Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

by Catherine Merridale

  9. For first-hand evidence, see Travels to Tana and Persia by Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, trans. W. Thomas et al. (London, 1873), pp. 165–6.

  10. For a discussion, see Bogatyrev, Sovereign, p. 17.

  11. Dmitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth (London, 1971), p. 356.

  12. John Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London, 1961), pp. 35–6.

  13. S. P. Bogoiavlenskii, ed., Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata Moskovskogo kremlia (Moscow, 1954), p. 511.

  14. Cited in Fennell, Ivan the Great, p. 53.

  15. Fennell, Ivan the Great, pp. 56–60.

  16. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa., 2001), p. 39.

  17. For a crisp summary, see Ruslan Skrynnikov, Krest’ i korona (St Petersburg, 2000), pp. 114–16.

  18. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London, 1997), pp. 70–71.

  19. AI, vol. 1, doc. 39, Vasily Vasilevich to Patriarch Mitrofan, pp. 71–2.

  20. AI, vol. 1, docs. 41 and 262, pp. 83 and 492.

  21. See John Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448 (London, 1995), p. 188.

  22. Russell E. Martin, ‘Gifts for the bride: dowries, diplomacy and marriage politics in Muscovy’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38, 1 (Winter 2008), pp. 123–6; Fennell, Ivan the Great, p. 158.

  23. There is a huge literature on this subject. For a summary, see Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 295–6.

  24. For Feofil, see AI, vol. 1, pp. 512–14.

  25. See Michael Cherniavsky, ‘The reception of the Council of Florence in Moscow’, Church History, 24 (1955), p. 352.

  26. Istoriia Moskvy v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1952), vol. 1, p. 61.

  27. V. I. Snegirev, Aristotel’ Fioravanti i perestroika moskovskogo kremlia (Moscow, 1935), p. 66.

  28. For the date of the original church, see A. A. Sukhanova, ‘Podklet Blagovesh-chenskogo sobora Moskovskogo Kremlia po dannym arkhitekturnykh i arkheologicheskikh issledovanii XX veka’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XVI, pp. 164–5.

  29. S. P. Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’ v starinu i teper’, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1912 and 1918), vol. 2, p. 49; Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 133; Snegirev, Fioravanti, p. 59.

  30. V. P. Vygolov, Arkhitektura Moskovskoi Rusi serediny XV veka (Moscow, 1985), p. 96.

  31. I. A. Bondarenko et al., eds., Slovar’ arkhitektorov i masterov stroitel’nogo dela Moskvy XV–serediny XVIII veka (Moscow, 2008), pp. 619–20; Vygolov, Arkhitektura, pp. 9–10.

  32. On the sculptures, see O. V. Iakhont, ‘Osnovnye resul’taty nauchnykh issledovanii i restavratsii skul’pturnoi ikony sviatogo Georgiia-Zmeebortsa 1464 goda iz Moskovskogo Kremlia’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XII, pp. 104–19. See also Vygolov, Arkhitektura, p. 168. Dmitry Solunsky is better known in western Europe as Demetrios of Thessaloniki.

  33. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 129; Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 1, p. 53.

  34. William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1997), p. 94.

  35. Vygolov, Arkhitektura, p. 185.

  36. Vygolov, Arkhitektura, p. 185.

  37. The classic study of the subject is Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450–1725 (Chicago, 1982).

  38. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture and the West (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007), pp. 84–5.

  39. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 134.

  40. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 134; Vygolov, Arkhitektura, p. 190.

  41. The account is taken from Vygolov, Arkitektura, pp. 190–92.

  42. Mario Salvadori, Why Buildings Stand Up (New York and London, 2002), p. 222.

  43. This story, which was repeated by Sigismund Herberstein, probably originated in her own entourage. See A. A. Gorskii, Moskva i Orda (Moscow, 2005), p 169.

  44. P. Pierling, La Russie et le Saint Siège: Etudes Diplomatiques, vol. 2 (Paris, 1896), p. 120.

  45. Pierling, Russie, p. 151.

  46. Pierling, Russie, p. 172. Ambrogio Contarini left a kinder description of Ivan. See Travels to Tana and Persia, p. 163.

  47. See Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 139 and Fennell, Ivan the Great, p. 318.

  48. An excellent account of the journey, largely based on Pierling, is given in T. D. Panova, Velikaia kniaginia Sof’ia Paleolog (Moscow, 2005), pp. 19–24.

  49. Interpreters were so numerous that they had a residential district to themselves on the south side of the Moscow river. On the debates, see Pierling, Russie, p. 173 and Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 75–6.

