CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR

The Church of Christ the Savior has a three-phase history: construction, demolition, and reconstruction. In 1812, after the defeat of Napoleon's invading armies in the Fatherland War, Tsar Alexander I decreed that a church in the name of Christ the Savior be built in Moscow as a symbol of gratitude to God for the salvation of Russia from its foes. Early plans called for a church to be built on Sparrow Hills, but due to unsteady ground at the original location, Nicholas I designated a new site near the Kremlin in 1827. Construction of the church was completed under Alexander II, and the cathedral was consecrated in 1883, during the reign of Alexander III. Some of Russia's most prominent nineteenth-century artists and architects worked to bring the project to fruition.

Josef Stalin's Politburo decided to destroy the cathedral and replace it with an enormous Palace of Soviets, topped with a statue of Vladimir Lenin that would dwarf the United States' Statue of Liberty. In December 1931, the Church of Christ the Savior was lined with explosives and demolished; however, plans for the construction of a Palace of Soviets were never realized. The foundation became a huge, green swimming pool. The destruction of the Church of Christ the Savior followed in the spirit of the revolutionary iconoclasm of the late 1910s and early 1920s, when the Bolsheviks toppled symbols of old Russia. But the demolition of the cathedral was also part of an unprecedented alteration of Moscow's landscape, which included the destruction of other churches and the building of the Moscow Metro, overseen by First Secretary of the Moscow Party Committee Lazar Kaganovich.

The process of resurrecting the demolished cathedral began in 1990 with an appeal from the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Russian government, requesting that permission be granted to rebuild the church on its original site. This project, headed by Patriarch Alexei II and Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was completed in 1996, and the Church of Christ the Savior was consecrated in 2000.

See also: alexei ii, patriarch; kaganovich, lazar moyseyevich; luzhov, yuri mikhailovich; russian orthodox church

bibliography

Bohlen, Celestine. "A Cathedral Razed by Stalin Rises Again." New York Times. September 13, 1998: E11.

Nicholas Ganson