How the Church of Christ the Savior was built, destroyed and restored. Capital Mayors and the Church: from the Beginning of the 20th Century to the Great Patriotic War
Heard from a parent
How my parent broke
Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
A. Galich, 1968
Exactly 76 years ago, on December 5, 1931, the Bolsheviks blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Volkhonka to build (fortunately, unsuccessful due to the war) in its place a new, Soviet "temple" - a monstrously huge Palace of Soviets .
"Yesterday, most of the building of the former church on the Palace of the Soviets Square was demolished." The manager of the Dvoretsstroy trust, comrade Linkovsky, told us the following:
“Exactly at 12 o’clock in the afternoon, the first explosion was heard: one of the pylons, on which the large dome of the building was held, collapsed. internal walls and part of the outside. The remains of the building will be demolished in a few days.
Before the explosions, a large preparatory work. In particular, seismographic devices were installed around the building, which noted the slightest fluctuations in the soil: special "visors" were arranged to protect against possible scattering of fragments. As a result - not a single accident.
The material of the building (brick, facing stone) remained mostly intact; it will be used on various buildings. One of these days "Dvoretsstroy" starts the removal of bricks and facing stone from the square of the Palace of Soviets. It is supposed to finish all this work in 2 months. At the beginning of February next year, the area of the Palace of Soviets will be cleared."
Explosion of the Cathedral of the Savior, 1931
in a few hours, what had been created for almost half a century was destroyed:
Memoirs of cameraman V. Mikoshi, filming the demolition of the XXC:
"For the first time I saw a golden dome shining like the sun - long before the appearance of Moscow, where I went by train to take exams at the university.
Cathedral of Christ the Savior! - said elderly woman standing next to the window, and crossed herself. The temple dominated the city and, together with Ivan the Great, created the main silhouette of Moscow.
After 3 years, I managed to shoot through the float of an amphibious plane far below, on the banks of the Moscow River, the Cathedral of Christ. Then I was a newsreel operator. Now I hold this picture in my hands and cannot believe that there is a big puddle in its place.
I go back almost 60 years ago. In the middle of the summer of 1931 I was summoned by the director of the Newsreel, V. Iosilevich.
I decided to entrust you, Mikosha, with a very serious job! It will only be better if we talk less about it! Understood? There is an order from above! - and he raised his index finger above his head. Looking very intently into my eyes, he said:
It was ordered to demolish the Temple of Christ. You will shoot! It seemed to me that he himself did not believe in such a monstrous order. I don't know why, I suddenly asked him a question:
- And what, Isaac in Leningrad will also be demolished?
- I do not think! However, I don't know! I don't know... So, - from tomorrow you will conduct film surveillance of its disassembly, filming as detailed and detailed as possible all the work from its fence to the very end, understand? "Do not spare cartridges." As you understand, this is for a long time, I hope for you! No fluff!
When I said at home that they would demolish the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, my mother did not believe it.
It can't be! He decorates our Moscow - shines over it like the sun. What marble sculptures, golden salaries, icons, frescoes on the walls! How many names: Surikov, Kramskoy, Semiradsky, Vereshchagin, Makovsky, Klodt, Loganovsky ... In the galleries under the temple there is a marble chronicle of victories Patriotic War with the names of fallen heroes. Indeed, in honor of the victory of Russian weapons, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was erected. All the Russian people donated their last savings to him. From poverty to masters. God bless!..
For the first few minutes, I couldn't even work. Everything was so monstrous that I stood in front of the camera in amazement and could not believe my eyes. Finally, he pulled himself together and started filming.
Through the wide-open bronze doors - they did not take out, they dragged out wonderful marble sculptures with loops around their necks. They were simply thrown from high steps to the ground, into the mud. Hands, heads, wings of angels were broken off. Marble high reliefs were cracked, porphyry columns were crushed. With steel cables, they pulled golden crosses from small domes with the help of powerful tractors. Priceless marble wall cladding brought from Belgium and Italy collapsed with jackhammers. Unique picturesque paintings on the walls of the cathedral perished.
From day to day, like ants, swarming around the unfortunate cathedral, paramilitary detachments. They were allowed through the construction fence only with a special pass. My assistant Mark Khataevich and I filled out a long questionnaire before receiving the pass, listing all the relatives of the living and long dead.
The most beautiful park in front of the temple instantly turned into a chaotic construction site - with thousand-year-old lindens felled and uprooted, Persian lilacs cut down by caterpillars of the rarest breed of tractors and roses trampled into the mud.
Time passed, the domes were bare of gold, the picturesque wall painting was lost, a cold wind with snow rushed into the empty gaps of huge windows. Working battalions in Budenovkas began to bite into the three-meter walls. But the walls resisted stubbornly. Jackhammers broke. Neither crowbars, nor heavy sledgehammers, nor huge steel chisels could overcome the resistance of the stone. The temple was made up of huge sandstone slabs, which during laying were poured instead of cement molten lead. For almost the whole of November, military battalions worked hard and could not do anything with the walls. They didn't give in. Then the order came. A handsome engineer told me in great secrecy:
Stalin was outraged by our impotence and ordered to blow up the cathedral. He didn’t even consider the fact that he was in the center of a residential area of Moscow ...
Only the force of a huge explosion and not one - December 5, 1931 turned a huge, grandiose creation of Russian art into a pile of rubble and debris.
Mom cried for a long time at night. Silent about the temple. She only said once:
Fate will not forgive us for what we have done!
