An Oasis in Moscow

It is a miracle that Krutitsy, one of Moscow’s oldest church residences, has survived. Dating back more than 600 years, this masterpiece of Russian architecture stands in the Taganka District, Moscow’s historic center. You could easily miss it, as it is hidden among the residential and office buildings that have risen up around it. Even locals know little about this place, to say nothing of tourists. But once upon a time this church residence, or metochion (from the Greek), was of central importance to Muscovy. Over the centuries, it has housed legendary figures from Russian history, not all of whom, incidentally, were there of their own free will.

If, when you are strolling through Moscow, the air suddenly smells fresher and you seem to have wandered into another century, it could be that you have found yourself at the Krutitsy Patriarchal Residence. (In bygone days, “Krutitsy” was the name for an elevated point along the left bank of the Moscow River, not far from where it is joined by the Yauza).

You slow your pace, wanting to examine every brick. The residence has seen it all: it was burned and plundered by Poles during the Time of Troubles and by the French in 1812. Under the Soviets, its sacred images were smeared with paint and its ancient graveyard was used as a soccer field. Ironically, it was under a foreign invader, the Golden Horde, when Rus was reduced to a few faltering principalities, that the Krutitsy Residence was built by Prince Daniel of Moscow, sometime around 1270. It originally served as a monastery.

Daniel’s father, Alexander Nevsky, apparently asked the Mongol khan, Berke, for permission to establish a special Orthodox eparchy in Sarai (not far from present-day Volgograd), the capital of the Golden Horde, so that Russians brought there as captives would have a place to worship. Some sources suggest that it was Berke Khan himself who demanded that Metropolitan Kirill II appoint a bishop to Sarai so that he could interact directly with senior members of the Orthodox clergy rather than simple priests.

Whatever the case may have been, in 1261 an episcopal see of the Orthodox Church was established in the capital of the Golden Horde. Later, this eparchy expanded to include lands along the River Don and began being referred to as the Eparchy of Sarai and the Don. In Moscow, Prince Daniel gave this eparchy land overlooking the Moscow River and ordered that a church be built on it, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. The site of what became the Krutitsy Residence (Крутицкое подворье in Russian) was not only picturesque, it was also extremely convenient, offering easy access to the road to Sarai, which led through the St. Nicholas Monastery, Kolomna, and Borovsk.

“This was a sort of transfer point, and when officials of the Russian Church traveled there, to the capital of the Golden Horde, or on their way back, they would stay here for a while,” tour guide Andrei Avramenko explained.

The bishops of Sarai were always in close contact with the khans, and even traveled with them, developing useful relationships. They were well respected by both the Russians and the Horde and served as a valuable source of information for Russia’s princes and metropolitans.

“Their jobs had less to do with pilgrimages or missionary work than politics and diplomacy. It was the embassy of the Russian Church in the capital of the state on which Rus was dependent!” Avramenko said.

This work continued even after the Horde’s influence began to wane in the mid-fifteenth century. Both the Russian population in Sarai and the Sarai eparchy became gradually smaller. In 1454, during the reign of Vasily II (the Blind), the Bishop of Sarai and the Don, Vassian, moved the see back to Moscow, to the Krutitsy Residence, and became the first Bishop of Krutitsy.

What used to be a temporary residence for bishops traveling from Sarai to Moscow became their permanent home. Within the Russian Orthodox Church, the eparchy itself was second in importance only to Moscow’s, and the Krutitsy metropolitan was ranked just below the patriarch.

The contours of the Krutitsy eparchy have often changed with shifting political and economic winds. Until the early sixteenth century, some lands (including fairly large cities) that were part of the eparchy were claimed by both Lithuania and Muscovy (which eventually won out).

In the seventeenth century there were 15 monasteries, 2 convents, and 907 churches in the eparchy. According to The Krutitsy Residence, Past and Present, by the priest Ilya Solovyov, during the early eighteenth century the eparchy was the size of France: 550,000 square kilometers. It included such renowned holy sites as the Optina and Danilov Monasteries.

During the Time of Troubles, in 1612, Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky’s second volunteer army passed near the Krutitsy Residence, stopped in the complex’s Dormition Church (not to be confused with the cathedral of the same name within the Kremlin walls) and swore an oath to liberate Moscow from the Poles or die trying. There is a memorial cross commemorating this event. During the period when the Poles had possession of the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral, the Krutitsy Dormition Church temporarily took over its central role within Russian Orthodoxy.

