Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
John 2:18-22, KJV
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow. One of the most imposing and controversial buildings in Russia, the resurrected Cathedral of Christ the Saviour had a short but turbulent history. It was originally commissioned after the defeat of Napoleon, but work did not begin on its construction until 1839. Designed by the great St. Petersburg architect Konstantin Ton, who was also responsible for the Grand Kremlin Palace and the Kremlin Armoury and whose church designs pioneered the Byzantine-revival style, the cathedral was erected, for maximum effect, on the embankment only a few minutes' walk from the Kremlin. Sadly, this entailed the destruction of the medieval Alekseevskiy Convent, a course of events which lends an intriguing irony to the cathedral's own fate.
The enormous - and extremely expensive - cathedral was eventually consecrated in 1883, and its vast copper domes dominated the Moscow skyline. However, the cathedral had taken almost as much time to build and to decorate as it would remain standing in its original incarnation. But just 34 years after its sanctification, the Soviets took power during the October Revolution of 1917. "Religion is the opium of the masses" then became the guiding principle in Lenin's politics of culture. The Soviets acted quickly: Nearly all churches were closed down, church property was confiscated and thousands of clergy members were shot. All of it was a matter of course for the new communist state. For fairly obvious reasons, it was singled out by the Soviet government for destruction and, in 1931, blown to pieces to make way for a proposed Palace of Soviets, one of the most influential pieces of architecture never to be built. Only the foundations had been laid when the Second World War brought an abrupt end to such an ambitious project, and Stalin's successor, Nikita Khruschev, had no stomach for such grandiose displays of hubris.
The project was abandoned, and the site turned over to become an open-air swimming pool, the largest in the world, which was kept at a temperature of 27°C all year round. The result was a thick covering of fog that shrouded a number of gruesome deaths (and murders) among the swimmers, or so it was said.
The symbolic significance of the site was reaffirmed after the fall of the Soviet Union, when ambitious Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov joined forces with the Orthodox Church to resurrect the cathedral in a $360-million reconstruction project. Completed in 2000, the new cathedral is loosely based on Ton's original designs, but constructed with modern building materials and fitted out with all mod-cons including air conditioning, telecommunications facilities, elevators and underground parking. Visitors can only see the cathedral as part of an organized tour, one of the highlights of which is the panoramic view from the 40-meter-high observation platform.
For many Russians, today's Cathedral of Christ the Savior is a grand symbol for the fact that religion once again holds an important place in Russian society. The Russian state under Vladimir Putin is recalling its pre-revolutionary past. Symbols from tsarist Russia are experiencing a revival. Christian values are highly praised and a majority of Russians consider themselves religious. The Kremlin is able to wield religion as an instrument for tradition-conscious patriotism.
Pussy Riot, an anti-Putin feminist punk-rock group, walked into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow and performed what they called their "Punk Prayer." During the performance, the group temporarily occupied the pulpit, praying to the Virgin Mary to "chase Putin out." The state's harsh crackdown on the group reminded the world of how closely linked Putin's state and the Russian Orthodox Church are and how terrified the Russian elite is of dissent. Most accounts of the episode refer to "a cathedral", but it would be more accurate to call it "the cathedral", as it is the Russian Orthodox counterpart to Saint Peter's in Rome.
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