 20 October (later extended to 1 December 1931). In September, the USDS amended the terms and explained the design of the palace would not be awarded to a single architect or a group or firm. The USS claimed no single group could overcome the project's unprecedented challenges; it requires a joint effort of "all living creative forces of the Soviet society". The message foreshadowed the imminent nationalization of the formerly independent professional community, but no one, even the party insiders like Iofan, Alabyan or Shchusev, could predict the outcome. Another covert purpose of the competition—suppression of undesirable architecture in a manner similar to the "Degenerate art" campaign in Germany—would be revealed by Alexey Tolstoy (another party insider) later, just before the announcement of the winners. Tolstoy clearly warned the architects that Gothic architecture, "American skyscraperism" and "corbusianism" had become distinctly unwanted.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The expert jury chaired by Molotov received 112 brief proposals and 160 proper drafts, including 24 by foreign architects. Dignitaries like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius or Erich Mendelsohn were preselected and invited by Iofan for a fixed fee. Armando Brasini agreed to submit a proposal at no cost. From a professional standpoint the best proposal came from Le Corbusier. The Soviet press praised his innovative, logical and convenient floor plan as late as 1940, but the jury felt the high-rise exoskeleton supporting the saddle roof was inappropriate for downtown Moscow.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Most of the sixteen drafts selected by the jury were modernist in inspiration, but the choice of the top three winners surprised and embarrassed everyone involved. The Politburo made the decision secretly, and the Construction Council announced it publicly five days later on 28 February 1931. The three prizes were awarded to Boris Iofan, Ivan Zholtovsky and the virtually unknown British-American autodidact Hector Hamilton. Iofan presented a revised version of his earlier proposal, re-aligned along the Moskva River. The draft disposed with former Constructivist novelty The shape of the main hall changed from a parabolic dome to a stack of flat cylinders and, according to Katherine Zubovich, acquired "more italianate form". Le Corbusier despised it as "childish megalomania".


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Ivan Zholtovsky bizarrely combined Italian Renaissance with the Pharos lighthouse and the Colosseum. Hamilton's Art Deco draft was uninspiring but the most cohesive of the three. Hamilton, who had never been to Moscow, deliberately avoided any references to both modernist and historical styles. The symmetrical array of staggered rectangular shapes and semicylinders, facing the river, was adorned only with uniform rows of white vertical pylons. The "ribbed style" of Hamilton's drafts is strangely reminiscent of almost all Soviet public buildings of the Brezhnev era. It was certainly not unique to Hamilton's entry: similar ribbed facades, a staple of American Art Deco, were also used by Alexey Dushkin, Iosif Langbard, Dmitry Chechulin and Iofan himself.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: European left-wing architects could not accept the fact and appealed directly to Stalin. The leaders of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) realized very well that the competition was a matter of politics, rather than art, and that Stalin had the final say. They were willing to cooperate with the dictator and felt betrayed when it turned out he had his own plans. Their message amounted to an ultimatum, threatening to retract all support to the Soviet Union. It is not known if Stalin ever read these letters, but the withdrawal of unwanted "allies" certainly suited him well.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The third, closed, competition among 12 invited teams of architects was held in March–July 1932. In addition to the nine prize-winners of the open competition, at Mikhailov's request the USDS also invited notable constructivists and rationalists. Two future co-authors of the palace, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich were invited as a reward for their work on the Lenin Library. The USDS required all architects to abandon a sprawling, squat design in favor of a single tall, compact, and monumental structure, avoiding any resemblance to church architecture. The main hall, seating 15,000 people, had to face the Kremlin.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The Ginzburg and Ladovsky teams remained true to modernist ideas. Karo Alabyan and company produced an impressive and novel modernist design—"a ship of state" with three lean "funnels" flanking the river. The other architects followed the instructions and presented compact, monumental but uninspiring proposals. Iofan settled for a tall stack of four cylinders, wrapped in rows of white "ribbed style" pylons. The jury declined to appoint a winner and announced yet another round of competition. Stalin, on the contrary, privately notified Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov that "Iofan's plan is unconditionally the best..." and compiled a list of necessary changes. Stalin expressly ruled out the alternative designs by Zholtovsky ("...smacks of Noah's ark"), and particularly by Shchusev ("the same cathedral, but without a cross. Possibly, Shchusev hopes to add a cross at a later day").


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The fourth and final competition between five selected teams was held in August 1932 – February 1933. This time, all proposals were very similar in composition, although still different stylistically. On 10 May 1933 the Politburo announced the final decision in favor of Iofan. The winning design closely followed Iofan's earlier proposal — a compact, ziggurat-like stack of three cylinders perched on a massive stylobate and flanked with colonnades, ramps and grand staircases. Total height of the core structure reached 220 meters, but there was no office tower and no statue of Lenin yet. The proposed statue of the "freed proletarian" was merely 18 meter tall. Structural engineering issues had not been addressed at all. The Politburo wasn't completely impressed with the result, and instructed Iofan to install a giant statue of Lenin, 50 to 75 meter tall, on top of the palace. The official narrative published in 1940 presented this proposal as Stalin's personal initiative. Molotov hesitated, arguing that the face of Lenin would not be seen from the main plaza, but had to bow to Stalin and Voroshilov.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: According to Andrey Barkhin, the true purpose of the fourth stage was to narrow down stylistic choice to one of two alternatives: either following an existing, historical model, or creating something completely new. Iofan managed to suit both sides: although his proposal looked novel, it was in fact a blend of various identifiable prototypes. Iofan himself said the two main inspirations behind his design were the Pergamon Altar and the Victor Emmanuel II Monument which was, in turn, inspired by the Pergamon Altar. The choice was natural for Iofan, because he had often seen the Vittoriano while living in Rome, and because he studied under one of its creators, Manfredo Manfredi. The other identifiable and undisputed design cue is the Art Deco "ribbed style" of exterior walls, which had already been used by other Soviet architects. The dome of the grand hall was inspired by the Centennial Hall in Breslau. Less obvious, speculative sources range from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to Athanasius Kircher's "Turris Babel".


