Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

by Catherine Merridale

  109. A controversial point argued cogently by Sedov, Zakat, pp. 132–9.

  110. Although our knowledge of this is limited, and while many elite noblemen were conservative (and relatively short of the necessary resources) when it came to collecting, there is evidence in the cases of figures such as Artamon Matveyev and Vasily Golitsyn.

  111. Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent of Russia (London and New Haven, Conn., 1990), p. 37.

  112. On the education of the tsarevich, see Sedov, Zakat, pp. 176–8.

  113. V. M. Zhivov, ‘Religious reform and the emergence of the individual in seventeenth-century Russian literature’, in S. Baron and Nancy Shields-Kollmann, eds., Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 1997), p. 184.

  114. James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago, 1988), p. 42. Buseva-Davydova’s monograph on seventeenth-century art effectively disputes this notion of crisis.

  115. Hughes, Sophia, pp. 52–88.

  116. Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (New Haven, Conn. And London, 2004), pp. 17–20.

  117. For details, see Hughes, Sophia, p. 193.

  118. DAI, vol. II, no. 90, pp. 286–7; Kozlitina, ‘Dokumenty’, pp.101–2. On the style, see Lindsey Hughes, ‘Western European graphic material as a source for Moscow Baroque architecture’, SEER, 55, 4 (October 1977), p. 437.

  6 CLASSICAL ORDERS

  1. Dvortsovye razriady, vol. 4 (St Petersburg, 1855), p. 911.

  2. Dvortsovye razriady, vol. 4, pp. 920–26; PSZ, vol. III, pp. 220–21, no. 1536.

  3. On the nuns, see I. E. Zabelin, Materialy dlia istorii arkheologii i statistiki goroda Moskvy, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1891), p. 8; on crime, see D. N. Anuchin et al., eds., Moskva v ee proshlom i nastoiashchem, 12 vols. (Moscow 1909–12), vol. 2, p. 43, citing Kotoshikhin. Traditionally (though Ivan’s was an exception) royal funerals took place at night.

  4. Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (London and New Haven, Conn., 2004), pp. 202–7.

  5. There had been a few European works. In 1661, for instance, an Austrian visitor to Moscow, Count Augustin Meyerberg, created two views of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s Kremlin that showed the walls and towers in remarkable detail (the artist was especially impressed by the new Saviour Tower).

  6. M. A. Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni (Leningrad, 1990), pp. 7–8 and 19.

  7. Alekseeva, Graviura, pp. 23–5.

  8. The chant itself had changed during Fedor Alekseyevich’s reign, as polyphonic settings (‘Kiev style’) began to become fashionable. See P. V. Sedov, Zakat Moskovskogo tsarstva: tsarskii dvor kontsa XVII veka (St Petersburg, 2006), pp. 494–5.

  9. For an excellent account of Peter’s political activities, see Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power (Cambridge, 2001), especially pp. 154–7.

  10. Hughes, Peter, p. 25.

  11. Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1998), p. 12.

  12. PSZ, vol. III, p. 296, no. 1546 (order banning heavy carts, 19 August 1696).

  13. James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago, 1988), p. 130; Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture and the West (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007), p. 185; for a more detailed account, see A. A. Aronova, ‘Azovskii triumf 1696 goda kak pervoe gosudarstvennoe torzhestvo Petra I’, Iskusstvoznanie, 2 (2006), pp. 61–83. One of the earliest official references to Red Square, referring only to the space between the Saviour Gate and St Basil’s (the current square did not exist), was an ukaz of 1658; popular use of the name may well date from the completion of the Saviour Tower three decades earlier.

  14. Samuel Collins, The Present State of Russia: A Letter to a Friend at London, by an Eminent Person residing at the Czar’s Court (London, 1671), p. 33.

  15. J. G. Korb, Diary of an Austrian Secretary of a Legation: at the Court of Czar Peter the Great, trans. and ed. by the Count MacDonnell, 2 vols. (London, repr. 1968), vol. 2, p. 145.

  16. Korb, Diary, vol. 1, pp. 255–6; on tobacco (and other merriment) see also Horace W. Dewey and Kira B. Stevens, ‘Muscovites at play: recreation in pre-Petrine Russia’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 13, 1–2 (1979), p. 192.

  17. On the meaning of Peter’s court, see Ernest A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom (Ithaca, NY and London, 2004). Similar remarks, with special reference to the patriarchate, are made by V. M. Zhivov. See his ‘Church reforms in the reign of Peter the Great’, in A. G. Cross, ed., Russia in the Reign of Peter the Great: Old and New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1998), p. 67.

