The relics of Soviet Russia
(walking tour, 4 hours)
During the tour
You'll see the prominent square of Moscow (the Red Square) that has been the scene of medieval religious ceremonies, riots, executions and soviet demonstrations. We'll visit Lenin's mausoleum and pass by the statues and the tombs of Josef Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Feliks Dzerzhinsky and other soviet rulers, scientists, commanders and astronauts that are buried at the foot of the Kremlin wall behind the mausoleum.
Then we'll travel a bit on the metro: you'll see the famous stations-palaces Revolution square, Kievskaya, Novoslobodskaya and Komsomolskaya.
Then we get off the metro on Oktybrskaya station to walk down Sadovoe Kolso street to the Park of the deposed statues. This is the collection of some of the sculptures removed from around Moscow at the end of Soviet era. You'll see the marble Stalin with broken nose, a huge statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky that used to sand in front of the KGB headquarters and the Memorial to the victims of the GULAG at the same park.
Then we can look at the Russian art of the XX th century / The Soviet official and unofficial painting in the Tretiyakov gallery. (3 hrs)
Note that Lenin's Tomb is open for viewing from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (except Monday and Friday and those periods when the body is sent back for refreshment of the preservatives). Visitors are not allowed to carry cameras and back bags. There is a check room near by.
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"Where else in what part of the world in what other country, do the people's leaders appear on solemn occasion atop a pharaonic pyramid, waving in greeting while standing, strictly speaking, over a crypt containing a mummy? Imagine this crypt with Lenin's mummy, the stepped carcass of the mausoleum and the members of the Politburo. Imagine this ideological pyramid visually and you will understand the uniqueness of the Soviet world." ( A-YA #7 Zinoviy Zinnik)
And this pyramid keeps the memory of millions who died in Stalin’s labor camps in GULAG, who died of starvation having nothing to eat because their savings were requisitioned under Stalin’s orders who was tortured to death at Lubianka. It keeps the memory of those who was killed in a terrible War.
"The full-blown cult of Lenin was an organized system of rites and symbols
whose collective function was to arose in the cult’s participants and spectators the reverential mood necessary to create an emotional bond between them and the party personified by Lenin. Stylized portraits and busts of Lenin were its icons, his idealized biography its gospel and Leninism its sacred writings. Lenin corners were local shrines for the veneration of the Leader and its central shrine was the mausoleum in Red Square displaying Lenin’s preserved remains. This formalized veneration of Lenin persisted until the end of the 1920s then the emerging cult of Stalin begin slowly to eclipse it. The cult of Lenin undoubtedly served as an example for the later cults of living Communist leaders." (Nina Tumarkin. Lenin Lives! 1983)
Leonid Brezhnev keeps kidding on this picture but the fate of his empire was already sealed.
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