- Why us?
- And to whom? To all of us... Man must build.. And to destroy is the work of the Antichrist..."
poet N.V. Arnold, like many Muscovites, mourned the cathedral: "Farewell, keeper of Russian glory, According to the brilliant idea of Ton Davydov, Figner and Seslavin, Over this pride of Moscow I feel sorry for artists and architects, Nothing is sacred to us! | .. and the "court" poet Demyan Bedny rejoiced - fooled around: "A joke is walking around Moscow: No, I remember - And he, and everything connected with him, the end! | ..and played the fool with might and main:: "From the ringing of bells All over Moscow: doo-doo! doo-doo! It came: the godless scourge dared - Like a bird flying out of a cage |
The manifesto on the construction of the church was signed by Alexander I on December 25, 1812, when the last Napoleonic soldiers left Russia: As a commemoration of Our gratitude to the Providence of God, which saved Russia from the death that threatened her, We set out to create a church in the name of the Savior Christ in Our Mother See of Moscow, a detailed decree about which will be announced in due time.
The international open competition, however, was held only two years later. The project of 28-year-old Carl Witberg, not even an architect by education, won, moreover, a Lutheran. However, in order to approve the project, he converted to Orthodoxy. His project was three times the size of the current temple, with a pantheon of the dead, a colonnade of 600 captured cannons, and other impressive details. It was supposed to be placed on the Sparrow Hills, where one of the out-of-town royal residences used to be. A huge amount was allocated for all this: 16 million rubles from the treasury plus public donations.
Alas, Witberg underestimated the peculiarities of the national construction. He had no managerial experience, he did not conduct proper control, he filled out the outfits with a pencil, he was trusting to the contractors.
As a result, even the zero cycle was not completed in seven years, and the commission later calculated the waste for almost a million rubles.
Witberg was sent into exile in Vyatka "for abuse of the emperor's trust and for damages to the treasury." And the construction of the temple on the Sparrow Hills was abandoned, according to the official version, due to the insufficient reliability of the soil.
Nicholas I, who had ascended the throne by that time, decided not to hold any competitions, but simply appoint Konstantin Ton as the architect of the temple, buy buildings on Chertolye (Volkhonka) and demolish them for the temple. At the same time, the Alekseevsky convent located there was also demolished, including a unique two-tented temple. By the way, in the new version of the XXC, the Church of the Transfiguration was built in memory of the monastery.
The solemn laying of the cathedral took place on the day of the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino - in August 1837, and active construction started only two years later and lasted almost 44 years. The total cost of the temple reached almost 15 million rubles. It is noteworthy that until 1917 the main patronal feast of the church, Nativity of Christ, was celebrated by Orthodox Moscow as the holiday of Victory in the Patriotic War of 1812.
Contemporaries were critical of the temple. Thus, the artist Vasily Vereshchagin believed that the design of the cathedral, executed by the “rather mediocre architect Ton”, “is a direct reproduction of the famous Taj Mahal in the city of Agra”. And in the article “Two Worlds in Old Russian Icon Painting” published in 1916, Evgeny Trubetskoy wrote:
“One of the largest monuments of costly nonsense is the Cathedral of the Savior – it’s like a huge samovar, around which patriarchal Moscow complacently gathered.”
Temple in the trash
In 1931, it became clear that the temple would not celebrate its centenary. On June 16, a resolution of the Committee for Cult Affairs under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee appeared: “In view of the allotment of the site on which the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is located, for the construction of the Palace of Soviets, this temple should be liquidated and demolished. To instruct the Presidium of the Moscow Regional Executive Committee to liquidate (close) the temple within a decade ... Petition from the economic department of the OGPU for washing away gold and a petition for the construction of the Palace of Soviets for the transfer building material submit for consideration by the secretariat of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
On July 13, 1931, a meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR was held under the chairmanship of Kalinin. At this meeting, it was decided: "To select the area of the Cathedral of Christ in the city of Moscow as a place for the construction of the Palace of Soviets, with the demolition of the temple itself and with the necessary expansion of the area."
On July 18, Izvestia published a decree on a competition for the design of the Palace of Soviets, and literally the next day, hasty work began on dismantling the temple. Sheets of roof and dome cladding were thrown down, breaking the cladding and sculptures; the cross thrown from the temple did not fall, but got stuck in the dome reinforcement. But the work still progressed too slowly, so it was decided to blow up the temple. On December 5, 1931, two explosions were carried out - after the first explosion, the temple survived. According to witnesses, powerful explosions were felt at a distance of several blocks. Yuri Gagarin later, at one of the plenums of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, called the temple "a victim of a barbaric attitude towards the memory of the past."
It took almost a year and a half just to dismantle the wreckage of the temple left after the explosion.
Marble from the temple was laid out at the Kropotkinskaya and Okhotny Ryad metro stations, benches decorated the Novokuznetskaya station.
Part of the plates with the names of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812 were crushed and scattered on the paths in Moscow parks, and part went to the decoration of city buildings.
Meanwhile, the project of Boris Iofan won the competition - he planned to build a building 420 m high, thereby overtaking the tallest building in the world at that time, the Empire State Building (381 m). The palace was to be crowned by a huge statue of Lenin. According to the architect's calculations, the building should be visible for 35 km.
