June 10 – Moscow, Russia-Leaving the Ship. Today we are leaving the ship. This day could have been a real trial as our train to Vienna does not leave until almost Midnight. But in looking for a way around that I finally decided that it would be the perfect day for a car, driver and guide. I also reserved a hotel room for us to get ready for the train after our touring is done. Elizabeth and Misha showed up at just after 9AM to take us to the Novodevichy (New Maiden's) Monastery and the Tagansky Bunker. I don't think we'll see too many American tourists today. We usually don't when we're off on our own.
The hotel, the Radisson Blu, is on our way to the monastery so we stopped off there to drop off our luggage and check in. Fortunately a room was ready so we had the luggage taken up and were on our way.
The Novodevichy Monastery has many interesting stories relating to it. It starts out in the normal way for Russia, it was founded by Grand Prince Vasili III in commemoration of the conquest of Smolensk in 1514. It served an important link in the southern defenses of Moscow and is situated on a curve in the Moscow River. Lots of churches and monasteries commemorate an event or person.
This is where the story gets interesting. During the years of the Tsars many women from Royal households were forced to 'take the veil' (become nuns) for a variety of reasons. If the royal wanted to remarry his wife might "decide" to take the veil leaving the poor abandoned Tsar to find another wife. She might decide to do this because she didn't produce a son and heir or just because the Tsar wanted a newer model for his mate. Our old buddy Boris Godunov lived here with his sister, Irina Godunova wife of Tear Feodor I, until Boris became Tsar himself. She had been sent here for failure to produce a son.
Sofia Alekseyevna was confined here after a failed attempt to keep Peter I from asserting his right to the throne. Sofia had ruled as Regent while Peter was a child but at 17 he asserted his right to rule and although Sofia plotted against him even to the point of armed rebellion, she failed to prevent him from becoming Tsar. She was banished to this monastery but not required to take the vows of a nun. From her she planned one last attempt to take the throne which also failed. Her supporters attempted once again to put her on the throne while Peter was out of the country but the uprising was suppressed. Sofia finally took the veil and her supporters were hung outside her window so she could see them. She was put in solitary confinement and even the other nuns couldn't talk to her except on Easter Sunday. She died six years later.
Eudoxia Lopukhina, the first wife of the same Peter I, was chosen for him by his mother. She was to say the least, not a good match. She was banished to a distant monastery but when her grandson, Peter II, took the throne he brought her back to stay here until her death.
The grounds of the monastery are very beautiful. The first thing you see as you approach the entrance is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior. It's built over the main gate. In true Moscow Baroque style it's red with white trim and five gold domes. In contrast to the earlier all whitewashed style.
Speaking of old style, the oldest building on the grounds is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk built in 1524. It's exactly the prototype of the old Russian church. White with one gold dome and four smaller grey domes. It's named for the icon Our Lady of Smolensk. Very plain on the outside it's a feast for the eyes inside. The murals are some of the best I've seen. It's very dark inside but there's bright light streaming through a few very tall and narrow windows that put almost everything in a combination of very bright and very dark areas. The eye doesn't mind this so much but the camera hates it.
Some of the murals were quite unique. They showed people interacting but over their heads were small copies of Our Lady of Smolensk. Some of the murals had as many as three of these icon reproductions. I'm pretty sure the events shown had a good outcome as the result of protection or intervention of Mary in specific the Mary in the Smolensk icon. I've never seen murals that used icons in that way before.
There are several graves inside the church. Sofia's there as well as Eudoxia. I guess if you're brought here and die here, you can stay here.
In between the churches and other buildings there are also graves. There are 95 inside the monastery walls proper. When the open space here was all spoken for they started the cemetery next door. We're going to visit it later. The original Mother Superior's grave is inside as well as the grave of the Mother Superior who supervised the reopening after the Communists were ousted from power.
We walked over to the attached cemetery which is divided into two parts, old and new. The oldest part has the graves of many of the 'heroes' of the Bolshevik Uprising (FNA The Revolution). Most are unheard of in the USA but one grave in this are stood out, that of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin's second wife. It's a fairly tall, square white marble column that is topped by a bust of Nadezhda. The bust is mostly complete but part of it is still in raw rock I believe to symbolize that her live was not completed. Officially she died in 1932 of an illness, but we've heard that line before. It's amazing how many communist officials died of heart attacks after even raising mild suspicions on the part of Stalin about their loyalty. It is much more likely that she committed suicide by shooting herself, although that method is not usual for women. I think it is much more likely that Stalin murdered her or had her murdered. Certainly he was a completely ruthless man and responsible for millions of deaths. It's a melancholy grave site but there are people who remember her because there were several bouquets of fresh flowers on her grave marker.
There's a much more satisfying grave in the new section, Nikita
Kruchov. I remember his behavior at the UN and his threats against America. Even the Russians finally came to see him for what he was. His gravestone is make up of two large blocks of stone, one dark grey, almost black and one white. They are irregular in shape with a lot of angles and flat surfaces. Near the top there's a niche carved half out of each color stone in which there's a bust of Nikita. It rests on a shelf of the white stone but is carved out of the dark stone. The symbolism is clear, they see him as a man that has done some good (for example he built a lot of housing for people) but some bad. His policies caused a lot of hunger and distress for his people. I think, on the whole, they see him as negative and thus had his bust carved from the dark and no the white stone.
