Moscow is about to ‘restore’ its landmark 1922 Shukhov radio tower — by dismantling it and replacing almost all of its original steel

The Shabolovka Tower is engineer Vladimir Shukhov’s best-known structure. Once the Soviet Union’s main radio and television transmitter, it was a landmark engineering achievement of the New Economic Policy era and remains a defining feature of Moscow’s Shabolovka neighborhood. This fall, its owner, the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network (RTRS), plans to dismantle almost all of it and replace it with a replica by 2028. Specialists say that would be tantamount to destroying Shukhov’s work: preserving the original metal matters as much as preserving the tower’s shape. Architecture journalist Asya Zolnikova tells the story of the hyperboloid tower and the disputed overhaul ahead.

An engineering breakthrough. How Vladimir Shukhov built a tower admired around the world.

Vladimir Shukhov was an exceptionally inventive engineer and a true innovator. First in the Russian Empire and then in the Soviet Union, he developed several technologies and structures used far beyond architecture. He effectively laid much of the technological groundwork for oil refining in Russia, designing cylindrical tanks for petroleum products, tubular steam boilers, nozzles for burning fuel oil, oil barges, and equipment for cracking petroleum. He had hundreds of inventions, more than a dozen of which were patented.

One of Shukhov’s patents covered lattice hyperboloid structures. From the late 19th century, he used them to build roofs and, later, towers. The first such tower was built in 1896 for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.

A hyperboloid was assembled from straight metal rods set at an angle, sometimes in two rows slanting in opposite directions. Rings secured them at the top and bottom. Strong yet light, the rods distributed the tower’s weight evenly: if it had 48 supports, as the Shabolovka hyperboloid does, each carried one forty-eighth of the total weight. Shukhov’s colleague, engineer Alexander Galankin, compared this arrangement to equality in a socialist society.

The design allowed the rods to be very thin and relatively light. Shukhov’s towers used less metal than conventional towers and needed shallower foundations. Archival drawings suggest that the Shabolovka tower’s supports extend only three meters (about 10 feet) into the ground — remarkably little for a base 40 meters (about 130 feet) across. The metal lattice also lets air pass through, making the tower more resistant to gusts of wind.

The Shabolovka Tower was built between 1919 and 1922. Vladimir Lenin personally backed the project. He understood radio’s value for propaganda, calling it a “newspaper without paper and without distance” in 1920. The year before, he had signed a decree ordering a powerful radio station built in Moscow “with extraordinary urgency.”

At 144 meters (about 470 feet), the Shabolovka Tower remained Moscow’s tallest structure until 1953, when the 240-meter (about 790-foot) main building of Moscow State University was completed. Shukhov’s tower was originally meant to be even taller: 350 meters (about 1,150 feet), with nine sections instead of six. That would have put it above the “bourgeois” Eiffel Tower, then the world’s tallest structure at 330 meters (about 1,080 feet). It would also have used far less metal: 2,200 metric tons (about 2,400 U.S. tons), compared with 7,000 metric tons (about 7,700 U.S. tons) for the Eiffel Tower.

There was not enough metal to reach that height. Construction took place during the Civil War, when supplies were scarce because bridges and railways constantly needed repairs. Akim Nikolayev, chairman of the Radio Council, recalled having to “fight” the military for metal from warehouses in Smolensk that German manufacturers had used before World War I.

The tower was erected by a method known as telescopic assembly: all the sections were built at ground level, then raised one after another. The method was economical and safe, although some accounts say a cable snapped while the fourth section was being lifted, killing a worker. Some sources claim Shukhov was then given a “suspended death sentence.”

Airat Bagautdinov, founder of the educational project Glazami Inzhenera, doubts that story. A winch cable did break, he says, but official sources give no indication that anyone died in the incident. Two people died “under other circumstances” during the tower’s construction, according to Bagautdinov. The account of a “suspended death sentence” appears in only one source — Shukhov’s diary. As far as Bagautdinov knows, no one has looked for supporting evidence in the Federal Security Service’s archives: “Perhaps the sentence was worded differently. We don’t even know what kind of document it was.”

