And indeed. The Temple of Christ the Savior is more than thirty stories tall. Its walls are 3.2 meters thick; they were built out of forty million bricks. These walls — on the outside and on the inside — are covered with slabs of Altaic and Podolia marble as well as Finnish granite. The slabs are attached to the bricks along the entire surface of the temple with the help of special lead grips. The shrine is crowned by a gigantic cupola covered with sheets of bronze that weigh 176 tons. On the summit stands a cross three stories high. The cupola is surrounded by four belfries in each of which hang fourteen bells with a combined weight of 65 tons. The main bell weighs 24 tons. (The largest bell in Poland — the Zygmunt on Wawel Castle — weighs 8 tons.) Twelve gates sculpted in bronze lead into the interior of the church. Their combined weight is 140 tons.
The interior is the most impressive. It is lit up by candles placed in three thousand candleholders. Furthermore, because the faithful enter the church and light their own candles in accordance with the Orthodox custom — and this building can hold more than ten thousand worshipers at a time — its windows glow for a great distance.
After entering one sees before him a gigantic and dazzling iconostasis, for which 422 kilograms of gold were used. The iconostasis reflects the shimmering light of the thousands of tallow candles, and its intense and commanding brilliance puts us imperceptibly into an inspired and humble state of mind.
The lower portions of the walls are covered with 177 marble plaques on which the following particulars have been engraved:
• The dates and places of the battles of Russian armies
• The names of the regiments and divisions fighting there
• The last names of their commanders
• The numbers of dead and wounded
• Who received what decoration, and in particular who was awarded the Cross of Saint George
Higher up, above the marble plaques, up to the summit of the cupola, the surface of the walls is covered with frescoes, painted using a special technique on white plaster. There are portraits of the saints there, scenes from the life of Christ and the apostles, biblical motifs. The authors of these works are the most famous Russian painters of the epoch — Bruni and Viereshchagin, Kramskoy and Litovchenko, Siedov and Surikov.*
THIS IMPRESSIVE and magnificent shrine, unique as an architectural specimen, and in its élan, the true glory of Russian art, existed for forty-eight years — until the middle of 1931, when Stalin decided to raze it. This he did not do in an excessively coarse manner, he did not announce to one and all, “And now we will raze the Temple of Christ the Savior!”
No! Of course not!
No such pronouncements or declarations! Quite simply, on July 18, 1931, there appeared in Pravda a news item to the effect that the authorities of the USSR had decided to build a Palace of the Soviets in Moscow. The item also included information about where this palace was to be erected. The address mentioned signified nothing to outsiders, but to the inhabitants of Moscow it signified everything — the palace was to be built in the spot where the temple stood. Why precisely in this place? Moscow is after all an enormous city; there were many empty areas in it; there were even empty lots, near the Kremlin, so one could have chosen any number of truly excellent locations. But no, no, what is wanted is precisely that patch of ground on which stands the Temple of Christ the Savior!
Stalin orders the largest sacral object in Moscow to be razed. Let us for a moment give free reign to our imagination. It is 1931. Let us imagine that Mussolini, who at that time rules Italy, orders the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome to be razed. Let us imagine that Paul Doumer, who is at that time president of France, orders the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris to be razed. Let us imagine that Poland’s Marshall Józef Piłsudski orders the Jasnogórski Monastery in Czestochowa to be razed.
Can we imagine such a thing?
No.
IN THE COURSE of one night they enclose the enormous site of the temple with a fence, and by dawn they have already set to work. One could divide the labor of demolishing the temple in acoustical terms into (a) the quiet stage, (b) the noisy stage. During the quiet stage, the regime robs the temple. We know what treasures were in this church. Almost half a ton of gold alone. And how many tons of silver, brass, enamel, amethysts! How many diamonds and emeralds, turquoises and topazes! How many priceless icons and ornate gospels, how many croziers and censers! And the collections of liturgical vestments woven with gold and silver, those chasubles, belts, slippers set with precious stones!
All this now had to be taken down from the walls and altars, taken out of closets and chests of drawers, frames and hinges. All this had to be carried away and hidden — some in the warehouses of the Kremlin, some in the safes of the NKVD. Taking down the marbles was the most work. The marble, fastened with lead to the brick walls, did not want to give, could not be torn away. Its removal lasted weeks, and we do not know whether the delay irritated Stalin. If it did — it would be small wonder. For during this time Stalin had dozens of things on his mind. First and foremost, he was directing the campaign of killing ten million people in the Ukraine by starvation. The killing of ten million people given the current state of technology was no easy matter. They did not yet know about gas chambers; they did not know about weapons of mass destruction. Facts bespeak that the course of this campaign was of special interest to him. Stalin was a suspicious man, did not trust anyone, read the dispatches from the Ukraine himself, scolded the sluggish, issued new instructions and decrees, and all this must have cost him much in time and nerves.
Simultaneously, the secretary-general was keeping close watch on the ambitious expansion of the network of labor camps — an immense task in such a huge country, and all the more different if one considers the intemperate climate, the enormity of the transportation difficulties, and the shortage of all building materials. And time was pressing — the Leader was already plotting his first purge and needed somewhere to put up the millions of condemned. Under the circumstances it would be difficult to blame Stalin if, for example, he relaxed somewhat his supervision of and interest in the destruction of the Temple of Christ the Savior. He was already over fifty, after all, and must have felt weary to his bones from the years of murderous struggle for power.
And yet — no!
Everything indicates that Stalin did not neglect the matter for even a moment. He must have been aware of how tremendous was the challenge confronting him and his people. The goal was after all to destroy, using only very backward and primitive techniques, in barely four months (such was the deadline set for this horrifying operation) that which was built with uncommon effort and extraordinary sacrifice over the course of forty-five years.
But even this proved possible! And when finally the temple was stripped of everything that could be carried off from its dazzlingly sumptuous interior, from its treasury and dressing room, from its closets and secret receptacles, altars and belfries, stripped of everything that could be torn from the iconostasis, from the walls and gates, of everything that could be hammered off, chopped away, screwed off, pulled out, forced out, gouged out, and broken off, when, as I say, the dexterous brigades, working day and night, finally accomplished their feat — the wreckers saw before them an overwhelming sight: there they were, standing inside a gigantic, gloomy, and repellent shell of bricks, to which here and there, like insects to the skin of a monstrous beast, clung the figures of workmen on scaffoldings.