A steep staircase leads to another place of worship. This is where the Prelovsky family baptized their children, and where their friends were married. For this young family, the residence is like home. Vera Prelovskaya shared her experience of the place: “At first, a sense of peace descends on you. As soon as you enter, you feel as if you have come under the wing of an angel. Here, praise God, I have always felt free of trouble.” For her, there is nothing like it in Moscow. “The Krutitsy Residence is like a time warp in the center of the city. I’m still amazed that this place has survived in this specific form and with this atmosphere.”

The complex’s heyday may have been under Tsar Alexei I. Metropolitan Paul II (1664-1676) occupied the Residence at that time. He established a library and arranged to have the Bible translated from Greek into Russian. Seminarians studied ancient languages at the Residence, and Paul II turned it into a true center of enlightenment. However, there was one legendary figure from that time, Archpriest Avvakum, who was immune to reason and learning. Paul took great pains to educate Avvakum but ultimately failed, and the archpriest continued to resist church reforms, helping to cause the rift between those now known as Old Believers and the Orthodox Church.

Avvakum was not simply the leader of the Old Believers, he was a very influential figure in Christian Rus. He was a forceful proponent of upholding the moral tenets of Christianity and opposed the Byzantine liturgical canons. In 1652, he rebelled against the church reforms being promulgated by his fellow Novgorodian, Patriarch Nikon.

In 1666, Avvakum was confined to the basement of Krutitsy’s Church of the Resurrection without food or water, awaiting the decision of the very same Church Council that had anathematized him. At the same time, across the road, in the New Savior (Новоспасский) Monastery, his erstwhile friend Patriarch Nikon may well have been conducting church services (the New Savior Monastery was where the patriarch then resided).

Nikon had been sympathetic toward Avvakum before being appointed Patriarch, after which he was surrounded with opponents of the old ways of worship. Avvakum saw Nikon as the devil incarnate and called him an “infernal hound” in letters he wrote to Tsar Alexei.

In his fifth letter to Alexei, Avvakum recalled the horror of his days of imprisonment, writing: “And I was very burdened by sorrow and my thoughts that in ancient times, even heretics were not so cursed as I am now: they have cut off my hair and beard and execrated me, and the Nikonites locked me in the dungeon.”

Avvakum underwent trials and tribulations his entire life. Despite his ordeals, he outlived both the tsar and Nikon himself. But in 1682 the Church Council sentenced him to be burned alive. The sentence was carried out on Avvakum and three of his followers using a small log structure specially designed for the purpose. The basement of the Church of the Resurrection holds no reminder that the “fierce archpriest” was once imprisoned here. Today, it is the final resting place of Krutitsy’s metropolitans.

Under Metropolitan Paul II, another architectural wonder was completed in 1655: The Hall of Metropolitans. They lived and worked in this two-story palace. The hall opens onto what at first might appear to be a desolate place, but once upon a time this was a public square, seething with life. The common people could come here to see their metropolitan. “The metropolitan would come out right here and stand right up there and interact with the people. He might even throw out a little money. Or wave a scarf,” the guide Avramenko said.

The Krutitsy metropolitans and bishops, legend has it, used to come out to take in the sight of the assembled throngs and bless them, right from the windows of the Terem (an upstairs private quarters with a balcony), which was built in 1693-1694. This Terem is under UNESCO protection and is the Residence’s greatest treasure. It is adorned with approximately two thousand glazed tiles (page 32). Today, its empty windows, like eyes from the past, gaze on the Residence and can hardly believe how quiet it has become.

A bright and calm period in the history of the Krutitsy Residence came to an end with the reign of Peter the Great, who abolished the patriarchate and made himself head of the church. He handed church governance over to a new body, the Holy Synod. Krutitsy’s bishops lost their status and the title of metropolitan. As Avramenko explained, this was a shocking demotion: “After all, the local father was no simple priest! At the time, he was number two within the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the patriarch’s deputy. And that was it. One fine day this local priest really was nothing but a local priest.”

Somehow, Krutitsy managed to maintain its importance, but in 1785 it was placed under the Synodal Office, and until 1917, there were no Krutitsy bishops.

On May 6, 1788, an order was issued to redraw the boundaries of the eparchies, which were now supposed to match provincial boundaries. This meant that the Synod had to abolish certain eparchies and redistribute their lands. On May 17, 1788, the Krutitsy eparchy was ordered “not to be,” and its churches were given to the Moscow, Oryol, Kaluga, and Smolensk eparchies. The Residence’s archives, furnishings, and the contents of its vestry were moved to Chudov Monastery.

The Residence itself (minus the Dormition Church) was handed over to the Synod’s Economic Collegium, which passed it on to the War Department.

