Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

by Catherine Merridale

  56. Kirichenko, Khram, p. 152.

  57. I. E. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy (Moscow, 1904; repr. 2005), pp. 259–6.

  58. For an idea of these (from the leading architect himself), see N. V. Sultanov, Pamiatnik imperatoru Aleksandru II v Kremle (St Petersburg, 1898).

  59. Konstantin Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi Kreml’ (Moscow, 2007), p. 203.

  60. Putevoditel’ po Moskve (Moscow, 1918), p. 10.

  61. For the scarf, made by the Daniilov factory, see Vedernikova, Oblik, p. 223. As for the gilded youth, see RGADA 1239/24/2990, a 1914 register of fines and reprimands to Kremlin staff, which includes details of fines issued to Kremlin guards for allowing couples to smoke near the monument.

  62. ‘Steny Kremlya: Chto oni takoe, i chto oni mogli by byt’,’ Russkii arkhiv, 3 (1893), pp. 365–73.

  63. Apollinari Vasnetsov published a collection of imaginary views of medieval Moscow in 1914, still available as his album Drevniaia Moskva. See also Shmidt, Entsiklopediia, pp. 158–9. Much of the brothers’ work is still on show at the museum-reserve at Abramtsevo, near Moscow.

  64. Pravoslavnye sviatyni Moskovskogo Kremlia v istorii i kul’ture Rossii (Moscow, 2006), p. 368.

  65. GARF 130/2/160, 17.

  66. Pravoslavnye sviatyni, p. 373.

  67. On the Synod choir, which was sometimes joined by the great star Konstantin Rozov, see Kirichenko, Khram, pp. 190–93. The disappointed commentator was Tolstoy’s widow, Sofiya. See The Diaries of Sofia Tolstaya, trans. Cathy Porter (London, 1985), p. 690 (entry for 12 March 1911).

  68. On their resentment of the term, expressed in 1917, see RGADA 1239/24/3297, 1–3. The Russian word is lakei.

  69. RGADA 1239/24/2893 (on the resident population in 1914) and 1239/24/2985, 90 on arrests.

  70. Diary entry from Tolstaya, Diaries, p. 841; Tolstoy’s account appears in Louise and Aylmer Maude’s translation of Anna Karenina for The World’s Classics (repr. Oxford, 1983), part 5, chapters 1–6, and this quotation is on p. 445.

  71. RGADA 1239/3/19277 gives details of this process in 1857 and RGADA 1239/24/2986 discusses the same preparations for a state visit in 1914. On this occasion, the Kremlin administration was required to find accommodation for just over 2,000 military personnel alone.

  72. Tolstaya, Diaries, p. 14 (29 Jan. 1862).

  73. Snegirev, Dnevnik, vol. 1, p. 297.

  74. Snegirev, Dnevnik, vol. 1, p. 302.

  75. See Zabelin, Dnevniki, pp. 7–23.

  76. Snegirev, Dnevnik, vol. 2, p. 35.

  77. Zabelin, Dnevniki, p. 47.

  78. Zabelin, Dnevniki, pp. 239 and 245.

  79. For Sergei Aleksandrovich’s anti-Semitism, see Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2006), pp. 311–12.

  80. Cited in Wortman, Scenarios, p. 364.

  81. Zabelin, Dnevniki, p. 214.

  82. Konstantin Bykovskii, cited in William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1997), p. 423.

  83. A record of its publications was edited in 1915 by V. K. Trutovskii as Spisok izdanii Imperatorskogo Moskovskogo Obshchestva po 50 let ego deiatel’nosti. See also Shchenkov, Pamiatniki, p. 249.

  84. For an account, see I. Mashkov, ed., Otchet po restavratsii Bol’shogo Moskovskago Uspenkago Sobora (Moscow, 1910), pp. 6–23. For the developing criticism, which was led by I. E. Grabar, see the first report of the Commission for the Preservation of Historic and Artistic Treasures, reprinted in V. N. Kuchin, ed., Iz istorii stroitel’stva sovetskoi kul’tury 1917–1918. Dokumenty i vospominaniia (Moscow, 1964), pp. 149–53.

