|
Monday, 23.07.2007
Red Square or Sheremetevo 3
For Russians, Red Square is a place of legends. People travel thousands of kilometres by train, just to tread its cobble stones. Have a look around while you’re there: The eyes and mouths of the Russian tourists from the provinces are opened even wider than those of the tourists from Europe and America.
|
|
No other place encapsulates Russian history as does Red Square. Even if only symbolically.
|
The Soviet authorities in particular loaded Red Square with historical significance. Smoking was prohibited here during Soviet times. The square around Lenin’s marble tomb was to be kept free of cigarette butts.
|
It might be that smoking is still formally prohibited on Red Square today. Nobody knows. Nor is it important any more. Red Square’s political significance evaporated along with the hour-long queues to view the Soviet Union’s foremost corpse.
Nowadays, at the entrance to the square, you can have a picture taken of yourself between two smiling doubles: to the left, Ivan the Terrible, to the right Lenin, the immortal revolutionary.
And the area beside St. Basil’s Cathedral, where Mathias Rust landed his Cessna in 1987, rocking the Soviet leadership, is popularly referred to as Sheremetevo 3.
Red Square’s Early History
|
The name: Up to the end of the 15th century, houses stood right next to the Kremlin walls. Later the area they had occupied was called ‘Torg’ (trade). Only in the 17th century did the name Krasnaya Ploshchad appear. ‘Krasnaya’ at that time meant both ‘beautiful’ and ‘red’. Only in the 20th century did the name gradually start to mean ‘Red Square’.
Up to 1812, a 30-metre wide moat protected the Kremlin walls where the Lenin mausoleum currently stands. When the French pulled out in retreat, and the rebuilding of the city started, the moat was filled in.
|
Where Pugachov lost his head
|
Red Square was always political. This was where heralds proclaimed the Tsar’s decrees. This was also where the Tsar’s enemies, such as peasant leader Stenka Rasin, the 2000 Streltsy guards and the Cossack rebel Pugachov were quartered, beheaded or otherwise executed.
|
Peter the Great was rumoured to have himself participated in executing the Streltsy. The executions mostly took place in front of the platform called the Place of Skulls, and sometimes on top it.
|
Public executions later ceased. Now, after the end of the Soviet Union, even the Red Square’s military parades on the 7th November, and the workers’ parades on the 1st May, have been consigned to the scrap heap of history.
But Red Square has never lost its connection to trade. At the start of its history, there were long lines of kiosks, like you see at present-day metro stations. The end of the 19th century then saw the construction of what was at the time Russia’s largest department store: GUM, (state universal store).
|
And Red Square has also always been a place of religion. For a time it was even known as Trinity Square after a church that stood here. In the mid-16th century, Ivan the Terrible erected St. Basil’s Cathedral to commemorate victory over the Tatars. And in 1635, Prince Posharskiy built the Kazan Cathedral here.
|
The little church was built to give thanks to God for liberating Russia from the Polish invaders. The prince had repulsed the Polish invasion with the help of a people’s army led by the humble butcher Minin Sochoruk. The monument in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral honours the memory of these two Russian heroes.
|
Kazan Cathedral was demolished in the 1930s, and then rebuilt in the 1990s.
|
Place of Science
|
Few people realise that Red Square was also a place of science for almost 120 years. This was where teaching started at Moscow’s first university, the second in the entire country, in 1755.
|
Since 1871, the dark red brickwork of the original university building (between the Kazan Cathedral and the Kremlin walls) has housed the Historical Museum. The university was relocated at that time a few hundred yards further to the Mochovaya Ulitsya.
|
What would Red Square be without Stalin! At least one attraction poorer. It was Stalin who forced Lenin, against his will, to move into the air-conditioned crypt with marble walls beside the Kremlin.
|
Lenin himself never wanted to be buried here.
|
After his death, Lenin was provisionally exhibited in a wooden mausoleum. The current building was only erected in 1930, and had a very pragmatic function: It was the platform from which the rulers inspected military parades and processions of workers, peasants and Konsomols (youth activists).
|
On each side, additional stands were built capable of seating 10,000 guests of honour. And the small garden in the shadow of the Kremlin walls turned into a celebrities’ cemetery.
|
Celebrities’ Cemetery
|
Stalin, who had himself installed in a mausoleum next to Lenin’s following his sudden death in 1953, was moved by his successor Khrustchyev to a grave under the Kremlin walls.
|
Other personalities you can meet here: Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Kruspskaya, the German socialist Clara Zetkin, Kalinin, Brezhnev, and the Soviet Union’s answer to Elvis Presley, Yurii Gagarin, the first man in space, who was killed in a plane crash in 1968.
|
The mausoleum and cemetery must be visited together. It is not permitted to take in rucksacks or cameras. Leave these for safekeeping at the tourist entry to the Kremlin (Alexander Garden).
|
Now that the only place you see a permanent queue to enter the mausoleum is on photos, Lenin’s visiting hours have been restricted. But during visiting hours, Red Square is blocked off, as if the clocks were being turned back, and an original Lenin queue quickly mushrooms between the Kremlin wall and the Historical Museum! So quickly hand in all hammers (to safeguard Lenin’s case) and cameras, and join the line.
|
But waiting in line is no longer what it was during Soviet times. Most people are speaking English, German or Japanese, and they know what they are queuing for. A notice-board to the right of the Mausoleum tells you when the current opening times are. Have fun!
|
|
