“Last week, the final guests checked out of the daunting Moskva hotel, for 70 years the gateway to Soviet Moscow, looming over one corner of Red Square. The better rooms of this heroic Stalinist pile may well have been bugged, but they did offer magnificent views over Red Square and St Basil’s cathedral. From the 15th floor the views were the stuff of epic Russian films, while from the corridor windows you could just peep across the walls of the reclusive Kremlin. For some years a debate has raged in Moscow over the future of the 1,000-room Stalinist hotel featured on every bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and built in the early 30s.”