MEMORY 43

Changing Sacredness and Historical Memory of Moscow’s Red Square DAVID A. WEBER UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

R ed Square has for centuries been the geographic center of Moscow. The ideological centricity of the Square is an-other matter, as its sacred nature as the heart of the com-munist universe was a created sacredness that has influ-

enced the sense of history that remains there to this day. This paper examines the nature of such created sacredness and the role played by the interaction of various actors and narratives, both official and unof-ficial, in the ongoing reinterpretation of the historical significance, and thus the present and future status, of Red Square and its place as the ―heart‖ of Russia. This debate serves as a mirror for the both the state‘s and the public‘s formulation of a post-Soviet Russian identity.

For many Westerners of my generation—one of the last that still recalls the Soviet Union as an actual political entity, and not just as something in a history book or Cold War spy films—the predomi-nant image of Red Square still stems from the evening news reports each May: of ordered columns of soldiers, tanks, and rockets; of ath-letes and children in costume waving thousands of red flags; all marching past old men standing atop a dead man‘s tomb. From the perspective of someone growing up during the waning years of the Cold War, it remains an indelible memory, perhaps not as strongly charged as those of the previous generation, but still a potent image of the ―Other.‖

This was prior to Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika in the 1980s, before Boris Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet bloc and, later, of the Soviet Union itself in the early 1990s. It was also prior to my own experiences in Moscow in the mid-1990s, as a graduate stu-dent in anthropology interested in just these sorts of demonstrations of national identity. By that time such large-scale performances were much rarer; the collapse of both the communist ideology and the Rus-sian economy had curtailed the perceived need and desire for such things. Things had changed greatly when I returned in 2006: Russia had a powerful new leader with an autocratic style, a booming energy-based economy, and an overwhelming drive to reassert itself on the

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international scene. In the midst of it all, as before, stood Red Square, though it too had undergone changes.

Red Square serves as a prime example of the controlled trans-formation of a ―site of memory‖ (Nora 7). Due to its proximity to the Kremlin and the long-held view of the Square as the center of the city if not the entire country, access is often limited and there are specific rules that must be observed. Today the area around the Square bustles with commerce, though little if any is allowed on the Square proper, again due to restriction of access. This is selective as well—the small carts selling camera film and batteries that could occasionally be found on the Square in the 1990s are now mostly relegated to the fringes, and the owners of the GUM shopping center, which stands opposite the Kremlin, are able to construct—with government permission—ice rinks and concert stages that dwarf and distract from the nearby Lenin Mausoleum.

While there are still occasional parades, one is more likely to see a rock concert on or near Red Square than a procession of tanks. In the past, stages have been set up in front of St. Basil‘s Cathedral so as to provide for maximum crowd space and for the dramatic back-drop the iconic church provides. Internationally-known performers such as Paul McCartney1 in 2003 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1999, as well as popular Russian rock and pop bands, have performed on the Square over the years. This configuration is still used on cer-tain special occasions, such as New Year‘s Eve; however, it has be-come more commonplace for holiday stages to be constructed near GUM—across the Square from the Mausoleum. Like the ice rink, these stages are often sponsored by the wealthy GUM ownership. For other concerts, it has become de rigueur to place the stage just off the Square, on the Vasil'evskii Spusk (―slope‖) between St. Basil‘s Ca-thedral and the Moskva River (Fig. 1). The area still allows for a St. Basil‘s Cathedral backdrop, holds a sizeable crowd, and keeps such crowds off of the Square, which is routinely closed during such events for crowd control and security in any case. This site is commonly used during the spring and summer holidays, such as maslenitsa; in 2006 fea-tured major international acts such as The Black Eyed Peas and Shakira.

During the Soviet period (1917-1991), Red Square came to be regarded as the most politically sacred site in the Soviet cosmos. Can it be said, though, that Red Square is today undergoing a process of ―desacralization‖ of memory? My observations, collected during ex-

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tended stays in Moscow in 1996-97 and 2005-06, certainly point to the conclusion that the Square, once the ―heart‖ of the communist world, is indeed losing some of this sacred character. However, one could also say that it very much remains the heart of the city, if not the country. From an official standpoint, the status of the Square seems to be in transition. Current prime minister and former president Vladimir Putin and his entourage are largely St. Petersburg natives, and appear to be more favorable towards the prime minister‘s birth-

Figure 1. Significant features of Red Square (drawing by author, not to scale)

1. Red Square 2. Lenin Mausoleum 3. GUM 4. St. Basil‘s Cathedral 5. Vasil'evskii Spusk 6. State Historical Museum 7. Voskresenskie Gates 8. Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 9. Church of the Kazan' Mother of God 10. Okhotnyi Riad Shopping Center

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place than towards the capital city. Since Putin first took office as president in 2000, the Russian Constitutional Court has been relocated from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and the 2006 G8 Summit was held at the scenic Constantine Palace outside of the ―Northern Capital.‖ In this matter, it appears that Putin has much in common with the Rus-sian emperor—and founder of St. Petersburg—Peter I (―Peter the Great‖).

