What Lies Beneath

Moscow’s sixteenth and seventeenth century architectural heritage is represented on the pages of specialized books and textbooks, to some significant degree, by master works of the art that are long since lost. This includes both national treasures that were consciously destroyed during the Soviet era and those torn down during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an interlude when Moscow was not the nation’s capital and its ancient architecture did not receive the attention it deserved. These treasures still exist, however, not simply in drawings and photographs, but also as sites recovered by architectural archaeology, the significance of which is now receiving greater recognition in cities with rich histories around the world.

The attitude toward sites of interest to architectural archaeology, which often seem to show up in inconvenient places and at inconvenient times, is reflected in the degree of flexibility a government exercises in order to safeguard this inheritance. Many European capitals, suffering through a succession of distressing losses, not only learned how to manage relations between developers and archaeologists, but succeeded in making them mutually profitable (the most widely known example of this in recent years is probably Bloomberg’s European Headquarters, which incorporated the Roman Temple of Mithras – originally discovered on the site – into the complex’s design). When archaeology precedes the drafting of plans, finds have a chance to become a gift, and not an obstacle, for the developer.

For Moscow, planned, thoughtful, methodologically-sound excavations are to this day a rarity – instead, researchers are constantly dodging the buckets of backhoes that barge onto construction sites before archeology can be completed. The unsettling chronicle of efforts to protect the capital’s archeology is an eloquent commentary on our time.

A century ago, in both Europe and Russia, archaeology was still understood primarily as a treasure hunt. Some finds wound up in museum display cases, but excavations were not conducted as systematic research projects. For example, in prerevolutionary Moscow, Nikolai Shcherbatov and Ignaty Stelletsky, two zealous amateurs, dreamed of finding Ivan the Terrible’s library – and, after digging up half of the Kremlin’s grounds, they left no detailed records of their work, only jumbled diary notes. Better educated members of the Archaeological Society conducted observations of construction projects in the city’s center, but this was done only haphazardly. There was never any discussion of preserving discovered structures.

The capital’s first official construction monitoring came in 1934, when the first line of the Moscow metro was being built, with an agreement reached between the builders and the archaeologists, who were able to offer useful guidance in complex hydrogeological situations (for example, ground water collecting at the bottom of a long-filled moat). This collaboration also resulted in publication of a detailed scientific account that described the contours of the foundation for the walls of the Kitai-Gorod and Bely Gorod fortresses. In a preface to the account, regret was expressed that “historians’ efforts commenced only after excavation had already begun,” and the intention in the future to take the opposite approach.

With various degrees of success, archaeologists continued to collaborate with large construction projects. However, without legal requirements to back them up, their work depended on construction bosses’ schedules and whims. Several excavations were initiated in the 1940s, at the start of construction of the never-completed tower in Zaryade. Their results, which shed light on the structure of Moscow’s medieval urban estates, entered history textbooks, and one can only guess how much richer these scholarly materials would have been if the area investigated had included the entire construction site.

Still more tragic are the circumstances of excavations conducted during the construction of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin in 1960. The enormous construction pit sat right on a spot key for solving the mystery of Moscow’s origins: the spot where Prince Yuri Dolgoruky put the first wooden fort in 1156. Later, it was the site of the women’s quarters of the Sovereign’s Court. Archaeologists were allowed to excavate two tiny areas that covered not even five percent of the whole territory. Walls were found from the palace of Tsaritsa Natalya, the mother of Emperor Peter the Great, and from that same first fort. As the story goes, at the height of the work on the pre-Mongol stratum, a specialist in civilian clothes approached the archaeologists and said, “Enough fooling around, they’ve given you the sign, it’s time to start building.” The entire remaining layer of potential cultural artifacts was destroyed before it could be investigated.

