Fallen Heroes, a load of Bolshoi, Gulags, Soviet Holocaust and Bric a Bracs......

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Day 3 and 4 Moscow

Our day started crossing The Krymsky Bridge, the first cablestayed bridge in the Soviet Union, built by Stalin in 1938. Around the same time, the granite Krymskaya and Pushkinskaya embankments were laid down, which still border the Muskva River, making similar to the Thames or the Seine in the middle of their capital cities.

On the site north of Gorky Park in 1923 was the All-Russia Agricultural and Industrial Craft Exhibition with pavilions from Germany, Italy and elsewhere. Lenin visited the exhibition three months before he died.

During the Great Patriotic War (what we call WW2) aircraft guns were stationed near Krymsky Bridge, and by the late 1940s, a vast, empty space had appeared that became the city’s largest snow-dumping ground. The Central House of Artists was built in 1965 amidst wooden shanties on this area.The square around CHA was built in the 1980s, and Muzeon Park was established by the City of Moscow in 1992 with a Sculpture Park of 'Fallen Heroes', leaders and unidentifiable workers and peasants were removed from their pedestals, hauled to the park and left in their fallen form. They were rectified later, although missing original pedestals. In 1990s these statues shaped the park outline, but as more and more modern sculpture was added and the fallen statues more carefully placed and the park began hosting symposiums for sculptors working with limestone; the sculptures they donated are displayed on a special square reserved for white-stone sculptures.

And today 27th August, we wander around the vast exhibit in the midst of a day of Film, Theatre, Music, Sreetfood and children's events in this Muzeon Park and throughout Moscow. Brilliant.

And dominated all the time by the huge Peter the Great Monument, a giant black ship amidst fountains in the middle of the river.

We've vowed to catch the Metro today to cut down on the amount of shoe leather ground into the pavements. But the dilemma is in crossing huge boulevards and finding the big red 'M's marking the metro entrances..... thee positioning on maps is never very clear. Furthermore, every park we go to suffers from locked-gate-syndrome, where obvious routes on foot are foiled by padlocked park exits.

So by the time we've got to Tretyaskovskaya Metro station we could have been over the giant road bridge to the Kremlin, our next port of call...... and then exiting Biblioteka Metro proved the same toothpullingly frustrating task, being thwarted by eight line wide roads with no crossings.

The plan is to get inside the Kremlin, walk around the site and not to queue up with the tour parties to see the armoury museum or church interiors. We managed to access a computer ticket terminal quite easily and bought the basic ticket, got caught up with a Japanese tour being counted laboriously through the turnstile but relatively quickly were able to break free and enjoy the Kremlin Garden, the Fallen Bell, the biggest cannon never fired 'cos the cannonballs didn't fit the barrel and the numerous churches all in the Novogorod golden domed style. The best bit was sitting on a park bench surrounded by rose bushes with a view of the river, St Basil's, and the rest of the Kremlin infrastructure.

There are number of places off-limits (you can tell because a man in a peaked hat will blow a whistle at you). And there's a modern glass building with black and gold frames built at the initiative of Khrushchev in 1959 as an arena for Communist Party meetings. It looks a little incongruous alongside the ancient architecture. This Kremlin Palace is able to hold six thousand people, was the main place for mass state events (particularly party congresses). Presently it is used for official and popular concerts: the Bolshoi during renovations, but also Mariah Carey, Tina Turner, Cher, Leonard Cohen and in 2008, Deep Purple!

Proceeding to the Biblioteka Metro again, we hoped to take a train to Arbatskaya, but discovered there was a great long straight walk way between the two.... very beautiful, cool and direct, but counter to our promise of walking less.

From there to Gorky's Art Nouveau House Museum, Malaya Nikitskaya, 1906 house by architect Fyodor Shekhtel which was gifted to author Gorky in 1931. The exterior is shrouded by trees, but if you look upward you can see murals of botanicals on sleek white rendered walls. Inside, it is the stunning granite staircase which binds the house's design themes together. It's a flowing organic 3D form, a giant helix of Gaudhi unsymmetrical delight, folds and drapery in stone. The doors and door frames, parquet floating, stained glass, wrought iron, ceramics and painted friezes on the landing all add up to a charming house that still feels lived in...... left largely untouched since Gorky's death. There's a hidden prayer room up a separate staircase with a free hand painted decorations up into a cupola...... this was kept tucked away from the authorities but is the icing on the cake for this visit.

