We returned to the Kremlin in the morning to walk around the collection inside. Some stuff was really interesting, but most of us were still just so tired that it was hard to pay attention. We saw some armor, a lot of cool gifts given to the tsars, random decorated bible frames, china and silverware, these amazing cups and challises made of seashells, this glass with a bell and whistle that was used for punishment for latecomers to parties where you’d have to drink three shots of vodka and then be able to blow the whistle in the cup (which only works if the cup is drained) and if not, drink three shots all over again. There were beautiful royal carriages and winter sleds, including the one Elizabeth took all the way from Petersburg to Moscow (in order to be crowned there) in a 3 day journey, led by 23 horses, going through 1500 horses over the 600k, Peter the Great’s boots (which were huge, even if he did wear several pairs of shoes inside his boots since he was so self conscious about his relatively small feet), lots of dresses (including Catherine’s which progressively got bigger and bigger the older she got), a 6 kilo coronation dress, the ceremonial chainmail of various Romanov’s, the armor and bible of Charles the 12th of Sweden which Peter got a hold of while at war, also various Russian helmets that are domed to look like those on the tops of Russian churches to mark them as soldiers of Christ. We also saw the ceremonial double throne and crowns of Peter and his brother Ivan who were made joint tsars of Russia at the request of Peter’s controlling half sister (who would stand behind the throne in this little corner where the fabric was thin to instruct the little tsars about what to say). Eventually she found herself in serious trouble when she tried to organize the Streltsy against Peter and ended up imprisoned in a convent (which we went and visited and will be covered later).
After exiting the Kremlin museum place we walked over to where there are a cluster of a dozen or so churches reopened in 1925 for tourism.
Ivan the Terrible was buried in one of the churches here in order so people would actually believe he had died (since people were still so terrorized by the mere thought of him). Some of the churches were really interesting because the graveyard was essentially inside the church, with all these important tsars, tsarinas, and their children literally buried inside the church with their tombs poking up around the church floor. We saw the Annunciation Cathedral, which is where the royal family would go for coronations and baptisms (built in 1474, if I remember). Before each coronation the frescoes were washed and repainted, so there are all these interesting layers of work on the walls. All in all there are fragments from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries and something like 249 individual compositions. I really liked some of the depictions of Revelation and how different and far less horrifying they are compared to most other paintings I’d seen with the same theme (take John Martin for an example). In all of the domes were enormous depictions of Christ peering down. The domes were very dark so you’d have to stand below them for a few moments letting your eyes adjust to see the candle smoke darkened faces that seemed to appear and float down mysteriously. I can’t imagine having had to paint them. The ones in this church were really neat though because in each dome was a depiction of Christ at different stages of his life (or so it seemed), including one of a white haired older Christ, a Christ who never lived and looks more like the father than the son.
Random church pictures:
So we went to several more churches in the cluster and then made our way over to the Tsar’s Bell, which weighs 200 tons and unfortunately cracked in the 1300’s so was never able to be lifted up into this bell tower. It has been sitting here in this square pretty much ever since.
Crazy enormous canon thing that symbolically protects the Kremlin:
Next we wandered back over to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The place is huge and can fit up to 10,000 people for a service. The history of the cathedral is pretty fascinating and by tracing its history you can really see certain aspects in the development of Russia and political and social discourse and trends in Russia. It was symbolically destroyed (1931) to build a ridiculously tall monument of Lenin (415 meters tall or something crazy like that) called Palace of the Soviets, but due to money problems and other issues like flooding, the place was never built and the site was instead turned into a gigantic public swimming pool (1958) that my professors remember going to as children. The church was rebuilt in the 90’s as an act of repentence.
It’s a nice looking building from the outside, although I wasn’t much impressed by the interior, which felt a lot like a regular Catholic church or something. The interior smelled amazing, as most of these Russian churches do, but was much more sterile, bare, and open like a big barn or something. There was much more marble and fewer frescoes, and it felt somehow official. Large church functions are held here and I think Putin was even blessed here by the Church patriarch or something like that (which really angered people, seeing as he has a pretty dark past and a lot of people don’t actually believe he’s a true Christian).
Downstairs is a smaller room used for daily church services and smaller functions. It was also pretty sterile and uncomfortable. You felt like you were more in a museum than a church. We saw the icon of our Lady of Kazan and some gaudy and hideous icons decorated with pink and pearls and amber. So after some more wandering around we got ready to head back.
Church (check out Soviet style skyscraper in the background):
Here's the church over on the right and this ridiculous monument thing. Russia tried to give it to the US (as a kind of statue of liberty thing), but we refused it. It was supposed to be Columbu. So to they just made it into Peter the Great and put it up in Moscow. Lame.
Our tour guide was an interesting woman who grew up in the suburbs of Moscow and obviously had had a rough time of it. She kept reminding us not to ignore history and how difficult it was for her to discover that everything she had been told about the world and her own country was partially a lie, about the mental wound and necessary shift in one's perception that that created, and how you must learn to accept both the good and the bad aspects of history and somehow reconcile them to each other. Such an idea of reconciliation was interesting to watch architecturally in the city, seeing as Golstein’s real estate agent friend told us that 60 more skyscrapers were planned in various styles, some of which are still in the style of the Stalinist ones. It is also interesting how the Soviet star that bedecks the tops of many of these skyscrapers was not replaced after the collapse of the soviet union, perhaps with the idea that one cannot completely and so simply wipe away one’s past.
