Resurrecting Savior's

The story of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (also called Christ the Redeemer) begins in 1812. Tsar Alexander I made a vow that year to honor Russia’s victory over France with a cathedral dedicated to Christ the Savior. On September 10, 1839, ground was broken for a massive, Russo-Byzantine cathedral designed by the architect Konstantin Ton. Leading Russian artists, including Vasily Surikov, Ivan Kramskoy and Vasily Vereshchagin, decorated the interior. The construction was financed by popular donations and lasted for nearly fifty years. For the nation, the cathedral became the symbol of Russian glory, faith and compassion for its war heroes. The cathedral was consecrated on May 26, 1883—on the same day as the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. Later, Tsar Nicholas II commissioned an immense statue of his father, Alexander III, that was placed near the cathedral to commemorate the Romanov tercentenary in 1912.

Fifty years later, the Soviet state slated the cathedral for destruction, to make way for a huge Palace of Soviets—a 420 meter high skyscraper (12 meters taller than the Empire State Building) that would have included a 100 meter statue of Lenin (with 3-meter-long fingers). On December 5, 1931, after two attempts to explode the cathedral failed, a third succeeded. Few original decorations were preserved—some bas-reliefs from the interior have been displayed on the walls of Moscow’s Donskoy monastery for many years. Facing stones were used around the city, in metro stations and on the Lenin Library annex.

As it turned out, the Second World War and a leaky foundation (117 springs were found flowing here) thwarted Stalin’s ambitious schemes for the Palace of Soviets. Eleven stories of girders had been erected by the end of 1939, but the steel was needed for the war effort (including for tank traps outside the city). The foundation slowly filled in and became a popular swimming and fishing spot. It was first filled in with dirt in 1957. Then, in 1960, Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, brought Soviet architectural dreams down to earth. An open-air, heated swimming pool, the largest in Europe, was built on the former site of the cathedral. For nearly thirty years, Muscovites would swim there even when temperatures sank to –30o C. Huge clouds of steam from the pool bewildered passing tourists and assaulted the delicate collections at the nearby Pushkin Museum.

The idea to reconstruct the cathedral was born in the late 1980s. The project took off when it was embraced by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov in 1993. He secured support from Russia’s Orthodox Church and presented to then President Yeltsin a prioritized list of capital city sites to be restored. Christ the Savior topped the list. Corporate sponsors were brought on board, reportedly often with less-than-subtle entreaties (major donors’ names are engraved on the cathedral’s walls). But there were also grass-roots efforts: according to official church sources, some 25 million Russians contributed money to the project.

The cathedral’s new foundation was laid on January 7, 1995 and construction proceeded very quickly. The building site became a 24-hour beehive of activity: some 3,000 construction workers were employed there, plus some 1,000 sculptors, restorers, casters and molders. The construction of the building itself (without decorative work) was completed by September 1997, in time for the 850th anniversary of Moscow.

The rebuilt cathedral is 103 meters high to the top of its cross (the Palace of Soviets would have been four(!) times this height); the main dome is nearly 30 meters in diameter, the walls are over three meters thick and the internal ceiling is 80 meters high at its tallest point. The cathedral can hold up to 10,000 persons at one time.

In addition to the main sanctuary, there are three other churches on the territory of Christ the Savior. There is the restored Church of the Transfiguration of Christ (the lower cathedral), plus two smaller churches which are not restorations: one dedicated to the Tikhvin Icon of the Virgin Mary and the other to St. Alexis the Mad of God (the convent of St. Alexis was relocated from this spot in the 19th century in order to make room for the cathedral). As well, a small chapel was built next to the cathedral and is dedicated to the Icon of Our Sovereign Lady.

Around the lower Transfiguration church there is a huge meeting complex, which will include the largest museum in Moscow, a dining room for 1,500 persons and a 1,600 seat auditorium, to be used for religious meetings, sacred music concerts and events of religious significance on state holidays.