  18. For the wedding, see Hughes, Peter, pp. 109–11 and also her ‘Playing games: the alternative history of Peter the Great’, School of Slavonic Studies Occasional Papers, no. 41 (London, 2000), p. 10.

  19. Korb, Diary, vol. 1, p. 157.

  20. Korb, Diary, vol. 1, pp. 159–60; see also Hughes, Peter, p. 53.

  21. Johann Korb, ‘A Compendious Description of the Perilous Revolt of the Strelitz of Muscovy’ (reprinted as part of his Diary, vol. 2), p. 85.

  22. Korb, ‘Compendious Description’, p. 81.

  23. I. Snegirev, Moskva: Podrobnoe istoricheskoe i arkheologicheskoe opisanie goroda, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1875), p. 18.

  24. RGADA, 1184/1/195, 256–7; PSZ, vol. III, p. 680, nos. 1735 and 1736.

  25. PSZ, vol. IV, p. 182, no. 1887; on the visual aids, see also Lindsey Hughes, ‘Russian culture in the eighteenth century’, in CHR, vol. 2, p. 67.

  26. An illustrated commentary on the Old Believer attitude appears in Michael Cherniavsky, ‘The Old Believers and the new religion’, Slavic Review, 25, 1 (March 1966), pp. 1–39. See also Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1961), p. 76.

  27. Hughes, ‘Russian culture’, p. 77.

  28. Korb, Diary, vol. 1, pp. 179–80.

  29. On religious transformation, see Zhivov, ‘Church reforms’, passim.

  30. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter, pp. 208–9.

  31. Cracraft, Petrine Revolution, p. 128.

  32. PSZ, vol. IV, p. 177 (no. 1879) and p. 192 (no. 1909).

  33. Korb, Diary, vol. 2, p. 150.

  34. I. E. Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarei v XVI i XVII stoletiiakh (Moscow, 1862, repr. 1990), vol. 1, p. 70; S. de Bartenev, Le Grand Palais du Kremlin et ses neuf églises (Moscow, 1912), p. 15; I. A. Bondarenko et al., eds., Slovar’ arkhitektorov i masterov stroitel’nogo dela Moskvy XV–serediny XVIII veka (Moscow, 2008), p. 577.

  35. Cracraft, Petrine Revolution, p. 122; Snegirev, Moskva, vol. 2, pp. 16–17.

  36. Alekseeva, Graviura, p. 33.

  37. Bondarenko, Slovar’ arkhitektorov, p. 332.

  38. Cited by Maria di Salvo, in Simon Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes (London, 2010), p. 96.

  39. See Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, pp. 76–7; Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, NJ, 1995), vol. 1, p. 48.

  40. Hughes, Peter, p. 60.

  41. Hughes, Peter, p. 63.

  42. A. Aronova, ‘Petropavlovskaia krepost’: istoricheskii mif i gradostroitel’naia real’nost”, Iskusstvoznanie, 2 (2001), pp. 370–80, which corrects the more widely accepted version in Hughes, Peter, pp. 66–8.

  43. The Dutch engineer-designer was assisted by one of Peter’s own artillery officers. See N. A. Skvortsov, Arkheologiia i topografiia Moskvy: kurs lektsii (Moscow, 1913), p. 100.

  44. S. P. Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml’ v starinu i teper’, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1912 and 1918), vol. 1, p. 69.

  45. Albert J. Schmidt, The Architecture and Planning of Classical Moscow (Philadelphia, Pa., 1989), pp. 18–19; Cracraft, Petrine Revolution, p. 122; M. P. Fabricius, Kreml’ v Moskve: ocherki i kartiny proshlogo i nastoiashchego (Moscow, 1883), p. 142.

  46. Alekseeva, Graviura, pp. 117–21.

  47. I. E. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy (Moscow, 1904; repr. 2005), p. 172; Bartenev, Moskovskii krem
l’, vol. 1, p. 70.

  48. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 168.

  49. Istoriia Moskvy v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1952), vol. 2, p. 337; Anuchin, Moskva v ee proshlom, vol. 4, p. 9.

  50. For evidence, see Zabelin, Domashnii, vol. 1, p. 125; Korb, Diary, vol. 1, p. 254.

  51. Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml’, vol. 1, p. 70.

  52. Bartenev, Grand Palais, p. 14.

  53. Zabelin, Domashnii, vol. 1, pp. 125–6.

  54. Zabelin, Materialy dlia istorii, vol. 2, pp. 6–7.

  55. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter, p. 338.

  56. See Catherine the Great’s playful remarks on the subject in her letter to Voltaire of 15/26 March 1767, reprinted in W. F. Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great (Cambridge, 1931), p. 15.