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: During the competition period, the state dissolved formerly independent architectural movements and "de facto" nationalized all architects under the umbrella of state-owned design companies and the . By the end of 1932, modernist architecture in general, and its constructivist, and formalist movements in particular, came to a halt, giving way to the emerging Stalinist architecture. Modernist projects laid down earlier were gradually completed and often "improved" to suit the new policy. Architects kept on producing and publishing modernist drafts until at least 1935, but such proposals had no chance to be built. Rudolf Wolters, who came to Novosibirsk in the summer of 1932, reported that by the time of his arrival the provincial party executives had already received orders from Moscow to build "in classical style" only. On the national level, no such orders were formally published; the change appeared to be a natural development within the professional community.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The overwhelming majority of Soviet, Russian and foreign authors, with the notable exception of Antonia Cunliffe, agree the competitions represented a deliberate rejection of modernism in favor of monumental historicism. The connection has always been public but subject to different interpretations. Soviet authors of the 1930s usually appealed to the "improved welfare of the masses". Constructivism was presented as a temporary, low-cost ersatz architecture. Once the nation had overcome the bitter poverty of the 1920s, "the people" (i.e. the communist state) disposed with stopgap solutions and rightfully embraced "quality" architecture. After World War II the "welfare of the masses" fell to an all-time low and Soviet critics adjusted accordingly. They painted modernism as a hostile, subversive influence of the capitalist West that was promptly revealed and suppressed by the party. The reform was effected through the party decrees of the 1930s, starting with the USDS review of the international competition.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In the late 1950s and 1960s modernism became the official style of the Soviet state, and recent history was rewritten again to exonerate the party. Soviet theorists argued that the architects of the 1930s abandoned constructivism voluntarily and then forged the new monumental style on their own. The "excesses" of Stalinist architecture were the architects' fault only. The party, which carefully advised the professionals, bears no responsibility for what was actually built. A toned-down version of the same narrative persisted until the 2000s, notably in the works of . Western authors, likewise, did not produce a plausible explanation until the 2000s publications by and Christiane Post.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In the late 1990s Dmitry Chmelnizki advanced a different explanation. The competitions were set up by Stalin personally as a complex political provocation. In the opening, self-educational phase, Stalin familiarized himself with all active architectural schools and selected the general direction that would soon become the official style. Then, he artfully degraded the social status and self-esteem of the architectural profession—which was a prerequisite to nationalization. Finally, he destroyed the ties that united the architects into firms, groups and movements. In the end, the former diverse and independent professional community was reduced to a homogenous mass of obedient individuals. Anna Selivanova later published a similar theory.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Opponents like Sergey Kuznetsov argue the existing evidence of Stalin's personal involvement is too scarce to make far-reaching conclusions. There are very few transcripts and quotations reproduced in the Soviet media. The protocols of the Politburo and the journals of Stalin's office in the Kremlin contain very few records related to the palace. Chmelnizki, on the contrary, rates the same Politburo evidence as substantial. Kuznetsov says mundane issues like deliveries of firewood mattered more than architectural follies. Apart from a few publicized meetings, there is no evidence that Stalin ever invited architects to the Kremlin. The only architect who had spoken to Stalin regularly was his personal contractor Miron Merzhanov, who remained modernist throughout the 1930s.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Yet another hypothesis suggested by Sona Hoisington in 2003 views the stylistic change as a direct and unintended consequence of the destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Demolition of the largest building in Moscow left a void in the city fabric that required, at the very least, an equally monumental replacement. The modernist drafts received in 1931 could not make up for the loss. They lacked "a center of gravity, a sense of hierarchy", and any connection to the existing city; there was nothing distinctly "Soviet", either. The state demanded "supermonumentality", and found it in Iofan's Art Deco proposal, which was then replicated in lesser projects across the country.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The decree of 10 May 1933 expressly warned Iofan that the politicians felt free to "help" him by attaching other architects to the design process. The threat materialized on 4 June, when the Politburo co-opted Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich. Iofan remained the chief architect, but he now had to deal with two experienced and influential co-authors. The theatrical, dramatic visionary architecture that emerged from this collaboration was approved and publicized to great pomp in February 1934 despite a complete lack of technical and economic estimates.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The official narrative presented the outcome as a joint effort of the three peers, but the reality was more complicated. In the second half of 1933, Iofan's team in Moscow and the Shchuko-Helfreich team in Leningrad operated separately. Iofan did not want to alter his 1933 design radically or to increase its already substantial height. Contrary to the instructions received in May, he preferred placing the statue of Lenin on a standalone pedestal or tower, to maintain the balance between the statue and the building. Shchuko and Helfreich thought otherwise, and did not hesitate to perch the giant statue on top of the building, extending its height by . Initially, their base structure was a slab-sided rectangular block rather than Iofan's stack of cylinders. Iofan objected, but Shchuko appealed directly to the Construction Council. The politicians summoned Iofan and forced him to accept the Shchuko-Helfreich proposal or be removed from the project. He complied, and the design evolved along the middle road between the two extremes.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Placement of a giant statue on top of an already enormous structure caused a disproportional, nonlinear increase in building height. To make the statue visible from the ground, architects had to mount it on a tall but narrow, tapering pedestal—a "skyscraper" standing on the top of the grand hall. The increased height of the pedestal made the statue appear smaller, and the cycle repeated itself. According to the official narrative, experiments with scale models led to the conclusion that the appropriate height of the statue is exactly . Lenin's head alone had to be almost as large as the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions. The location of the statue and the design by Sergey Merkurov remained controversial throughout the 1930s and were harshly criticized in public by Boris Korolyov, Nikolai Tomsky, Martiros Saryan and other involved artists.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: A salient function of the palace project was the transfer of modern technology to the backward Soviet industry. At the end of 1934, Iofan, Shchuko, Helfreikh and their associates departed on a lengthy tour of European and American cities. Their main objectives were the reevaluation of the 1934 design against best American practices, and the research and purchase of modern construction technologies. Moran & Proctor, a leading foundation engineering firm, became the first American company to be hired for the project and would assist the USDS throughout the 1930s. More visits and more contracts, facilitated through the Amtorg network, would follow in subsequent years. From a purely architectural perspective, the most important experience was gained at the site of the partially completed Rockefeller Center. Iofan used the stepped-slab motive of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in later projects, and directly inspired careful realignment of the palace's staggered layers. These and other subtle exterior changes proceeded throughout the rest of the decade, along with the subsidiary interior design and urban planning tasks, and the creation of factories and workshops.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The definitive exterior design took its final shape by 1937. The number of stacked cylinders was reduced from five to four with progressively decreasing, rather than uniform, spacings between the pylons. The stainless steel moldings attached to the pylons widened progressively with height for a smooth transition from the granite-clad tower to the all-metal statue. The pose and the proportions of the statue also changed. This revised design was presented and discussed at a conference of the Union of Soviet architects in July 1939. A book by describing the design and the construction process in plain language was published one year later.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The total height of the palace, including the statue, was set at , taller than the recently completed Empire State Building. Being a much wider structure, the palace was estimated to weigh over 1.5 million tons, and have a gross volume of over 7.5 million cubic meters. Its net internal volume would have surpassed the combined volume of six largest American skyscrapers of the period. The palace would require 350.000 tons of structural steel, six times more than the Empire State Building and almost twice as much as the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge).


