According to Kabakov's plans, Monument to a Lost Civilization is to exist below ground in a space without any windows, which might allow the viewer to find solace through the sight of the sky. The space was to be designed like a cavernous lair impossible to navigate where visitors will get lost. They will ask directions to the garden and be told they must find the final room, only to discover the door to the garden, which the artist equate with paradise, locked. In part due to the monument's enormous size, viewers would enter and forget where the exit is, but never forget what is outside as they begin to feel an atmosphere resembling the Soviet Union, thus giving “an idea of totalitarianism.”