  57. Zhivov, ‘Church reforms’, p. 74; Lindsey Hughes, ‘Seeing the sights in eighteenth-century Russia: the Moscow Kremlin’, in R. Bartlett and G. Lehmann-Carli, eds., Eighteenth-century Russia: Society, Culture, Economy: Papers from the IV International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-century Russia (Berlin and London, 2007), p. 316.

  58. V. S. Dediukhina et al., eds., Sokhranenie pamiatnikov tserkovnoi stariny v Rossii XVIII–nachala XXv. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1997), pp. 18–19, referring to ukazy of December 1720 and February 1722.

  59. M. K. Pavlovich, ‘Reorganizatsiia Kremlevskikh sokrovishchnits i masterskikh pri Petre I’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIII, p. 139; Richard Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia 1600–1725 (Chicago, 1999), p. 571.

  60. See Petr Velikii v Moskve: Kalatog vystavki (Moscow, 1998), pp. 114–15.

  61. Dediukhina, Sokhranenie, p. 18.

  62. On Romodanovsky, see Bartenev, Moskovskii kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 206–7; see also I. Ia. Stelletskii, Poiski biblioteki Ivana Groznogo (Moscow, 1999), pp. 273–4.

  63. The same impression was reported by a visitor of 1711. Hughes, ‘Seeing the sights’, p. 318.

  64. On the gardens, see Korb, Diary, vol. 1, p. 288, and Zabelin, Domashnii, vol. 1, pp. 103–7.

  65. F. Bekhteev, cited in A. I. Mikhailov, Bazhenov (Moscow, 1951), p. 99.

  66. Bushkovitch, Peter, pp. 385–6.

  67. N. A. Ogarkova, Tseremonii, prazdnichestva, muzyka russkogo dvora (St Petersburg, 2004), pp. 11–14.

  68. S. A. Amelekhina, ‘Koronatsiia Ekateriny I. 1724’, in Petr Velikii i Moskva, p. 169.

  69. Zabelin, Domashnii, vol. 1, p. 120; see also Amelekhina, ‘Koronatsiia’, p. 170.

  70. Amelekhina, ‘Koronatsiia’, p. 170.

  71. E. V. Anisimov, Five Empresses: Court Life in Eighteenth-century Russia, trans. Kathleen Carroll (Westport, Ua., 2004), p. 31.

  72. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 1-vol. edn (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2006), p. 37.

  73. For the procession, see Amelekhina, ‘Koronatsiia’, p. 171; for Dmitry of Uglich, see above, pp. 119–27.

  74. Pungent comments on the inconvenience appear in Catherine the Great’s letters. See, for example, her comments to Nikita Panin in SIRIO, vol. 10, pp. 276–7. For prejudice against Moscow by other courtiers, see SIRIO, vol. 23, pp. 11–12. On the role of the Guards, see Anisimov, Five Empresses, p. 8, citing Campredon.

  75. On this reform, enacted by Peter III, see Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, p. 125. For its impact on cities, see, for example, Schmidt, Architecture and Planning, p. 5.

  76. Cited in John T. Alexander, ‘Catherine II, bubonic plague, and the problem of industry in Moscow’, AHR, 79, 3 (June 1974), p. 640.

  77. A. Pypin, ed., Sochineniia Ekateriny II (St Petersburg, 1907), vol. 12, pp. 169–70.

  78. A. S. Shchenkov, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 2002), p. 17; Luba Golburt, ‘Derzhavin’s ruins and the birth of historical elegy’, Slavic Review, 65, 4 (Winter 2006), pp. 670–93.

  79. On Russian ideas of the picturesque, see Christopher Ely, This Meager Nature: Landscape and National Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 2002).

  80. Cracraft, Petrine Revolution, pp. 40–41, 150–51.

  81. For a discussion, see Schmidt, Architecture and Planning, p. 8.

  82. Shchenkov, Pamiatniki, vol. 1, p. 18 (citing a Senate report of 1770).

  83. Bartenev, Grand Palais, p. 49; on Napoleon, see below, pp. 211–15.

  84. Cited from her Reflections, in Pypin, Ekateriny II, vol. 12, p. 642. See also Simon Dixon, Catherine the Great (London, 2009), p. 10.

  85. Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 229–31.

  86. Peter II (b. 1715) was the son of Peter the Great’s murdered heir, Aleksei Petrovich. In 1730, after barely two years on the throne, he died of smallpox. Unlike almost all Peter the Great’s other imperial successors, he was buried in the Kremlin.

  87. Snegirev, Moskva, vol. 2, p. 88.

  88. I. M. Snegirev, Spas na Boru v Moskovskom Kremle (Moscow, 1865), p. 7.

  89. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 49.