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The grand hall seating 21 thousand people had to have an inner diameter of , an outer diameter of , a height of meters and internal volume of 970,000 cubic meters. The "small" hall had 5,000 seats and a height of . The "even smaller" Constitution Hall and Reception Hall in the stylobate measured and . Floors in the office tower were planned to have a usable height of , for even more session halls of various government branches. The exact number of floors was not disclosed.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Enormous as it was, the palace's grand hall was much smaller than Albert Speer's Volkshalle, designed to hold 180 thousand people. But, to Hitler's chagrin, the communist palace still surpassed the Volkshalle in total height.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The completed palace would have consisted of two parts resting on two independent foundations: the circular core with the grand hall, the office tower and the statue of Lenin; and a rectangular stylobate adjacent to the core. The core's concrete foundations rested on limestone bedrock below the level of the Moskva River. The much lighter, tall stylobate could safely rest on the uppermost limestone sill, below the ground.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The stylobate design used a traditional steel frame; on the contrary, the frame of the core was radically unconventional. Instead of running the whole vertical height of the building, the palace's load-bearing columns had to wrap around the grand hall. Thus, the frame was split into three distinct segments. The lower segment, tall, comprised 32 pairs of vertical columns placed around the grand hall and connected to the foundation slab via massive riveted "shoes". These "shoes" rested on massive steel plates implanted into the concrete slab. Columns of the second segment were placed at a 22° angle, forming a tent over the grand hall up to the mark. Above it, a traditional vertical frame would be used. Two massive steel rings, similar to the hoops that hold the staves of a barrel together would hold the tent. These rings, weighing an estimated 28 thousand tons, were the largest, the heaviest and the most expensive elements of the frame. The statue of Lenin, weighing around 6,000 tons, was to be built around its own steel frame, and clad in monel sheeting with an estimated lifetime of two thousand years.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: External walls followed the American pattern of hollow-body brick infill and granite exterior cladding. According to the official narrative, Stalin instructed the designers to avoid unnecessary visual clutter and use a simple two-tone color scheme. The designers selected greyish blue Ukrainian labradorite for the basement and pale grey granite from the valley for the rest of the structure.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The palace's internal transport infrastructure was designed assuming 50,000 visitors daily. The routes to the grand hall and to the office tower were physically separated; the former relied primarily on stairs and escalators, the latter on elevators. There were to be 130 passenger elevators carrying 25 people each, 27 service elevators and 20 elevators with firefighting equipment. Since no elevator could travel the whole height of the building, visitors to the top floors had to make two or three transfers, sometimes via escalators or stairs.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Electrical consumption of the palace was specified at 90 MW peak, and 90 million kWh per annum. Fault-tolerant, redundant electricity supply required the construction of three new thermal power stations.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Internal cleaning and waste disposal systems contained twelve central vacuum cleaning stations of 750 KW each, and thirty industrial garbage disposal units with a combined capacity of seven tons/day. Heavy air conditioning equipment would have been located below ground level, the conditioned air would be delivered to each seat in the grand hall via a network of ducts running under each row of seats. The placement of air intakes required further research on the distribution of pollutants in the air; the designers knew that the intakes should have been raised to at least , but the exact height was not yet known. Apparently dust prevention and cleaning the dust were paramount concerns. The designers even provided for vibrating brushes, installed in the floors of the lobbies, for cleaning the soles of the visitors' shoes.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Moscow's planners viewed the palace as the hub of the "Ilyich Alley", a new southwest-to-northeast axis aligned along present-day Komsomolsky Prospect, Volkhonka Street, Manezhnaya Square and Sakharov Prospect. The concept developed by the Vesnin brothers and Ivan Leonidov in the 1920s was incorporated in the in its basic form, and was subsequently reexamined in numerous drafts and proposals. Real construction practice often contradicted the plans: new buildings erected in the center of Moscow often blocked or narrowed the planned avenue.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In 1940, the city approved a revised plan. All buildings between the palace and the Kremlin, including the Moscow Manege, had to be demolished. The Alexander Garden would be leveled into a flat and straight boulevard. The Pushkin Museum building, which partly obstructed the course of the Alley, would be moved north to Gogolevsky Boulevard. Most of it would be absorbed into the palace plaza. The plaza would extend far south-west along the axis of the Alley, and north-west into present-day Arbat District. The Zamoskvorechye island west of the House on the Embankment would disappear, making way for a wide reflective pool. The tip of the island would become a base to the memorial of the "Chelyuskin" and the projected Pantheon of the Aviators.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: After World War II, the Ivan Zholtovsky workshop proposed an even larger, and certainly unreal, redevelopment plan for the central squares. Nothing ever came from these fantasies except for the construction of the New Arbat Avenue in the 1960s.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: A geological survey of the site began in 1933 and continued into 1934. Drilling to depths of confirmed the feasibility of construction. The uppermost limestone sill was too thin to carry the main building's weight, but the second one, below the water level, was sufficiently solid. Groundwater in the area contained very little sulfates and chlorides, and was almost always still, thus concrete degradation was not a significant concern.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In the second half of 1934, the builders drilled hundreds of boreholes around the perimeter of the site and pumped hot bitumen into the ground. This formed a watertight vertical curtain extending from the surface to the load-bearing sill, which allowed safe excavation below the river level. Blasting and excavation commenced in January 1935, and continued for more than three years. To clear the pit down to the bedrock, the workers removed of rock and of soft soil. The core's concrete foundations, consisting of two concentric rings with an external diameter of , were completed in January 1938. In a related but independent development, the nearby "Dvorets Sovetov" ("Palace of the Soviets") metro station, placed just outside the watertight perimeter, was built in less than a year in 1934–1935.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Two types of structural corrosion-resistant alloy steel were developed specifically for the palace: the high-strength DS (ДС) containing copper and chromium, and the regular-strength 3M. The steel beams were rolled, cut and milled at the Verkhnyaya Salda plant, and transported by rail on custom-made flatcars to a transshipment yard in Luzhniki. After inspection and assembly, land tractors and barges hauled the steel to the construction site.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In 1939, when the palace's frame rose above ground level, the propaganda campaign around it reached its peak. The outline of the palace was so omnipresent in Soviet media that, according to Sheila Fitzpatrick, it became more familiar to the average citizen than any existing building. The palace appeared on postcards, stationery and candy wrappers. Filmmakers routinely used special effects to blend the model of the palace into live-action street scenes, as if the structure actually existed.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In the summer of 1940, when the lower load-bearing columns were partially installed, the time to complete the whole frame was estimated at 30 months. A newspaper photograph dated 26 June 1941 attests that by then the frame of the northern wing was largely complete. According to Iofan's biographer Maria Kostyuk, the palace would have certainly been built had it not been for the German invasion.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Immediately after the outbreak of the war, construction was suspended indefinitely; many of its 3,600 construction workers were pressed into military service. The USDS factories and workshops were mobilized for the war effort; the stock of structural steel was used for Moscow's anti-tank defenses. Iofan's closest students volunteered for the army and perished in battles. In August–September 1941 project manager and his engineering staff, along with 560 railcars of the USDS equipment, were evacuated to build the . Iofan and Merkurov left Moscow in October under direct orders from Molotov.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: At the end of 1941, the remaining workers duly fireproofed and camouflaged the steel frame, and left Moscow for the Urals. In 1942, the frame was disassembled to salvage steel for building railway bridges. With no workers left to maintain the watertight curtain, river water seeped through and eventually flooded the foundations. In 1958–1960 the site was drained and rebuilt into an open-air swimming pool.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Iofan and the remnants of his team spent most of the war in Sverdlovsk working on defense projects. He would later recall that in December 1941, at the peak of the Battle of Moscow, unnamed authorities instructed him to resume work on the palace. However, there is plenty of evidence that he did not have resources to do it. Work on the palace proceeded slowly in Iofan's free time. The next iteration of the design, the so-called "Sverdlovsk variant", emerged only at the end of 1943. It was superficially similar to the 1937 design, but looked flatter, heavier and lacked the dynamics of the original. Iofan removed the ribbed pylons from the upper layers and added lots of oversized, opulent sculpture. The "Sverdlovsk Variant" was presented at the Kremlin in 1944 and in 1945, and became the new canon replacing the pre-war designs in mass media.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: However, by this time, Stalin had lost interest in the palace. Instead, in January 1947, the state concentrated resources on eight lesser skyscrapers in Moscow. Early official announcements presented the new project as a constellation of towers centered around the dominant Palace of the Soviets. Very soon the new towers were given priority over any pre-war plans, and effectively replaced the Palace as the new propaganda icons. Unfinished projects launched before the war were quietly scrapped or repurposed to the needs of new tenants. By 1953, seven of eight planned towers were actually built, while the palace became a phantom, a fruitless exercise in "paper architecture".


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: Of the three titular architects of the palace, Vladimir Shchuko died in 1939, and Vladimir Helfreich moved on to other projects, which included one of the "sisters". Boris Iofan tried to secure the contract for the main building of Moscow State University, but fell out of favor. The university contract, along with all preliminary work by Iofan's team, was awarded to Lev Rudnev. Iofan remained in charge of the unbuilt palace and was instructed to decrease the size and cost. From 1947 to 1956, he presented six new proposals. The 1947–1948 variant decreased to in height and 5.3 million cubic meters in volume. The 1949 variant retained same height, with a further decrease in volume. In 1952–1953, the completion of the "seven sisters" freed up resources and the palace expanded to ; in 1953 it decreased again to .


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: On 30 November 1954, Nikita Khrushchev launched a public campaign for the mass construction of affordable housing, and against the "excesses" of Stalinist architecture. Khruschev had no preference for a particular style, but his speechwriters and consultants carefully guided him towards modernist views. The former elders of Stalinist architecture did not dare to object and accepted the new reality. One year later, the "excesses" were condemned in a joint decree of the party and the Soviets, and in 1956 the government dissolved the last refuge of Stalinist art—the Academy of Architecture. The almost forgotten Palace of the Soviets was not mentioned in any of the debates and decrees. Iofan did not want to give up yet. Aided by Helfreich and his new partner , he scaled down the design again to in 1954 and to in 1956.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: In the autumn of 1956, Iofan's work finally stopped after the announcement of a new competition for a new Palace of the Soviets. The volume of the new structure was capped at 500,000 cubic meters, 15 times less than Iofan's design. The main hall had to seat 4,600 people (five times less), with two lesser halls seating 1,500 people each.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The initial proposal mandated construction on the old site (of the demolished cathedral) which by 1956 was flooded and needed extensive salvage work. In December 1956, the government proposed two alternative locations for the palace, both near Rudnev's University building. Proximity to the university tower precluded any high-rise designs; the new palace had to be a sprawling, horizontal, flat structure. However, same proximity suggested that the complete break with Stalinist art had not yet been sealed. The most important government building in Moscow had to be unique; it could not be built cheaply, and it could tolerate at least some "excesses". The neoclassicists believed they were given a chance to redeem Stalinist art in the eyes of Khrushchev. The rising modernists felt Khrushchev's tacit support and saw a chance to impose their own view on the whole Soviet industry.


title: Palace of the Soviets

text: The first round of the competition was split into two concurrent leagues: the open competition, with 115 entries representing both Stalinists and modernists, and a privately contracted competition with 21 entries. The winning, and probably the most artistically valuable proposal by , was an outright modernist glass box—a huge winter garden with three oval halls floating in a sea of greenery. Contrary to expectations, Vlasov did not receive a formal prize immediately, but was rewarded later on. A similar but less radical design by disposed of the winter garden and added rows of narrow white pylons. The second round of the competition was held in 1959, and attended by Khrushchev himself. This time, all the entries followed the template established by Vlasov and Pavlov, with superficial differences. The new canon of Soviet state architecture, which first took tangible shape in the Soviet pavilion at the Expo 58, was now complete. Vlasov became the head of the new Palace of Soviets construction agency. Very little is known about its work, which ceased after Vlasov's death in 1962. The idea behind the Palace of the Soviets was laid to rest. Its intended role was taken over by the Palace of Congresses in the Moscow Kremlin, completed in 1961.


