During the last week of August, The Washington Post reported that President Trump told aides to “fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules.” He reportedly added that he would pardon any “potential wrongdoing.” Although acknowledging that an administration official insisted the president was only joking about pardons, the report reveals the extent of the president’s desperation to secure a victory before the 2020 presidential election. A week after the Post story, the U. S. Department of Defense authorized diverting $3.6 billion to fund 11 wall projects along the Mexican border.
Egotistical rulers like Trump often have grandiose architectural plans. Hitler had his “Germania,” his name for a new redesigned Berlin that would dazzle the world. Mao Zedong had his “10 Great Buildings” built in Beijing 1959. Stalin had his never-built Palace of Soviets, which was to be higher than the Empire State Building, and later, Moscow’s seven skyscrapers known as the “seven sisters.” As a candidate and heretofore as president, Donald Trump has been consumed by his dream of building “a great, great wall” on the United States–Mexico border. After announcing this when declaring his presidential candidacy in mid-2015, he added that “nobody builds walls better than me,” and that he would “have Mexico pay for that wall.”
For comparison with Trump’s wall obsession, however, let’s just concentrate on one despot’s architectural plans—those of Stalin. Although the idea of Palace of Soviets had been floating around for a while, it was not until August of 1932 that Stalin began to personally supervise its design by indicating specific alterations he wished in one architect’s plan. In 1933, he gave further instructions. They indicated various details in regard to shape, the need for the building to reflect the international solidarity of the proletariat, and, most importantly, that it be a monument to Lenin. Thus, Stalin wanted it to be topped by a gigantic statue of Lenin that would be much higher than the Statue of Liberty. To make room for the new structure, which was to be the tallest building in the world, the massive Cathedral of Christ the Savior was destroyed (later rebuilt in post-Soviet Russia).