  90. For an account, see Dixon, Catherine, pp. 4–22.

  91. Catherine’s instructions were reprinted and their consequences deplored in I. Mashkov, ed., Otchet po restavratsii bol’shogo Moskovskago Uspenskago sobora (Moscow, 1910), pp. 5–7.

  92. For her disappointment with the place, see SIRIO, vol. 23, p. 22 (letter to Grimm of 29 April 1775).

  93. Fabricius, Kreml’, pp. 156–7.

  94. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 102.

  95. PSZ, vol. XVIII, p. 696, no. 13142 (1 July 1768).

  96. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 98.

  97. For a discussion of Bazhenov’s plans, with diagrams, see Mikhailov, Bazhenov, pp. 70–81.

  98. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, pp. 77–80; William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1997), p. 323.

  99. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 80.

  100. Alexander, ‘Catherine II’, p. 661.

  101. Cited in Reddaway, ed., Documents, p. 135 (letter of 6/17 October 1771).

  102. Fabricius, Kreml’, pp. 158–60.

  103. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 84.

  104. Cited in Mikhailov, Bazhenov, pp. 86–7.

  105. A. I. Vlasiuk et al., Kazakov (Moscow, 1957), pp. 13–15; Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 248–9.

  106. Mikhailov, Bazhenov, p. 182.

  107. Brumfield, Russian Architecture, pp. 328–9; Schmidt, Architecture and Planning, p. 64; Vlasiuk, Kazakov, pp. 31–2.

  108. Hughes, ‘Russian culture’, p. 68.

  7 FIRE BIRD

  1. Cited in B. Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1982), p. 100.

  2. The planners’ efforts to ‘improve’ Moscow by opening up squares and more elegant streets are discussed in P. V. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki i zastroiki Moskvy, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1954), pp. 390–93, and also Albert J. Schmidt, The Architecture and Planning of Classical Moscow (Philadelphia, Pa., 1989). See also A. S. Shchenkov, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 2002), pp. 231–44.

  3. P. V. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki i zastroiki Moskvy, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1972), p. 15. On the wooden theatre, see ibid., vol. 2, p. 392.

  4. M. V. Posokhin et al., Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskvy: Kreml’, Kitai-gorod, Tsentral’nye ploshchadi (Moscow, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 371–3; Vedomosti was founded by Peter the Great at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

  5. Population figures from Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 3, pp. 13–18. For a survey of Moscow’s elite life, see Alexander M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb, Ill., 1997), pp. 58–9.

  6. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 3, pp. 13–18.

  7. Among the earliest of abolitionists was the foreign-educated radical Alexander Radishchev (1749–1802). Catherine the Great herself famously considered the issue of serfdom, but her intellectual interest in its abolition was never translated into policy.

  8. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 3, pp. 13–18.
<
br />   9. The nobility was expanding in this period, but still constituted less than 1 per cent of the population of the empire as a whole. See Dominic Lieven, ‘The elites’, in CHR, vol. 2, p. 230.

  10. For commentary, see Shchenkov, Pamiatniki, pp. 30–40.

  11. For a reflection on Moscow, see Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 3, p. 16. On Batiushkov and landscape, see A. Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin: Russian Fiction in the Age of Alexander I, 1801–1825 (New York and Amsterdam, 2006), esp. pp. 60–61.

  12. For more discussion of Russian perceptions of the landscape at this point, see Christopher D. Ely, This Meager Nature: Landscape and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 2002), p. 50.

  13. Ely, Meager Nature, pp. 50 and 64.

  14. Cited in T. Slavina, Konstantin Ton (Leningrad, 1989), p. 157.

  15. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 2, p. 386.

  16. These were noted by the Comte de Ségur as he approached the Kremlin with Napoleon in 1812. See his History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812, 2 vols. (London, 1826), vol. 2, p. 4.

  17. William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1997), p. 339; the other palace used was Kazakov’s Petrovskii dvorets.

  18. Cited in I. E. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy (Moscow, 1904; repr. 2005), p. 281.

  19. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, p. 281.

  20. Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613–1917 (London, 2009), p. 134.

  21. Schmidt, Architecture and Planning, p. 51.

  22. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki, vol. 3, p. 10.

  23. For a discussion of Francophobia in the years before 1812, see Martin, Romantics, pp. 58–142.

  24. Istoriia Moskvy v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1952), vol. 3, p. 46.

  25. Hughes, Romanovs, pp. 143–4.

  26. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2006), p. 95. The room, in Petersburg’s Michael Castle, was still closed to visitors in the late 1990s.

  27. Wortman, Scenarios, p. 99.

  28. Wortman, Scenarios, p. 103; see also S. M. Liubetskii, Starina Moskvy i russkogo naroda (repr. Moscow, 2004), pp. 99–100.