title: Loitering

text: Loitering is the act of remaining in a particular public place for a prolonged amount of time without any apparent purpose.


title: Loitering

text: While the laws regarding loitering have been challenged and changed over time, loitering is still illegal in various jurisdictions and specific circumstances.


title: Loitering

text: Loitering has historically been treated as an inherent preceding offense to other forms of public crime and disorder, such as prostitution, begging, public drunkenness, dealing in stolen goods, drug dealing, scams, organized crime, robbery, harassment/mobbing, etc.


title: Loitering

text: Loitering provides a lesser offence that can be used by police to confront and deter suspect individuals from lingering in a high-crime area, especially when criminal intent is suspected but not observed.


title: Loitering

text: Local areas vary on the degree to which police are empowered to arrest or disperse loiterers; limitations on their power are sometimes made over concerns regarding racial profiling and unnecessary use of police force. The offence remains highly subjective. In many places, loitering is a crime in and of itself, but in others, serious criminal activity must be observed before police can confront any suspect.


title: Loitering

text: The Vagrancy Act 1824 was designed to prevent suspects and infamous thieves from "lingering about" certain places. This was modified slightly by 34 & 35 Vict. c.112, the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871, and 54 & 55 Vict. c.69, the Penal Servitude Act 1891, which introduced the phrase "loitering with intent". The Vagrancy Act 1898 was passed, then both were repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 2003.


title: Loitering

text: The Vagrancy Act 1824 permits in section 6 "any person whatsoever" to apprehend offenders and to bring them directly before a Justice of the Peace. The same section creates a duty on "any Constable or other Peace Officer" to apprehend and bring them before a justice of the peace, or be charged with "Neglect of Duty", punishable in section 11 by a fine of five pounds or three months in jail. The same Act provides disbursements from the general funds of Council for expenses of Prosecutors and Witnesses. Classes of persons that the Act was designed to dissuade, on penalty of three months at hard labor, include:


title: Loitering

text: The law was also used to criminalize men who were found in areas where men picked each other up for sex.


title: Loitering

text: In several jurisdictions, persons required to register as a sex offender are prohibited from loitering within a defined distance of schools, parks, or other places in which children may congregate.


title: Loitering

text: In 1992, the city of Chicago adopted an anti-loitering law aimed at restricting gang related activity, especially violent crime and drug trafficking. The law, which defined loitering as "remain[ing] in any one place with no apparent purpose", gave police officers a right to disperse such persons. In cases of disobedience, the law provided a punishment by fine, imprisonment, and/or community service. It was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court of the United States ("Chicago v. Morales", ) as unacceptably vague by not giving citizens clear guidelines on what acceptable conduct was. In 2000, the city adopted a revised version of the ordinance, in an attempt to eliminate the unconstitutional elements. Loitering was then defined as "remaining in any one place under circumstances that would warrant a reasonable person to believe that the purpose or effect of that behavior is to enable a criminal street gang to establish control over identifiable areas, to intimidate others from entering those areas, or to conceal illegal activities."


title: Loitering

text: Police officers in South Australia may ask a person to stop loitering in a public place (in other words, to leave the place) where they believe on reasonable grounds:


title: Loitering

text: In pre-independence Ireland, in 1635, a statute “for the erecting of Houses of Correction and for the punishment of rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars and other lewd and idle persons” was passed. Many other laws in the 17th–19th centuries targeted vagrants.


title: Loitering

text: The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 stated, "Any constable or peace officer may take into custody, without a warrant, any person whom he shall find lying or loitering in any highway, yard, or other place during the night, and whom he shall have good cause to suspect of having committed or being about to commit any felony in this Act mentioned, and shall take such person as soon as reasonably may be before a justice of the peace, to be dealt with according to law."


title: Loitering

text: In the Republic of Ireland, the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994 allows the Garda Síochána to order to move on any person who "without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, is acting in a manner which consists of loitering in a public place in circumstances, which may include the company of other persons, that give rise to a reasonable apprehension for the safety of persons or the safety of property or for the maintenance of the public peace," and to arrest anyone who does not follow their orders; on conviction, the penalty is a fine of up to €1,000 or up to 6 months' imprisonment.


title: Loitering

text: There is no loitering law in Sweden since it expired in 1981, but the Public Order Act regulates what one can and cannot do in public. The municipality decides what rules apply. For example, it is prohibited to drink alcohol in some designated public places. Loitering can be prohibited under particular circumstances.


