“freakish hypervictorian ornamentation”

Thanks to @gtiso’s Best Blog Posts of 2010 I have been intro­duced to Owen Hatherley on Architecture:

Jonathan Meades has an inter­est­ing archi­tec­tur­al the­ory of dic­tat­ori­al longev­ity – that the more a régime embraces kitsch, the more it will be entrenched in power. The Nazis, with their middlebrow neo­clas­si­cism, their Kingsnorthian moun­tain retreats, did­n’t get long – Stalin, mean­while, died of old age, his régime gil­ded by gold leaf and freak­ish hyper­victori­an ornamentation.

[From sit down man, you’re a bloody tragedy: Red Gates]

I think you should check it out, too.