A Cathedral and a Corpse

World Adventurer (November 21, 2003 Chautauqua)

Red Square, featuring (from left to right):

The GUM Store (barely visible),

St. Basil's Cathedral

The Spasskaya Tower

Lenin's Tomb

and the walls of The Kremlin

    Tuesday, May 6th, was grey, wet and rainy in Moscow as I stood at the entrance to a 400 by 150 metre area so central to Russian history, Krasnaya Ploshchad - Red Square.

   It lies immediately outside the northwest wall of the Kremlin.  I entered from a street called ulitsa Nikolskaya. To my right was the Resurrection Gate (Voskresenskiye Vorota), which was rebuilt in 1995. It is an exact copy of the original completed on this site in 1680. The original was torn down in 1931 because Stalin thought it was in the way of the parades and demonstrations held in Red Square.

   To my left was the GUM store. I passed through the concrete barriers and stepped onto the cobblestones of a place very far away from my Canadian prairie home. The square is closed to vehicular traffic, except for government limousines.

   The name Red Square has nothing to do with either communism or the blood that has flowed here. Krasny originally meant beautiful: only in the 20th century did it come to mean red, too.  The place used to be a market square, and has always been the place where the Kremlin's occupants made several important statements to their people.

   Ivan the Terrible publicly confessed his misdeeds here in 1547, built St. Basil's Cathedral to commemorate his victories in the 1550's, and later had numerous perceived enemies executed here.

   The Cossack rebel Stephen Razin was dismembered here in 1671.

   In 1698, Peter the Great had 2,000 members of his palace guard, the Streltsy, executed en masse. The spot is marked by a round, walled Place of Skulls (Lobnoe Mesto).

   Soviet rulers chose Red Square for their twice-yearly military parades. In November 1941, they held one in which the tanks rolled straight off to the front line outside Moscow.

   During the cold war, lines of ICBMs rumbled across the square to remind the west of Soviet military might. The leaders of the Soviet Union reviewed these displays from the top of Lenin's Tomb ( a practice begun by Stalin).

Lenin's Tomb

   Made of red granite, the tomb stands at the foot of the Kremlin wall. Lenin has remained on display here since 1924, apart from some time spent in the Urals during World War II. From 1953 to 1961, he shared his tomb with Stalin, until Krushchev had him removed. There is some talk of having Lenin removed, as well, and having him interred somewhere more appropriate, but no-one is willing to provoke the hard-liners who want him just where he is. There is also some talk of whether the body is real, or just something you might see at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. I cannot give you my opinion, as the tomb was closed when I was there, as was the Kremlin wall, where many worthies are resting, including:

Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka (forerunner of the KGB)

Yakov Sverdlov, a key organizer of the revolution

Inessa Armand, Lenin's lover

John Reed, The American author of a first hand account of the revolution, Ten Days That Shook The World

Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut

Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the commander who defeated Hitler.

   Preparations were under way for the celebration of V-E day on Thursday, with many guards around overseeing the workers setting up seating for dignitaries, and barriers to hold back members of the public.

St. Basil's Cathedral

   I proceeded south, towards a building that everyone visualizes when you say Russia, St. Basil's Cathedral. The cathedral was partially covered with scaffolding while I was there, so I did not get a complete appreciation of the multi-coloured, multi-shaped domes. To some, they suggest something from the Orient, but they are the culmination of a wholly Russian style that had been developed in building wooden churches.

   St. Basil's was created between 1555 and 1561, replacing an existing church, to celebrate Ivan the Terrible's taking of the Tatar stronghold of Kazan on October 1st, 1552. This was the day of the feast of the intercession, hence its official name, the Pokrovsky (Intercession) Cathedral. The architect is thought to be Posnik Yakovlev, who was blinded by Ivan so that he could never build anything comparable.

   The cathedral owes its usual name to Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, the barefoot holy fool who predicted Ivan's damnation and added (correctly) that the day the army left for Kazan, Ivan would murder one of his sons. Vasily died while Kazan was under siege, and buried in the church which St. Basil's soon replaced.

The cathedral from the south

   The many domes are arranged over nine main chapels: the tall, tent-roofed one in the centre; four big, octagonal towered ones, topped with the four biggest domes, on the north, south, east, and west; and four smaller ones in between. A couple of extra tent roofs were added over the stairways, and another on the north-eastern chapel over Vasily's grave.  Only in the 1670's were the domes patterned and St. Basil's given its present, highly colourful appearance.

   The interior is fairly close, and gives the impression of great age. The walls are painted cement except for the areas in the chapels that have icons displayed. The ceilings under the domes go up quite high. There is a model of the cathedral in the entrance lobby.

   Out in front, there is a statue of the butcher Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, who together raised and led an army that ejected the occupying Poles in 1612.

   My steps now took me towards the place where all Russian roads eventually lead, and where all political power emanates from, The Kremlin.

The Spasskaya Tower