Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

by Catherine Merridale

  24. Donetskaia and Kondrashova, ‘Iz istorii prosvetitel’skoi’, p. 304; Ol’ga Sosnina and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, eds., Dari vozhdiam: Katalog vystavki (Moscow, 2006), p. 302.

  25. N. S. Vladimirskaia, ‘Etapy stanovleniia nauchnoi deiatel’nosti muzeia’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIV, p. 283.

  26. It was issued by the publishing house Moskovskii Rabochii in 1957.

  27. It, too, was published by Moskovskii Rabochii, and went through several editions after 1957.

  28. For the objects, see the catalogue, edited by Sosnina and Ssorin-Chaikov, Dari vozhdiam, passim.

  29. M. M. Gerasimov, The Face-Finder (London, 1971), p. 187. See also M. M. Gerasimov’s account for his peers, ‘Dokumental’nyi portret Ivana Groznogo’, in Kratkie soobshcheniia instituta Akademii Nauk SSSR, 100 (1965), pp. 139–42.

  30. I. A. Rodimtseva, Iz glubiny vekov: ocherki istorii Moskovskogo Kremlia (Moscow, 1997), p. 124, describes some of the work. For more detail, and a criticism of the projects of this period, see V. V. Vladimirskaia, ‘Restavratsiia pamiatnikov arkhitektury moskovskogo kremlia. XX vek’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIV, pp. 331–3.

  31. Mezhdunarodnyi Sovet Muzeev, p. 1.

  32. Mezhdunarodnyi Sovet Muzeev, pp. 8–10. See also I. L. Buseva-Davydova, Khramy Moskovskogo Kremlia (Moscow, 1997), p. 15.

  33. The first volume of the Kremlin staffs’ occasional series of research papers, Materialy i issledovaniia, appeared in 1973. It had no single theme, but included essays on the history of the Kremlin museums, on conservation, and on individual treasures.

  34. The catalogue, with colour illustrations, was Treasures from the Kremlin: An Exhibition from the State Museums of the Moscow Kremlin (New York, 1979). The show took five years to arrange.

  35. M. G. Rabinovich, Zapiski sovetskogo intellektuala (Moscow, 2005), p. 241.

  36. Rabinovich, Zapiski, pp. 297–8.

  37. N. N. Voronin and M. G. Rabinovich, ‘Arkheologicheskie raboty v Moskovskom Kremle’, Sovetskaia arkheologiia, 1 (1963), pp. 252–72. Sytin, of course, had worked with the metro-digging teams.

  38. T. D. Avdusina, ‘Vystavka “arkheologiia moskovskogo kremlia”’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIV, p. 271.

  39. N. S. Vladimirskaia (Sheliapina), ed., Arkheologicheskaia vystavka muzeev kremlia: katalog (Moscow, 1983), passim.

  40. For the garrison, see A. Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Moscow, 1997), p. 39.

  41. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 193.

  42. On the telephone system of the 1960s, see J. Patrick Lewis, ‘Communications output in the USSR: a study of the Soviet telephone systems’, Soviet Studies, 28, 3 (July 1976), pp. 406–17.

  43. The story of the British angle was related to me by K. A. (Tony) Bishop, CMG, OBE, official interpreter on the British side; for the graded telephone systems, see Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, p. 129.

  44. S. V. Mironenko, ed., Moskovskii kreml’: tsitadel’ Rossii (Moscow, 2008), p. 51.

  45. C. Cooke, ‘Manhattan in Moscow’, Domus, 840 (September 2001), p. 95.

  46. V. A. Vinogradov, ed., Moskva 850 let, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1997), p. 140; Colton, Moscow, p. 371.

  47. Colton, Moscow, p. 366. I remember the swimming pool from my own student days, an open-air giant that was heated right through the coldest Moscow winters.

  48. Mark Frankland, Child of My Time (London, 1999), pp. 31–3.

  49. Konstantin Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi Kreml’ (Moscow, 2007), p. 264.

  50. A. Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers: Conversations with Felix Chuev (Chicago, 1993), p. 187.

  51. Interview with engineer P., September 2009.

  52. Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi, p. 251.

  53. V. V. Vladimirskaia, ‘Restavratsiia’, Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XIV, p. 330; Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi, p. 250.