  50. For more on this elsewhere in Europe, see Kostof, History of Architecture, pp. 428–9.

  51. For a summary of what is known (as opposed to the abundant myths) about Fioravanti, see Dizionario Biografico Degli Italiani, vol. 48 (Rome, 1997), pp. 95–100. There has been some debate about his name, but most agree that, in the best renaissance style, Fioravanti was christened Aristotele: Snegirev, Fioravanti, p. 27.

  52. Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 80–82; Snegirev, Fioravanti, pp. 27–36.

  53. Ambrogio Contarini stayed briefly in ‘the house of Master Aristotele which was almost next to his Lordship’s palace’: Travels to Tana and Persia, p. 222. On the seraglio, see Snegirev, Fioravanti, p. 38.

  54. Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, p. 82.

  55. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 145; on the technology, see A. N. Speransky, Prikaz kamennykh del: Ocherki po istorii prikaza kamennykh del Moskovskogo gosudarstva (Vologda, 1930), p. 20.

  56. For more details, see Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, pp. 144–7, and also I. L. Buseva-Davydova, Khramy Moskovskogo Kremlia (Moscow, 1997), pp. 29–30.

  57. One art historian remarks that the building fused ‘medieval Russian architecture with the style of an Italian palazzo’. Cyril Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1976), p. 338. See also Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 85–91; Brumfield, Russian Architecture, pp. 96–8.

  58. Contarini visited too soon to see the finished work, but see, for example, Francesco da Collo, Relazione del viaggio e dell’ambasciata in Moscovia (1518–19, repr. Treviso, 2005), pp. 107–8. By this time Fioravanti’s name has disappeared. On other Italian visitors, see Dzh. D’Amato, ‘Gorod Moskva v vospriiatii ital’ianskogo chitatelia XV–XVI vekov’, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik (1997), pp. 103–6.

  59. Pierling, Russie, p. 204.

  60. On Onton or Anton Fryazin, see I. A. Bondarenko, ‘K voprosu o lichnosti Antona Friazina’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XV, pp. 40–43.

  61. Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 92 and 99.

  62. For the strongroom, which was rediscovered in the first decade of the twentieth century, see Iu. V. Brandenburg et al., Arkhitektor Ivan Mashkov (Moscow, 2001), p. 82, and also Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, p. 71. A map, by K. K. Lopialo, appears in O. I. Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi pri Ivane IV (Moscow, 1972), appendix.

  63. The third tier and iconic cupola were added later, however. On Kalita’s tower, see Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 316.

  64. Buseva-Davydova, Khramy, p. 173.

  65. On Ermolin’s version at the Trinity-St Sergius Lavra, see Aida Nasibova, The Faceted Chamber in the Moscow Kremlin (Leningrad, 1981), p. 6.

  66. Brumfield, Russian Architecture, p. 101.

  67. M. V. Posokhin et al., Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskvy: Kreml’, Kitai-gorod, Tsentral’nye ploshchadi (Moscow, 1982), p. 36.

  68. Determined efforts to explore them were made over many centuries. See I. Ia. Stelletskii, Poiski biblioteki Ivana Groznogo (Moscow, 1999). As I discovered, the details of the subterranean Kremlin are now state secrets.

  69. Vladimir Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ pri prezidentakh (Moscow, 2004), p. 20.

  70. The specifications are especially detailed in Sytin’s sections of the archaeological survey that took place at the time of the construction of t
he Moscow metro. Po trasse pervoi ocheredi Moskovskogo metropolitena imeni L. M. Kaganovicha (Leningrad, 1936), p. 114.

  71. There is some evidence that Ivan III went in for sealed caskets, though most were probably housed in or beneath the Treasury. See G. L. Malitskii, ‘K istorii oruzheinoi palaty Moskovskogo kremlia’, in S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, ed., Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata Moskovskogo kremlia (Moscow, 1954), p. 512.

  72. Stelletskii, Poiski, p. 184; for the second, later, excavation, see Po trasse metropolitena, p. 116.

  73. By the 1520s, when Sigismund von Herberstein last visited Muscovy, timber for building in the city was being brought seventy miles downriver from Mozhaisk.

  74. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 160.

  75. Po trasse metropolitena, p. 15.

  76. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 210.

  77. Arthur Voyce, The Moscow Kremlin: Its History, Architecture and Art Treasures (London, 1955), p. 23.

  78. Po trasse metropolitena, pp. 110–11.

  79. For the European, as opposed to Byzantine, origins of Ivan’s double-headed eagle, see Gustave Alef, ‘The adoption of the Muscovite two-headed eagle: a discordant view’, Speculum, 41 (1966), pp. 1–21.

