Backstory: Do svidaniya, Rossiya!

It won't be as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall, nor as TV-friendly as the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statues in Baghdad. But when the Rossiya Hotel is torn down this month, one of the most visible legacies of Soviet rule will disappear from central Moscow.

Sprawling across 30 acres next to Red Square, the Rossiya is hard to miss. Its centerpiece, a 21-story tower, looms over the multicolored cupolas of St. Basil's Cathedral. The concrete colossus owes its size to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who wanted a hotel large enough to house all 6,000 delegates to Communist Party congresses.

When the Rossiya opened in 1967, it became the largest hotel in the world. And it remained the largest in Europe until it was closed on New Year's Eve, by order of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Wrecking teams have since fenced off the property as they prepare to demolish the unsightly behemoth.

In his glitzy drive to redevelop the once sooty-gray Russian capital, Mr. Luzhkov has become Enemy No. 1 of preservationists, who bemoan his approval of developments that have bulldozed hundreds of the city's historic buildings in recent years. But the mayor's plan to raze the much-loathed Rossiya has been endorsed by some of his harshest critics - and sparked debate over which parts of history, exactly, are worth preserving.

Alexei Komech, director of the Moscow Art History Institute, keeps a "black book" of landmarks that have perished at the hands of the mayor. But on the Rossiya, he agrees: "Starting in the 1960s, we in the architectural community had a very negative attitude to it. We always thought it was too big for its location."

And architects aren't alone. For many of the Rossiya's former guests - especially those who stayed there in its Soviet heyday - the hotel conjures memories of gruff service, baffling bureaucracy, sinister food, and bizarre Soviet touches, such as radios that could only pick up one station and could only be turned off by being unplugged.

For John Pollock, an American who first stayed at the Rossiya as a student in 1976, the worst part was trying to fall asleep: "The bed wasn't really a bed. It was a slab of wood, like a wooden shelf."

Equally rigid were the rules that governed the comings and goings of guests. It took a special card to enter the hotel, and each of the Rossiya's long corridors was watched over by a surly dezhurnaya, a matron who collected room keys from guests whenever they left.Those who came back late at night could expect a tirade from the sleepy hall monitor as she retrieved their keys.

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