  85. On the mosaics, and also other problems with the interior restoration, see B. Iu. Brandenburg et al., Arkhitektor Ivan Mashkov (Moscow, 2001), pp. 81–4. On the church’s attitude to the building more generally, see RGADA 1239/24/3082.

  86. Zabelin, Dnevniki, pp. 91–2.

  87. See Zabelin, Dnevniki, pp. 17–18.

  88. On the Kremlin trove, see T. D. Panova, ‘Arkheologicheskoe izuchenie territorii Moskovskogo kremlia v kontse XVIII–XX veke’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIV, esp. pp. 351–2.

  89. Zabelin, Dnevniki, p. 112.

  90. For a Soviet-era account, see V. M. Raushenbakh, ‘Rossiia v 1861–1917g’ in Mezhdunarodnyi sovet muzeev: Konferentsiia komitet muzeev arkheologii i istorii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1970), pp. 3–11.

  91. These finds were lovingly explored in Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, pp. 82–3.

  92. Zabelin, Dnevniki, p. 91.

  93. Panova, ‘Arkheologicheskoe’, p. 350.

  94. N. P. Likhachev, Biblioteka i arkhiv moskovskikh gosudarei v XVI stoletii (St Petersburg, 1894), p. 4.

  95. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, pp. 82–3.

  96. Panova, ‘Arkheologicheskoe’, pp. 352–3.

  97. N. A. Skvortsov, Arkheologiia i topografiia Moskvy: Kurs lektsii (Moscow, 1913), p. 80; Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 65.

  98. Likhachev, Biblioteka, p. 1.

  99. S. P. Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml’ v starinu i teper’, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1912 and 1918), vol. 2, pp. 202–6; Likhachev, Biblioteka, p. 5.

  100. Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 204–5.

  101. Likhachev, Biblioteka, pp. 2–5.

  102. For some examples, see Likhachev, op. cit. and also A. I. Sobolevskii, ‘Eshche raz o kremlevskom tainike i tsarskoi biblioteke’, Arkheologicheskie izvestiia i zametki, no. 12 (1894), pp. 400–403; idem (1894), pp. 33–44; see also S. O. Shmidt, ed., Biblioteka Ivana Groznogo. Rekonstruktsiia i bibliograficheskoe opisanie (Moscow, 1982).

  103. Panova, ‘Arkheologicheskoe’, p. 353.

  104. The Moscow Duma was set up under a statute of 1870. By 1905 it had 160 deputies and met in splendid premises on Voskresenskaia Square. See Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, pp. 27–8.

  105. Two reprints appeared in 2005 alone. The book is also available in at least three versions as a PDF.

  106. Moskovskii kreml’ v starinu i teper’. The volumes appeared between 1912 and 1918. They were reprinted in 2011.

  107. A list of residents appears in RGADA 1239/24/2985.

  108. Built in 1900; see Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, p. 21.

  109. Palace staff uniforms are debated in RGADA 1239/24/2894 and 2901.

  110. Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi, pp. 275–81.

  111. Zabelin, Dnevniki, pp. 213–15.

  112. Letters of Nicholas and Marie, p. 188.

  113. Letters of Nicholas and Marie, pp. 188 and 203.

  114. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishchikh vremen, vol. 3, pp. 97–100.

  115. The best examples are printed in Vasnetsov, Drevniaia Moskva.

  116. See Wortman, Scenarios, pp. 334–43.

  117. The phrase ‘ideal Christian state’ occurs on the first page of text in Nicholas II’s coronation album. Sviashchennoe koronovanie … Nikolaia Aleksandrovicha, vol. 1, p. 1.

  118. I. Tokmakov, Istoricheskoe opisanie vsekh koronatsii rossiiskikh tsarei, imperatorov i imperatrits (Moscow, 1896). The picture of Riurik is on p. vii; there are equally beguiling ones of St Vladimir of Kiev and Moscow’s Vasily II.

