Russia, Moscow and The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

The white marble walls of the cathedral towered above us as we approached the main doors and shuffled inside and made our way across polished marble floors with giant geometric patterns towards the main central altar where people were approaching the icons with appropriate reverence and all the while bowing and praying and no doubt hoping to exchange devotion to the Lord for a favour or two in return.

Around the ornate altar the four giant arches holding aloft the central dome soared high into the cathedral decorated predominantly in gold with paintings of the Saints and various scenes from the Bible and at the very top a gallery running around the base of the brightly coloured dome.  Giant candelabra swayed gently above our heads and the air was full of choking incense and candle fumes.

Although we were tourists, apart from the Metro, this seemed to be closest that we had come to sharing the lives of ordinary Russians because the cathedral was full to overflowing with local people going about their daily lives in this extraordinary place and they paid no attention to us as they pursued their personal religious business.  In a side chapel there was singing and a service was taking place so we stood discreetly at the back and watched from behind several rows of patterned headscarves while a choir in lavender shirts led the singing in between the chanting and the prayers of the priest.

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour commemorates the Divine Intercession that led to the Russian victory over Napoleon in 1812 and is therefore both a religious and a historical monument and in the galleries of the side chapels the frescoes and paintings are devoted to the glories of Russian history and in particular the War of 1812.  Interestingly it was in the original building (the one that was destroyed on the orders of Stalin) that Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 overture’, my favourite piece of classical music by the way, was first publically performed.

Next we made our way down a flight of red granite stairs which led to the crypt where various smaller chapels were laid out ready for service and in one there was a well attended wedding that we watched for a few minutes before making our way to a temporary exhibition of precious icons.

Icons have been in use since the earliest days of the Christian Church and remain closely associated with the Russian Orthodox Church which differs dramatically in style and decoration from the western Catholic Church through its use of sacramental objects and these holy icons that are hung on the walls and the murals which cover most of the interior.  I was fascinated by these priceless exhibits and in the souvenir shop on the way out I bought a reproduction of my favourite (no particular reason why), the Seven Sorrows of Mary and Kim wondered why and gave me a look that said ‘buy it if you must but when we get home it’s not going up in the house!’

We left the Cathedral now and returned to the streets of Moscow that were now bathed in sunshine and we made our way towards the Kremlin and Red Square.  As we walked away from the Cathedral there was a small party of school children each with a packet of coloured chalks and under the instruction of the teacher leaving a personal memento of their visit to the cathedral on the pavement outside.

It wasn’t far to the centre but we had to cross a couple of busy main roads and with the roads congested with vehicles we were glad that the Communist Party conference was finished now which meant that after three days the Alexander Gardens under the western wall of the Kremlin were open again now to the public.  We strolled through the flower beds and in between the statues and grottos towards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame which commemorates what we know as the Second-World-War but which Russia calls ‘The Great Patriotic War of 1941-45’.  Here after a goose stepping changing of the guard ceremony three members of the Kremlin Guard in immaculate green uniforms and military caps with wide crowns stood impossibly still with impassive faces while children teased them and tourists took endless amounts of photographs.

I was glad that the gardens were open, it would have been a shame to miss them but now we passed through iron gates under the shadow of one of the twenty Kremlin Towers and made our way towards Red Square for the final time.

Russia, Moscow and The Kremlin

The Kremlin is situated in the very centre of the capital of Russia and the monumental walls and towers, golden-domed cathedrals and ancient palaces all standing high on the Borovitskiy Hill above the Moskva River is inherently symbolic of the Russian State.

Since 1991 it has been the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation and is a potent symbol of two mighty imperial cultures, of medieval Muscovy and of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin is at once fascinating and foreboding, a mixture of lavish opulence and austere secrecy, and inside the heavily guarded walls  its eclectic mix of architecture reflects these paradoxes and seismic cultural shifts that have created this unique place over nearly a thousand years of history.

Within the Kremlin wall and its towers the complex contains four palaces and four cathedrals but it is only possible to visit about half of it because visitors are not really welcome in the government offices.  Because of the increased security on account of the Communist Party conference getting inside was a bit of a chore today but eventually we passed through the check points at the Borovitskaya Tower and we were immediately outside the pale lemon and cream State Armoury museum and making our way towards the Cathedrals where we entered a square and were immediately surrounded by elegant tall Italianate buildings and gleaming golden domes.

First we visited the Cathedral of the Archangel which is the burial place of the early Russian Tsars before the Romanovs relocated to Saint-Petersburg and we walked around the nave and among the tombs and sarcophagi of royal princes with Slavic inscriptions and all magnificently decorated with bronze.  The flat walls and soaring pillars are all painted with superb seventeenth century frescoes with over sixty colourful portraits of Russian rulers and striking images of the Archangel Michael, the traditional protector of the Russian Tsars.

There were more frescoes covering the walls and ceilings of the Cathedral of the Annunciation with rows and tiers of pictures of angels, prophets and Patriarchs.  All of this took me completely by surprise; sometimes places are exactly what we expect and sometimes they can even be disappointing but for me this was a genuine open-mouthed knee-buckling moment as I tried to take in and comprehend the magnificence of it all.  I had really not expected anything quite look this and I was overwhelmed with the scale and beauty of the place and even before the holiday was fully over I was confident that I could proclaim this to be the absolute highlight of the week!