Lots of famous people are buried here, Anton Chekhov the author, possibly the best writer of short stories of all time, many ballerinas, composers, and artists. In the military section there are cosmonauts, weapons designers (the grave of the designer of the Russian mobile ballistic launch system has a small model of the launcher on his gravestone), Tupolev (aircraft designer, his gravestone has a carving of an jet aircraft on it), Boris Yeltsin's grave stone is a huge carving of the Russian flag. The red stripe looks like red porphyry, the blue stripe looks like inlaid lapis lazuli, and the white stripe is white marble. It's show as billowing in the wind. At first I thought it was a display and didn't know it was a grave stone until I saw his name carved in the white rock with his birth and death dates.
We have one more stop today and that's at a strange place called Object-42, aka the Tagansky Bunker. This bunker served as a command point for the Soviet nuclear arsenal. It was one of the most secret items the USSR had. It also served as a backup for controlling the long-range nuclear aircraft that were always flying a racetrack circuit heading toward the USA. It has an area of 75,000 square feet and is more than 200 feet underground. It could house up to 3,000 people for 90 days with no assistance from the outside. It had a small hospital, food air purification system and generators for electricity.
All you see on the surface is a small, very plain, neoclassical building on a very small, little used Moscow street. The building is just a shell to cover the elevator gear that takes you down to the working level. Since seeing 600-800 people entering such a small building would have raised suspicions, there are also 2 tunnels connecting it to the nearby Taganskaya metro station. Workers would commute to the complex on special metro trains that ran late at night, walk off the end of the platform and along the tracks to one of the tunnels.
The project was started in 1951 because the USA had the monopoly on nuclear weapons and the USSR feared we would attack them and they would have no response.
Psychological Note: I have long believed that people project their attitudes and personalities on others and the best way to identify what those are is what they worry about. If a parent had an unhealthy, obsessive paranoia about something their teen might do it's probably because that's exactly what they did when they were teenagers. The Soviet's fear that the USA would attack them without provocation just because they had the nuclear advantage is a strong indicator that, if the positions had been reversed, that's exactly what they would have done. In other words, you worry about what others might do because you would do the same thing if you had the chance.
The built it using the same techniques that were used in the construction of their Metro system. Every 24 hours the personnel were changed. In order to prevent combat anxiety the staff worked in short shifts. If it's anything like the US military you work 4 on 4 off so in a 24 hour day you would be on duty 12 hours. This lessens the likelihood of stress problems. By the 1960s the bunker was fully equipped with everything needed in the case of a nuclear attack. In the 1970 they started to have problems with the facility. Concrete was crumbling because it was inadequately protected from water and the station is below the water table. The generators and ventilation systems were breaking down regularly. They decided to undertake a reconstruction project but in 1995 the closed the bunker and declassified it.
The tour begins with an elevator ride down to the bunker level. It's a small elevator, obviously only special people used this method to get in. Most came on the special metro trains and in from the station. When the elevator door opened we were in a long hallway with a curved roof. It was lined with steel places that had 4 inch by 4 inch plates on it in a random pattern. That's when our host, dressed in an army uniform, told us that we were below the water table and the plates were to keep the outside water pressure from collapsing the tunnel. The plates are attached to identical plates by six foot steel rods that are welded to the plates underneath the 4x4 plates. Between the plates it's solid concrete. After walking about 100 feet down the hall we came to a space with a desk, a phone and a signaling device. This would be where the newcomers would be screened for radioactivity or biological comtamination. If everything was in order you would proceed into another tunnel that eventually led you to one of the 4 cylindrically shaped separate spaces that comprise the Object. Each cylinder is about 75 feet from the next and they are all of different lengths. One served as living quarters, kitchen, baths, etc. Another was the missile control bunker. One was a hospital/admin area and the fourth had the generators and other mechanical devices and repair shops.
When we first entered the complex they had a film set up in what was probably a briefing room. They had an old 16mm projector on the table but the actual film was shown on a computer and LCD projector. It was a short piece about the Russian view of the arms and space race of the 60s and 70s. All it left out was the fact that the cost of that race bankrupted their system and was a major contributor to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Next we entered the missile control bunker and walked through several rooms each sealed from the last by heavy steel doors. They still have some of the equipment in the spaces, there were computers, teletype machines, radios and other gear that was impossible to identify. In one of the room our host opened a locker and pulled out an AK-47. He held it out to me and his eyebrows went up when I took it and opened the action to be sure it wasn't loaded, let the bolt slide back into place and pulled the trigger to release the tension on the firing pin spring. I don't think he expected the old, overweight American to know much about firearms. But he was grinning pretty big when I handed it back to him and said, "I've seen a lot of these around." He nodded and winked at me. I believe he's seen a little conflict in his time as well.
When we left that bunker to walk down the tunnel that led to the complex from the Metro station he slammed the door behind us and started a little show. The lights went out for a few seconds, probably not more than 10, after which a Claxton started sounding and the red lights along the hall started flashing. A rather stern voice came on the loudspeaker to inform us that Moscow was under nuclear attack and we should prepare to respond. Of course, I didn't understand a word of it so I was just enjoying the light show. I have to admit it was pretty spooky. Sort of like the scene in the Andromeda Strain when the bugs begin to compromise the stations seals, only in the dark with red lights flashing.
All too soon our time was at and end and Elizabetha and Misha had to take us to the Radisson Blu Hotel to wait for our train to leave.
It was a good day and we saw a lot. Pretty good way to 'wait for the train.'
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