RUSSIA: The Third Rome

Moscow, the holy and the bloody, the loved and the dreaded, last week was a historic focus of rejoicing and remembrance. Her crown of spires and belfries shone in freshly gilded splendor, and the cupolas of her innumerable churches sat m the sky like frozen clouds. The cross atop the Tower of Ivan the Great glistened m the sun, and told visitors approaching from all over Russia that they were near their goal. In the streets, the people lanced and blessed their city upon its 800th anniversary. It was as Moscow’s son, Alexander Pushkin, had written “Moscow: those syllables can start A tumult in the Russian heart!” In 1947 those syllables produced tumultuous twinges not in Russian hearts alone.

Moscow, they said, east & west in China, in France and in Nebraska; they said it in devotion, fear and anger. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, like the pealing of the city’s thousand bells—Moscow, the shrine of the great new materialist faith, aspiring to be the new mistress of the world, was the most talked of city of the 20th Century.

Yet few actually knew this fabulous city on the border of Europe and Asia which, since its first stirrings under petty tyranny to its coma under a modern machine of domination, has been the most isolated of the world’s great capitals.

The Face. Last week, Moscow was barely recognizable even to those who knew it well. It seemed as though the entire Cosmetics Trust of the U.S.S.R. had gone to work, covering Moscow’s wrinkled face with layers of magic makeup. Almost overnight the Bolshoi Theater turned a shade of blushing pink; other buildings were newly yellow, light green and blue. Reported a visitor: “It looks like an explosion in a paint factory.”

Mother Moscow’s city fathers were working to get her in shape for a formal presentation to history. Streets were repaved, automobiles were ordered specially polished and passengers with overly bulky bundles barred from the elegant subway. Even the underground river Neglinka, got a new concrete conduit in place of the old wooden one.

Behind this Sunday-best façade (which cost an estimated 700 million rubles—$58 million) was everyday Moscow, a slow city, solemn friendly (when its masters permit it) and relatively clean—especially near the center. Dirt increases in direct proportion to distance from the Kremlin. Not even last week’s ceremonial ablutions could douse Moscow’s habitual smell—a musty and ageless compound of wet plaster, cabbage and inadequately dressed furs. Not even last week’s hectic carnival rumpus could exaggerate the Muscovites’ devotion to their white-walled, golden-headed city.

The People. One typical measure of this love is the superior attitude toward the rival city of Leningrad (or St. Petersburg, as many oldsters still call it), which Peter the Great built. Disaster cannot kill this feeling for Moscow, and exile only enhances it. Last week, a Muscovite who has not seen his birthplace in 30 years reminisced:

“Moscow people do not drink coffee as the Petersburg aristocrats and bureaucrats do. Moscow merchants, teachers priests, industrialists drink tea ‘until the seventh sweat,’ as we say. They drink tea, sweat, dry themselves with a towel and start all over again. A Muscovite has seen a lot, knows his worth, but doesn’t put on airs. He has an open Russian face, not necessarily with an uplifted bulbous nose. He also has an open soul. He is not cold like Petersburg people—he is passionate and sincere. He keeps all holidays and fast days, but during Muslenitsa (butterdish time; i.e., carnival) he stuffs himself with bliny, drinks beer and vodka until he is dizzy, rides around in sleighs, shouts, plays the accordion and—sins. A Muscovite says, ‘If one doesn’t sin one cannot repent, and if one doesn’t repent one cannot be saved.'”

This is a picture of the real heroes of Moscow’s history—Moscow’s people who lived between the heights of cathedrals and citadels. But history sums up Moscow’s 800 years not by telling of the peoples anonymous pageant, but by chronicling the rise of their rulers. The pageant started with a hermit called Bukal who lived in the midst of a thick morass by the banks of the Moskva River, where the Kremlin stands today.

The Masters. Just 800 years ago, the hermit’s peace was disturbed. The region at that time was under the dominion of a boyar called Stephen Ivanovich Kuchko who had a pretty wife. A neighboring prince, one Yuri Dolgoruki (meaning Long-Arm),*quarreled with the boyar because (at least according to one version) he wanted Kuchko’s wife. Long-Arm seized Kuchko’s domains, threw a bang-up banquet on what later became Kremlin hill, and decided that this spot—with its roads and rivers crossing in all directions —would be a good place for a town. He called it Moskva after the river.

That event in 1147 first put Moscow on the map. At the time, London was already a thriving city which had achieved trial by jury and relatively democratic city government and Vienna was coming along nicely under Margrave Henry of Babenberg, who started the building of St. Stephan’s Cathedral.

Long-Arm was succeeded by many rival princes, among them Basil the Cross-eyed, who later became Basil the Sightless and Ivan Kalita, called Moneybag, who first gave Moscow something like an ordered economy. The young town was repeatedly overrun by the Golden Horde of Tartars, one of whose reasons for coming back again & again was Moscow’s women, much coveted on the world slave markets. Sultan Ahmed I is said to have asked his eldest son one day: “My Osman, wilt thou conquer Crete for me?” Whereupon Osman replied: “What have I to do with Crete? I will conquer the land of the white Muscovite maidens.”

By the middle of the 15th Century, Moneybag’s descendants had established a dynasty and a tyranny. Ivan III married Zoe, the niece of the last Eastern Roman emperor, who brought Byzantium’s religion, architecture and incense-heavy intrigue to Moscow, which was now more powerful than any other Russian city. She hoped to make it succeed history’s two earlier Romes (the one on the Tiber and the one on the Bosporus). Ivan took the title of Czar, i.e., Caesar, and Sovereign of all the Russias. He began to build a strong brick wall around the Kremlin: it still stands today.† Then Moscow was ruled by Ivan IV, called the Terrible, who decisively defeated the Tartars and gave Moscow its first secret police—the blackclad Oprichniki (“extras”), who were mounted on black horses and carried a broom and a dog’s head at their saddle, “to sweep and gnaw away treason.” When much of Moscow was destroyed by the huge fire of 1547, Ivan retired to the Sparrow Hills so as not to see the sufferings of his people. That gesture was typical of Moscow’s rulers and their relation to the ragged mass on whom the splendors of the city rested.