The main construction began in 1937, and already in 1939, the laying of the foundation of the high-rise part, the main entrance and seven floors of one of the sides (facing Volkhonka) was completed. For the construction of the palace, a special steel grade was made - DS, the strongest at that time in the USSR. However, already in September-October 1941, the metal structures prepared for installation were used to manufacture anti-tank hedgehogs for the defense of the capital. After the occupation of Donbass in 1942, only the completed part of the palace had to be dismantled. Steel structures were used for the construction of an overpass on the Volokolamsk highway and for the superstructures of the Kerch bridge.
After the end of the war, it was decided to focus on the restoration of the country, and the project was first frozen, and then completely closed.
The Palace of the Soviets metro station, which opened in 1935, was renamed Kropotkinskaya in 1957, so now we are reminded of the unrealized project only by the Kremlin gas station on Volkhonka (the gas station was one of the elements of the palace) and a bas-relief panel at the entrance to the building North River Station.
In 1960, the Moskva outdoor swimming pool appeared on the site of the cathedral, which existed until 1994. The pool was open all year round and became an integral part of the memories of many citizens. “Imagine: dark Moscow, a pool illuminated by searchlights, steam above the water, icicles on the head, and the smell of caramel and chocolate comes from the Red October,” said Archpriest Alexei Uminsky.
There were many legends about the Moskva pool. In particular, they talked about some drowners who used a curtain of steam in winter, grabbed swimmers by the heel and held them under water until they choked. Thus, they allegedly took revenge on innocent people for the destruction of the temple. It was also said that at night the image of the demolished temple glimmered over the water. Well, Muscovites began to joke about this topic: “First there was a temple, then rubbish, and now it’s a shame.”
Curse of the abbess
In April 1988, an initiative group was organized in Moscow for the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Almost a year later, the group grew into an Orthodox community and organized its own "popular referendum" for the revival of the temple. On the anniversary of the destruction, December 5, 1990, a granite foundation stone was installed, two years later the foundation for the construction of the temple appeared, and the construction itself began in 1994 and was completed in a record three years.
The reconstruction of the temple, according to information on the website, was spent "a little more than four billion denominated rubles.
This includes all costs - from the preparation of the construction site and the dismantling of the Moskva pool to the operating costs incurred by the temple fund since 1998. The share of the cost of restoring the artistic decoration of the temple amounted to just over one billion rubles.
Yuri Luzhkov, who then held the post of mayor of Moscow, recalled the construction of the temple in the following way: “In the center of Moscow, a dump was depressing, into which the pit of the drained Moskva pool turned into. Under it was the foundation of the Palace of Soviets. The question arose: how to deal with it? I took archival materials and saw a grandiose platform on 128 piles driven to the rocky foundation. The idea arose about the revival of the Cathedral of Christ on this foundation.
Having received consent to the project of Patriarch Alexy II, the mayor's office turned to President Boris Yeltsin. He, according to Luzhkov, supported the project, but said that there was no money in the budget for it. “I answered: we will try to collect donations, many people want to recreate the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, expresses the desire of business to contribute funds. Yeltsin easily agreed. He was not up to the temple,” recalls the ex-mayor. Unexpectedly, when the temple was almost completed, Luzhkov, according to him, was called by Yeltsin himself and asked "not to hurry with the completion of the temple", to which the mayor told him: "It's not in my power."
However, the haste affected the appearance of the temple is not the best way. Until 2010, the temple was decorated with copies of medallions made of white composite material, only then they were replaced with bronze ones. Bronze steel and high reliefs, which is a contradiction to the original with marble compositions, six of which can still be seen in the Donskoy Monastery. On the website of the temple, however, they explain it this way: the high reliefs were originally supposed to be bronze, but there was not enough money for them at that time, so the sculptures were made from cheap protopopovskiy dolomite limestone, which had already collapsed by 1910. How the original sculptures made of cheap and rapidly deteriorating material survived until 2016 is not reported on the site.
The painting of the interiors of the temple, carried out by the artists recommended by Zurab Tsereteli, and the replacement of the white stone cladding with marble, and the fact that instead of gilding the roofing of the roofs (except for the domes) were covered with a composition based on titanium nitride, were also criticized. All this led to a change colors facade from warm to colder.
The structure of the temple has also changed: it has become two-level, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior appeared in the basement level.
“There is a legend that the abbess of the monastery, Abbess Claudia, cursed this place. They say that everything that will be built here will not last long.
The abbess' curse seemed absolute. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up. The Palace of Soviets was not completed at all, the structures already installed were demolished,” Luzhkov said. “I came up with an idea: to build below, on the foundation of the Palace of Soviets, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in order to receive forgiveness from the abbess for the sacrilege of the 19th century, the forced destruction of her church by our ancestors and convent- said Yuri Luzhkov. “Therefore, there are actually two temples there now. The upper one, in fact, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior itself, restored in the form in which Ton created it, and the lower one - the Transfiguration of the Lord, in honor of the female Alekseevsky monastery that stood here earlier.
Protection with God's help
Now the temple performs not only religious functions. Under the temple there is a two-level guarded underground parking for 305 cars with a car wash. “Thanks to the modern air conditioning system, the optimal microclimate for storing cars is constantly maintained. Modern system security and a well-functioning security service allow us to be legally responsible for the safety of our clients' cars that are in our custody, ”the temple fund website says.
The temple also has its own dry-cleaning-laundry, which is engaged in both cleaning the vestments of the clergy and washing secular robes. Security is monitored by its own private security company Kolokol, which also offers security services for other facilities. “Employees of the security company have extensive experience in ensuring the on-site regime, protecting material assets, ensuring public order and safety during public events, as well as in the use technical means in the implementation of security activities, ”the fund’s website says.
