Kremlin: Red stars over the holy church of communism

Moscow is a mystery for every foreigner. We traveled Moscow for a few days and explored the great unknown among the world cities.

Proud and stubborn to this day, indomitable even if all the other large western states continue to criticize. Russia is different, as is its capital Moscow. You must have seen that. Read part 1 of the story here, part 2 is here, the 3 part here, part 4 here, part 5 here.

The towers and churches build an impressive skyline

Red walls, a wide field behind, with meadows, big cannons, golden roofs and impressive church buildings. The Kremlin in Moscow is not only the heart in the middle of the largest nation in the world in terms of area, but also architecturally an impressive structure.

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral on the left hand side, Kremlin right.

More than 500 years than is the fortification complex, which consists of a triangular boundary wall with 20 towers. Built for the most part between 1485 and 1499, the entire ensemble still looks like new today. The tsars used to rule from here, later the murderous communist dictator Stalin ruled from here with an iron hand. The Moscow Kremlin is the oldest and central part of Moscow on Borovitsky Hill on the left bank of the Moskva River.

The Kremlin with the river Moskwa

Easy to walk around

Since 1992, the Russian government has been sitting in the Kremlin, somewhere in one of the sprawling buildings to which visitors are not allowed access. Everything else, however, is free to walk and to visit: Uniformed guards watch over the marble Lenin mausoleum on the outer wall, which - smooth and straight - looks like a foreign body against the ornate Kremlin walls.

Meadows and flowers inside the middle of the Russian empire.

But visitors can only enter the Kremlin if you have paid the entrance fee and passed a security check, but then you are free to go wherever you want - except for the parts of the Kremlin that are closed to visitors, such as the Senate or the Terem Palace. Even so, there is plenty to see between the octagonal bell tower "Ivan the Great" and the Archangel Michael, Assumption and Annunciation Cathedrals.

The Spasski Tower, a symbol of Russia

Different traditions

The latter was the coronation church of all tsars and is the most famous building with its gilded domes. In the interior, one involuntarily gasps for breath - the building is decorated all over with frescoes, which makes it seem gloomy and, in a way, cramped. Between the nave and the altar rises a magnificent iconostasis, the wall decorated with icons how are common in Orthodox churches. Russian believers kiss the icons they venerate - here Western Europe is suddenly very distant again.

It's raining in Moscow.

This day the Kremlin is not what it once was: the largest church of Soviet communism, an ideology who was buried a quarter of a century ago. At the beginning of his era the leaders of the revolution decided to make the Kremlin to a palace of the Soviet: after 1935, there have been no more eagles dotting the Kremlin walls from Spassky, Nikolsky, Borovitsky and Troitsky Towers.

The Tsar Cannon is a large early modern period artillery piece on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin

Instead, the Communists crowned the four towers with five-pointed stars with a hammer and sickle. Supposedly, the five-pointed star only became the symbol of Soviet power in the first place because Leon Trotsky, who was still powerful at the time - he was later assassinated in exile in Mexico on Stalin's orders with an ice pick - believed the pentagram had a strong energy potential.

No more eagles

The traditional double-headed eagles fell, the first stars, still huge and clumsily designed, followed. They were later replaced by ruby-red shining examples, the smallest on the Vodosvodnaya Tower, the largest, with a beam length of four meters after all, on the Spasski and Nikolski Towers, each illuminated by four lamps with a power of 5,000 watts each and cooled by a powerful ventilation system that not only cools the lamps but also purifies the air in the stars.

Inside the coronation church of all tsars

As backward as Russia was then, its state stars were modern: stars are good, but spinning stars are doubly good, because Moscow is big, there are many people, everyone needs to see the Kremlin stars. Therefore, special bearings were installed at the base of each sprocket, which allow the stars to rotate easily and face the wind, despite their considerable weight. This makes it possible to judge which way the wind is blowing based on the arrangement of the stars.

Red star, symbol of the communist revolution

Modern management of stars

In a central control room, malfunctions were displayed in real time on the console of the electrician on duty, who then immediately set out to replace the huge incandescent lamp made of molybdenum glass, whose filaments reached almost 3,000 degrees Celsius during operation.

Cathedral of the Annunciation

Alpinists were employed at that time to maintain and clean the Kremlin stars. To prevent overheating and damage, about 600 cubic meters of air are passed through the stars per hour.

The Spasski star by night

The stars are not threatened by power outages as their power supply is self-sufficient. In 2014, a comprehensive reconstruction of the star was carried out at the Spasskaya Tower: It received a new lighting system with several metal halide lamps with a total power of 1000 watts. In 2015 the lamps in the star of Trinity Tower were replaced, and in 2016 that of Nikolskaya.

The State Historical Museum (Russian: Государственный исторический музей, Gosudarstvenny istoricheskiy muzyey)

To this day, the ruby-red glowing state symbols of a bygone era are usually washed every five years. Scheduled preventive maintenance is performed monthly to maintain reliable operation. So the Kremlin always lights in Moscow nights - good for tourist because you will ever find your way back to your hotel.

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