title: Loitering

text: Loitering in public is not illegal in New Zealand, but it is an offence to loiter with the intent to commit an imprisonable offence.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: A sequel, titled "", was released in Japan in 2017 and in Western territories in 2018. In July 2019, a port of the game and its sequel for Nintendo Switch and Windows, was announced for release on October 18, 2019, as "Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition", although the PC version was released a day early.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" is a role-playing game, played from a third-person perspective where players control a human character with the ability to command Digimon, digital creatures with their own unique abilities who do battle against other Digimon. Players can choose between either Palmon, Terriermon or Hagurumon as their starting partner at the beginning of the game, with more able to be obtained as they make their way into new areas. A total of 249 unique Digimon are featured, including seven that were available as DLC throughout the life of the game, and two which were exclusive to the Western release. The title features a New Game Plus mode where players retain all of their Digimon, non-key items, money, memory, sleuth rank, scan percentages, and Digifarm progress.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: The "Complete Edition" includes the 92 new Digimon from "Hacker's Memory", for a total of 341 Digimon.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Players assume the role of Takumi Aiba (male) or Ami Aiba (female), a young Japanese student living in Tokyo while their mother, a news reporter, is working abroad. After receiving a message from a hacker, Aiba investigates the physical-interaction cyberspace network EDEN, where they meet Nokia Shiramine and Arata Sanada. The hacker gives them "Digimon Capture" programs and locks them in EDEN. While searching for an exit, Aiba meets Yuugo, leader of the hacker team "Zaxon"; Yuugo teaches Aiba how to use their Digimon Capture and tells them that Arata is a skilled hacker himself. Aiba meets up with Nokia and Arata, who unlocks a way out, but the three are then attacked by a mysterious creature that grabs Aiba and corrupts their logout process.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Aiba emerges in the real world as a half-digitized entity and is rescued by detective Kyoko Kuremi, head of the Kuremi Detective Agency, which specializes in cyber-crimes. Aiba manifests an ability, Connect Jump, which allows them to travel into and through networks. Recognizing their utility, Kyoko helps Aiba stabilize their digital body and recruits them as her assistant. They investigate a hospital ward overseen by Kamishiro Enterprises, which owns and manages EDEN, and finds it filled with patients of a phenomenon called "EDEN Syndrome," where users logged onto EDEN fall into a seemingly permanent coma. Aiba discovers their own physical body in the ward, before being confronted by a mysterious girl. The girl admits to knowing one of the other victims, and helps Aiba avoid Rie Kishibe, the current president of Kamishiro.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: The mysterious girl approaches Kyoko and Aiba and reveals herself as Yuuko Kamishiro, the daughter of Kamishiro Industries' former president, and requests they investigate her father's purported suicide. With the assistance of Goro Mayatoshi, a detective in the Tokyo Police Department and an old friend of Kyoko's father, Kyoko and Aiba gather evidence regarding illegal activity within Kamishiro. Kyoko's plans are thwarted when Kishibe holds a sudden press conference, admitting to the activity and terminating several non-essential employees as scapegoats, which causes Mayatoshi's superiors to call off the accusations. Aiba, Arata, Yuuko, and Kyoko take advantage of an EDEN preview event to hack into the Kamishiro servers, learning of a "Paradise Lost Plan," and that Yuuko's older brother is a victim of EDEN Syndrome, a casualty of a failed beta test eight years ago apparently covered up by Kamishiro.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Nokia, with Aiba's help, reunites with an Agumon and Gabumon she met and bonded with in Kowloon; she learns from them that Digimon are not hacker programs, but living creatures from a "Digital World", and that Agumon and Gabumon came to EDEN for a purpose they can't remember. Nokia vows to help them recover their memories, but is hampered by her lack of fighting experience; after being soundly defeated by Yuugo's lieutenant Fei, she resolves to become stronger and forms her own group, the Rebels, to improve relations between humans and Digimon. This allows Agumon and Gabumon to digivolve into WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon, and gains her a large following, but Yuugo worries that she might interfere with his goal of protecting EDEN.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Meanwhile, Aiba assists Arata in investigating "Digital Shift" phenomena occurring around Tokyo. They meet Akemi Suedou, who identifies the creature behind the Digital Shifts as an Eater; a mass of corrupted data that consumes users' mental data, making it responsible for the EDEN Syndrome and Aiba's half-digital state. Eaters have links to a "white boy ghost" that keeps appearing around it, and by "eating" data can evolve into different forms. Arata, discouraged after witnessesing many friends become victims of EDEN Syndrome, decides to help Aiba upon learning the truth about their condition.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: As Aiba continues their investigations, Jimiken "Jimmy KEN," a Japanese rock idol and disgruntled Zaxon hacker, breaks away from Zaxon and forms a group called the "Demons." Jimiken hijacks Tokyo's television signals, broadcasting a music video overlaid with subliminal messaging to hypnotize users into logging onto EDEN and entering the Demons' stronghold. Aiba defeats Jimiken, who reveals the signal hijacking equipment was given to him by Rie Kishibe in exchange for his loyalty, but his account is destroyed by Fei before he can be further interrogated.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Yuugo mobilizes hackers around EDEN to attempt a large-scale attack on Kamishiro Enterprise’s high-security servers codenamed "Valhalla." Arata intervenes, revealing he is the former leader of a hacker group that failed to hack the Valhalla server in the past, and initiates a battle between Yuugo's Zaxon hackers, his own group of veteran hackers, and Nokia's Rebels, supported by Aiba. The battle is interrupted when Rie unleashes Eaters in the server, revealing the entire event was a trap to get Yuugo to accumulate Eater prey, and forcibly logs Yuugo out, who is actually Yuuko using a false EDEN avatar modeled and named after her older brother. Rie informs Yuuko that she was using the avatar to manipulate her actions, and begins extracting Yuuko's memories.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Nokia's determination during the battle causes WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon to DNA Digivolve into Omnimon, who rescues the survivors and remembers that his real purpose of coming to EDEN was to save the Digital World from the Eaters, which were created from negative human emotions taking form in EDEN; the Digital World's ruler, King Drasil, determined that humans were the cause, and ordered the Royal Knights to investigate and put a stop to the attacks, but the Royal Knights became split, with some Knights advocating destroying humanity to wipe out the Eaters at their source, and others favoring a peaceful solution. Deducing that Rie is allied with the Knights who advocate destroying humanity, Aiba and their friends chase after her. When they confront Rie, she reveals her true identity as the Royal Knight Crusadermon, and that her "Paradise Lost Plan" is meant to gather energy via Tokyo's digital network, with which to open a gate between the physical and digital world as a preface to a full-scale invasion. Arata closes the dimensional gate by causing a citywide blackout and encounters Suedou, who reveals that he was the hacker who developed and distributed the Digimon Capture program. Aiba rescues Yuuko, who was being held captive by an Eater "Eve", but is pulled into a digital void, where they meet the real Yuugo. Yuugo wishes Aiba and their friends well, but asks them not to search for him, before a mysterious Digimon rescues Aiba from the digital void.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Aiba returns to the real world to discover a week has passed, and that Tokyo is besieged by a massive Digital Shift as a result of Crusadermon's actions, allowing Digimon to run amok in the real world, and they discover that their half-digital body is beginning to destabilize as their mental data disperses. The group begins to search for the other Royal Knights in the hopes of convincing them to join their side instead of trying to destroy humanity. In the process, Aiba and Yuuko encounter a former colleague of Suedou, who gives them details regarding the EDEN Beta test eight years ago; Kamishiro sent five children, one of which was Yuugo, into the Beta as a demonstration to investors, but something went wrong and the test was aborted. Four of the children logged out successfully, but were heavily traumatized, and Yuugo never regained consciousness, becoming the first EDEN Syndrome victim. To cover up the disaster, Suedou had the memories of the remaining four children erased.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Shortly after, Aiba and Arata encounter Suedou inside another Digital Shift; Arata is attacked and consumed by an Eater, but Suedou rescues him and sparks a specific memory in his mind. Arata, now suddenly obsessed with becoming stronger, leaves with Suedou and cuts all contact. Aiba and their friends manage to recruit most of the Royal Knights to their cause, and Aiba tracks down and confronts Crusadermon, seemingly defeating them, but, upon trying to return to Kyoko, falls into a Digital Shift containing what appears to be a recreation of the EDEN Beta test from eight years ago. Crusadermon, still alive, reveals the recreation to be a trap to capture Aiba and tells them the truth of the Beta test incident: The four other children who entered the beta with Yuugo were none other than Arata, Nokia, Yuuko, and Aiba themselves. When the children first entered the beta, they found a portal leading from EDEN to the Digital World. However, after opening it, an Eater followed them and consumed Yuugo; the other children, frightened, fled the Digital World back to Eden, leaving the portal open, allowing more Eaters to enter the Digital World. Overcome by despair at the revelation and already suffering from deterioration, Aiba allows their data to be absorbed into the simulation.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Meanwhile, Nokia and Yuuko, worried about Aiba after they failed to return, discover the entrance to the Beta Test recreation while searching for them. After learning the events of the Beta test incident, they locate what is left of Aiba, but are ambushed by Crusadermon. To save them, Kyoko enters the Digital Shift and reveals her true form as "Alphamon", the 13th Royal Knight, and assists them in defeating Crusadermon and restoring Aiba. Alphamon then explains that the "real" Kyoko and Rie were humans who were attacked by Eaters and inflicted with EDEN Syndrome, and that Alphamon and Crusadermon possessed their comatose bodies to hide in the human world, but unaware of each other. Despite Crusadermon's defeat, however, Alphamon informs Aiba that Leopardmon, Crusadermon's leader, is collecting power in order to evolve into an even more dangerous form, intending to destroy humanity themselves, and that they must be stopped before the evolution is complete.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Aiba and Alphamon head to the Tokyo Metropolitan Office to stop Leopardmon but are confronted by Arata, who reveals Suedou had sparked his memory of the beta test incident and his despair at being unable to save Yuugo. Arata transforms completely into an Eater "Adam" and attempts to assimilate Aiba, but Aiba defeats the Eater and saves Arata as they did with Yuuko. After stopping Leopardmon, Suedou appears and tells the group that they can stop the Eaters by traveling to the Digital World and extracting Yuugo from the core of the "Mother Eater," which will make it so that Eaters, and their effects on both worlds, never existed. The group arrives to find that the Mother Eater has completely taken over King Drasil; after defeating it, Aiba rescues Yuugo, but Yuugo reveals that he had been acting as a limiter on Eater's actions, and without him as a central conscience it has no restraint to simply eat everything indiscriminately.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Suedou takes the opportunity to merge with Mother Eater himself and becomes its new conscience, hoping to merge the Digital and Physical Worlds as one and recreate a world without sadness or misery. After defeating the merged Mother Eater, Aiba, despite suffering from extensive data deterioration and risking a complete collapse of their half-cyber body, Connect Jumps into the Mother Eater in an attempt to rescue Suedou. Suedou, amazed that Aiba would risk their own existence to save him, determines that the universe is better off being allowed to unfold and evolve in its own way rather than be influenced by him, and restores King Drasil, simultaneously erasing himself from history.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: As Aiba returns to their friends and watches the reforming Digital World, Alphamon informs them they must return to the human world, as King Drasil will be reverting both worlds to a state in which contact with the Digimon eight years ago never occurred. Alphamon and the other Digimon bid farewell under the promise to meet again, and Aiba accompanies their friends back to the human world, but on the way back, Aiba's deteriorated half-cyber body dissolves before their friends' eyes, leaving behind only their Digivice.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: In the real world, only Nokia, Arata, Yuugo, and Yuuko remember the events while Aiba is still comatose; Yuuko's father is alive again, Rie is an ordinary human woman, Suedou was never born, and Kyoko, despite there being evidence of her existence, cannot be found by the remaining four friends, who are still anxiously waiting for Aiba to wake up. Eventually, Aiba's scrap data is found by Alphamon, who has Aiba's Digimon team gather data from their memories to recreate Aiba's mind and restore them to their body. After being restored, Aiba meets Kyoko, who has no memory of them but, sensing a familiarity, invites them to work as her assistant.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" was first announced for the PlayStation Vita in a December 2013 issue of Japanese "V Jump" magazine, although its projected release date was still more than a year away. A teaser trailer was revealed near the end of the month on the official website, with a release window of Spring 2015 slated in a later September 2014 issue of "V Jump". The game was developed by Media.Vision, and features character designs by Suzuhito Yasuda, known for his work on "" and "Durarara!!".