In the dining room "Refectory" it is proposed to arrange banquets, including Lenten dishes, there is a conference hall, a gallery and the Hall of Church Cathedrals in the temple, where, judging by the poster, concerts by Vika Tsyganova, Lyudmila Senchina, Dmitry Pevtsov and the singer will be held in the near future Juliana.
But other concerts in the temple, to put it mildly, are not welcome.
The Cathedral of Christ the Savior became world-famous on February 21, 2012, when members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot performed an action they called a “punk prayer”.
They tried to sing the song "Mother of God, drive Putin away!" in front of the entrance to the temple altar. Two girls were sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a penal colony for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The participants also introduced fashion for balaclavas, enriched the Russian language with the word "blasphemers", and the Criminal Code with an article "for insulting the feelings of believers."
Documents 05.12.2011 19:56
SATANISTS DESTROY THE TEMPLE OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR
December 5, 1931
In 1931, the executioners of Russia decided to destroy the drama of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The entire destruction process was filmed. Photographing was entrusted to the novice chronicler operator Vladislav Mikosha. Here is what he says about it terrible crime satanic hyenas in the magazine "Ogonyok" No. 41 for 1989.
Theoretical classes at the camera department of the Institute of Cinematography are over. I was accepted as an assistant at the newsreel studio in Bryanka, and I immediately fell into the maelstrom of the main events of our country. The first of May 1931 on Red Square was my beginning, an introduction to camera work in Soviet newsreels.
At the end of the summer, I was called by our strict, but very respected and beloved director of the Newsreel studio on Bryanka, Viktor Iosilevich.
I decided to entrust you, Mikosha, with a very serious job. It would just be better to talk less about it. Shut up, you understand? And he raised his index finger above his head. Looking very intently into my eyes, he said: - There is an order to demolish the Temple of Christ! You will shoot! It seemed to me that he himself did not believe in this "instruction." I, I don't know why, suddenly asked him a question: - And what, St. Isaac's Cathedral in Leningrad will also be demolished?
I do not think. But I don’t know... So, from tomorrow you will monitor its disassembly, filming all the work in as much detail and detail as possible, from its fence to the very end, understand? "Cartridges" do not feel sorry. As you understand, this is for a long time and seriously, I hope for you.
When I said at home under great secrecy that they would demolish the Cathedral of Christ, my mother did not believe it.
It can't be! First, it is a work of art. What beauty in it are marble sculptures, gold salaries, icons, frescoes on the walls! They were painted by the best artists - Surikov, Vereshchagin, Makovsky. And the sculptures of Klodt! After all, we donated all the money to him, all over Russia, from beggars to gentlemen ... God forbid! - Mom got excited, fell silent. Then, pulling herself together, she said:
The Lord God Himself will not allow such a blasphemous atrocity to be committed against the entire Russian people who built this temple...
I kept silent, did not upset my mother, she still cannot believe it. And in the morning I was already filming how a high blank fence was being built around the temple.
For the first few minutes, I couldn't even shoot. When I received the task, I, of course, did not imagine that I would have to re-feel. When Iosilevich said: “You will shoot the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,” I simply accepted it as information about the next shooting. I could assume that everything that I would shoot would cut into my soul, into my heart, would torment me and hurt me for a long time and bleed with pain after the temple was gone, for the rest of my life.
Until now, I still do not understand: whose order I carried out? Those who gave the "instruction" to demolish the temple? Then why do they, who have surrounded their barbaric act with a high fence, need this thorough, soul-rending film evidence? Putting this monstrous accusation against oneself in the special storage of the film archive is beyond all logic. Or is it Iosilevich, risking everything and everything, took upon himself the decision to leave this testimony for future generations? Therefore, "shut up"? But how and how did he justify my shooting to those who were obliged to “see everything and know everything”?
Then everything I had to shoot was like a terrible dream from which you want to wake up and you can’t. Through the wide open doors, wonderful marble creations were dragged out with loops around their necks. They were thrown from a height to the ground, into the mud.
Hands, heads, wings of angels flew off, marble high reliefs cracked, porphyry columns were crushed by jackhammers. The golden crosses were dragged from small domes by steel cables with the help of powerful tractors. The unique painting on the walls of the cathedral perished. The priceless marble wall cladding brought from Belgium and Italy was crumbling.
I gritted my teeth and started filming. Day after day, like ants, swarmed around the cathedral, paramilitary detachments. They were allowed through the construction fence only with a special pass.
As time went on, the domes became bare of gold, the picturesque wall painting was lost. An icy, snowy wind blew through the empty gaps of the huge windows. The worker battalions in Budenovkas began to bite into the walls, but the walls put up stubborn resistance. Jackhammers broke. Neither crowbars, nor heavy sledgehammers, nor huge steel chisels could overcome the resistance of the stone. The temple was built of huge sandstone slabs, which, when laid, were filled with molten lead instead of cement. Military battalions worked all winter and could not do anything with the walls. Then the order came.
A handsome engineer told me in great secrecy:
Stalin was outraged by our impotence and ordered to blow up the cathedral.
Only the force of a huge explosion finally destroyed the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, turning it into a huge pile of ruins, inside which the cathedral with the bell tower of Ivan the Great could freely fit ...
Mom cried for a long time at night. She only said once:
Man must build. And to destroy this is the work of the Antichrist. We all, as one, gave money to him, why couldn’t we all, as one, save?