Shabolovka was chosen for the tower for a reason. As architectural historian Alexandra Selivanova, former director of the Shabolovka Avant-Garde Center, explained, “they chose the highest site they could find as close to the Kremlin as possible.” The site was once Firewood Square, which had never been built on. From 1918, it housed a radio base used for defense.

When it opened in 1922, Shukhov’s structure was called the Comintern Radio Tower. It became the country’s first and main radio transmitter. It transmitted a television signal for the first time in 1937, and regular television broadcasts began on March 10, 1939. It became the Soviet Union’s main television tower and remained so until the Ostankino Tower was built.

Alexander Rodchenko photographed the tower for his celebrated series in the 1920s and 1930s. Around the same time, it appeared on the cover of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s book “Letayushchy proletary” (“The Flying Proletarian”). Later in the Soviet era, it appeared in a stained-glass work by Andrei Kuznetsov at the Shabolovskaya metro station, which opened in 1980. The Shabolovka Tower became the emblem of Central Television and many of its programs, including the New Year’s show “Goluboy ogonyok” (“Blue Light”), the late-1990s youth program “Bashnya” (“Tower”), and the interstitials on the Rossiya channel in the early 2000s.

Although Shukhov’s structures predated the revolution and he did not consider himself part of the avant-garde, architects of that era embraced the tower as the first major symbol of a new architecture. They saw much in common with Shukhov’s principles: the tower has no decoration, its appearance stands on its own, and it is entirely functional.

The corners of buildings in the Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing complex, one of Moscow’s largest residential monuments to Rationalism, point toward the Shukhov Tower. The Constructivist communal house on Lesteva Street and later architectural projects also take their bearings from it. Today, residential high-rises are going up across the neighborhood, and the hyperboloid no longer appears to be the neighborhood’s tallest structure.

Shukhov’s design was used abroad after his death. In 1963, the firm Nikken Sekkei designed a 108-meter (about 350-foot) lattice hyperboloid tower in Kobe, Japan. In 2003, Swiss architects Daniel Roth and Alexander Komm erected a Shukhov-style structure in Zurich as an experiment.

Some of the world’s best-known architects, including Frei Otto, Werner Sobek, Buckminster Fuller, and Norman Foster, drew on Shukhov’s legacy, each developing his ideas in a different way. Foster’s firm took part in a 2019 exhibition of Shukhov’s work at Moscow’s Shchusev Museum of Architecture. In a 2010 open letter, Foster himself urged the Russian authorities to save the tower from destruction. He called it a work of “dazzling brilliance and great historical importance” and “the first major landmark of the Soviet era.”

The tower today: How efforts to reinforce it made matters worse

Broadcasting stopped in 2002, and the tower has been out of use ever since. For more than 20 years, people have been unable to get close to it, so its precise condition remains unclear. According to Alexandra Selivanova, the Russian authorities “clearly weren’t very keen on letting people in,” because “the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company is there, and a restricted satellite communications facility is right next door.”

Even without a close inspection, it is clear that the tower needs substantial repairs and restoration. It has never had a major overhaul in its century-long history. Rust is “gradually spreading,” Bagautdinov says. A full inspection in 1947 found corrosion; the metal was cleaned and coated with anticorrosion paint. It was painted twice more, in 1950 and 1964.

Bagautdinov attributes some of the rust to a botched intervention in 1971. Specialists from the Melnikov Central Research Institute of Steel Structures — an institute that grew out of the design bureau Shukhov once headed — inspected the tower. They decided to reinforce its foundation and encased the base in concrete. But Shukhov had designed the supports to move, helping the tower withstand wind. The concrete fixed them rigidly in place at ground level. It also worsened corrosion: rust developed where the metal supports meet the foundation.

Despite these defects, the frame has withstood every load placed on it over more than a century. Bagautdinov said only 31 of its 30,000 rivets had fallen out, a figure that has since risen to 55. Antennas and other equipment were added throughout the Soviet period. Before World War II, a passing mail plane even caught a cable linking the tower to a neighboring radio mast. The plane crashed; the tower stood.

What RTRS plans to do. Why the new project cannot be called ‘restoration.’