  54. M. V. Posokhin et al., Kremlevskii dvorets s”ezdov (Moscow, 1974), p. 8.

  55. For the dimensions, see ibid., pp. 50–60.

  56. Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi, p. 44.

  57. Posokhin, Kremlevskii, p. 22.

  58. V. A. Kozlov, S. Fitzpatrick and S. Mironenko, Sedition (New Haven, Conn., 2011), pp. 113 and 136.

  59. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 264.

  60. On the women, see Vasileva, Wives, p. 208. The same source also deals with stories of the hunting and the food.

  61. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (London, 1995), pp. 143–4.

  62. A. S. Gratchev, La Chute du Kremlin (Paris, 1994), p. 26.

  63. Gratchev, La Chute, p. 28.

  64. J. N. Westwood, Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History 1812–1992, 4th edn (Oxford, 1993), p. 427.

  65. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 362.

  66. Gratchev, La Chute, p. 61.

  67. See Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 330.

  68. V. Kostikov, Roman s prezidentom: zapiski press-sekretaria (Moscow, 1997), p. 39.

  69. The story was another memory related to me in 2006 by the interpreter K. A. (Tony) Bishop, CMG, OBE.

  70. The name was also a pun on the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy.

  71. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, pp. 383–4.

  72. Mironenko, Moskovskii kreml’, pp. 48–50; Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 380. On the poor state of Cathedral Square at this time, see V. V. Vladimirskaia, ‘Restavratsiia’, p. 333.

  73. See, for example, Iu. Korolev, Kremlevskii sovetnik: XX vek glazami ochevidtsev (Moscow, 1995).

  74. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 101.

  75. Anatoly S. Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, trans. and ed. by Robert D. English and Elizabeth Tucker (University Park, Pa., 2000), p. 52.

  76. For an excellent study of the post-war mentality, see Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (New York, 2011).

  77. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 307.

  78. Vasileva, Wives, pp. 206–7.

  79. Mervyn Matthews, Privilege in the Soviet Union (London, 1978), pp. 36–40.

  80. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 500.

  81. B. D. Moroz, ed., Raisa: vospominaniia, dnevniki, interv’iu, stat’i, pis’ma, telegrammy (Moscow, 2000), p. 49. The issue clearly rankled with the Gorbachevs. See Gorbachev, Memoirs, pp. 137–8.

  82. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, pp. 122–4; interview with S. Mikoyan, Moscow, September 2007.

  83. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 125.

  84. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 28.

  85. Colton, Moscow, p. 524.

  86. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 135; Matthews, Privilege, pp. 38–42.

  87. The scandal, which had been the talk of Moscow’s kitchens for some years, was finally reported in Moskovskaia Pravda, 10–16 September 1986.

  88. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 135.

  89. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 330.

  90. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 308.

  91. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 174.

  92. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p 329.

  93. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 372.

  94. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 403; Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 195.

  95. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 219.

  96. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 19.

  97. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 222.

  98. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 64.

  99. Igor Korchilov, Translating History (New York, 1997), p. 59.

  100. A. Grachev, Final Days: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, trans. Margo Milne (Boulder, Colo., 1995), p. xi; see also Rodric Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down (London, 2002), p. 54.

  101. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 202.

  102. Korchilov, Translating History, p. 123.

  103. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 234.

  104. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 165.

  105. Gratchev, La Chute, p. 56.

  106. Chernyaev, Six Years, pp. 147–8.

  107. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 38.

  108. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 506.


  109. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 159.

  110. As David Remnick put it, ‘When history was no longer an instrument of the Party, the Party was doomed to failure.’ Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (London, 1994), p. 7.

  111. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 499.

  112. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 236.

  113. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 131.

  114. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 506.

  115. Cited in interview with Jonathan Steele, Guardian, 16 August 2011: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/16/gorbachev-guardian-interview (accessed 15 May 2012).

  116. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, pp. 39–40; Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 524.

  117. Braithwaite, Moscow River, pp. 190–91.

  118. The translation is from Braithwaite, Moscow River, p. 177.

  119. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 413.

  120. Boris El’tsin, Zapiski Prezidenta (Moscow, 1994), p. 54.

  121. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 766.

  122. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 352.

  123. Boris Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (London, 1994), p. 56.

  124. Yeltsin, View, pp. 68–9.

  125. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 378.

  126. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 826.