12/5/1931. The Bolsheviks blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow
Why was the Cathedral of Christ the Savior blown up and why was it restored?
Work on dismantling the building continued for several months (they robbed the altar, washed off the gilding), and on December 5, 1931, the church was barbarously blown up along with bas-reliefs and frescoes. After the first explosion, the walls withstood, it took a second, more powerful charge. According to witnesses, powerful explosion felt many miles away. It took another year and a half to dismantle the wreckage of the temple after the explosion. Marble from the Temple was laid out at the Kropotkinskaya and Okhotny Ryad metro stations, benches decorated the Novokuznetskaya station. Some of the slabs with the names of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812 were crushed and sprinkled on the paths in Moscow parks, and some went to the decoration of city buildings ...
On the site of the temple, according to the approved project of the architect B. Iofan (co-authors A. Schuko and G. Gelfreich), they planned to build a colossal Palace of Soviets with a 75-meter statue of Lenin on top, immersed in clouds (the largest monument in the world to the leader of the revolution). This "Tower of Babel of communism" was planned as a new cult memorial temple in honor of the formation of the USSR, the Comintern and Lenin personally. But the Lord did not allow it: she interfered.
By 1939, the laying of the foundation of the side of the Palace facing Volkhonka was completed. However, in the fall of 1941, from those prepared for installation metal structures were made anti-tank hedgehogs for the defense of Moscow, in 1942 the remaining structures of the Palace of Soviets were used for the construction of railway bridges.
After the war, there was still a department for the construction of the Palace of Soviets, the architect Iofan continued to improve his tower project. And only in 1960, it was decided to stop further designing of the Palace of Soviets. For many years after the explosion, a monstrous pit gaped on the site of the majestic Memorial Temple, where in 1958, during Khrushchev's godless "thaw", the Moskva swimming pool was built - also the "largest".
In the late 1980s, a public movement of believers arose for the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Prayers were regularly read at this place. The Moscow authorities picked up the idea for self-advertising purposes and turned it into a business project with the involvement of "donations" from such oligarchs as Berezovsky, Smolensky, Gusinsky. In 1999, work on casting a concrete copy of the temple, richly decorated with Jewish symbols, expensive marble and sculptures of Z. Tsereteli made of artificial material, was completed - in fact, with money stolen from the people. It is indicative of the spiritual atmosphere in the new church that there is no sacrament of Communion on major holidays in the XXC: the chalice is taken out of the altar and immediately taken back "for safety" (!).
We list below the main persons responsible for the reconstruction of the temple - it is from them that the Orthodox can try to get an answer to the question that has long tormented them: where does such an abundance of Jewish symbols come from in the restored Orthodox church - from the floor mosaic in the central part of the hall and the lamps to the domed crosses? Why is the star of David, the current symbol of the Zionist (Jewish) state "Israel" also depicted on the altar cross?..
The decision to start the restoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was adopted by the Moscow government in agreement with the Moscow Patriarchate on May 31, 1994, and on September 7 (the 6th was the Jewish New Year!) the founding meeting of the Public Council for the reconstruction of the temple took place. The Council was headed by Alexy II and Moscow Mayor Yu.M. Luzhkov. The management of the entire complex of works was entrusted to his first deputy, a member of the leadership of the Russian Jewish Congress V.I. Resina. On January 7, 1995, all the mentioned persons jointly made a solemn laying of the recreated temple.
The work on the creation of project documentation was supervised by the director of the department "Mosproekt-2", the chief architect of the project of the complex of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, deputy chairman of the Moscow Committee for Architecture, academician and member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts, Honored Architect of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the International Academy of Architecture M.M. Posokhin - faithful and illustrious heir to Lazar Kaganovich in the "reconstruction of Moscow".
The work on the construction of the temple was carried out under the guidance of the Honored Builder of the Russian Federation, laureate of the State Prize Russian Federation General Director of JSC "Mospromstroy" V.V. Frost.
“Work on the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was carried out in constant contact with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church appointed for this work by His Holiness the Patriarch ... The national significance of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as a national shrine determined the procedure for recreating each element of its decoration on a competitive basis ... [Most of the orders were received by Z. Tsereteli .] The Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts entrusted the direct operational management of the reconstruction of the murals to Vice-President E.I. Zverkov, who put a lot of work into the work on the semantic and artistic integrity of the pictorial decoration of the temple…”.
Works on the reconstruction of artistic decoration completed Russian Academy Arts, headed by its President - Academician Z.K. Tsereteli. Priest Leonid Kalinin was the head of the Coordinating Group of Specialists in the Artistic Decoration of the Complex. He was also a member of the Artistic Decoration Commission.
Discussion: 14 comments
Moscow. 5th of December. Interfax - The funeral service for the deceased Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II is likely to be held in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, sources in the Russian Orthodox Church told Interfax.
The venerable brother of the chief rabbi of Russia, Berl Lazar, departed for the judgment of God. Big loss for a brother.
Wherever the Jews go, they do dirty things. As a result, the Orthodox received not an Orthodox church, but a Judeo-Orthodox synagogue. And there is no reason to be surprised at this, if we recall the words of Alexy II, said by him at a meeting with the rabbis.
No matter how hard the wickedness tries not to kill the true faith. And reward them according to their deeds ... In any case, good will defeat the evil that they have been carrying for more than 2000 years
And the worst thing is that Kirill has ALREADY been chosen as "interim", and you and I remember what this means ...
