Vladimir Tatlin called it Monument to the Third International (1920). A model was built, but its tower was never realized. Indeed, it was only after Russian-style Soviet Communism began to wane (the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968, aka Prague Spring) that larger models were constructed. Which makes sense given that the tower was based on a ruin -- like religion was said to be a ruin in countries that called themselves communist.
On that note, the world's first tower (Genesis 11: 1-9) was the Tower of Babel. Built after the Great Flood, this tower would enable a united human race to enter heaven without having to die first. God looked down on this tower and, as punishment, assigned human beings different languages and scattered us around the world. The assumption here is that we would never develop communication and transportation systems that would allow us to come together, try something like this again.
God had so little faith in us. But we showed him, right?
Right?
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