Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the United States spent billions and billions of dollars to prevent communism from spreading throughout the world. Why would we write off New York City and abdicate to this dangerous ideology now? We were told that this thinking was rejected and left upon the ash heap of history, for good reason.

In 1928, Moscow opened Gorky Park, the flagship of the Soviet “parks of culture,” a state-curated pleasure garden built to give citizens the feeling of abundance and leisure without the substance of a functioning economy behind it.