On foot to the Gulag Museum for some serious stuff...... We walked up to and then down Puskinskaya Pl to Petrovka, through shopping streets decked with pastel coloured giant lampshades strung like bunting from side to side. Gucci, Burberry, and every designer name are there cheek by jowl. But the Gulag Museum Petrovka 16 is not... despite its billing in Lonely Planet guide.

A film crew were in the area with a camera on a see saw like boom, and filmed our backsides as we headed down Petrovka to the Bolshoi Theatre. It was surrounded in festival stalls and kit for full orchestra on a giant outdoor stage area was planned for later .... currently a Russian romance was on the screen with Joe Public sat in front in the sunshine with their hankies ready.

There various musical instrument stalls, one selling hand made balalaikas for 7000 rubles...... If only I hadn't been going home on a plane......

Finally we trudged to Kitay Gorod..... 'Chinatown' .... The best bits were further outdoor stages (child ballerinas dancing with garlands)' and some 17.00 bell ringing in the mines try belfry ..... two guys creating a funky sound, a cross between gamelan and samba batucada..... a definite one, two, one, two .... bass pattern played with the feet on big beams, and then contrapuntal high bell fills against a backbeat skank on mid range bells. Very engaging and uplifting.

Day 4 Moscow

Boot sales, Bric a Brac or БРИК Брач are universally successful, wherever they crop up, and most often enjoyed by yours truly. By the Kultury Park Metro, today, we came upon a whopper all laid out in the Sunday sun. But thwarted by a lack of snails or musical instruments for us to purchase, we moved on to station and headed for the National Puppet Theatre.

It was, as advertised, closed for the Summer, but being in the same proximity as the Gulag Museum we thought we'd give it a go. But the newly researched address for the Gulag Museum was correct. They moved to their new location, a more appropriate space, in late 2015, with ten times the floor area of the old one and with an industrial feel that does rather better than proximity to designer label shops on Petrosvka.

The Gulag ГУЛАГ, is an acronym of Russian Главное управление лагерей "main administration of the camps", that ran the main Soviet forced labour camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s until the 1950s.

The first such camps were created in 1918 and the term is widely used to describe any forced labour camp in the USSR. The first 'corrective' labour camps after the revolution were established in 1918, at Soloviki and 200,000 were said to have been incarcerated in the first year by Lenin. But it was Stalin who upped the anti and set up a system of informants betraying neighbours and friends, encouraged or forced to keep coming up with new information. So by 1935, approximately 800,000 were in camps and 300,000 in 'the colonies' and these figures don't take into consideration the high death rates for prisoners on reaching the GULAGS..... peat digging in Siberia when you're a poet, or journalist doesn't do the health any good.

The imprisonments continued until the '80s, but in a much reduced form after Stalin died.

The museum is excellent because it uses recent film of testimonials of previous prisoners to tell of their 'crimes' and to reflect upon their experience at the time and now in the noughties. Very similar to Amber Films' approach to filming Eastern Germany before and after perestroika (http://www.amber-online.com/archives/from-us-to-me ..... I did the music soundtrack!). It also runs film reels from the forties, and fifties contrasting with the modern footage.

Here's the museum's link: http://www.thegulag.org/

We left, humbled, but better informed.



On to the Jewish Centre for Tolerance.

This was something else! You could spend a whole day there just skimming the surface. The design values, the use of materials, the staff, the scale of the project and the building that houses it are beyond all expectations.

The initial statement of Jewish credo is in a cinema in the round with three panoramic 3D screens. The seats move in sympathy with the creation story ...... wind and rain actually ruffles and wets the hair.... extraordinary.

Then there are lots of fun interactive exhibits using touch screens, 'air mouse' waving-hands screen technology. But the climax to the whole exhibition, after gaining a thorough understanding of Jewish everyday life and migration to Russia, is a film about the 'Soviet Holocaust': 2 million Jews shot on Soviet soil by the Nazis.

There's other stuff that I didn't know about politics and Judaism in Russian from the mid 1800's through to the revolutionary times of Whites and Reds, large numbers of Russian Jewish troops in WW1, the role of Jewish schools and the Hebrew/Yiddish languages, the trumped up Doctors' Assassination Plot of the 1950's and finally perestroika in the '80s

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