The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network, which now owns the tower, seems to regard its planned dismantling as an achievement. At the company’s anniversary event on August 13, deputy director for economics and finance Alexey Popov said with evident pride that RTRS had worked toward this for more than a decade and had “finally launched” the project. RTRS has yet to say when dismantling will take place. In late August, it was still preparing project documents and obtaining permits. Stanislav Belyavsky, deputy director general for construction and major repairs, suggested that the process would definitely begin in October. There is still no firm start date.

RTRS did not respond to Meduza’s request for comment.

According to Belyavsky, “everything that can be restored will be restored,” while anything that cannot “will be replaced with equivalents made from modern materials.” “It will be exactly the same tower,” he said.

But Belyavsky’s claim bears no resemblance to what the project documents describe. The “restoration” plan was drawn up by the Central Research Institute for Industrial Buildings, which has inspected the tower three times since 2011. According to a state historical and cultural review dated July 7, 2025, the tower will be dismantled and rebuilt with new metal. Some supports from the sixth section, at the top of the tower, may be retained. That section bears the lightest load. Every element that has lost more than 5% of its load-bearing capacity will be replaced. The resulting structure will also get an observation deck and elevator. The review says this addition will be developed later “in a separate adaptation project.”

The Main State Expert Review Board approved the project on April 3, 2026. The Culture Ministry and Construction Ministry also backed it.

Until recently, such an outcome seemed impossible. Replacing the metal Shukhov used would jeopardize the tower’s legally protected features — the characteristics of a cultural heritage site that the state is supposed to preserve. For the Shukhov Tower, then a monument of regional significance, those features were listed in a document approved in 2014. They included the steel rods, rings, rivets, joints, and other details.

On July 8, 2022, a revised list of the tower’s protected features was approved, with vaguer wording. The revised list now specifies the protected material simply as “metal.” Formally, that means the tower can be replaced with a duplicate, provided it is made of the same material and has the same proportions.

The Communications Ministry transferred the tower to RTRS in 2002. Along with it, the company inherited a legal obligation to take specified measures to preserve the heritage site. A year later, then-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov proposed restoring the tower with city funds, but only if ownership was transferred to Moscow. Federal authorities refused.

Luzhkov drew attention to the tower again in 2008, calling it a “disaster site” and a “disgrace” to the capital. The next year, he again proposed transferring it to Moscow and restoring it with public funds. Around the same time, the Shukhov Tower Foundation, headed by the engineer’s great-grandson Vladimir Shukhov, warned that some elements were in “critical condition.”

Moscow’s heritage agency eventually sued RTRS for failing to meet its preservation obligations and won. The court ordered the company to inspect the tower at its own expense and prepare a full restoration plan for city approval. But that, too, led nowhere. As Vedomosti later reported, the sticking point was a years-long dispute between the Communications Ministry and the Culture Ministry over which was responsible for maintaining the tower. Neither had an answer, so neither could allocate a budget.

Finally, in 2011, the Russian government allocated 135 million rubles for restoration, but it was not enough. A detailed estimate showed that the organization Quality and Reliability would need 350 million rubles. Most of the money was returned to the treasury, and the work was postponed again.

By 2014, RTRS had failed to meet its preservation obligations for almost 12 years. The company was fairly candid about why: it had no direct access to the site, which was surrounded by property belonging to the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, a research institute known as TsNIILK, and the federal enterprise Satellite Communications. RTRS employees had to request passes from the broadcaster just to reach their own tower. The site, about 2,500 square meters (roughly 0.6 acres), barely extended beyond the tower’s base. RTRS said there was no room “to photograph visitors, provide food, set up a first-aid station or install portable toilets.” By then, the company was prepared to transfer the tower and its site to an organization specializing in the maintenance and operation of cultural heritage sites.

At a Public Chamber meeting on March 7, 2014, Deputy Communications Minister Alexey Volin proposed dismantling the tower and rebuilding it elsewhere — in Gorky Park, for example, or even outside Moscow, in Samara. Since 2021, Volin has headed Satellite Communications, the enterprise whose restricted facility stands beside the tower. Moscow declined to take the structure out of federal ownership. City government minister Vladimir Efimov wrote to the Economic Development Ministry that Moscow considered the transfer “inexpedient.”