To date, three services that included Holy Communion have been held at Christ the Savior Cathedral. The first was the Christmas High Mass on January 7-8, 2000. On January 27 of this year the first public Mass was celebrated, drawing 11,000 worshipers. Finally, on April 23, Patriarch Alexei II led a Palm Sunday Mass.

The Lesser Consecration of the Cathedral was conducted on December 31, 1999, the day when Boris Yeltsin resigned from the Russian Presidency. According to the chain of events reported by the Church, on that day Patriarch Alexei came to the Kremlin at the request of Acting President Vladimir Putin, who became the first post-Soviet leader to ask for a blessing on his efforts. After this was done, Alexei II came to Christ the Savior Cathedral and celebrated the Rite of the Lesser Consecration.

The Great (and final) Consecration is to be held on August 19, along the lines of the same formal ceremony conducted during the original consecration in 1883. In 1883, the Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir led a procession from the Kremlin’s Assumption Cathedral to Savior’s Cathedral. The date of August 19 was selected because this is Transfiguration Day in the church calendar. The rite will be the central event of the Jubilee Council of Bishops being held in Moscow at this time, but it will also coincide with another important event. According to the secretary of the Holy Synod on Commission on Canonization, Maxim Maximov, the Jubilee Council of Bishops will on that day decide whether to canonize Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

Since reconstruction of the cathedral began, it has been awash in controversy. Proponents argued that the project was a way to revive the “Russian National Idea,” to heal a sick society which had been shorn of its former ideals. The resurrected cathedral was a main symbol in the declaration of Russia’s tripartite values: sovereignty, Fatherland and the Orthodox Faith (seemingly derived from Nicholas I’s original triad: autocracy, Orthodoxy & nationality).

Opponents saw the rebuilding as merely political pork for Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. They accused the builders and their political bosses of misusing funds, arguing that the project’s $250 million price tag could have been much better spent. To some, the project was not a holy endeavor, but a sacrilegious waste of public funds when so many Russians were below the poverty line. Others said it hearkened back to the so-called “projects of the century” of the Soviet era.

Then there was the controversy about the authenticity of the reconstruction. Chief Architect Alexei Denisov was a proponent of authenticity, even down to using the same materials for the decorative work as were used a century ago. The idea was to make it “an authentic, and scientific reconstruction.” Denisov collected a wealth of visual information on the original cathedral, including thousands of photos and drawings by tourists. Denisov’s laboratory even conducted chemical analyses of the rescued frescoes, sculptures and original elements, so as to accurately reproduce all of these works.

Meanwhile, the renowned sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, who is also President of the Academy of Arts, argued for more practical solutions. In 1997, Tsereteli proposed that the external bas-reliefs be made not from the dolomite-marble material of a century ago, but of a plastic-like material called “decorativit.” The church agreed in principle to the “decorativit,” calling it “artificial marble.” Yet Denisov accused Tsereteli of trying to economize on material so as to raise the honorariums of the sculptors. Later, Tsereteli proposed an alternative material: bronze. This, he argued, would best withstand the elements. He also pointed out that the original façade pieces preserved at Donskoy Monastery could not be integrated into the design, as the pieces would break down too quickly.

In the end, pragmatism prevailed over formal authenticity. The cost and time involved in a “religious reproduction” of the original just could not be justified. In 1998, Denisov was dismissed from his post and the contract for overseeing the completion of the decorative work on the façade and interior was turned over to Tsereteli’s Russian Academy of Arts, which in turn contracted out the work to the Center of International Design, which is headed by ... Zurab Tsereteli.

One of the first American visitors to the cathedral was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The media widely reported her visit there, printing a photo of her staring up at the inside of the ceiling. “This is simply fantastic,” Albright declared. Later she reportedly asked, “Can it be that Russia is asking the IMF for money? We should be asking you how you have managed to build this cathedral in so short a time!”   RL