Even on a cold winter‘s day there are tourists on the Square—the Russian winter is often romanticized, fueled by imagery from books such as Boris Pasternak‘s Doktor Zhivago (1957) and in particular the films based upon them, most notably David Lean‘s 1965 adaptation of Pasternak‘s book. The reality can often be quite far from this idealized image: snow turned brown and slushy from plows, boots, dirt, and diesel fumes and cramped, hot rides on the Metro in heavy winter clothing are the order of the day, though the travelers I encountered during the season were mainly from other areas of Russia or ―the near abroad‖—few international travelers elect to brave the Moscow winter. The summer is far more varied: in a single afternoon, one can hear French, Portuguese (including Brazilian dialects in the form of the national basketball team in 2006), Dutch, Ukrainian, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English in every accent. Standing in line—and while they are shorter, there are still lines—to enter the Lenin Mausoleum today is more like waiting to get on a carnival ride, or perhaps more appropriately into a sideshow, as people chat, children are fussy, and tourists joke and laugh.2 The Lenin Mausoleum is second only to St. Basil‘s Cathedral as favorite photo background; the State Historical Museum is a distant third.

Red Square and its surroundings are now mainly a tourist des-tination. This has not always been the case, though tourism has long been central to the area. Many of the political aspects of tourism have been removed—such as the Soviet-era compulsory visits to the Mau-soleum arranged by schools and places of employment, which were outright indoctrination in theory, but largely ―going through the mo-tions‖ in practice. High- and low-end shopping, pricey hotels, histori-cally significant sites, plentiful restaurants and bars have made visiting the Square more of an activity: one can see the sites for which Mos-cow is justly famous, stand in the footsteps of history, take photos, buy souvenirs, or have a drink or two at one of the many tented beer gardens that are set up just off the Square in the summer months. Those with children may prefer to get a hot dog or some ice cream or

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to have a sit-down meal or a quick bite at McDonald‘s—there are two locations nearby.

Things were very different in the Soviet period, brought upon by a number of factors that built over the years into an organized rit-ual calendar centered on the Square. Chief among these was the relo-cation of the seat of government from St. Petersburg to Moscow—to the Kremlin in particular. For the first time since before Peter I, the rulers of Russia looked out their window and saw Red Square. It was a logical step to see this transformed into using the Square as a pa-rade/ceremonial ground; Ivan IV (―Ivan the Terrible‖) had a tower window overlooking the Square, supposedly to witness the public punishment and even execution of his real and imagined enemies. The next step was the decision to place Lenin‘s Mausoleum on Red Square. The presence of Lenin‘s remains, and later those of the Com-munist Party elite and national heroes, fundamentally reoriented Red Square away from St. Basil‘s Cathedral and towards the Kremlin. These elements—in spirit in the first case, in fact in the second—remain in place today. The leadership is in many ways both different and the same; if Lenin is in fact no longer sacred, there is still enough of his presence to be significant, if only because the current authori-ties feel the need to leave the Mausoleum intact, yet hidden during national holidays.

In this sense, there are still some vestiges of this ―sacredness‖ on the Square, though it has largely returned to its pre-Revolutionary state as a gathering place. It remains, however, the nation‘s main stage, seen frequently on television, site of parades and concerts and nationally televised New Years‘ celebrations. It would seem that it is only the shows that have changed, rather than the venue.

The Space and Place of Memory

The Soviet Union made prolific use of the political tradition of utilizing monuments and sacred spaces as a means of promoting the ideological validity of the ruling Communist Party and, along with it, an idealized version of history. The lack of democratic tradition in Russian and Soviet history suggests that such a means of propagandiz-ing the role of the rulers to the vast majority of the population, which remained largely illiterate until the Soviet period, could be a highly effective hegemonic exercise. Nearly twenty years after the Soviet Un-ion‘s collapse, the Russian populace was barely able to come to grips with democratic political and liberal, market-oriented economic prin-