  80. On Italians (and Sforza in particular), see Gino Barbieri, Milano e Mosca nella politica del Rinascimento (Milan, 1957); on the rest, see Pierling, Russie, p. 211.

  81. Fennell, Ivan the Great, pp. 117–21.

  82. M. I. Mil’chik, ‘Kremli Rossii, postroennye Ital’iantsami, i problema ikh dal’neishego izucheniia’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XV, pp. 509–17.

  83. Pietro Annibale is known in Russian as Petrok Malyi. See Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, p. 113.

  84. Po trasse metropolitena, p. 107.

  85. Po trasse metropolitena, p. 107; see also Paul of Aleppo’s peevish comments in The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch: Written by His Attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, in Arabic, trans. F. C. Belfour (London, 1836), vol. 2, pp. 21–2. As he also observed (p. 119), even Muscovites were not supposed to study their own Kremlin’s walls too closely.

  86. Posokhin, Pamiatniki arkhitektury, pp. 350–51 and (on foreign trade) p. 360.

  87. This argument is forcibly put by Marshall Poe. See his Russian Moment, p. 44. On backwardness more generally, the most famous essay (to which Poe’s is a partial rejoinder) is Alexander Gerschenkron’s, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). The star fort, or trace Italienne, is discussed in Parker, ‘“Military Revolution”’, pp. 204–5.

  88. Ryszard Kapuscinski, Travels with Herodotus (London, 2007), p. 59.

  3 THE GOLDEN PALACE

  1. Travels to Tana and Persia by Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, trans., W. Thomas et al. (London, 1873), p. 162.

  2. Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey, eds., Rude and Barbarous Kingdom (Madison, Wisc., 1968), pp. 55–6; see also Michael Flier, ‘The iconology of royal ritual in sixteenth-century Muscovy’, in Speros Vryonis Jr., ed., Byzantine Studies: Essays on the Slavic World and the 11th Century (New Rochelle, NY, 1992), p. 61.

  3. The same kinds of observations were made, in the middle of the seventeenth century, by the visiting Syrian priest Paul of Aleppo. See The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch: Written by His Attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, in Arabic, trans. F. C. Belfour (London, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 342–5.

  4. The most heroic explanation, and the most convincing, is Paul Bushkovitch, ‘The epiphany ceremony of the Russian court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Russian Review, 49, 1 (January 1990), pp. 13–14. The same article places the date of the ceremony’s adoption in Moscow at some point between 1477 and 1525. For the role of the horses and other magical aspects of the scene, see also W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (Stroud, 1999), pp. 57 and 131–2.

  5. Michael S. Flier, ‘Till the End of Time: The Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500’, in Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars (University Park, Pa., 2003), pp. 127–58.

  6. P. Pierling, La Russie et le Saint Siège: Etudes Diplomatiques, vol. 2 (Paris, 1896), p. 205.

  7. She was the first cousin once removed of both Ivan III and Prince Ivan Yurevich Patrikeev. For more on the late fifteenth-century crisis, see Nancy Shields Kollmann, ‘Consensus politics: the dynastic crisis of the 1490s reconsidered’, Russian Review, 45, 3 (July 1986), pp. 235–67.

  8. See Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 247.

  9. For an account, see S. P. Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’ v starinu i teper’, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1912 and 1918), vol. 2, pp. 91–3. See also G. P. Majeska, ‘The Moscow coronation of 1498 reconsidered’, JbFGO, 26 (1978), esp. p. 356.

  10. John Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London, 1961), pp. 339–42.

  11. The story is also discussed in T. D. Panova, Kremlevskie usypal’nitsy: Istoriia, sud’ba, taina (Moscow, 2003), p. 58.

  12. For a description of it, see Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 121–8; for evidence of later weddings, see Russell E. Martin, ‘Choreographing the “Tsar’s Happy Occasion”: tradition, change, and dynastic legitimacy in the weddings of Mikhail Romanov’, Slavic Review, 63, 4 (Winter 2004), pp. 794–817.

  13. Konstantin Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi Kreml’ (Moscow, 2007), p. 61.

  14. Sergei Bogatyrev, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, in CHR, vol. 1, p. 243.

  15. Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 168–73.

  16. There is no proof, of course. See Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System (Stanford, Calif., 1987), p. 168.

  17. Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2005), p. 40. The source is not given.