  119. Sviashchennoe koronovanie … Nikolaia Aleksandrovicha, vol. 1, p. 245.

  120. Letters of Nicholas and Marie, pp. 115–16.

  121. The Times, 10 May 1896, p. 3.

  122. The Graphic, Saturday 6 June 1896. More recent casualty estimates would suggest between 1,000 and (at most) 2,000 fatalities.

  123. Illus; Sviashchennoe koronovanie … Nikolaia Aleksandrovicha, vol. 1, pp. 176, 284–5.

  9 ACROPOLIS

  1. For the Paris event, see Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (London, 2010), pp. 317–18 and Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring (London, 1989), pp. 10–16.

  2. For contrasting views of the ballet’s significance, see Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, NJ, 1997), pp. 49 and 378 and Homans, Apollo’s Angels, p. 312.

  3. Critics
’ comments from A. V. Krusanov, Russkii avangard, 1907–1932: istoricheskii obzor v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1996), vol. 1, pt 2, pp. 196–8; see also The Knave of Diamonds in the Russian Avant Garde, trans. Kenneth MacInnes (St Petersburg, 2004). For the artists, see Aristarkh Lentulov, Katalog vystavki (Moscow, 1968) and http://www.foto-a.narod.ru/collection/polonchuk/ropot/ropot_dok_3.htm (accessed 23 Jan. 2013) for a facsimile of the 1914 exhibition catalogue.

  4. Cited from Norbert Lynton, Tatlin’s Tower: Monument to Revolution (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2009), p. 46. Malevich’s views on art can also be found in his The Non-Objective World, ed. Howard Dearstyne (Mineola, NY, 2003), and see also Charlotte Douglas, Kazimir Malevich (London, 1994).

  5. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams (Oxford, 1991), p. 170.

  6. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei v trekh tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow, 2000), p. 33.

  7. Evgenii Tret’iakov, ‘Otkrytie metro’, Moskva, 9 (September 2007), p. 137.

  8. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, pp. 21–2 and 27.

  9. Cited in Karl Schlögel, Moscow (London, 2005), p. 18.

  10. Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 56–7.

  11. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, p. 23.

  12. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, p. 108. See also J. N. Westwood, Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History 1812–1992, 4th edn (Oxford, 1993), pp. 210–11.

  13. V. N. Kuchin, ed., Iz istorii stroitel’stva sovetskoi kul’tury 1917–1918. Dokumenty i vospominaniia (Moscow, 1964), p. 332.

  14. RGADA 1239/24/3012, 99–105.

  15. RGADA 1239/24/3012, 20 and 28.

  16. Westwood, Endurance, p. 212. On the legendary courage of Russian troops, see C. Merridale, Ivan’s War (London, 2005), pp. 11–12.

  17. RGADA 1239/24/3012, 106.

  18. The most vivid account is still O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy (London, 1996), pp. 307–44.

  19. The Russian calendar makes the events of this year more than usually difficult to follow. Nicholas abdicated on 15 March according to the new (and current) calendar, but in Russia at the time the date was calculated differently, and lagged twelve days behind the European norm.

  20. Allan Monkhouse, Moscow, 1911–1933 (London, 1933), pp. 59–61.

  21. Eduard M. Dune, Notes of a Red Guard (Urbana, Ill. and Chicago, 1993), pp. 32–4.

  22. Dune, Red Guard, p. 35.

  23. RGADA 1239/24/3230, 2.

  24. RGADA 1239/24/3230, 5.

  25. RGADA 1239/24/3297, 1–3.

  26. RGADA 1239/24/3297, 31.

  27. Near Trubnaia Square. For an account, see V. S. Kundius’ memoir in Kuchin, Iz istorii, pp. 298–9.

  28. See I. E. Grabar, Pis’ma, 1917–1941 (Moscow, 1977), p. 15. See also V. P. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu (Moscow, 1983), p. 232. On the notion of an acropolis, see also Elena Gagarina, writing in Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XV, p. 200; Konstantin Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi Kreml’ (Moscow, 2007), p. 38.