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea later that March, RTRS proposed moving the tower to the peninsula altogether. “If we can reach an agreement with Sobyanin, we’ll happily take the tower apart and move it to Sevastopol,” company head Andrei Romanchenko said on April 3. He added:

In the end, campaigners managed to keep the tower where it was. They included city activists and prominent Russian and international architects who signed open letters to Putin.

In fall 2015, the antennas were removed to lighten the load. A year later, massive metal supports were installed inside the tower. Preservation activists compared them to a coat rack; Shukhov’s great-granddaughter Elena Shukhova likened them to useless crutches. Heritage specialists stressed that the added internal frame might help for only a few years and that a proper restoration plan was essential.

Those “crutches” “radically changed the tower’s appearance,” says Shukhov researcher Elena Vlasova. Worse, she says, they kept Shukhov’s structure from working as intended for a decade. Architectural historian and art scholar Olga Kazakova agrees:

Talk of a “major restoration” resumed in late 2020, when RTRS promised to preserve the monument carefully, without drastic intervention. That plan never went ahead. By May 2026, the owner was saying that the century-old metal had reached the end of its useful life and that replacing it was the only way to save the tower. The company called claims that the structure could be restored “unprofessional.”

Why does preserving the metal matter? Would it still be the same tower without it?

The engineer’s great-grandson, Vladimir Shukhov, believes the original materials can be preserved, though it would take longer and cost more. A conventional, research-based restoration would take “up to 20” years, rather than the couple of years RTRS wants to allow. If the money is not available now, the tower should be mothballed until it is, he says:

Shukhov says the tower is unique in three ways: its design, its assembly method, and its material. “If the tower is taken apart and then reassembled, or if a new one is simply built, at least two things that make it unique [the construction method and the material] will be lost.” But the tower’s owner does not seem to understand that: “…RTRS doesn’t need the tower. They said it back then [in 2014, when dismantling was already being proposed]: we’ll take it apart, and whoever wants it can take it and do whatever they like with it.”

Rustam Rakhmatullin, co-founder of the Archnadzor preservation movement, also believes RTRS “should listen to other experts, keep an open mind and review everything again.” Asked how the tower should be used, he says it should not be used for anything.

Oleg Shapiro, head of the major Moscow architecture firm Wowhaus, also sees risks in “turning an engineering structure into an attraction”:

In 2014 and again now, experts have warned that replacing the original metal would cost the tower its chance of UNESCO World Heritage status. “That’s why the tower needs to be carefully preserved, not rebuilt,” says Sergey Arsenyev, vice president of the Shukhov Tower Foundation. For the same reason — the loss of authenticity — he says an elevator and observation deck should not be installed.

Yelizaveta Likhacheva, former director of the Alexey Shchusev Museum of Architecture, writes:

Likhacheva calls the plans for the tower a “crime against heritage.” Those responsible, she says, will have to answer “not only to the Moscow of today, but also to the people who will live in this city after us.”

She and other experts point to Shukhov structures that have been saved. Restorers lacked experience with such sites in the 2000s and 2010s, but three hyperboloid towers have been restored in Russia in the 2020s. Local specialists carried out every project, replacing no more than 5% of the metal in each.

Likhacheva does not understand why Moscow cannot draw on that experience:

On August 6, the Union of Restorers called for an independent review. Other architecture specialists urged the State Duma to impose a moratorium on the current project and commission an inspection of the structure involving the Melnikov Central Research Institute of Steel Structures, the Kucherenko Central Research Institute of Building Structures, and other specialized institutes. They call a complete replacement a “fake.”

Archnadzor, the Vnimanie Foundation, and other groups promoting and preserving architectural heritage have called for the tower to be saved. In May 2026, after the first reports of its planned dismantling, the architecture website Arkhi.ru launched a public petition. More than 10,000 people had signed it by the time this article was written. Television host Andrey Malakhov, who was born in Apatity and promotes contemporary art there, wrote: “Let’s bring it to Apatity!!!”