Indeed, you can’t call it just a coincidence, that this is a misunderstanding, it’s unlikely - my opinion is a conscious line. It turns out that we bow to the wrong god ... And in general, these Jewish symbols in the Christian Temple are, in my opinion, a mockery of all Christians! This, as it were, says "Who is the boss in the house" Draw the conclusions of the Lord!
EVERYTHING IS VERY SIMPLE.
JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM ARE THREE RELIGIONS OF ONE BOOK - THE TORAH.
CHRISTIANS HAVE UNDERSTAND THIS AND GO TO PAGANISM.
MUSLIES WILL UNDERSTAND THIS SOON.
Then they blew it up, and now their followers have built it.
The Jews are the creators of cataclysms and they need the Russian people to constantly go crazy, turn their heads in all directions and don’t understand shit!
After the anti-Soviet coup EBN and Medvedoputy
the nationality indicator was removed from the document circulation of Russia. Thus, the Medvedevs, Chubais and other Abramovichs formally abandoned their parents. Purely Jewish gesture.
WHY SCAM
TEMPLE OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR?
A normal person will see that the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has been slandered and denigrated by the Jewish mafia, but the Patriarch does not see, the employees in this temple do not see that the Jewish stars in the temple of the heart of Holy Mother Russia, the lamp with a Jewish star, on the floor a Jewish star, on the glass are also Jewish stars! The Russian people visiting the temple do not see what is happening in the great temple, this black rot in the Holy Land has defiled the great temple of the heart, in which the services of the Patriarch are held, and he is not blind, it is the Jews, not the Russians, who should conduct services with Jewish stars in such temples the priesthood, and they are no longer a Patriarch, and is he a Patriarch after that at all!
With the money stolen by the Jews from the Russians, a new Cathedral of Christ the Savior was built, generously decorated with the stars of David. This means that after the next writing by the Jews of the history of the Russian state in 75 years, the Jews will write .... "Three thousand years before the construction of the Moscow Kremlin, this synagogue was built here"
All churches must be blown up, glory to the Bolsheviks!
Instead of churches it is necessary to build gardens, schools, theaters, buildings for collecting amateur circles. And capitalist power only stupefies the people. Keep believing in artless pictures. (Yes, I'm talking about icons).
since 1917 in Russia - anti-Russian power. Hence all the troubles.
On the eve of the election of the mayor of Moscow, we continue to recall how Moscow mayors treated the Church. In this part, the story is about the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, the tragic events of 1917, the new masters of Moscow, the Bolshevik figures Viktor Nogin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bulganin
Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. Hood. V.E.Orlov
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich - Charity and Khodynka
Even under Alexander III, in 1891, his brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, became governor-general of Moscow. His activities were assessed differently - some considered him a stubborn despot and strangler of freedoms, others saw in him a man of deep personal piety, who did not seek popularity with the press and an "educated society", who eventually became a martyr.
Here is how he wrote about his appointment to his nephew, the future Emperor Nicholas II: “But I’m sitting as the Moscow Governor-General. I can’t hide from you that it’s not particularly funny, but the main thing is that it’s sad and hard to part with the regiment: I still can’t come to my senses. The circle of old comrades is not enough. Ten years can't pass without a trace. And to play forever the first role and then to represent - all this is so contrary to my character, my nature, that I climb out of my skin from despair, and the further it goes, the worse it will probably be. Of course, it's not the business that frightens me - the business interests me very much and. Finally, Papa's trust in me deeply touches me, but it's hard, terribly! We have to start new life, in a new, unfamiliar environment with a completely already strangers» .
Soviet historians brought to the fore his inability to organize the coronation celebrations of 1895, the very tragedy on the Khodynka field, but Sergei Alexandrovich was also known to others - his charity. He donated funds to the Church, museums, popular societies and workers' organizations.
Shortly after taking office as the Moscow Governor-General, the Grand Duke was in Uglich and took part in the celebrations on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the martyrdom of Tsarevich Dimitri. The last gift of the Grand Duke of the Church was a precious cover for the relics of the saint.
Sergei Alexandrovich was a co-founder and chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. His participation in the work of the society was not only of status: the emperor's brother delved into the details of his work, communicated with the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin). Through his efforts, a temple was built on the slope of the Mount of Olives in honor of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene (the patroness of his mother, Empress Maria Alexandrovna), plots were acquired in the Holy Land, and the work of the mission developed.
During the revolutionary events of 1905, Sergei Alexandrovich, together with his brother Vladimir, was considered the main culprit in the use military force. The militant organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries sentenced him to death. The Grand Duke had less than a month to live. On February 4, 1905, near the Nikolskaya Tower of the Kremlin, he was killed by terrorist Ivan Kalyaev.
The wife of the Grand Duke - St. On February 7, Grand Duchess Elisaveta Feodorovna visited Kalyaev in prison, gave him the Gospel and an icon, forgave him on behalf of her husband, and asked the emperor to pardon the murderer. Kalyaev himself did not ask for pardon and before the execution he refused the parting words of the priest.
Vladimir Fedorovich Dzhunkovsky
Vladimir Dzhunkovsky - from governor to church watchman
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was succeeded by Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, his former adjutant. During the years of Dzhunkovsky's governorship, both the revolution of 1905 and the decree on religious tolerance fell.
Where Dzhunkovsky received more fame as Deputy Minister of the Interior and commander of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes. He held this position from 1913 to 1915 and was dismissed by Nicholas II for trying to limit the influence of Grigory Rasputin.