  127. Izvestiia, 23 August 1991, p. 1. A few days later, on 27 August, the same paper demanded ‘normality’ in the name of its readers.

  128. Yeltsin, View, p. 124.

  129. A point made in so many words by Gorbachev. See his On My Country and the World (New York, 1999), p. 151.

  130. Yeltsin, View, p. 123.

  131. El’tsin, Zapiski Prezidenta, p. 162.

  132. Izvestiia, 27 August 1991.

  133. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 40.

  134. Chernyaev, Six Years, p. 380.

  135. Volkogonov, Rise and Fall, p. 513.

  136. Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, p. 119.

  137. Kostikov, Roman s prezidentom, p. 131.

  138. Kostikov, Roman s prezidentom, p. 37.

  139. Grachev, Final Days, pp. 56–9.

  140. Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, p. 119; Gorbachev, On My Country, p. 148.

  141. Grachev, Final Days, pp. 56–9.

  142. Gorbachev, On My Country, p. 148; Yeltsin, View, pp. 111–15.

  143. On the briefcase itself, which is one of three, see Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, pp. 59–60.

  144. El’tsin, Zapiski Prezidenta, pp. 160–61.

  145. Grachev, Final Days, p. 181.

  146. Yeltsin, View, p. 121.

  147. Cited in Gorbachev, On My Country, p. 157.

  148. The photograph was printed all over the world. See Izvestiia, 26 December 1991.

  149. Grachev, Final Days, p. 191. Grachev later moved to Paris, so the figure he actually quoted was 200 French francs.

  12 NORMALITY

  1. A. Grachev, Final Days: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, trans. Margo Milne (Boulder, Colo., 1995), p. 194; V. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ pri prezidentakh (Moscow, 2004), p. 42; Boris Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (London, 1994), p. 12.

  2. Izvestiia, 2 January 1992.

  3. The shortages and high prices had begun before Yeltsin took power. See Otto Latsis, Izvestiia, 2 January 1992. On foreign aid, and the reasons for it, see ‘IMF Approves Stand-by Credit for Russia’, IMF Press release for 11 April 1995, available at https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1995/pr9521.htm (accessed 26 Aug. 2011).

  4. Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia (New York and London, 2000), p. 33.

  5. Klebnikov, Godfather, p. 36. The collapse of the Russian population was the subject of several international colloquia in the mid-1990s. For an analysis, see N. G. Bennett et al., ‘Demographic implications of the Russian mortality crisis’, World Development, 26 (1998), pp. 1921–37.

  6. On the Bank of New York scandal in particular, see ‘Russia misled IMF on loan’, Washington Post, 1 July 1999.

  7. For detailed statistics, see Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 4th edn (Abingdon and New York 2008), pp. 36–8.

  8. Again, these matters are outlined in Sakwa, Russian Politics, p. 30.

  9. See Otto Latsis and also Sergei Taranov, both writing in Izvestiia, 4 May 1993.

  10. The old Communist Party paper, Pravda, was a so-called ‘red-brown’ in its own right, as witness its reportage of the 1 May demonstrations.

  11. Viacheslav Kostikov, Roman s Prezidentom: zapiski press-sekretaria (Moscow, 1997), p. 173, citing the editor of Argumenty i fakty, Vladislav Starkov. For an account of the events themselves, see Sakwa, Russian Politics, p. 52.

  12. Vladimir Snegirev, writing in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 3 October 2003.

  13. For the composition of these crowds, and their motives, see Michael Urban, ‘The politics of identity in Russia’s postcommunist transition: the nation against itself’, Slavic Review, 53, 3 (Autumn 1994), p. 734. The liberal press referred to them as ‘hoorah-patriots’. See Izvestiia, 21 September 1993, pp. 1 and 4.

  14. The highest counts are in the low thousands. The figure of 147 is cited in Sakwa, Russian Politics, p. 52, and is on the low side, as even the Procurator’s office gave a total amounting to 249 (148 inside the White House and 101 on the streets).

  15. Izvestiia, 5 October 1993, p. 1.

  16. Yeltsin, View, p. 241; on the issue of medical services, see David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2003), p. 61. An entirely different view of events, from the red-brown perspective, was presented in Pravda, 25 September 1993 (‘Rossiia protiv diktatura’).

