World and people

MOSCOW - Workers demolishing a Stalin-era Moscow
hotel Sunday discovered a tonof explosives that would have been
used to blow the building sky-high if Nazi troops had taken the
Soviet capital, media reported.

After its opening in 1935, the hotel Moskva was one of the
Soviet Union's flagship hotels and stood opposite the Russian
parliament and only a stone's throw from Red Square.

"The boxes held only explosives without detonators so there
was no risk of an explosion in the hotel," a
police spokesman told Russian news agencies.

NTV television showed sappers and construction workers
removing bags of explosive from the deep, muddy hole that is
all that is left of the hotel, which once sported a distinctive
facade and dominated one of the capital's main thoroughfares.

"According to preliminary information, the explosive was
hidden in a cache during the Great Patriotic War," a police
spokesman was quoted by Itar-Tass agency as saying, referring
to World War II. Police said they had removed a tonof explosive
by evening.

NTV said the hotel was mined in case Adolf Hitler's forces
had taken Moscow. The German troops made it to the outskirts in
1942, but Soviet troops stopped them pushing into the center.

The Soviet Union had extensive contingency plans in case it
lost the capital. Many factories, institutes and government
bodies moved into Siberia and Central Asia.

The hotel has been demolished in what officials say is a
drive to improve and modernize Moscow's tourist facilities.
Media have reported that city officials intend to build a new
hotel looking exactly the same.

Many architectural historians say the demolition is a
shameful end for a key Moscow landmark that should have been
preserved.

# posted by Mike @ 3:27 AM