The Lives. At this time, the people’s lives were hard and narrow. Reported a visitor: “The houses of the common people in Moscow usually consist only of one room . . . used for all purposes. … In this room you encounter a large stove covered with boards . . . whereon sits almost all year round, the entire family. …” Their pleasures were few. Muscovites, who were social drinkers, liked to gather in a korchma (wine tavern) but the taverns were owned by the Czar and rented out to nobles: Muscovites who could not pay for what they drank were held until their friends ransomed them. For centuries, Muscovites did not know how to dance, and paid Tartars and Poles to dance for them.

When they died, common Muscovites were simply wrapped in a pall and carried yo the burial ground, behind an icon; in their hands was placed a piece of paper with a prayer for the repose of their souls. This prompted an early Moscow correspondent, who had discovered that there was less freedom of movement in Moscow than anywhere in Europe, to report: “The Russ, when he dies, hath his passport to St. Nicolas buried with him.”

The Saints. When, under Catherine the Great, Moscow was ridden by a frightful plague (1771) and a thousand people died each day, the Archbishop of Moscow forbade, for hygienic reasons, the kissing oficons; an outraged mob killed him. When in 1812 Napoleon marched on the city, the Governor General of Moscow issued a communiqué to the people which was a typical mixture of civic concern and religious fervor: “Thank God! All is well in Moscow. . . . Bread prices have not risen and meat prices have gone down. . . . Our protectors are, before the Lord His Holy Mother and all the saints who rest in Moscow. . . .”

Muscovites, to whom their saints were fellow citizens, worshiped God in their city and their city in God. The rest of the world seemed more remote than the saints. Wrote Gogol: “Moscow is an old home-keeping person, it bakes bliny, it looks from afar and listens, without rising from the armchair, to the tale of what goes on in the world.” Muscovites retained their simple faith, which often took the homey form of poetic superstition. Perhaps the most widespread legend was that the huge Tower of Ivan within the Kremlin was married to the Sukharev Tower, a cute little number outside the Kremlin walls. Muscovites called them Jack & Jenny and claimed that every year they moved a little closer together.

The legend came to an abrupt end when the Bolsheviks tore down Jenny.

The Changes. Moscow could no longer listen to the tale of the world. It was the heart of the tale. The Revolution once more made it the capital of Russia. Once more, the country’s tyrants dwelt in the Kremlin. With the new masters came symbols of the age that produced them—factories (steel, machine tools, electric equipment, autos, locomotives). The Communist planners went to work, tore down whole sections, built new functional concrete palaces.

The Kremlin, open to all citizens under the Czar, was tightly closed; Red Square, where once Muscovite merchants had inspected parades of prospective brides, was given over to endless military shows. The Truba, a noisy quarter where children used to buy pet robins or wrens to set free on Annunciation Day, was quieted down; birds were rarely set free nowadays —for one thing, they served as food, and for another, the symbolism of freedom involved was frowned upon. The Kremlin chimes no longer played Glory to our God in Zion; instead they played the Soviet Anthem. But the people still clung to their saints, with whom Moscow’s new masters have, of late, tried to make an uneasy peace.

The Prophets. Last week, Moscow saw more gaiety than it had in years. But, as usual since the Revolution, joy moved in strictly organized channels. More than 100,000 dancers, singers and musicians had been ordered to Moscow to provide entertainment; they roamed the city in brigades, performed on huge wooden stages or at street corners, supported by sound-trucks. There were relay races around the town, boat races on the river, eight straight hours of spirited horse racing.

The city as a whole, as well as the fire department and the subways, was awarded the Order of Lenin. The trolleys were presented with the Order of the Red Banner, while the Stalin Water Supply Station received the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class. Pilgrims from all over Russia and foreign emissaries from such diverse capitals as Rome and Bangkok were on hand. From all over Russia came birthday presents to the revered capital—gleaming new trolleys, carloads of cabbages, carrots, tomatoes and flour, which were sold in the street at unusually low prices.

Joseph Stalin issued a birthday proclamation: “[Moscow represents] the liberation movement of toiling mankind from capitalist slavery. . . . Agents of imperialism are trying, in this way and that, to provoke a new war. [But] it is known that peace-loving peoples are looking to Moscow with hope as the capital of a great peace-loving power and as a mighty pillar of peace. . . .”

The fact was that the world saw in Moscow’s domes of power, in her old & new shadows of violence, the capital and nerve center of an international conspiracy which prods and stabs into the world’s remotest hearts. In its 800th year, Moscow the holy and the loved threatened to unleash a conflagration compared to which the city’s earlier catastrophes would be like gentle tremors on a sleeping face, and which would terribly verify the ancient prophesy of a Russian churchman: “The third Rome, Moscow, stands. A fourth there will not be.”

*Even in those days, the British got around. Long-Arm’s mother was an English girl called Gyda, who was the daughter of King Harold. † When it grew too narrow, an outer wall was built around the merchants’ quarters, known as Kitai Gorod (or Chinatown), a name picked up from the Tartars. Later, two even larger walls were built—one of white stone (which gave its lame to Bely Gorod, or White Town, where the Czar’s servants lived) and a wooden wall (which gave its name to Zemlyanoi Gorod, Wooden Town, for workmen and soldiers).