Many many moons ago I read the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn and vaguely I

remember his analysis on the psychological reason and impact of the huge

palaces and other buildings erected during the Tsarist and Bolsheviks eras .From shetchy

memory I think he posited that these buildings with their magnificence were erected with

purpose of overawing the populace to the point where they [the people] saw themselves

as miniatures unable to resist the status quo.

Does anyone remember this analysis ? The book is out of my library and my grandson

has stumped me with a school essay on Solzhenitsyn's analysis of Tsarist palaces.

Thanks for any imput.

Sorry, can't help you on your specific question re Solzhenitsyn's analysis. But that sounds a likely general explanation, given what a vast and almost ungovernably diverse place that vast slab of the world had always been - when you consider it's not far short of twice the area of the USA (if you trust the CIA...!)

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html

I am unfamiliar with that analysis.

...purpose of overawing the populace to the point where they [the people] saw themselves as miniatures unable to resist the status quo.

It's difficult for me to accept this *base reasoning... and certainly/evidently not true... sad how this arrogance perpetuates itself even into modern times.

The definition of 'pride' has enough problems without it embedding itself into materialism.