In the early 1970s, the Kremlin saw the appearance of its own archaeological service, and having archeologists present when earth was being dug became a requirement, at least in theory. But, in practice, that happened far from always. For example, in 1988, trucks loaded with dirt exiting the Kremlin gates alerted scholars to the construction of “a special technical object” in the garden near Petrovsky Tower. And the famous Great Buried Treasure, hidden on the day that Moscow was sacked by Mongol Khan Batu (1238) and found that same year, in 1988, was uncovered near Spassky Gate, not by an archaeologist, but by a builder. Had not museum specialists conducted training sessions with workers, many extremely valuable finds would have gone straight to the dump, as, for example, a rusty “fire poker” brought in for examination that turned out to be a fourteenth century sword with the identification mark of the famed European blacksmith Gicelin.

With the advent of the romantic years of perestroika, the situation outside the Kremlin changed somewhat. In 1987, when a utilities trench was being laid in the Historic Passage, an underground walkway connecting Tverskaya Street with Red Square, workers ran into the foundation of the Kitai-Gorod fortress’s Voskresenky Gate, which had been demolished in the 1930s. Though construction plans called for lining the trench with concrete in three days, a huge public response to the find helped change the plan. Specialists say that it was precisely then that preservation of Moscow’s archaeological legacy began. This dig, which Moscow’s municipal authorities had by no means planned on, provided sensational results, including, most importantly, Moscow’s first birch bark manuscript. Hundreds of such manuscripts, as is widely known, have been found by archaeological expeditions in Novgorod, and their absence in Moscow had always presented a bit of a puzzle. Now it was clear that the absence of finds was not because medieval Muscovites were less literate than their compatriots, but because construction workers had been too rushed to notice blackened rolls of birch bark with ancient lettering scratched into them.

The most important result of this work was the establishment of Moscow’s Archaeological Service and laws designed to ensure oversight of earthworks in the city. Unfortunately, good laws do not always mean good enforcement. The majority of excavations conducted since that time have generated complaints. For example, during study of a historically significant stratum below Manezh Square in connection with the construction of an enormous trade center there in the 1990s, a few selected areas were thoroughly investigated, but behind the fence demarcating the research sites, the very same layer was being destroyed by excavators. Eyewitnesses say that workers handed out whole buckets of military cockades bearing the emblems of Napoleonic regiments. In retreat, the French invader had ordered that several wagonloads of spare ammunition be dumped in the Neglinka River.

At the same time, astounding remnants of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century buildings were found under Manezh Square – including a stone bridge that once crossed the Neglinka (long ago relegated to running underground in tunnels), as well as cellars of private buildings demolished in the 1930s. Archaeologists appealed to municipal authorities to transform part of the street excavations into a museum, or to include them as interior elements of new construction. The only discovery preserved post-construction was a part of the stone Voskresensky Bridge, although even it was dismantled and moved to a new location.

In 2002, at the developer’s expense, for the first time excavations were started before construction at the planned site for a business center in Romanov Lane. This was where Ivan the Terrible built his legendary Oprichny Zamok, a retreat for the tsar and his personal guard, the oprichniki. The building was a wooden “anti-Kremlin,” where the tsar cut himself off, creating his own tightly controlled realm, separate from the Russian state. Archaeologists uncovered 12 sixteenth-century brick stoves, identifying them as part of the palace kitchen. Later, the idea was proposed that these were the foundations supporting stoves of a “gothic” design that was unusual for Moscow that must have been installed in individual rooms, meaning that the dig had uncovered the footprint of the palace itself, something that had been sought unsuccessfully since the nineteenth century. Confirmation of that theory is difficult – only a part of one stove was kept for display in the new office complex, while the other remnants were destroyed.

In 2007, in conjunction with some sort of classified construction project, an excavation was, for the first time, properly conducted on Kremlin grounds. Archeologists were given less lead time than they would have liked, but enough for them to thoroughly study approximately 18,000 cubic meters of an historically rich stratum of at the Podol – the riverfront foot of the hill that the Kremlin sits on. This is the Kremlin’s southern, garden area where nothing had been built for a long time, so that archaeologists were able to examine an entire block of cellars from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century wooden houses. They were well enough preserved that in some places archeologists could identify the remains of pickled mushrooms in wooden tubs. The finds were carefully studied and then discarded – only the remains of one of the wooden homes was moved to a museum.

