Wednesday: Grand Kremlin Palace, a Business Lunch, Stalin Tour

We were fortunate to be able to visit the Grand Kremlin Palace, newly restored to the imperial elegance of tsarist times to the tune of over a billion dollars. It is only open to one tour group once a month, and even that is sometimes canceled. It was built from 1837 to 1851 during the reign of Nicolas I to emphasize the grandeur of the monarchy. The first level contains private chambers for the imperial family to live in when they visited Moscow. These elaborately decorated rooms were relatively smaller and appeared even smaller because of the enormous columns in the middle of each room. Each room was built in a different architectural style with the columns painted to look like marble in each room. The Empress's dressing room had no mirrors because she didn't want to look at herself in the morning, but she did have a very beautiful malachite fireplace. The outside facade shows 3 levels of windows, but inside there are only 2 levels: the private chambers with 1 level of windows on the lower level, and the upper public chambers with 2 levels of windows because the ceilings are so high.
Upstairs were the state reception halls, enormous halls carefully restored to pre-Soviet decoration. The five halls were named after the five orders or decorations of the Russian Empire. St. Catherine's hall is the fifth. St. George's Hall is used for official ceremonies as well as state and diplomatic receptions. International treaties are signed in St. Vladimir's Hall The last two halls, St. Alexander's Hall and St. Andrew's Hall (also known as throne hall since this is where the Tzars were coronated) had been combined in Soviet times to be used for meetings and conferences of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a statue of Lenin where the tzarist thrones used to be (picture of how the 2 halls looked during Soviet times). On May seventh, the new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, will be inaugurated in St. Andrew's hall. (article) We walked on the red carpet which was already in place for him. (This is the long version of the inauguration, the only one I found which gives you a feel for what the rooms look like inside in addition the cool aerial overview of the Kremlin domes at the start. This appears to be the considerably edited version of the first; I haven't watched either all the way through yet)

From St. Vladimir's hall, we walked into the Palace of Facets, the only hall left of the palace commissioned by Ivan III in 1485. Most houses in this era were made of wood since wood was much more comfortable in the winter. This was one of the first secular buildings made of stone, and since the people who usually worked with stone, made cathedrals, it was built and decorated like a cathedral. In the top corner was a large window built so that the Tzarina could look in and see what was happening. Up to Peter the Great's time, aristocratic women never came out in public. We were not able to tour the Tzarina's Golden Chamber to see the other side of the window, but we did tour the Terem Palace, the imperial palace of the 17th century.

We ate lunch at Le Pain Quotidien where my Monica was talking with the owners to use their cafe for meetings of the International Women's Club. I was very impressed by Monica's business skills. One owner, Gofar, was particularly interesting because she radiated energy, confidence, and competence. She was Armenian and had lived in Iran until she was four. At that point her parents moved to California and she apparently lived in the states until she graduated from college. In 1989 she emigrated to Russia, and then eventually she started a Russian branch of Le Pain Quotidien which has now expanded to five stores. One of the things she mentioned was how much Russia had changed in the almost twenty years she has been here. "When I first came here, they didn't even have toilet paper."

At 4:30 we met at Kievskaya? Metro station outside the Macdonald's for a tour entitled "Stalin's Moscow"(related websites: Stalin and de-Stalinization).







Because Moscow is a very old city, the streets were narrow and twisted. Stalin, who wanted to make Moscow a model communist city, came up with a plan for reconstruction of the city. According to our guide, a French architect was first invited to redesign the city, but he declined, realizing that working for Stalin was dangerous. Stalinist architecture beginning in 1933 was also designed to show the power of communism. For example the seven sisters (a British name, not one used by the Russians) were designed to tower over the older non-communist buildings. Their architectural plans all referred to the non-existent Palace of the Soviets as if it had already been built. The highlight was to be this Palace of the Soviets, built on the site of Christ the Savior Cathedral. A Russian who won the design contest used ideas from his competitors to create the building which was to be the tallest building in the world. The wedding cake tiers on the bottom were to be used as an administrative center and the congress hall. The statue of Lenin on top was to be 100 meters tall, making the building a total of 420 meters high. It took several tries to destroy Christ the Savior Cathedral, but the foundation was finally started in 1937. In 1939, all 16 floors worth of metal already put in place were removed for use in the war effort. After the war it became clear that the rest of the world would not be converting to communism, and the plan for the palace was dropped. This huge pit stared out at the people of Moscow for 21 years until 1958 when it was turned into the largest open-air swimming pool. In the 1990s the swimming pool was removed, and a replica of Christ the Savior Cathedral was rebuilt.

Every point in the architecture had to be approved by Stalin who had a crew of handpicked architects who lived in special housing and would be sent to Siberia if he didn't like their designs. The Moscow Hotel had a mismatched facade because apparently Stalin was given two different designs and signed the paper right in the middle. The architects, not knowing which design Stalin wanted and afraid to build the wrong one, built both. When we were there the original Moscow Hotel was being renovated probably with a symmetric facade, while an exact copy of the mismatched facade was being built outside Red Square.

This building is an example of Stalinist architecture with lots of glass and steel.

Stalin's emphasis on industrialization which brought people into the city and his focus on building monuments rather than housing meant that there was a severe housing shortage. One solution was communal housing which meant that several families lived in one house sharing the kitchen and the bathroom. One guide told us that communal housing was really rather rare; another told us that up to 80% of the housing in St. Petersburg was communal and about 20% of the housing in Moscow. The second guide appears to have been less politically motivated and more honest. These communal houses were not built for ideological reasons but rather as a temporary solution that lasted until the time of Kruschev who built the ugly concrete apartments, a cheap and fast solution to fix a severe housing shortage.

This building is the Defense house with an underground passage to the metro. This apparently was used by Stalin during World War II. It was very difficult to find our way around Moscow because street names were constantly changing. The Soviets had renamed most of the streets and cities after revolutionary figures, and now they appeared to all be changing back Not only did we have to decipher the names written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but we also had to deal with street names that weren't on the map.

We walked past the KGB building (now the FSB) and its affiliated prison supposedly still in use. The joke is that this building has the best view since one can see all the way to Siberia from the inside; many people went in the doors and right to Siberia unless they were executed. It was originally 3 buildings which were put together. Eventually a proper facade was created in the front although in the back, it still sports 2 different facades. The guide asked us not to take pictures of it from the back since she had been interrogated for a half hour when a tourist in her group had taken pictures on a previous tour. Instead we got pictures from the front on the other side of the street.

Next we walked past Christ the Savior Church and across the bridge to House on the Embankment. On the bridge were multiple locks placed by newlyweds to symbolize their union. They keys were thrown over the bridge into the river.

The House of the Embankment was completed in 1931 for apartments for the highest party officials during the Stalin's time. It was self contained with stores, restaurants, and a movie theater. The area where it is built was low and marshy, so it was built on 3,000 piers. The apartments were small and cramped with very plain furniture because building materials were scarce. The kitchen was especially small because residents were expected to eat in the communal dining room. 

Residents reportedly slept with their clothes on so they were prepared when a knock came at the door. Being a top official didn't sound like a very pleasant job. A common scenario was that the dad was taken away and shot, the mom was sent to Siberia, and the children were either sent to a grandparent's house or, if this wasn't possible, to a juvenile criminal colony. One of the apartments has been turned into a small museum dedicated to the people who 'disappeared' during the purges of Stalin. There was a small display about Stalin's second wife who officially died of something normal but purportedly either committed suicide or was shot by Stalin.

And finally, on a more pleasant note, this cow was advertising the chain restaurant My My (pronounced Moo Moo.)