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: In June 2015, Amazon Canada listed a North American version of "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" under the title ""Digimon World: Cyber Sleuth"" for the PlayStation 4, hinting for a release in the region. Bandai Namco Games later confirmed English-language releases in North America and Europe for 2016, which would be a retail title for the PlayStation 4, and digital release for the PlayStation Vita. An English trailer was showcased at the 2015 Tokyo Game Show, with a final North American release date of February 2, 2016 announced the following month. Pre-order DLC bonuses for the North American physical PlayStation 4 version include two Digimon exclusive to the Western release - making for a total of 11 DLC Digimon, in-game items, and costumes for Agumon, whist the digital Vita version included the same pre-order items with two PlayStation Vita themes. Seven new Digimon were added as free DLC on March 10.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: The game's music was composed by Masafumi Takada, with sound design by Jun Fukuda. Purchasers of the Japanese version of the game received a code for a free digital download of 13 tracks from the game grouped together as the "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Bonus Original Soundtrack". An official commercial soundtrack containing 60 tracks from the game was released in Japan on March 29, 2015 by Sound Prestige Records.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Cyber Sleuth was removed from the US PSN store on both PS4 and PS Vita on December 20, 2018. It remained up in Europe and South East Asia however. It was delisted in Europe/South East Asia at the end of January 2019.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: "Cyber Sleuth" is considered to be a reboot of the Digimon Story (series) and was developed with player feedback in mind. Kazumasa Habu decided to stick to the base concepts of the Story series which has simple turn based battles with a levelling system, as that would allow players to be able to play without having to read instructions. As the focus of the Story series was to collect and train Digimon, it was felt that it was important to make sure "Cyber Sleuth" at least had the same amount of trainable Digimon as the original Digimon Story game, "Digimon World DS". With "Cyber Sleuth" having 3D models instead of sprites this was tough, but they were able to achieve this goal thanks to the work of the developers, Media.Vision. Feedback they had received from players was that they wanted to be able to see their Digimon during battle, which the games didn't do, which is why they decided to use 3D models for "Cyber Sleuth". Due to the experience of creating models for "Digimon Adventure (video game)", Habu was certain they would be able to take that knowledge into making them for "Cyber Sleuth" as well. The attack and victory animations in "Cyber Sleuth" were very popular and highly admired, with their quality being because one of the development staff was a big Digimon fan so put a lot of effort into studying even minor Digimon. When "Cyber Sleuth" was in development, overseas distributors were not open to the idea of localising Digimon games because according to them, the games were aimed at children, and the anime wasn't popular, but they were eventually to localise "Cyber Sleuth" because of the petitions signed by fans for Digimon games to be localised again.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: The game holds a score of 75/100 on the review aggregator Metacritic, indicating generally favorable reviews. "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" received a 34 out of 40 total score from Japanese magazine "Weekly Famitsu", based on individual scores of 8, 9, 9, and 8.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: Destructoid felt that the game wasn't much of a departure from older role-playing games, stating "The battle system is basically everything you've seen before from the past few decades of JRPGs," which includes random encounters that are "either deliciously or inexcusably old-school, depending on your tastes." While PlayStation LifeStyle felt that the game "isn’t a perfect video game interpretation of Bandai Namco’s long-running franchise," criticizing its linear dungeon design and "cheap" interface, its gameplay improvements were a step in the right direction "for fans who have been waiting to see the series get on "Pokémon"’s level." The website also commended the colorful art and character design of Suzuhito Yasuda, declaring that "Yasuda’s art brings crucial style and life to Digimon’s game series, which had spent previous years sort of fighting to establish its identity." Hardcore Gamer thought that the game was an important step forward for the franchise, stating "It isn’t perfect; its story and script could use some fine-tuning, and the world needs to be more interesting, but overall, this is a solid first step."


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: The PlayStation Vita version of "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" sold 76,760 copies in its debut week in Japan, becoming the third high-selling title for the week. Although initial sales were less than its predecessor, "", "Cyber Sleuth" managed to sell approximately 91.41% of all physical copies shipped to the region, and would go on to sell a total of 115,880 copies by the end of 2015, becoming the 58th best-selling software title that year.


title: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

text: In the UK, "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth" was the 11th best selling game in the week of release. The PlayStation Vita version was the best selling digital title in North America and Europe. The game also has good performance among Latin American countries (#2 Brazil, #3 Mexico, #3 Argentina, #3 Chile, #3 Costa Rica, #4 Guatemala, #6 Perú, #9 Colombia) and the PlayStation 4 version was the 20th best selling digital title in North America and the 19th in Europe on the PlayStation Store in the month of its release in their respective categories. By May 2019, Cyber Sleuth had sold over 800,000 copies worldwide. By October 2020, "Cyber Sleuth" and "" had shipped more than 1.5 million units worldwide combined. The Switch port of "Complete Edition" sold 4,536 copies in its first week in Japan.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed the Tigers, is an Australian rules football team playing in the Australian Football League (AFL). Between its inception in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1885 and 1907, the club competed in the Victorian Football Association (VFA), winning two premierships. Richmond joined the Victorian Football League (now known as the AFL) in 1908 and has since won 13 premierships, most recently in 2020.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond's headquarters and training facilities are located at its original home ground, the Punt Road Oval, which sits adjacent to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the club's playing home since 1965. Richmond traditionally wears a black guernsey with a yellow sash. The club song, "We're From Tigerland", is well known for its "yellow and black" refrain.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The club is coached by Damien Hardwick and its current co-captains are Dylan Grimes and Toby Nankervis. Five Richmond players have been inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame as "Legends" of the sport: Kevin Bartlett, Jack Dyer, Royce Hart, Kevin Sheedy and Ian Stewart.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: A short-lived football club named Richmond formed in 1860 with Tom Wills, one of the founders of Australian rules football, serving as its inaugural secretary and captain. Wills' cousin H. C. A. Harrison captained Richmond briefly in the early 1860s before moving to Geelong. This club was disbanded in 1871 and has no continuity to the present club. A number of teams formed in Richmond during the game's rapid expansion in the 1870s and early 1880s. However, all played at a junior level and it was considered an anomaly that Richmond, one of Melbourne's most prominent suburbs, did not boast a senior side. The wait ended when the Richmond Football Club was officially formed at the Royal Hotel in Richmond on 20 February 1885. A successful application for immediate admission to the Victorian Football Association (VFA) followed. The club shared the Punt Road Oval with the Richmond Cricket Club, one of the strongest cricket clubs in Australia which had been playing on the ground since 1856.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: At first the team wore blue guernseys and caps with yellow and black stripes in the style of the Richmond Cricket Club. The football club soon adopted yellow and black as its official colours. The team was variously called the "Richmondites", the "Wasps" or, most commonly, the "Tigers".


