American singers Mariah Carey, Tina Turner and Cher have played in the palace, as did Norwegian band A-HA[2] and Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Externally the palace is faced with white marble and the windows are tinted and reflective, which makes the classic architecture in the Kremlin appear particularly picturesque.

In his view, the gradual transitions between the foyer and the lobbies employed the principle of "shimmering construction of space", which symbolised continuity with the architectural experiments of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s.

The interior decoration of the palace was done by the artist Alexander Deineka, who made mosaic emblems in the banquet hall and the frieze in the foyer.

[3] In Tom Clancy's 1986 novel Red Storm Rising, the building is bombed in a false-flag operation by the KGB to justify an invasion of Western Europe, with West Germany being framed for the attack.