The fate of Dzhunkovsky after the revolution was tragic. From November to mid-December 1917, he spent under arrest in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Then the Bolsheviks release him and even appoint a pension - 3270 rubles a month, but soon a new arrest follows from 1918 to 1921.
Shortly before his second arrest, at the end of a letter to the Cheka, he says that he never lied: “Everyone who knows me, and almost the entire Moscow province knows me, will confirm that I could make mistakes, but I never lied. He always spoke the truth to everyone's face under the old regime, and has not changed even now under Soviet power.
Sitting in the Taganka prison, Dzhunkovsky was in charge of rabbit breeding and enjoyed great respect soldiers saluting him, letting him go for walks unaccompanied. Agent denunciations have been preserved telling about the prisoner's visit to his sister, church services and "counter-revolutionary clergy".
Since April 1922, Dzhunkovsky has been living with his sister Evdokia Fedorovna. In March 1923, in a letter to his beloved woman, Antonina Evreinova, who left Russia, the former Moscow mayor directly writes about faith and readiness to bear his cross: “You cannot follow the Lord the Crusader without a cross. What is a cross? All sorts of inconveniences, hardships and sorrows, leaning from without and from within on the path of conscientious fulfillment of the commandments of the Lord in life in the spirit of his prescriptions and requirements. Such a cross is fused with a Christian in such a way that where there is a Christian, there is this cross, and where there is no such cross, there is no Christian. All-round preferential treatment for life's pleasures is not befitting a true Christian. His task is to cleanse and correct himself ... "
The new government gave Dzhunkovsky many ways to "purify" and "correct". He worked as a church watchman and gave French lessons. In 1937 he was again arrested and shot on February 26, 1938 by the verdict of the "troika" of the NKVD.
Preserved evidence famous writer R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik about last days Dzhunkovsky in Butyrskaya prison: “He was a charming old man, lively and cheerful, despite his seventy years, who was ironic about his Butyrka position. During the three days of our neighborhood, he told me so many interesting things about the past days that it would be enough for a whole book. To my great regret, he was taken away from us, where we could not guess ”(Magazine Rodina, 2010 No. 3, pp. 105 - 109.)
There is a version that Dzhunkovsky became a monk, but she has no documentary evidence. Nevertheless, his tragic fate after the revolution and his activities as the mayor of Moscow testify to his sincere faith and readiness to endure suffering.
The first decade of the 20th century was coming to an end. In Moscow, from 1905 to 1917, temples of various denominations were rapidly built. This was made possible by a change in religious policy. Russian Empire. The Old Believers and Orthodox erected their shrines, not assuming that they would soon be ruthlessly destroyed, and many believers would be shot or sent to prison and exile.
By 1917, 764 churches had been built in Moscow. By 1988, when they began to massively give to the believers of the church, there were 46 of them left.
Viktor Pavlovich Nogin
Viktor Nogin - the Bolsheviks come to power
Under the mayors of the Provisional Government from March to October 1917, the Church still enjoyed freedom and was able to convene a Local Council, at which Patriarch Tikhon was elected.
However, with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the situation changed dramatically. In March 1918, the Soviet government headed by V. I. Lenin moved to the Kremlin. This happened after fierce fighting, when the shrines of the Moscow Kremlin were destroyed. At the end of October 1917, the Kremlin was fired from cannons, many shrines were damaged and destroyed, but this was only the beginning of the tragedy. The first Bolshevik leader of Moscow was Viktor Nogin. It was thanks to his activities that the new authorities strengthened themselves in Moscow, destroyed the shrines and seized the Kremlin.
The famous writer Herbert Wells, who visited Moscow already in 1920, when life in the capital began to normalize, described the state of Moscow churches and the attitude towards believers in the following way:
“There are many traces of fierce street fighting in early 1918. One of the domes of the ridiculous St. Basil's Cathedral, at the very gates of the Kremlin, was smashed by a shell and still not repaired ... Ten thousand crosses of Moscow churches still sparkle in the sun .... Churches are open; crowds of worshipers diligently kiss the icons, the beggars still sometimes manage to beg for alms. The famous chapel of the miraculous Iverskaya Mother of God near the Spassky Gate; many peasant women, unable to get inside, kiss her stone walls. Just opposite it, on the wall of the house, the now famous slogan is displayed in a frame: "Religion is the opium of the people." The effectiveness of this inscription, made at the beginning of the revolution, is significantly reduced by the fact that the Russian people cannot read.
Lev Borisovich Kamenev and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Lev Kamenev- technocrat closes temples
Much longer Moscow was led by Lev Kamenev. In the memoirs of Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov, we can find an interesting description of this man: “He is a smart, educated person, with the talents of a good state worker (now they would say “technocrat”). If not for communism, he would be a good socialist minister in a "capitalist" country. ... In the realm of intrigue, cunning and tenacity, Kamenev is quite weak. Officially, he "sits in Moscow" - the capital is considered to be the same patrimony of his as Zinoviev's Leningrad. But Zinoviev organized his clan in Leningrad, seated him and holds his second capital in his hands. While Kamenev is a stranger to this technique, he has no clan of his own and sits on Moscow by inertia.
These words should not mislead the reader. During the reign of Kamenev in Moscow (October 1918 - May 1926), the Bolsheviks carried out large-scale anti-religious campaigns of opening relics and seizing church valuables.