title: Richmond Football Club

text: During the late 1880s, Richmond struggled to make an impression in the VFA, and after a promising season in 1888 (when they finished fifth with eleven wins), the club slipped backwards, in the process losing players to more successful sides. As the local economy slipped into severe depression in the early 1890s and the crowds began to dwindle, some of the VFA's strongest clubs began to agitate for a reform of the competition. Richmond was not considered part of this elite group, which usually voted as a "bloc" at VFA meetings.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: In 1896, Richmond walked off the field in a match against South Melbourne to protest the umpiring, and later in the season, the Tigers had their half-time score annulled against Essendon when it was discovered that they had too many men on the ground. In the closing three weeks of the season, Richmond's cut of the gate takings amounted to just five pounds, and they finished the season with the wooden spoon.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: In October 1896, the cabal of six strong clubs broke with the association to form the Victorian Football League (VFL). As a struggling club with a poor following, Richmond was not invited to join the new league. Richmond's performances did not immediately improve in the depleted VFA until the turn of the century.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The Tigers were boosted by a significant country recruit in 1901. George "Mallee" Johnson was an instant sensation and the first true star player at the club. Richmond leapt to third place and then in 1902, with Johnson dominating the ruck, Richmond entered the closing weeks of the season neck and neck with Port Melbourne at the head of the ladder, but Port Melbourne faltered against Williamstown to hand Richmond its first flag. Having missed a potential bonanza from a premiership play-off, the VFA decided to emulate the VFL and introduce a finals series in 1903, a fateful decision for the Tigers. After recruiting the competition's leading goalkicker, Jack Hutchinson, and finishing the season as minor premier, Richmond lost both finals and were runner-up.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The following season, the club became embroiled in a feud with umpire Allen, whom the Tigers accused of failing to curb field invasions and, in particular, the dubious tactics of arch-rival North Melbourne. In the 10 September 1904 match, during which a significant number of Richmond players sustained serious gashes, and despite the earnest requests of the Richmond players, field umpire Allen refused to exercise his legitimate, official power to check the boots of the North Melbourne players for "spikes" on the soles of their boots. When the two clubs were scheduled to meet in the 1904 VFA Grand Final, Richmond announced that they wouldn't play with Allen as umpire. The VFA called Richmond's bluff, and appointed Allen as umpire for the match, meaning that the Grand Final was scratched and North Melbourne won the premiership on forfeit.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond were now openly at odds with the VFA, and matters failed to improve in the next few years. The club was campaigning against violence (both on-field and among the crowd), ungentlemanly conduct and poor sportsmanship, issues that plagued the VFA to a far greater extent than the rival VFL since the 1896 split. Richmond cultivated links with some VFL clubs by playing practice matches against them. Richmond knew that they were a major asset to the VFA, had built up a large following and played on one of the best grounds in the competition, where they remained unbeaten for five years. In 1905, Richmond confirmed their status with a second premiership, this time overcoming bitter rivals North Melbourne, "Mallee" Johnson had moved to Carlton, but youngster Charlie Ricketts dominated the season and won plaudits among the pressmen, who voted him the best player in the VFA.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: However, Ricketts was also lost to the VFL and injury hit the club hard. In 1906–07, the Tigers played finals without looking likely to win the flag. The club earned a rebuke from the VFA for scheduling a practice match against Geelong before the 1907 season, then went ahead with the commitment and earned further censure. Later in the year it became clear that the VFL wanted to expand its competition and Richmond won a place ahead of North Melbourne, which had been strengthened by an amalgamation with the bankrupt West Melbourne as part of their bid. Richmond were granted admission along with the now defunct University Football Club.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The first few seasons in the VFL were less than spectacular. Although the club turned up some star players, it let a lot of talent leave and the administration was unstable after George Bennett's death at the end of the 1908 season. In 1916, the side won its first wooden spoon while also playing in the finals for the first time – World War I having reduced the competition to just four clubs, finals qualification was automatic.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Finally, in 1919, Richmond made their first Grand Final appearance, losing to Collingwood. Richmond stoked a rivalry with Collingwood by recruiting their former skipper Dan Minogue as playing coach and gained vengeance by beating Collingwood in the 1920 VFL Grand Final to secure a first flag in the big league. This was followed by an even better performance the next year. The only club that continued to beat Richmond on a regular basis was Carlton. Finishing minor premier with only one loss for the season in 1921, Carlton were the hottest premiership favourite, yet Richmond managed to beat them in two classic finals matches played over successive weeks to go back-to-back.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The rest of the decade saw four more Grand Final appearances, all of which would end in frustration. From 1927 to 1929 Richmond became the first club in the VFL to lose three consecutive Grand Finals, all of which were to neighbouring archrivals, Collingwood.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The next VFL flag came in 1932, with Richmond's triumph over Carlton in a tough encounter which saw Richmond wingman Alan Geddes play the second half with a broken jaw. Another premiership came in 1934, this time against South Melbourne's famed "Foreign Legion", avenging Richmond's loss in the 1933 VFL Grand Final.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Prior to the commencement of the 1940 season, internal problems were brewing between the key personalities at the club. Some felt that the uneven performance of the team was due to Percy Bentley's coaching methods, and that he should be replaced. Jack Dyer walked out on the club and threatened to play in the VFA after his father, a committeeman who was involved with the anti-Bentley faction, lost his position at the board elections. Finally, the matter was resolved and Bentley kept his job, while Dyer returned to training on the eve of the season. The problems appeared to have been solved when Richmond won the semi-final against Melbourne to go straight into the 1940 VFL Grand Final. However, Melbourne reversed this result with a crushing win to pinch the premiership. Richmond had been out-thought by their old mentor Frank 'Checker' Hughes, who had assigned a tagger to negate Dyer. Dyer was furious that Bentley had done nothing to prevent his opponent taking him out of the game. The Richmond committee agreed with this assessment, so when Bentley (after retiring as a player) attempted to negotiate a higher fee to continue his coaching tenure, he was rebuffed. Incensed, Bentley quit Punt Road and moved to Carlton as coach, adding further spice to an already fierce rivalry between the two clubs.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Despite the tribulations created by the Second World War, Richmond was able to maintain a commendable level of consistency on the field. The club had quite a lot of players in reserved occupations who remained at home, while the administration became adept at securing star players who were temporarily in Melbourne on war service. Dyer was a fearsome presence in his role as playing coach, but he was unable to improve Richmond's ability to win finals matches. A loss in the 1942 VFL Grand Final to Essendon (after starting as favourite) meant that over the previous 18 years, Richmond had won two flags but been runner-up eight times. Jack Titus set a still unbeaten record of playing in six losing Grand Final teams. In 1943, Richmond broke through to beat Essendon in a thrilling Grand Final by five points, a win that the club dedicated to ex-player Bill Cosgrove, an RAF pilot who had been killed in action a few weeks before the match. But another Grand Final loss followed in 1944, when Dyer's team failed against Fitzroy on a very hot day.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: In the immediate post-war era, despite an influx of excellent new players, Richmond struggled to make the four, appearing in the finals only once, in 1947. Dyer continued on as coach for three years after his playing retirement at the end of 1949, but was asked to retire by the committee who felt the club needed a shake up. Under a succession of coaches in the 1950s, With the demands of potential players increasing with each passing year, the club refused to allocate sufficient funds to recruit and they failed to replace star players as they retired. When stalwarts such as Des Rowe and dual-Brownlow Medallist Roy Wright left, the team slumped dramatically and finished with a wooden spoon in 1960.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: In 1962 Graeme Richmond was appointed Secretary of the club, Richmond was the under 19's coach who had been around the club since the early 1950s as a junior player until knee injury stopped him from playing so he took on coaching. Graeme understood that for Richmond to improve so would the recruiting. A shrewd businessman, Richmond was able to sign young recruits for bargain like fees. Royce Hart was given a suit and six shirts, and Kevin Bartlett simply walked in off the street. Graeme kept a close eye on the success former player Tom Hafey was having with Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley Football League. When coach Len Smith had a heart attack in 1965, the club appointed Jack Titus to serve as interim coach until a replacement could be found. Hafey was encouraged to apply, and the decision came down to Hafey and former club captain Ron Branton. Many expected Branton to get the job. However, Graeme Richmond saw something special in Hafey and he was appointed coach for the 1966 season.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: 1966 heralded the start of the Tom Hafey era. Hafey, a former player of the club, was appointed coach and brought with him a couple of quality young footballers from northern Victoria. Out of the Goulburn Valley came Dick Clay from Kyabram and Francis Bourke from Nathalia. Further afield were Doug Strang and John Perry from Albury and Wodonga.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: On his return to Richmond, Hafey found the team had acquired a number of young, high quality players, Kevin Bartlett was a skinny 17 year old who lived locally and had walked in and asked for a tryout. Mike Green followed Kevin a year later. Even so, he quickly put his stamp on the club, bringing intensity and desire to reach the top. Although he acknowledged the ideas and tactical approach of Len Smith (who remained at the club as a selector and consultant), Hafey opted for what became his trademark style: kick the ball long and quickly into the forward line. He raised the bar for fitness among his players,[4] extending pre-season training and introducing a third training night during the week. Richmond quickly became known for being the fittest team in the competition.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond began 1966 strongly. A month before the finals, they hit the top of the ladder for the first time since 1951 and seemed certain to play in September. However, two losses dropped the Tigers to fifth place with thirteen wins and a draw. Richmond dismissed a number of players, replacing them with new players such as Royce Hart, Kevin Sheedy and Francis Bourke.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond dominated the 1967 season, running out winners in a classic Grand Final against Geelong. In his first two years, the team lost only seven games and Hafey had gone from an unknown coach in the bush to the toast of the football world. In hindsight, the 1967 premiership marked a turning point for the game. The Tigers were fitter than any team that had gone before and were the highest scoring team since 1950. Australian football, after two decades of defensive-based play, was about to enter an era of high scoring, aided by rule changes, new tactics and better standards of fitness. They won the 1967 flag in a thrilling encounter with Geelong, ending a 24-year premiership drought.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The Tigers started the 1968 season slowly. They rallied to win the last six games, but missed the finals. When the Tigers were again lethargic in mid-1969, accusations of under-achievement arose and rumours that Hafey was on the way out circulated. The players rallied behind Hafey and finished the season strong, taking fourth place. The team won all three finals, beat the much fancied Carlton in the 1969 VFL Grand Final by 25 points.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: After missing the playoffs in 1970, Hafey took the Tigers to the finals for the next five years. Basing the team's strategy around all-out attack had drawbacks. Richmond were dominant in 1972 and were hot favourites in the 1972 VFL Grand Final against Carlton. However, Carlton stunned Richmond in a game of ridiculous high scoring. Even Richmond equalled the then record highest score in a Grand Final of 22.18 (150), but Carlton beat it with 28.9 (177). Richmond got their revenge in an intensely physical clash in the 1973 VFL Grand Final and went back-to-back in 1974 with a strong win against a resurgent North Melbourne.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: By now, the aggressive attitude of the club both on and off the field had created resentment toward the club. A number of incidents during the 1973 Grand Final – the Windy Hill brawl, the attempted recruitment of John Pitura from South Melbourne and a poor reaction to Kevin Bartlett's failure to win the Brownlow medal – all focussed negative attention on the club. Hafey, however, used the resentment to his advantage, telling his players "it's Richmond against the world".


