And We Thought the Soviets Had Knocked Down All the Churches July 23, 2006
Early to rise, Sergey and Igor picked us up at 8 this Sunday morning. We are going to Vladimir and Suzdal, two towns about 180 kilometers from Moscow. Suzdal is the big attraction and is said to be the spiritual center of Russia. Because of this it also has some of the most historic buildings in Russia.
After a two hour drive we reached Vladimir where we picked up another guide, Natalia who specializes in this area. Our vehicle was a VW Passat and with three of the five people being of the large variety things were rather close. We drove the 30 minutes to Suzdal all the while listening to Natalia’s own brand of high speed data transfer. We are under the opinion that at RGU (Russian Guide University) speed talking and breath control are not electives. On top of this, Natalia is employed taking small children to the museums and teaching them how to enjoy learning. This must be all consuming as Natalia was using phrases like “we will go this way, walking straight, walking straight, walking straight” and “we are at the toilet please use it”. I told Sergey she reminded me of a teacher that I once had. Sergey replied “she scares me”.
Our first stop in Suzdal was at the Open Air Wooden Architecture Museum. An outdoor facility with wooden structures that ranged from houses to windmills. Please don’t be worried, of course there were two churches, one for both winter and summer. I declined another cathedral visit and when the lady in front of the windmill motioned that I should pay another entry fee for that privilege I declined and headed toward the exit. This was followed by a flurry of cathedrals, convents and monasteries. All very impressive and most built before the 15th century but I have to restate an earlier observation when you’ve seen a few of these cathedrals they all begin to look alike. It seems for about five centuries their interior designers had not heard of the Renaissance. They have been stuck with the “same murals on these three walls and Icons over there” theme for a while. There was an exception when in one cathedral, and I won’t even pretend to remember the name, a tomb was glass topped and held a mummy even if you could only see a hand it was more exciting than another mural. We were also treated to a “small concert” as Sergey calls them when a group of the local monks tuned up and wailed out the top five Gregorian Chants of all time. I may poke a little fun but it was actually a beautiful sound in the arched masonry acoustic chamber.
Back in Vladimir we stopped at yet another monastery and cathedral. This made me begin to wonder about what I had been taught when I was young, that the communist were a godless lot, and had no respect for anything except their own dark agenda. How did all these cathedrals survive? I asked Sergey who didn’t think it seemed unusual although religion was banned during the Soviet regime. He said sometime the buildings were used for other things such as warehouses and sometimes it was just too much trouble. The only time it seemed they were knocked down is when they were in the way of building a monument to Lenin or Stalin. It’s even more complicated than that because in the 17th century whoever was Tsar at the time decided that a church reform was needed and the best way to do this was to start blessing people with three fingers instead of two, two being the way they used to do it in Constantinople. From that time on, the two-finger way was outlawed and anyone who believed it was called Old Believers. That was three hundred years ago and I in 2006, went into two cathedrals and a convent that practiced the ways of Old Believers. My point is that the Russians seem to have a soft spot for religion because even though they may outlaw it, they don’t do much to prevent it from happening. There are hundreds of churches standing today in the city of Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, that were built prior to the revolution in 1917. My belief is that they left them standing so they could torture some poor capitalistic slob like me by making him tour 20 or 30 of them.
The next surprise was that everyone in Moscow has a “dutch” (unsure of spelling) which is a weekend house outside of the city. Holly and I were told that a large number of Muscovites go to these cottages every weekend of the summer and if the cottage is heated they will go in the winter also. These visits aren’t the normal run of the mill I need to get away weekends. The weekenders are growing vegetables to supplement their diet. Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in and wages in Russia are not high so whatever it takes to make ends meet. The surprise for us was the traffic coming back to town. The two hour drive out this morning took almost three and a half coming back in early evening. We arrived at the hotel around 8:30 thankful to be out of the car and out of class.
After a two hour drive we reached Vladimir where we picked up another guide, Natalia who specializes in this area. Our vehicle was a VW Passat and with three of the five people being of the large variety things were rather close. We drove the 30 minutes to Suzdal all the while listening to Natalia’s own brand of high speed data transfer. We are under the opinion that at RGU (Russian Guide University) speed talking and breath control are not electives. On top of this, Natalia is employed taking small children to the museums and teaching them how to enjoy learning. This must be all consuming as Natalia was using phrases like “we will go this way, walking straight, walking straight, walking straight” and “we are at the toilet please use it”. I told Sergey she reminded me of a teacher that I once had. Sergey replied “she scares me”.
Our first stop in Suzdal was at the Open Air Wooden Architecture Museum. An outdoor facility with wooden structures that ranged from houses to windmills. Please don’t be worried, of course there were two churches, one for both winter and summer. I declined another cathedral visit and when the lady in front of the windmill motioned that I should pay another entry fee for that privilege I declined and headed toward the exit. This was followed by a flurry of cathedrals, convents and monasteries. All very impressive and most built before the 15th century but I have to restate an earlier observation when you’ve seen a few of these cathedrals they all begin to look alike. It seems for about five centuries their interior designers had not heard of the Renaissance. They have been stuck with the “same murals on these three walls and Icons over there” theme for a while. There was an exception when in one cathedral, and I won’t even pretend to remember the name, a tomb was glass topped and held a mummy even if you could only see a hand it was more exciting than another mural. We were also treated to a “small concert” as Sergey calls them when a group of the local monks tuned up and wailed out the top five Gregorian Chants of all time. I may poke a little fun but it was actually a beautiful sound in the arched masonry acoustic chamber.
Back in Vladimir we stopped at yet another monastery and cathedral. This made me begin to wonder about what I had been taught when I was young, that the communist were a godless lot, and had no respect for anything except their own dark agenda. How did all these cathedrals survive? I asked Sergey who didn’t think it seemed unusual although religion was banned during the Soviet regime. He said sometime the buildings were used for other things such as warehouses and sometimes it was just too much trouble. The only time it seemed they were knocked down is when they were in the way of building a monument to Lenin or Stalin. It’s even more complicated than that because in the 17th century whoever was Tsar at the time decided that a church reform was needed and the best way to do this was to start blessing people with three fingers instead of two, two being the way they used to do it in Constantinople. From that time on, the two-finger way was outlawed and anyone who believed it was called Old Believers. That was three hundred years ago and I in 2006, went into two cathedrals and a convent that practiced the ways of Old Believers. My point is that the Russians seem to have a soft spot for religion because even though they may outlaw it, they don’t do much to prevent it from happening. There are hundreds of churches standing today in the city of Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, that were built prior to the revolution in 1917. My belief is that they left them standing so they could torture some poor capitalistic slob like me by making him tour 20 or 30 of them.
The next surprise was that everyone in Moscow has a “dutch” (unsure of spelling) which is a weekend house outside of the city. Holly and I were told that a large number of Muscovites go to these cottages every weekend of the summer and if the cottage is heated they will go in the winter also. These visits aren’t the normal run of the mill I need to get away weekends. The weekenders are growing vegetables to supplement their diet. Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in and wages in Russia are not high so whatever it takes to make ends meet. The surprise for us was the traffic coming back to town. The two hour drive out this morning took almost three and a half coming back in early evening. We arrived at the hotel around 8:30 thankful to be out of the car and out of class.
posted by Gary and Holly Davis @ 7:44 AM
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