While in Moscow last year to study Russian theater, I was determined to make time for a visit to the Kremlin. On June 1, having just ridden up the highest escalator on Earth, I emerged from the Moscow metro at the Arbatskaya station and began to walk east toward the Kremlin along Znamenka Street. In a brief moment of sunlight that morning, I noticed a gleam of gold far to my right. Turning toward it, I saw a gigantic unfinished building of brick and poured concrete, topped by golden spires and crosses and framed in the sky by construction cranes.
My first thought was that I was looking at a major renovation of an old church. But as I changed my route and walked block after block to get a better view, I began to appreciate the grandeur of its form and to realize that the vast structure was entirely new.
Nothing in my guidebooks had alerted me to this building project of such prodigious size and religious significance. (Later I did find part of the story in Fodor's Exploring Moscow & St. Petersburg.) Arriving at the fenced-off site after a walk of about 10 blocks, I took photos of the church in the twilight of the overcast morning then resumed my journey to the walls and towers of the Kremlin.
Inside that most beautiful of fortresses I met a young woman of the Russian Orthodox faith who served as my guide and who was the first to tell me the name and the story of the new church. We could see it glowing in the distance from where we stood on the sidewalk in front of the headquarters of the Russian government's executive branch. The sun had come out. With a zoom lens I took my last photo of the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a Kremlin tower looming in the right foreground. The glowing gold spires were meant to resemble candle flames, she told me.
The original Cathedral of Christ the Savior had been constructed over a period of 44 years (as Fodor's informs us) between 1839 and 1883. It was meant as a thanksgiving offering to God for the defeat of Napoleon's invading army in 1812 -- and it served also as a national memorial to the Russian soldiers who fell during Russia's successful counterattack.
The largest single structure in Moscow, the original cathedral displayed itself to Joseph Stalin on the southern horizon every time he stepped outside his Kremlin office throughout the 1920s. While the church had come to symbolize the deep spiritual roots of Russia, Stalin was trying to forge what amounted to a cult for the worship of himself. And he always destroyed any real or suspected competition.
In 1931, Stalin decreed that the Cathedral of Christ the Savior be destroyed so that a state-of-the-art government complex could be built on its site. On December 5, 1931, the explosive charges placed inside the cathedral were detonated. According to my Kremlin guide, the structure swayed but did not collapse. It took a second detonation that day to demolish the cathedral. Over the years, in a kind of biblical symmetry, two attempts were made to start construction of the new government complex on the holy site. Both times the superstructure mysteriously collapsed. At length, in 1958 the huge empty lot was transformed into the world's largest outdoor swimming pool.
Then, shortly after the collapse of the Communist coup in 1993, the Russian government enthusiastically agreed to spend the millions needed to rebuild the Cathedral of Christ the Savior exactly according to its original plans. In 1994 the Moscow Swimming Pool was drained and plowed under and the reconstruction of the cathedral began at once. As soon as the candle-flame spires were in place they were plated with paper-thin gold -- even though the cathedral as a whole may not be prepared for its religious consecration until 2000.
Already any Russian leader who steps outside the Kremlin offices is greeted from the southern horizon with the glowing resurrected symbol of Russia's spiritual strength.