In 1842, the Moscow Internal Garrison Battalion was installed in the Residence, and Krutitsy was converted into a military prison and barracks. One person who knew well what went on at the complex in those days was Alexander Herzen, the famous revolutionary, writer, and critic of Russian imperial policy in the nineteenth century. At age 22, Herzen spent more than seven months imprisoned in the Embankment Hall, awaiting trial and exile to Vyatka. He devoted an entire chapter of his book My Past and Thoughts to the Krutitsy barracks. In Part II, Chapter XI he wrote:

After driving an hour and a half, we finally passed the Simonov Monastery and stopped by some heavy stone gates being guarded by two gendarmes armed with carbines. This was the Krutitsy Monastery, which had been turned into a police barracks.

I was taken into a small office. The clerks, the adjutants, the officers – everyone was in light blue.* The duty officer, wearing a helmet and in full uniform, asked me to wait and even offered to light the pipe that I held. After that he started writing a receipt acknowledging that he had taken custody of a new arrestee. After giving it to the policeman, he left and returned with another officer.

“Your room is ready,” the other officer told me. “Let’s go.”

The gendarme lit the way for us with a small lantern, and we descended some stairs, walked briefly through a courtyard, and passed through a small doorway into a long corridor that was illuminated by a single lamp. There were small doors on either side, one of which the duty officer opened. The door led to a tiny guardroom, beyond which was a small room that was damp, cold, and smelled like a cellar. [...]

Some of the monks’ cells, which were 300 years old and sinking into the earth, were now serving the secular purpose of housing political arrestees.

My room contained a bed with no mattress, a tiny table holding a jug of water, a chair, and a large copper candlestick with a thin tallow candle. The dankness and cold penetrated to the bone. The officer ordered that the stove be lit, and then everyone left. The soldier promised to bring some straw, but for the time being, using my greatcoat as a pillow, I lay down on the bare bed and started smoking my pipe. A minute later I noticed that the ceiling was covered with cockroaches.

Herzen was almost suffocated by carbon monoxide poisoning in this cell. He was found, passed out on the floor, by a gendarme.

“Your honor was nearly done in by the fumes,” he said, seeing that I had regained consciousness. “I brought you some pickled horseradish and kvas. I already gave you a sniff.  Now drink some.”

I drank it. […]I felt awful. The double-paned window had no opening; the soldier went to ask if I could be let out into the courtyard. The duty officer replied that neither the colonel nor the adjutant was in and that he could not take responsibility himself. I had to stay in my fume-filled room.

Herzen passed his time at Krutitsy conjugating Italian verbs. It was only the beginning of his persecution for revolutionary activities. He spent several years in exile, and, a year after his father’s death in 1846, he left Russia for good.

Around that same time, in the mid-nineteenth century, the complex underwent a partial restoration. Nevertheless, by the dawn of the twentieth century, this historic site was in a deplorable state. After the revolution it continued to deteriorate.

In 1921, Patriarch Tikhon held mass at Krutitsy, but three years later, in 1924, all of the complex’s churches were closed. By the late 1920s, the Dormition Church was serving as a dormitory for the Moscow Military District.

After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Lavrenti Beria, the notorious secret police chief who was part of Stalin’s inner circle and who tried to seize power after his death, was apparently imprisoned in the complex for either one or three days (sources vary).

According to Father Solovyov, Beria was brought to Krutitsy out of fear that his former secret police comrades would help him escape. The Moscow military prison at Krutitsy (a part of the complex served this purpose right up to 1996) was then under the control of the War Ministry, and Marshal Zhukov is said to have guaranteed that Beria’s supporters would not find him there. As Father Solovyov writes: “During Beria’s first hours at Krutitsy he was extremely uncooperative, refused to eat, poured a bowl of soup on one of the guards, smashed the stool in his cell, and demanded the return of his pince-nez.”

From Krutitsy, Beria began to write letters to Georgy Malenkov and other Communist Party leaders begging for mercy, but to no avail. He was shot that December. The cell where he was kept no longer exists.

The Krutitsy Residence was saved from total destruction by the architect Pyotr Baranovsky, who has been working on restoring it for almost 30 years. But, as the architects and restorers say, there is enough work here to keep them busy for another half century.

In 1966, the Krutitsy Residence was designated a museum, and in 1982 it became a branch of the State Historical Museum. Later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it began to serve as the residence of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus. Gradually, church services were restored, and a part of the complex was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Today the complex houses the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department of Youth Affairs, a school for church singing, and a library. Since 2004, children have been able to attend free Sunday school classes here.

But even this renewed activity is nothing compared to the Residence’s vibrant past. The relative quiet that still reigns is occasionally broken by newlyweds, who come all dressed up and with photographers, hoping to capture a place where time is standing still. RL