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond showed signs of ageing in 1975, when they lost in the preliminary final. Triple Brownlow medallist, Ian Stewart retired, Paul Sproule returned to Hobart, Brian Roberts and two others were part of the John Pitura trade. A raft of other player departures made for a poor 1976 season, Hart spent most of the year nursing a knee and Dick Clay opted to retire. The Tigers finishing seventh, Hafey's worst ever result. Internally the Richmond board bickering had flared into the public domain. It took a majority vote for Hafey to be reappointed for 1977, but not unanimously (he had no contract with Richmond, instead being appointed on a year-to-year basis). When it leaked that Graeme Richmond, the club's powerbroker, had voted against Hafey's reappointment Hafey immediately resigned.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The club appointed dual premiership player Barry Richardson as coach for two seasons before he was replaced by Tony Jewell. Richmond won its next premiership under Jewell with a then record-breaking margin of 81 points over arch-rivals Collingwood in 1980. After reaching and losing the 1982 VFL Grand Final, it has been a rocky road for Richmond who have struggled to come to grips with the rules and regulations of a modernised VFL, including the draft and salary cap. The successes of the early 1980s were bought at high financial cost through expensive recruiting, and were followed by severe cut backs that saw several top players depart.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Still smarting from the loss of star players to Collingwood, Richmond set themselves for war with Collingwood in 1984 by signing three of their players: John Annear, Craig Stewart and Phil Walsh. Not only were there big contracts and transfer fees to pay, but the costs of an expensive court action as well.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Richmond also signed a number of mediocre players on big contracts, and the club's financial situation took a battering. With the team failing to improve, a challenge to the committee was brewing and Richmond's traditional political stability threatened. The rebel group, organised by long-time servant Bill Durham, convinced former player and coach Barry Richardson to be leader. An election in late 1984 failed to clarify the situation.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Ian Wilson held on to the presidency into the new year. When the one hundredth birthday of the club arrived in February 1985, there was too much dissension to mark the moment fittingly. Eventually, Wilson handed over to Richardson, who had selected his former premiership teammate Paul Sproule to return from Tasmania and take over the coaching position on a guaranteed contract.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: As the season progressed with Richmond still struggling, Sproule came under pressure. Richardson guaranteed his position, but at the end of the year, the committee overruled Richardson and sacked Sproule. Incensed, Richardson walked out of Punt Road, which was in turmoil again. Desperately, Richmond turned back to Tony Jewell, who was appointed coach for a second time, the only man in the club's history to get a second go at the job. Jewell later commented on the destruction wrought on the club during his four-year absence: "the supporters were gone, the members were gone, the money was gone, ... a real shame."


title: Richmond Football Club

text: With the competition set to expand, Richmond made a number of misguided moves in 1986. To fill the vacancy left by Richardson, Richmond wooed high-flying West Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond to become president. Bond came with an agenda to raise money for the club by listing on the stockmarket and relocating to Brisbane. When the latter plan was revealed in the media, a furious reaction from supporters and high-profile club personalities buried the proposal almost immediately. Early in 1987, Bond's tenure at the club ended in farce when he resigned without presiding over a single game. The off-field confusion was reflected in the players' performance as Richmond slumped to only its second wooden spoon in 70 years.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Although the new president, ex-captain Neville Crowe, had stabilised the club and scored a coup by persuading club legend Kevin Bartlett to coach, the club managed to stay solvent by cutting expenses to the bone and paying only two-thirds of the allowable salary cap. But there was no money for recruiting to improve an impoverished playing list. The club struggled to come to terms with the draft after its inception in 1986, and made a number of poor choices—notably, the number one pick in 1987 was used on a player who had only four games with Richmond.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Finally, with the economy in serious recession and interest rates touching seventeen per cent, Richmond's creditors came knocking. At one point, an attempt was made to seize the club's 1973 and 1974 premiership trophies as securities for unpaid debts, an embarrassing situation. For a number of years, the exact amount that the club owed was not publicly known. After Bartlett came Allan Jeans, who then passed the job to ex-Richmond premiership player John Northey for 1993. Northey returned the team to the simple long-kicking style of the halcyon days under the legendary Tom Hafey. Along with some draft concessions granted by the AFL, Northey's efforts gradually improved Richmond. The team fumbled an opportunity to make the 1994 finals, then opened 1995 with its best start to a season in 75 years and eventually made it to the preliminary final. With a talented playing list and a strong administration led by Leon Daphne (Richmond's first president from the corporate world, the Alan Bond farce aside), Richmond looked set to become regular finalists again.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: The anticipated success failed to materialise, partly because Richmond allowed the coaching position to again become unstable. With over a year still to run on his contract, John Northey demanded a contract extension that the club refused. This was because of a rumour that some people with an association with the club were pursuing Essendon coach and former Richmond premiership player Kevin Sheedy. So Northey walked out on Richmond and accepted a longer-term contract to coach the Brisbane Bears. Richmond, caught short, appointed the Bears' ex-coach Robert Walls for 1996. After several humiliating thrashings in 1997, Robert Walls became the first Richmond coach to be sacked mid-season. After two-and-a-half seasons under Jeff Gieschen, the club appointed ex-St Kilda captain Danny Frawley. After a Preliminary Final appearance in Frawley's second season, Richmond overestimated the strength of the list and settled for trading for established players rather than drafting youth. Over the next three seasons, the team managed just 18 wins. The administration continued to support Frawley and ensured that he would see out his contract, a far cry from the way many of his predecessors were treated. However, midway through the 2004 season (a season in which Richmond only managed 4 wins, and lost their last 14 H&A matches), Frawley announced he would be relinquishing his role as Richmond coach at seasons' end.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: Under newly appointed head coach, Terry Wallace, the 2005 pre-season brought renewed optimism at the club. The Tigers held the no. 1 draft pick, selecting Brett Deledio who was touted as a future star and leader. However, the Tigers' first match of the season (against Geelong), quickly dashed that hope, as they were thrashed by 62 points. However, this loss would spark a change in the Tigers, and in the next 8 weeks of the season, they would go on to win 7 matches (the one exception being a 68-point loss at the hands of St Kilda in Round 5). This included wins over the then-reigning premiers, Port Adelaide, and over then-runners up, the Brisbane Lions. Sitting pretty at 7 wins and 2 losses, and 3rd on the ladder, the impossible prospect of finals football loomed large. However, in the Round 10 match against Melbourne, star player Nathan Brown suffered a horrible leg injury, that would sideline him for the rest of the season. They went on to lose the match by 57 points, and would only register 3 more wins for the season (one of those was against eventual premiers the Sydney Swans by one point, who had a one-point win against Collingwood the round before), eventually finishing 12th.


title: Richmond Football Club

text: 2006, a year which many experts predicted continued improvement for the Tigers, saw them lose their first H&A match by 115 points, against the Western Bulldogs, after which followed losses to St Kilda and West Coast. By the end of Round 3, things were looking grim for the Tigers once again. However, just as they did in 2005, the Tigers would respond to their poor start by winning 8 of their next 11 matches, and by the end of Round 14, the Tigers were in the Top 8 by a game and percentage. However, their spot in the Top 8 would be short lived, as 4 straight losses between Rounds 15 and 18 would effectively end their finals chances. They finished the 2006 season in 9th place, with 11 wins and 11 losses.