The massive building on the embankment here is the House of the Russian Government  which is better known as the White House for obvious reasons.  The building was built between 1965 and 1979 and represents one of the last examples of Soviet architecture in Moscow.  From 1991 to the fall of the Soviet Union, the building was known as the House of Soviets of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.  The White house has witnessed two major political events in modern Russian history.  Firstly the August 1991 coup d'état attempt where hard-line communists attempted to seize power from Mikhail Gorbachev.  Secondly the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis where President Boris Yeltsin ordered the White House be shelled to bring the Congress of People's Deputies and Supreme Soviet under control and to arrest its leaders, who had attempted to impeach him.

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