There have, however, been several successful efforts to incorporate the remnants of ancient structures into modern Moscow. The first was in the 1960s, when the foundation of the long-gone towers of St. Barbara’s Gate were uncovered in an underground passage being built during construction of a metro station. It only worked out because someone there happened to know who to call to elicit support from the city’s Communist Party Committee. In the underground passage built for a second exit from this same station, a wall was found that once supported the neighboring St. Elijah’s Tower – this time, however, there was no one to make a quick phone call, and the find was submerged in wet cement.

Many years later, in the early 2000s, building plans were redrawn to preserve the foundations of the sixteenth-century Trinity in the Fields Church. In 2012, the foundation of the church that was part of the seventeenth-eighteenth century Conception Convent was incorporated into a specially-constructed vault beneath the church built to replace it. And, in 2017, a small section of the Bely Gorod Fortress (1590), uncovered during the construction of a never-finished parking garage ten years earlier, was conserved and included in a pedestrian zone on Khokhlovskaya Square.

The failed parking garage project became a much-discussed example of bad city planning. On Moscow’s Boulevard Ring, which runs over the site of the former fortress, there are many spots where the underground portions of fortress walls have been better preserved, to a height of two meters. This particular stretch of wall, not especially impressive or historically significant, was happened upon accidentally, and the decision to construct an amphitheater around made no sense whatsoever. The preserved wall does not work as the centerpiece of the design, and using it as a stage or speaking platform would be very impractical. As a result, the space, onto which the windows of residential buildings look, became a drinking hangout. In 2020, it was blocked off by a fence with gates where police made sure nobody was bringing in alcohol.

In 2016, another principally important project was completed: for the first time, a piece of architectural archaeology was put display in situ: remnants of the Chudov Monastery that was demolished by Stalin in 1929.

This is actually a strange and intriguing story. To everyone’s surprise, President Vladimir Putin brought up the idea of rebuilding two monasteries demolished by the Bolsheviks on the grounds of the Kremlin. For this project, it would be necessary to remove a large administrative building – known as Wing No. 14 – constructed in 1933 and that had also managed to become part of the Kremlin’s history. In sacrificing Wing No. 14, also known as the Kremlin Presidium, the government was giving up a significant amount of office space that had only recently been renovated. Most of the personnel that had worked there had to be moved off Kremlin grounds. This plan seemed to signal a serious intention to rebuild the monasteries. There was surprise and concern from some quarters when demolition began before there was even a rough sketch of what the restored monasteries would look like.

Wing No. 14 was demolished, replaced by a square, and there is no longer any talk of rebuilding the monasteries. One can only guess at the reasons behind the hurried demolition of the Presidium, formerly one of the “picture postcard” symbols of Soviet power. Archaeology, however, came out a winner: part of the territory of the former monastery was not only excavated but put on display under the open sky, under glass that visitors can walk on as they study the monastery’s remnants. Since then, excavations on Kremlin grounds have continued not as rushed efforts to preserve history, but taking the time that serious investigation demands. Over the last two years, a part of the territory that was home to the Prikazy – a complex of seventeenth-century ministerial buildings – has been studied, generating scholarly publications.

Outside the Kremlin, however, archaeological efforts continue at their four-alarm fire pace. In 2016, the Moscow municipal government launched a program dubbed “My Street”: an ambitious upgrade of the city center, including widening of sidewalks and the relocation of underground utilities. Archaeologists, just as they did 80 years earlier, have been following around backhoes, combing the dug-up earth for artifacts. And despite the fact that old drawings more or less accurately tell us where to expect finds, exceptionally valuable pieces of  Moscow’s history are regularly mangled by earthmoving equipment.

