The Big House is an unofficial name of the building in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, shared by the headquarters of the local Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast

Leningrad Oblast

Leningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It was established on August 1, 1927, although it was not until 1946 that the oblast's borders had been mostly settled in their present position...

 branch of the Federal Security Service of Russia and the Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Main Department of Internal Affairs

Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs

The Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del is the interior ministry of Russia. Its predecessor was founded in 1802 by Alexander I in Imperial Russia...

. The building is located in the Central District

Tsentralny District, Saint Petersburg

Tsentralny District is a district of the federal city of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It borders the Neva River in the north and in the east, Obvodny Canal in the south, and areas around the Gorokhovaya Street in the west...

 of Saint Petersburg at the beginning of Liteyny Prospekt

Liteyny Prospekt

Liteyny Avenue is a wide avenue in the Central District of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The avenue runs from Liteyny Bridge to Nevsky Avenue....

, one block from Neva river

Neva River

The Neva is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length , it is the third largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge .The Neva is the only river flowing from Lake...

. It was constructed in 1931-1932 in the late Constructivist style

Constructivist architecture

Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced...

 at the site of imperial Old Armoury Building burnt down in 1917. The building was designed by Soviet architects Noi Trotsky

Noi Trotsky

Noi Abramovich Trotsky was a renowned Soviet architect.- Biography :Born in St. Petersburg to a family of a typesetter, Trotsky took art classes from the renowned painter Nicholas Roerich, graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1920 and 2nd Polytechnic in 1921...

, Alexander Gegello and Andrey Ol for the use by Soviet secret police OGPU. The Big House is part of a larger complex which includes the detention facility on Shpalernaya Street. Both the Big House and the jail gained notoriety during repressions by Stalin

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

.

External links

• Big House @ Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg