Suzdal

In my previous post I described our automotive adventures on a trip from Moscow to Suzdal. This time, I briefly look at the destination of our epic journey. 

Suzdal is a charming, rural town of about 10,000 people located 220 kilometres east of Moscow.

It was founded a little before Moscow. Its kremlin (fortress) was built by the same chap who founded Moscow, Prince Yuriy Dolgorukiy. Unlike its counterpart in Moscow, all that remains of Suzdal’s kremlin is a long, grassy mound.

What Suzdal does have in abundance that Moscow lacks is rural tranquillity. Enough to absorb even the busloads of tourists which descend on the place over the summer weekends. 

Suzdal was bypassed by the railway. Usually a disaster for a community, this has turned out to be a blessing for this lovely town of churches. The lack of a railway meant it was also bypassed by industry. 

 If you ever plan a trip there (and you need an overnight to make it worthwhile), we stayed at the Kremlyovsky Hotel. Very nice place and the receptionist even spoke some English.

And while I’m giving credit where it due, I’ll give another company a kick in the backside. I had organised our hire car through Sixt via Expedia. When I arrived at the Sixt desk with my Expedia reservation, Sixt refused to acknowledge the price quoted, of which I had a printed copy, and charged me almost FOUR TIMES that rate. This is the first time I have ever had this happen to a booking made through Expedia. I will never hire a car through Sixt again. SO BE WARNED – an advance quotation from SIXT is meaningless – they’ll just charge what they want when you arrive to pick up the car.

Inside St Basil's Cathedral

It is fairly common for people to mistake this place for the Kremlin. Perhaps because news reports, when discussing what 'The Kremlin' has been up to lately, typically show this photogenic building.

This is St Basil's Cathedral. It stands in Red Square, which is an impressively large and attractive open space next to the Kremlin. The Kremlin (which is a word meaning 'fortress') is a complex of buildings and cathedrals enclosed by long, high red walls. One of these walls defines the western edge of Red Square.

Ivan the Terrible had the main part of St Basil's (also known as the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral, or the Cathedral of St. Vasily the Blessed) built between 1555-61.

I heard a guide telling a tourist that Ivan had the two architects of St Basil's blinded so that they could never design a more beautiful building. If you hear that story, its not true. One of the architects, Yakovlev, is known to have designed more buildings after St Basil's was completed. Apparently Ivan wasn't quite that terrible.

Stalin on the other hand, wanted to knock St Basil's down. Apparently he felt it was a bit of a nuisance, being in the path of his Red Square tank parades. Thankfully, he was talked out of it. Resurrection Gate, at the opposite end of Red Square, was not so fortunate and was only rebuilt in 1996.

I used to be curious what was inside St Basil's when I'd see it on those Cold War newsreels. For a mere 250 roubles (about $7) I found out. Its a bit of a maze. Anyway, that's enough text, I'm not all that fond of writing - you can have a look now for free.

Nikolo-Perervinsky Monastery

The last few days have been beautiful. Welcome sunshine after a couple of months of grey skies and gloom. The sun even has some warmth in it.

Many tourists find their way to Novodevichy Convent, so I thought I'd write about a religious institution casual visitors to Moscow do not see, the Nikolo-Perervinskiy Monastery. I also think its more attractive than Novodevichy.

The blue towers of the 'Cathedral of the Iberian Icon of the Virgin' are visible in the distance and across the river from the architectural park at Kolomenskoe (see my posts dated 9 March and 6 August last year - which reminds me I need to do a more complete post on that park some time). It took me a little while to work out where this cathedral is and how to get there. You take the metro on the light green line to Pechatniki, then a bus south (the 30, 161 or 292). The monastery is very obvious - get off the bus when you see it.

The Cathedral of the Iberian Icon of the Virgin

 The monastery's existence was first recorded in 1623, but it has probably been around since the 14th century. The cathedral was built in 1908, one of the last churches to be constructed before the Bolsheviks took power. It was also one of the last monasteries to be closed, perhaps because the buses down there are pretty rickety and Stalin didn't like traveling in them.

The monastery is functioning, fully restored and the grounds and cathedral are open to visitors.

Monastery entrance

 

Vagankovo cemetery

Winter is coming. The temperature has dropped to single digits with the arrival of October. The skies have been grey all week and it rains, on and off, most days. 

The Russian word for umbrella is zont, which I think is great. Looking down from our balcony one damp afternoon I noticed that many of the women in the streets carried zonts with fashionable colours and designs. They looked like little mushrooms moving about. Wendy had a boring black zont, so we went zont shopping on the weekend and bought her a very colourful new zont showing Parisian street scenes.

About 3 kilometres northwest of the Kremlin is a large cemetery called Vagankovo, which was established in 1771. It is a short walk from metro station Ulitsa 1905 Goda.

Particular burial grounds have long reflected one’s status in Russian society. This tradition was continued during the Soviet years. The most prestigious burial place is under the Kremlin walls, pride of place going to Lenin, who has a mausoleum in Red Square (after nearly a year here I still haven’t queued up to inspect his remains). Nearby are buried other significant characters such as Stalin and Brezhnev.

If you didn’t quite cut the Kremlin Walls mustard, but were still a big wheel in the Soviet machine, then Novodevichy cemetery was where you might aspire to push up daisies (all complaints about the idiomatic stew in that sentence will be ignored). Interestingly, Khrushchev was buried in Novodevichy and not at the Kremlin. That sort of thing tends to happen when one falls out of favour before one dies in a totalitarian state. 

Vagankovo was a bit further down the status ladder - a place for prominent artists, musicians and sportspeople. I won’t bore you with a list of people you’ve never heard of, you can find that sort of stuff elsewhere on the internet. 

Some memorials to people you probably haven't heard of.

I’m sure the irony of all this ultimately futile status-seeking in the supposedly egalitarian Soviet Union is not lost on you.

Vagankovo is also the happy hunting ground of many ordinary folk. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon headstone, which blankly offers only a name, some dates, and perhaps a little poem, Russian memorials typically carry engraved pictures of the departed. This is a tad disconcerting, but also quite touching. Considerable expense went into many of these memorials. Often, I expect, by people who could barely afford it.

I found the images unsettling at first. But they do add something very personal and real

 The cemetery is a pleasant place to stroll on an autumn afternoon. Tree-shaded lanes branch into paths branch into little tracks that weave between the jumble of plots. Most are defined by black, wrought iron fences. Here the grass and weeds have grown wild, there a plot is tended and tidy. Perhaps a little bench and a small rose bush. The occasional person wanders silently by, clutching a trowel and shriveled bunch of flowers.

The lanes are perfect for some quiet reflection

If you want to read more about cemeteries in the Soviet Union, this is an interesting article:
http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/summer08papers/archivesummer08/vladimirov.pdf