Kamenev was the chairman of the Moscow Council at the time when the head of the VI department of the OGPU, Yevgeny Tuchkov, was splitting Orthodox Church when a process was underway that threatened the death of Patriarch Tikhon, and churches in Moscow were seized by the Renovationists.
During the reign of Kamenev in 1923, all the utensils were confiscated from the Iberian chapel on Red Square. The chapel itself was demolished on the initiative of Yemelyan Yaroslavsky on the night of July 28-29, 1929. But let us return to Kamenev.
Here is evidence that allows us to say that Kamenev is personally responsible for the persecution: “According to the decision of the Moscow City Council, all former monastic premises should come into the exclusive use of the Department of Public Education; from most of the Moscow monasteries. the monks were evicted by the middle of 1920. But life has made significant adjustments to this decision. Many monasteries were transferred to a number of other departments - housing, military"
In 1920, the Revolution and the Church magazine wrote that “in Moscow, 551 residential buildings, 100 commercial premises, 52 school buildings, 71 brothels, 31 hospitals and 6 orphanages were confiscated from the church.” In May 1923, the Moscow Council issued an order to liquidate all home Orthodox churches. At the same time, all temple buildings became the property of the state, and the authorities were able to close them under any pretext. In 1922, in the church of Pimen the Great on Tverskaya Street, they “find” alcohol mashine, the community is expelled from the church, and a club is opened here.
Under Kamenev, there was a mass seizure of valuables from the Kremlin cathedrals. In 1922, more than 300 poods of silver and more than 2 poods of gold were taken out of the Kremlin cathedrals, and the Kremlin hospital was placed in the Miracle Monastery, demolished in 1929-1930.
Konstantin Ukhanov- churches as "historical rubbish in the squares"
However, the mass destruction of churches in the capital began in the late 20s - early 30s under other mayors - Konstantin Ukhanov (May 1926 - February 1931) and Nikolai Bulganin (February 1931 - August 1937).
The first bears personal responsibility for the destruction of the Sretensky Monastery on Bolshaya Lubyanka, where the NKVD services were located. And also for the closing of the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin. On September 17, 1928, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution that determined the timing of the demolition of church buildings and ancient structures of the Moscow Kremlin. As a result, by 1932 the entire eastern part of the Kremlin was a ruin.
During the reign of Ukhanov, texts appeared in Evening Moscow, the authors of which called for "removing historical debris from the squares." It was not only about the monument to Minin and Pozharsky on Red Square, but also about churches. 
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin
Nikolai Bulganin- explosion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior
The situation did not improve under Nikolai Bulganin either. And could it improve? The official biographies say sparingly that in the years civil war Bulganin worked in the organs of the Cheka. Behind this stingy line is the leadership of the Nizhny Novgorod "emergency". Bulganin was personally involved in the executions of the clergy and the taking of priests as hostages.
The story of the martyrdom of Bishop Lavrentiy of Balakhna, who was executed by order of Bulganin, is amazing. Vladyka visited the arrested priests in prison, and at the end of August 1918 he himself ended up in the dungeon. In the cell, he prayed incessantly - he even had to ask for new rosaries to be handed over from the will, the old ones were worn out - and on holidays he served in the prison church. The believers collected a pledge for him, but the authorities refused to release the archpastor. In October 1918, the Chekists (perhaps Bulganin himself) suggested that he renounce his rank and receive freedom. There was a refusal. On the eve of the first anniversary of the revolution, on November 6, the saint was shot in the garden - at the dug grave, he prayed for the executioners with upraised hands.
However, let us return to Bulganin, the master of Moscow. In 1931, the Moscow Council decides to build several schools on the site where the temples used to be. In the center of the city alone, 23 churches were demolished for this purpose. Another 80 church buildings were razed to the ground in order to build offices or residential buildings in their place. In 1934, the Moscow Council excluded a number of churches from the list of valuable architectural monuments. This decision led to the fact that these churches were ruthlessly destroyed or badly destroyed.
Demolition of the temple of Spyridon Trimifuntsky, which is on the Goat swamp, in Moscow, 1930
On December 5, 1931, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up in order to build a giant Palace of Soviets in its place. The cyclopean structure was never erected, and the capital lost one of its symbols. Toilets were often built on the site of destroyed shrines. Pavel Palamarchuk in his book "Forty Forties" talks about 20 such cases. 
Demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, 1931
In 1930, a decree was issued prohibiting bell ringing. The bells were sent for remelting, and until the mid-40s of the last century, Muscovites, even on Easter, heard the ringing from the Trinity Church on Sparrow Hills, which then was not part of the city.
In the same year, the last Moscow monastery, Danilovsky, was also closed, and secret monks and nuns appeared in Moscow. According to Church historian Aleksey Beglov, most often they were women who worked in research institutes or cultural institutions. The factory environment was considered too rough and dangerous for girls. 
Church of the Resurrection on Ostozhenka, 1935
To imagine how a believer felt in Moscow, here is a quote from a letter from a visitor to a museum created in St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square: “Workers come to St. Basil’s Cathedral in groups and singly, hoping to see and hear how the church and religion served as a support for the exploiters. This hope, however, is in vain. ... Not a word of anti-religious. Is it random? We must assume that it is not. And on the walls of anti-religion. there are no posters. This is not accidental either. There is only a rather pale anti-religious corner. However, the guide didn't even give him a tour."
In the 30s of the last century, a person could go to prison and camps for a lesser reason. So people had to publicly declare their atheism in order not to become a victim of denunciation.