In 2016, a few sections of the Bely Gorod Fortress and the cellar of a seventeenth-century church on Tverskaya Street were damaged. There were calls from the public for building project plans to include the work of archeologists and worries that in the following year losses could be even greater: the improvements to the city center would then be moving into Kitai-Gorod, the richest medieval commercial area in the capital. But the system remained unchanged, and the 2017 season set a record for problems: several sixteenth-century buildings were damaged or outright destroyed – among the oldest in the city. In the spring, underground vaulted chambers built into the Kitai-Gorod wall and the cellar of the Sretensky Monastery’s church on Lubyanka Square was damaged (these historic structures had been torn down in the 1930s). In the summer, a trench on Ilyinka Street (200 meters from Red Square) revealed the walls of Blagoveshchensky Church, demolished in the late eighteenth century.

Observers say that these disasters canceled out all of the previous achievements by the city’s archaeological conservancy service. At first, an eyewitness posted a warning on social networks: an excavator had uncovered ancient stonework under the square built in the time of Catherine the Great, right where an old church had stood. With the recent experience of the Lubyanka in mind, when attempts to reach the official archaeological services gave no result, people reached for whatever business cards they had for people who might be able to help. Information was successfully passed to “high places,” and soon archaeologists arrived on Ilyinka Street, not to conserve, but at least to conduct a thorough investigation of the church and its adjacent territory.

The finds turned out to be sensational – a significant portion of the modern square covered an untouched, 3.5-meter-deep stratum of history from the twelfth through eighteenth centuries. A treasure trove of weapons, pre-Mongol decorative art, and the remains of wooden homes were found. There were also marvelously preserved stone walls of a church built at the same time as St. Basil’s Cathedral, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (previously, Moscow’s archaeologists had seen only the foundations of buildings from that period). A staircase leading to a caved-in basement of the church was particularly intriguing, as it led to somewhere beyond the area to which the archaeologists had access. The excavation was open and the city’s residents had the opportunity to observe the dig on a daily basis.

At the same time, it became known that the My Street program had already planned for a fountain that would require a pumping station at a depth of four meters, and it could be located only on the site of the church. It seemed like it should be possible to sell government officials on the idea of creating a unique archaeological exposition, and the fountain could certainly be built on any other city square. This was an opportunity to enrich a street that originated in ancient times, but that, by our day, had lost practically all its earlier architecture. It was also a chance to set an important precedent.

On August 4, 2017, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin ordered that the church be left in place and turned into a museum. But on August 15 (the Russian Federation’s Day of the Archeologist holiday) specialists were suddenly given the command to clear out. Only about one-third of the pit’s area had been thoroughly investigated. The remaining territory had been dug down to the fifteenth-sixteenth century level: the earliest strata were so far untouched. For a month, which would have sufficed to finish the work, nothing happened on Ilyinka Street. On September 14, an excavator scooped out the pit to make way for construction, destroying the untouched lower layer, which dated to Moscow’s founding, and the unstudied church wall. Where the ancient staircase led remained unknown.

The police, summoned by citizens to the site on the day it was destroyed, said: don’t worry, work done next to the Kremlin can’t be illegal.

Of course, for Moscow, this event meant much more than the loss of one historical site. To return to our comparison with London, we can quote archaeologist Igor Kondratiev: “England’s PPG16 planning guidance, passed in 1989 and defining archaeologists rights in the city, was contemporaneous and analogous to our Decision of the Moscow City Council No. 1584. It is simply that, since then, our archaeological service has been gradually degraded, while London’s still has power.”

In the three years that followed, the situation has remained stable and unchanged: all excavations outside the Kremlin are conducted under archaeological observation. That is, archaeologists are not included in work planning, construction personnel dig trenches and pits, and archaeologists just show up at the job site, gathering a harvest of “artifacts” and noting the locations of any discovered foundation. In Moscow, assurances that work would be halted and plans reviewed in the event something valuable is found bear no relation to reality. And while government archaeologists report thousands of artifacts found every year in the center of the capital, their colleagues watching from outside the municipal system believe that the number of finds only serves to confirm the scale of what is being lost, as the extremely rich medieval layer continues to be dug up in a history-obscuring rush.