  29. A. S. Shchenkov, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury v Sovetskom Soiuze (Moscow, 2004), pp. 14–15.

  30. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, pp. 84–5.

  31. For a short biography, see http://www.kreml.ru/ru/history/ReferenceData/guidance-museum/Trutovskiy (accessed 6 June 2012).

  32. RGADA 1239/24/3272, 1–2.

  33. A. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers: Conversations with Felix Chuev (Chicago, 1993), p. 98.

  34. For the view of a conservative Moscow historian, see Terence Emmons, trans. and ed., Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e (London, 1988), pp. 72–3.

  35. Monkhouse, Moscow, p. 67.

  36. John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 226.

  37. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, p. 228.

  38. Episkop Nestor Kamchatskii, ‘Rasstrel’ Moskovskogo Kremlia’, repr. Moskovskii zhurnal, 4 (1992), p. 24.

  39. A. N. Kashevarov, Pravoslavnaia rossiiskaia tserkov’ i sovetskoe gosudarstvo, 1917–1922 (Moscow, 2005), p. 87.

  40. See Novaia zhizn’, 3 November 1917. This translation cited from Reed, Ten Days, pp. 220–21.

  41. Emmons, Got’e, p. 80.

  42. Monkhouse, Moscow, p. 68.

  43. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, p. 234.

  44. Reed, Ten Days, pp. 227–30.

  45. A. Abramov, U Kremlevskoi steny (Moscow, 1981), p. 34; Kashevarov, Pravoslavnaia rossiiskaia, p. 90.

  46. Abramov, Kremlevskoi steny, p. 52.

  47. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, p. 226.

  48. Episkop Nestor, ‘Rasstrel’, pp. 27–9.

  49. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, p. 228.

  50. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’, p. 231; for Malevich, see Shchenkov, Pamiatniki … v Sovetskom Soiuze, p. 49.

  51. S. V. Mironenko, ed., Moskovskii kreml’ tsitadel’ Rossii (Moscow, 2008), p. 218.

  52. P. D. Malkov, Zapiski komendanta kremlia (Moscow, 1968), p. 118.

  53. Grabar, Pis’ma, pp. 22–3.

  54. Joel A. Bartsch and the curators of the Moscow Kremlin museums, eds., Kremlin Gold: 1000 Years of Russian Jewels and Gems (New York, 2000), p. 62.

  55. Decree on the Kremlin monuments, 5 January 1918, reprinted in Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 55; see also Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 185.

  56. Decree of April 1918 in Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 69.

  57. Testimony of V. C. Kundius in Kuchin, Iz istorii, pp. 301–2.

  58. Shchenkov, Pamiatniki … v Sovetskom Soiuze, p. 49; Emmons, Got’e, p. 91.

  59. Emmons, Got’e, p. 102.

  60. Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 63; Shchenkov, Pamiatniki … v Sovetskom Soiuze, p. 49.

  61. Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 65.

  62. On the commission, see Oranovsky, ‘Kreml’ akropol’, in Kuchin, Iz istorii, pp. 317–56.

  63. Shchenkov, Pamiatniki … v Sovetskom Soiuze, p. 17.

  64. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 218.

  65. Oranovsky’s testimony in Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 322.

  66. The letter is reproduced in Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 264.

  67. Emmons, Got’e, p. 121.

  68. Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 157.

  69. V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow, 1965), p. 210. See also Malkov, Zapiski, p. 116.

  70. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 185.

  71. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, pp. 122–3.

  72. Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000), p. 343.

  73. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, p. 197.

  74. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 194.

  75. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, pp. 200–205.

  76. Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 80.

  77. Malkov, Zapiski, p. 117.

  78. Malkov, Zapiski, p. 116.

  79. Malkov, Zapiski, p. 113.

  80. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, p. 211.

