More Moscow and a MOVIE July 24, 2006

It seems the Tsars had a convenient way of removing unwanted wives from their lives. They would have them committed to a convent. I use the word committed because it is the word that best describes the action. The Tsarina would be confined in one of the many (maybe millions from what I can see) of convents for the remainder of her life while having few privileges or pleasures. Sergey told us one story about a Tsar that after having confined his wife, found out that the Patriarch of the church was visiting her on a regular basis. The odd thing was that the man would dress as a peasant and come to visit her at night while not leaving until the next morning. The Tsar, being the typical territorial male, promptly had her visitation privileges revoked. Now so you wives don’t feel like you’re being targeted for special treatment, sisters were also committed sometimes if the Tsar felt they were a threat or just a general embarrassment. If this sounds harsh, consider for a moment that unwanted males were routinely assassinated by fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles or the odd unrelated extremist. It was risky being in the Russian royal family. The Bolsheviks may have done them a favor in 1917 except for the fact that Nicholas II and his whole immediate family were assassinated during that little turnover.

I learned all of this while visiting the Novodevichy (New Maiden) convent this morning in Moscow. After the Kremlin, it is believed that this convent was the second most important religious structure. A great walled structure with several cathedrals, another bell tower (these are normally separate from the church itself) and of course the nunnery. I made Sergey promise that this would be the last. He said he did not think we would want to miss the “juicy” part of royal Russian life. He was right, but I think he just likes digging in the dirt.

Next we moved on to a driving tour of town, a whistle stop tour that allowed us to see numerous buildings, monuments, parks and squares. We ended up back at Red Square to take more pictures and a quick lunch at a place called Roschick’s KFC. Sergey had no idea what KFC meant so I think they have a little more work to do here. To him it was just fast food and I’m not sure that he thought of it as a chicken place.

After lunch we walked down to the Moscow River where we boarded a boat for a short cruise. The river afforded us a different view of the Kremlin as well as views Gorky Park and the once flown Russian Space Shuttle.
Having studied our Russian history and architecture Sergey granted us some free time in the form of a movie. We went to see The Pirates of the Caribbean, English version. Movie; 400 Rubles (about US$6.50 per ticket), popcorn and cokes; 280 Rubles, sitting down for two and a half hours; priceless. One other point of interest; they had a Siberian tiger cub in the lobby of the movie that you could have your picture taken with