Palace of the Soviets
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".