  81. Service, Lenin, p. 345.

  82. On the lift, see GARF R-130/2/199, 17; for the plumbing, see Aleksandr Kolesnichenko, ‘Mesto propiski: Moskva’, Argumenty i fakty, 17 June 2009.

  83. Interview, Moscow, September 2008; see also S. O. Shmidt, ed., Moskva: Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1997), p. 401.

  84. Resis, Molotov Remembers, p. 98.

  85. Shchenkov, Pamiatniki … v Sovetskom Soiuze, pp. 20 and 57.

  86. Leon Trotsky, My Life (Harmondsworth, 1984), p. 368.

  87. G. Bordiugov (compiler), ‘Kak zhili v kremle v 1920 godu: Materialy kremlevskoi komissii TsK RKP(b)’, in V. A. Kozlov, ed., Neizvestnaia Rossiia (Moscow, 1992), vol. 2, p. 267. The material cited here gives a figure of 1,112, which other sources confirm.

  88. Mironenko, Moskvoskii kreml’, p. 210. Roughly half of the total were civilians, the rest were soldiers or members of the security forces. See Bordiugov, ‘Kak zhili v kremle’, p. 267.

  89. Trotsky, My Life, p. 366.

  90. Trotsky,
My Life, pp. 366–7.

  91. GARF R-130/2/160, 203.

  92. GARF R-130/2/199, 204; see also Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 210.

  93. GARF R-130/2/199, 203.

  94. Malkov, Zapiski, p. 120.

  95. GARF R-130/2/162.

  96. Ia. N. Shchapov, ed., Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i kommunisticheskoe gosudarstvo, 1917–1941 (Moscow, 1996), p. 39.

  97. GARF R-130/2/160, 7.

  98. GARF R-130/2/160, 17.

  99. Cited by T. A. Tutova in Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XX, p. 305. For the whole incident, see her ‘Trotskaia protiv Stalina. Piat’ pisem k Leninu ob Oruzhenoi palate’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XX, pp. 298–322.

  100. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 285.

  101. Dune, Red Guard, p. 86.

  102. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, pp. 134–5.

  103. Trotsky, My Life, pp. 366–7. See also Dune, Red Guard, p. 86.

  104. Bordiugov, ‘Kak zhili v kremle’, pp. 265 and 270.

  105. Tamara Kondratieva, Gouverner et nourrir: du pouvoir en Russie, XVIe–XXe siècles (Paris, 2002), p. 174.

  106. Service, Lenin, p. 368.

  107. Cited in D. Volkogonov, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire: Political Leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev (London, 1998), p. 63.

  108. Malkov, Zapiski, pp. 159–60.

  109. On the garage, see Argumenty i fakty, 23 March 2011 (‘Shef v Kreml’! Istorii iz zhizni garazha osobogo naznacheniia’); Malkov, Zapiski, p. 109; Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, p. 210; on the Delaunay-Belleville, see also Sean McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist (New Haven, Conn., 2008), p. 39. The tsar had owned a fleet of his favourite marque, so there were a few replacements at Lenin’s disposal.

  110. Istoriia Moskvy s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3, p. 127.

  111. Kondratieva, Gouverner et nourrir, p. 101; Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, p. 225.

  112. For a discussion, see C. Merridale, Night of Stone (London, 2000), p. 129.

  113. Kuchin, Iz istorii, pp. 25–6. See also A. Mikhailov, ‘Programma monumental’noi propagandy’, Iskusstvo, 4 (1968), pp. 31–4 and idem, 5 (1968), pp. 39–42.

  114. Malkov, Zapiski, pp. 218–19.

  115. By July 1918. See the report of the State Control Commission in Kuchin, Iz istorii, p. 105.

  116. Mikhailov, ‘Programma monumentalnoi’, Iskusstvo, 4, p. 34; see also Kuchin, Iz istorii, pp. 32–7 for resolutions reflecting Lenin’s impatience.