  17. Cited by Robert Conquest, Washington Post, 10 October 1993.

  18. Washington Post, 16 October 1993.

  19. Cited by Lilia Shevtsova, in A. Brown and L. Shevtsova, eds., Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin: Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition (Washington, DC, 2001), p. 69.

  20. As Vasily Pribylovsky put it, ‘The idea of power was the ideology that he supported.’ See David Satter, It Was a Long Time Ago, And It Never Happened Anyway (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2011), p. 158.

  21. Cited in Andrew Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia (London, 2004), p. 227.

  22. Brown and Shevtsova, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, p. 76.

  23. The Russian constitution is available online at www.constitution.ru.

  24. The decisions are reviewed in Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, pp. 52–62.

  25. The proposal’s sponsor was Yury Luzhkov. See Kostikov, Roman s Prezidentom, p. 263.

  26. For a discussion, see Brian D. Taylor, State Building in Putin’s Russia (Cambridge, 2011), esp. pp. 294–8. See also Edward Lucas, The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West (London, 2008), p. 43.

  27. On Gorbachev and John Major, see Rodric Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down (London, 2002), p. 217.

  28. Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (London, 2000), p. 160; I am grateful to K. A. (Tony) Bishop, CMG, OBE, for the other side of the story, related to me in July 2006.

  29. The BBC reported this in detail. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/133725.stm (accessed 31 Jan. 2013).

  30. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, p. 304.

  31. Iu. A. Bychkov et al., eds., Petr Baranovskii: Trudy, vospominaniia sovremennikov (Moscow, 1996), p. 142.

  32. Ruslan Armeev, ‘Kazanskii sobor vozrozhden!’, Moskovskii zhurnal, 1 (1994), p. 2.

  33. For an analysis of the fairy-tale element in Moscow’s reconstruction at this time, see Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, ‘Unravelling the threads of history: Soviet-era monuments and post-Soviet national identity in Moscow’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 3 (September 2002), pp. 524–47.

  34. L. G. Georg’ian, ed., Podgotovka k prazdnovaniiu 850-letiia osnovaniia Moskvy: sbornik statei opublikovannykh v gazetakh Moskvy i podmoskov’ia v 1995–1997 gg. (Friazino, 1997), p. 53.


  35. Dmitri Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization and the politics of scale: the resurrection of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90, 3 (September 2000), p. 561.

  36. Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization’, p. 561.

  37. Y. Luzhkov, My deti tvoi, Moskva (Moscow, 1996), p. 193.

  38. Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata. Posleslovie (Moscow, 2004), p. 456.

  39. Zoe Knox, ‘The symphonic ideal: the Moscow patriarchate’s post-Soviet leadership’, Europe-Asia Studies, 55, 4 (June 2003), p. 586.

  40. Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization’, p. 565.

  41. This is the first criterion for the selection of cultural sites, and was specifically mentioned in the Kremlin’s case. For a full list, see http://whc.unesco.org.en/criteria/.

  42. The resolution by UNESCO was taken at its 14th session in December 1990.

  43. The contrast with nearby Kolomna, whose Kremlin walls have been rebuilt in finest pastiche, is striking.

  44. Konstantin Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi Kreml’ (Moscow, 2007), p. 245.

  45. www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/13604 (Nauka i zhizn’, 4 (2008), the recollections of A. Grashchenkov, a former member of the Kremlin museum team, accessed 25 Aug. 2011).

  46. Mikhailov, Unichtozhennyi, p. 244.

  47. New York Times, 16 September 1999.

  48. The Economist, 16 September 1999.

  49. New York Times, 27 August 1999.

  50. A fact bemoaned by its former director in conversation in Moscow in September 2007.

  51. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, p. 96.

  52. Shevchenko, Povsednevnaia, p. 38.

  53. The companies involved included Martolini and Maioli, based in the historic artisan quarter of Florence.

  54. Nezavisimaia gazeta, 17 November 1998.

  55. The story is repeated in the New York Times profile of Borodin, 1 July 2001.

  56. There is a good account of this in David Satter, Darkness at Dawn, pp. 57–9.

  57. Corriere della Sera, 25 August 1999.

  58. New York Times, 8 September 1999. Turover’s reliability as a witness was later challenged. Moscow Times, 6 March 2001.

  59. New York Times, 13 April 2001.

  60. Moscow Times, 16 April 2001.