So after our historical perspectives lecture we ended up at the New Tretyakov Gallery, which has all the modern stuff. We only had two hours, so I wasn’t able to see everything, which was fine because the art work seemed to be getting worse and worse the newer it got. I didn’t even see the second floor, which was all the very modern stuff, but from what I heard I’m happy I spent more time with Larionov, Goncharova, Chagall, Mashkov, Falk, Filonov, Kandinsky, Malevich, Mituvich, Altman, and Petrov-Vodkin. It was nice to see a few more Filonov’s since he is little known outside of Russia (although has become more popular of late), seeing as he doesn’t fit so cleanly within the usual development of modern art. His works are rather disturbing, but their construction is really remarkable. His paintings are so detailed and intricate and have this musical use of color and pattern. They’re not quite lyrical but have a strange grotesque beauty and a fantastical quality that makes you look deeper and deeper into the painting so your eye is roaming and getting caught on one little pen or brush stroke till all you’re seeing are shaky lines and confusing blotches. His paintings are interesting at all different distances, whether close up or far away when the images and colors fuse and fragment in bizarre ways to expose geometrical figures and contorted, demonic faces emerging out of bruised colors. CRAZY. It was nice to see Petrov-Vodkin’s “Bathing the Red Horse,” which is somewhat inspired by the image of St George killing the dragon (Moscow’s patron saint and the image on the back of kopek pieces). It’s such a bizarre painting and it was great to see in all its enormity and vibrance. We saw the Black Square of course, which really isn’t impressive at all and is so poorly painted that the paint is cracking through and the square is no longer even black. It’s also much smaller than I imagined it to be. Maybe if it had been like 6 feet length and width it would’ve been more impressive. But I guess I’m glad I saw it, seeing as it’s now a cultural cliché that one should be familiar with and as much a symbol of Russian art as icons.
You’re not supposed to take pictures in any of the galleries, hence I have no pictures, save one… This painting was so wretched that I had to take a picture of it. It’s called Phenomena by Pavel Tchelitchew. It’s so gross and random and weird and looks like the bizarre fantasies of a drugged out 15 year old boy with too much time, too many disturbed hormonal cravings, and a lot of shrooms. Enjoy!
After the gallery we went back to the hotel for a little while. Alex and Tania were going out to meet old friends and family. Alex lived in Moscow for four years as a child when her parents were foreign correspondents here for the Washington Post. So she went to visit her old nanny. Tania went to meet her grandfather’s cousin who lives not far from Moscow and whom she’d never met. Zach, Joel (who made his way to Moscow somehow), David, and Michelle went over to the Arbat, Ashley stayed in to do work or something, and Britt, Lydia, Alisa and I went out to eat at this great European place. It was wonderful to have some good, healthy, non-sickening food for once. And also to have somewhat timely service and wine (since I guess the restrictions hadn’t hit Moscow yet).
Scary metro map:
It was a really beautiful night and nice to have just a small group of people to hang out with. I liked getting to know Britt better since I hadn’t really spent much time with her till then. We walked around quite a bit after dinner, and sat around in this little park with a rather melancholy monument to Pushkin that faces the first McDonald’s in Russia (’91 or ’92 I want to say), and is the hip place to hang out, drink, and smoke pot among the Moscow youth. We eventually found a little place to get desert, which was clean and nice, even if insanely expensive. Britt ordered some fruit cup thing, which ended up costing about 20 dollars, because they for some reason charged by the berry. Ridiculous. I guess I’m starting to believe that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world, even if I didn’t earlier.
After walking around all day and night, Moscow definitely feels more like New York, cleaner but loud, rich, confident--less depressed, more in this century, whereas Petersburg feels somewhat lodged in the 19th century in certain ways. It’s strange that even though Moscow was restored to its previous place as the capital of Russia, with its more ancient and native Russian heritage and more central place in the center of Russia geographically, the city feels rather unRussian and more like its own country with its own pace and way of life in comparison to the rest of Russia. If St Petersburg represented a new turning point as the capital of a western looking Russia, one that faced the enlightenment, technology, civilization and art, as this strangely peripheral yet central city, now with Moscow returned to its former place as the capital of Russia under the Soviet regime, and its current surreal and eclectic combination of influences, one has to wonder what the city may say about Russia’s past, present, and future. Stalin’s presences is still so palpable here in the mountainous architecture built to make you feel meaningless, the gigantic prospects that you must cross underground, the cowering 17th century churches in the shadows of apartment complexes and government buildings. Even so, with the growth of capitalism, there’s a new kind of optimism here that one can sense, an optimism that is lacking in Petersburg. Russia has been split in so many different ways, from the religious schism, Peter the Great, the Slavophile Westernizer rivalry, and now the injection of neon capitalism in this gray, Soviet city.
Moscow skyline:
It’s strange to look at Moscow and see how people deal with their past and the fact that so many fed into the same lies, and some have yet to deny it while others have completely embraced the west in this more interior city. St Petersburg feels older, more slow, literary, thoughtful, still wounded and in a state of slow decay; one wonders if Moscow is now pointing the way to Russia’s future. The sad thing is, if you just take the subway or a cab out into the suburbs and city limits people’s lives have improved little, like Tania’s relative, who is extraordinarily poor like many people her age who is too old and ill to work anymore and thus relies upon her insufficient pension. For many, things seem about the same or worse than during the Soviet Union. It’s crazy to think about how little life has changed in the country for many Russians, just by virtue of how big Russia is and how difficult it is to control. One wouldn’t necessarily guess, but despite having a controlling communist government with a seemingly omnipotent and omnipresent ruler, Russia was remarkably uncontrolled and undergoverned, and still is. Compared to countries like the US where government is everywhere and everything is so controlled and regulated, Russian government may still be a little frightening but is also so incapable when you think how they don’t even have the power to collect taxes. Anyway… Day 3 will be posted separately.
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