Holy Schmoley...

While I may not have lived through arguably the scariest part of the Cold War - the Cuban missile crisis - I think that it is fair to say that the Cold War was still alive during the Reagan years and they managed to hold their share of tense and frightening moments and images. I recall as an 8th or 9th grader they made a mini-series called “The Day After” about a period of time after the Soviet Union and the US have bombed the daylights out of each other. We were forced to watch it in Social Studies class, and it was just a little too realistic. It scared the hell out of us, and I recall one or two girls leaving the classroom crying because the thought of dying like that was too much. We all listened to Sting’s song “Russians” which contained the lines “So what might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children too.”

Ok, why do I say all of this?

Because today I stood in the middle of Red Square with St. Basil’s on my left, the Kremlin wall and Lenin’s Mausoleum in front of me, and the famous Russian Department store GUM behind me. Later on, they even let me pass through a check point and into the Kremlin grounds themselves. And suddenly for the first time on this trip all of that past came back to me. I am certain that if you had asked me if this would be possible twenty five years ago as I sat in that old classroom in Central Junior High I would have found it hard to believe.

It really is incredible to stand in such historic places. Some form of the Kremlin has stood on this site since 1156, although the oldest of the current buildings ONLY date back to the 1470s. To be honest, I didn’t know a lot about the Kremlin prior to this trip. I knew it was a “fortress” that held the residence of the Russian Tsars and now the Russian President, but I didn’t realize that it was quite so large, and contained as many churches as it does (five or six by my count). Outside in Red Square there is a just as much history. St. Basil’s was completed in 1561, and the Lobnoe Mesto - a large circular stone platform from which the Tsar made his decrees - longer than that. While I was amazed at the history in St. Petersburg, it is clearly the ugly young step child compared to Moscow (and Moscovites will TELL you that).

Of course all of this is like wandering around in front of the White House or the capital - full of tourists. However, the vendors here aren’t aggressive as in St. Petersburg, and the police presence (given the significance of the place) is well felt.

In the afternoon I traveled with two of my colleagues to the Tretyakov Gallery, a museum of Russian art that was VERY well done. It was probably the nicest museum I have visited on this trip, and is one I really would love to experience with my wife Amy some day. They would rent you those little electronic listening devices which told stories in each room in the language of your choice, but that language wasn’t Russian then the price jumped to nearly $12 to rent the thing (this after paying $10 to get in). However, each room had plastic laminated “cards” (like 11x17 inches) explaining the theme of the room, some of the paintings, how they fit into history, how they fit into the evolution and structure of art at the time, etc. It was REALLY interesting. In one room they had basically one “real” painting (something like a 6 feet by 12 feet of Christ revealing himself to an excited crowd) and then the rest of the walls were covered with “studies” and design sketches, and the sheet in the room explained what to look for in the design studies and why the painting was so popular in 18th century Russia and the challenges that the artist had in completing it, and who he was in history…. I enjoy art museums, but I wouldn’t say I am a huge art fan. However, this was a really neat way to experience an art museum! You actually felt like you could learn a little bit. Even if I never remember it, I enjoyed the experience.

So, from the capital of Russia, farewell for today.

---

---