  18. de Madariaga, Ivan, pp. 40–41; Panova, Kremlevskie usypal’nitsy, p. 60.

  19. Panova, Kremlevskie usypal’nitsy, p. 147.

  20. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, p. 170.

  21. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, pp. 169–74.

  22. The letter is part of the famous Ivan–Kurbsky correspondence. For a discussion of its authenticity, see R. G. Skrynnikov, Perepiska Groznogo i Kurbskogo: paradoksy Edvarda Kinana (Leningrad, 1973) and the book that provoked it: Edward L. Keenan, The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha (Cambridge, Mass., 1971).

  23. J. L. I. Fennell, trans. and ed., The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579 (Cambridge, 1955), letter from Ivan to Kurbsky, p. 73.

  24. Bogatyrev, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, p. 244.

  25. Sergei Bogatyrev, ‘Reinventing the Russian monarchy in the 1550s: Ivan IV, the dynasty, and the church’, SEER, 85, 2 (April 2007), p. 273.

  26. R. G. Skrynnikov, Velikii gosudar’ Ioan Vasil’evich Groznyi, 2 vols. (Smolensk, 1996), vol. 1, p. 137. Ivan III’s advisors had probably used a Serbian translation of original Greek texts, and the likelihood is that Makary’s men used similar materials. As Michael Angold puts the matter, it was ‘much easier to absorb Byzantine influences, once Byzantium was no more’. Michael Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans (Harlow, 2012), p. 140.

  27. Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1961), p. 45.

  28. D. B. Miller, ‘The coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’, JbFGO, 15 (1967), pp. 559–74, esp. p. 563.

  29. According to the best recent scholarship, Makary further emphasized this point by withholding the ritual of anointing with holy oil from the ceremony itself. See Sergei Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors: Ritualised Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture (Helsinki, 2000), p. 164, and also his ‘Reinventing the Russian Monarchy’, p. 275.

  30. A version of the text appears in Makarii (Arkhimandrit Veretennikov), Zhizn’ i trudy sviatitelia Makariia (Moscow, 2002), pp. 367–9.

  31. Skrynnikov, Velikii gosudar’, vol. 1, p. 138.

  32. On t
he choice of date, see Flier, ‘Iconology of royal ritual’, p. 73.

  33. See Sergei Bogatyrev, ‘Micro-periodization and dynasticism: was there a divide in the reign of Ivan the Terrible?’, Slavic Review, 69, 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 406–7.

  34. The gold is referred to with special emphasis in accounts of the coronation. See DAI, vol. 1, pp. 41–53. On the teams who rang the Kremlin bells, see A. Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, Calif., 1967), p. 114.

  35. Miller, ‘Coronation of Ivan IV’, p. 562.

  36. The case is made by R. G. Skrynnikov, Krest’ i korona (St Petersburg, 2000), p. 225.

  37. Bogatyrev, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, p. 249.

  38. Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, p. 179. The original account of the fire, in the Tsarstvennaia kniga, was written thirty years or so after the fact.

  39. John Stuart, Ikons (London, 1975), p. 102.

  40. See Skrynnikov, Krest’, pp. 225–6.

  41. Tsarstvennaia kniga, PSRL, vol. 13, s. 456; cited in Fennell, Correspondence, p. 81, n. 2.

  42. de Madariaga, Ivan, pp. 61–2.

  43. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 63.

  44. This last was the obraznaia palata. See S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, ed., Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata Moskovskogo kremlia (Moscow, 1954), p. 514. See also O. I. Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola zhivopisi pri Ivane IV: raboty v Moskovskom Kremle 40x–70x godov XVI v. (Moscow, 1972), p. 15; Stuart, Ikons, p. 102; on the workshops, see also I. A. Selezneva, Zolotaia i serebrianaia palaty: kremlevskie masterskie XVII veka: organizatsiia i formy (Moscow, 2001).

  45. Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola, pp. 5–8; on Ivan’s throne, see Bogatyrev, Sovereign, p. 75.

  46. For a discussion, see V. M. Sorokatyi, ‘“Serdtse tsarevo v rutse Bozhiei”: tema nebesnogo zastupnichestva gosudariu v khudozhestvennom ubranstve Blagoveshchenskogo sobora pri Ivane IV’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIX, pp. 67–82.

  47. See also Michael S. Flier, ‘The throne of Monomakh’, in James Cracraft and Daniel Bruce Rowland, eds., Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present (Ithaca, NY, 2003), pp. 21–33.

  48. The entire cycle is decribed in an appendix to Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola, using Ushakov’s sketches.