  

Finally we visited the Cathedral of the Assumption, for me the most wonderful of them all, the most important church in Russia and the seat of the Patriarch, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, with walls and pillars covered in frescoes and wall paintings towering above us into the highest domes.

Outside again we walked in the shadow of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower and outside it the two hundred tonne Tsar Bell, the largest in the world, but sadly never rung because an eleven tonne section broke off during the casting process. Next to this colossal bell was a huge canon weighing in at a massive forty tonnes and crawling with children visiting the place on a school outing.

   

Most of the tour party disappeared now on a visit to the Armoury Museum but being skinflints we had refused to pay out the excessive official tour guide price and we justified this decision on the basis that we had seen quite a lot of museums already this week.  Instead we spent some time in the Kremlin gardens taking care not to stray into those parts that were off limits and as we walked we enjoyed the sunshine as it beat down into the Cathedral Square and reflected off the buildings and bounced around the golden domes.

We left the Kremlin by the same gate that we entered and then walked through the flower beds in the leafy gardens underneath the crimson Kremlin wall and reluctant to leave and with several backward glances we walked away and towards Arbat Square and Arbatskaya where we walked past the street vendors and entertainers and settled on a restaurant with pavement tables and reasonable prices and we sat and enjoyed the good weather and reflected on our visit to the Kremlin.

Before we left Arbatskaya we returned to the souvenir shop with the 50% discount offers and finally made some purchases for gifts and then we made our way back to the Metro and visited some of the most ornate stations on the way back to the Holiday Inn hotel.  We were becoming fascinated by the Metro and decided that we would return later and explore the best of it.

Russia, Lenin’s Mausoleum

It was quite an early start this morning because our first visit of the day was to the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square and we were warned that there was a possibility of long queues.  Since Perestroika fewer Russian people visit the permanently preserved body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lying in State in his glass coffin but there are still large visitor numbers every day which are swollen by several dozen coach loads of tourists because this is now a top Moscow visitor attraction.

It is only open for four days a week and the opening hours are short so if you get there too late then it is possible to line up for an hour or two and then reach the front of the queue to coincide with closing time and be turned away so Galina was mindful of this when she hurried us from the coach and to the back of the queue lining up at the entrance to Red Square.  It wasn’t a long queue but the army guards on duty only allowed a few people through at a time and this was only to go through the first check point to get to a second three hundred metres in front.  This meant that progress was tediously slow and it was about now that we discovered that Russian people are equally as bad as French or Greeks when it comes to line discipline so we had to be on our guard to make sure people didn’t push in.

Eventually it was our turn to go through the gate in the metal fence and we made our way to the more rigorous checkpoint at the entrance to the mausoleum gardens.  Cameras and mobile phones are strictly forbidden because the authorities don’t want snapshots of the great man turning up on the internet in people’s Blogs or Trip Advisor reviews so they have to be left in a locker room and if anyone tries to defy this and is caught by the thorough security checks then there punishment is to be sent to the back of the queue!

Sticking to the rules we got through without incident and made our way through the gardens with their memorials and wall plaques commemorating the lives of previous Soviet leaders and heroes of the USSR and approached the mausoleum where there was a third and final check by army guards before being allowed to go through the entrance.  There was bright sunshine in Red Square but inside it was dark and gloomy so because of the contrast it took our eyes a while to adjust and this was a bit dangerous because almost immediately we had to follow some black dogleg marble stairs down into the underground chamber where Lenin is lying in his glass tomb.

Exhibiting his body in this way was totally against his wishes and those of his family but his successor Stalin overruled this and when he was satisfied that the preservation process had been successful arranged for him to go on permanent mawkish display.

Queuing up like this to spend a few seconds looking at a mummified corpse might seem like a strange thing to do but I was fascinated to be able to do this and to be able to see for myself one of the men who shaped the twentieth century and the cold war world of my childhood – a world of spies and espionage, nuclear weapons, underground fallout shelters for the great and the good and the constant nagging fear of Armageddon.  Of course I wanted to see him, I’d go and see the preserved body of Adolf Hitler if someone hadn’t poured petrol on it and set it alight!

When Lenin died in January 1924 he was acclaimed as ‘the greatest genius of mankind’ and ‘the leader and teacher of the peoples of the whole world’. Time Magazine named him one of the one hundred most important people of the twentieth century (Albert Einstein was first and Mahatma Ghandi and Theodore Roosevelt close runners up).  According to the article in Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘If the Bolshevik Revolution is, as some people have called it, the most significant political event of the twentieth century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader… he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx’.

For a man responsible for the revolution and its bloodshed and the elimination of the Romanovs he looked rather gentle lying there with outstretched arms in his black suit and favourite white spotted tie, his carefully groomed ginger beard and a slightly yellowing skin.

The body is removed every few months for running repairs, the application of more preservation chemicals and to be fitted up in a new suit.  There are rumours, stridently denied by the authorities, that this isn’t the body of Lenin at all and that the preservation process owes more to Madame Tussauds than the skill of the laboratory embalmers but it would be impossible to do a detailed investigation or stop for a while and look for waxy evidence because if anyone stops for even a moment there is a guard in the room who immediately instructs them to move on and this means that time in the chamber is no longer than a few seconds before ascending the stairs on the opposite side and emerging blinking back into the sunlight.

We left the mausoleum gardens and went back into Red Square and went to get our cameras.  This meant going back out of the security fencing and once I had retrieved our property was refused entry back inside without going through the queuing up and security process all over again all of which seemed a bit unnecessary but thankfully it didn’t take too long.