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ciples before the slow, steady slide into the so-called ―soft authoritari-anism‖ began. The current Russian government continues the tradi-tion of state-sponsored control over public space and monumental architecture in an attempt to shape and control public memory. This process, begun under Yeltsin, has incorporated a re-invention of the pre-Soviet past, and in more recent years there has even been some-thing of a rehabilitation of the Soviet era to go along with the revital-ized imperial trappings of the presidency. The administrations of Putin and Dmitrii Medvedev have, for better or worse, stressed the continuity of Russian and Soviet history, exemplified in the adoption of the white, blue and red tsarist tricolor alongside the tune of the Soviet national anthem. Contemporary Muscovites who grew up un-der varying degrees of Soviet totalitarian rule and the younger genera-tion that is coming of age amidst the growing pains of post-communist Russia must perceive and confront these Soviet memorial sites and sacred spaces. Their own concepts of identity, history, and sacredness greatly influence how they deal with the new ―invented‖ and restored traditions, which are based on the interpretation of the pre-Soviet past proliferated by the local and federal authorities. Mos-cow, and Red Square in particular, thus constitutes an intriguing case in the study of the (re)presentation of national history and values based on such cultural productions as memorials, monuments, muse-ums, and politically sacred spaces (and the degrees to which these overlap). It can provide insights into the dynamics of self-perception and state-generated concepts of national identity as they relate to the interaction of public and private historical memory. First-hand obser-vations of the public negotiation of these productions of pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture in and around Moscow pre-sents an ideal opportunity for investigating the roles of history and memory in the formation of post-Soviet identity.

The Soviet Union was a veritable wellspring of Eric Hobs-bawm‘s so-called invented traditions, defined as:

a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly ac-cepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past … where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. (1)

To the Soviet leadership, this ―suitable past‖ meant mainly the revolu-tionary aspects of imperial Russian history, along with select parts of

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the tsarist past that fit with the Party‘s and Stalin‘s ―progressive‖ vi-sion, including military strength, autocratic rule, and imperialistic ex-pansionism. In Moscow today one can witness this formula at work. A suitable past based on pre-Soviet Russian and Orthodox culture and history is being invented, while at the same time the invented Soviet traditions persist. Both are readily visible in the urban and social land-scape as it undergoes yet another transformation, again largely at the hands of those in power. Civil society, which was rudimentary at best in pre-revolutionary Russia and all but annihilated by the Soviet state, has had difficulty taking shape in post-Soviet Russia as well, particu-larly as the siloviki3 take on ever more authoritarian forms.

The concepts of democracy and freedom of expression have very shallow roots in Russia, having no strong antecedents prior to the fall of communism; the issue of political hegemony over peoples‘ per-ception of common identity as expressed through state-sanctioned ceremonies and monumental architecture is a very real part of this. This long history of authoritarian and totalitarian rule, including tight control of the media, education, and historical representation, has contributed greatly to the weakness of civil society in contemporary Russia (Khazanov, After the USSR 69ff; ―Post-Communist Moscow‖ 305; ―Whom to Mourn‖). Given the combined forces of censorship, a powerful secret police organization for the enforcement of state pol-icy, and the extreme concentration of authority that has existed almost without interruption since the time of the tsars, the liberal and not-so-liberal publics that have existed in Russia have done so under the most difficult of circumstances. The inability to establish a liberal de-mocratic public sphere in pre-revolutionary Russia is only under-scored by the fact that in 1917 the Bolsheviks replaced an authoritar-ian regime with a totalitarian one, under the façade of the ―dictatorship of the proletariat,‖ with only the brief democratic Provi-sional Government of February-October 1917 to interrupt them. The most publicly active segments today, at least in terms of the frequency and visibility of their demonstrations and rallies, are the communists, who are no longer viewed as a threat by the party in power, and the nationalists, whose views have been largely co-opted by the ruling party. The city, in its architecture and memorial complex, is still very much oriented around the Soviet era, and the trials associated with contemporary life in Russia—even in the relatively well-to-do capi-tal—have generated a wave of nostalgia for times when there was less freedom, but more certainty.

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Today this ―nostalgia industry‖ (Sturken 134) that produces packs of cigarettes bearing portraits of Lenin, Stalin, and Peter I, and bottles of vodka featuring various tsars—a byproduct of the economic and social hardships of the 1990s—remains in full force; it is here that the state-sanctioned version of national and historical identity has found fertile ground. Rather than attempting to forge a new history or deal with the less savory aspects of the past, as has long been the project in Germany (Olick 140), the primary message of Russian monuments, symbols, and holidays is presenting ―the past without the pain‖ (Khazanov, ―Post-Communist Moscow‖ 308). When coupled with the resurgence of the Orthodox Church, a burgeoning—if per-haps only temporarily—energy-based economy, and the still rising prestige of Vladimir Putin, the ―official‖ memory finds itself dealing with religious (which, like nationalism, has been co-opted into the official ideology), consumer, and other ideologies.

This continuing authoritarian-style organization of public space and, through monumental construction, of official memory, in addition to the aforementioned tradition of authoritarianism and its attachments, have led many of these obstacles to spring from the ―secular religious‖ and social engineering policies of Marxism-Leninism and the city planning theory that came from it. While Mos-cow was not engineered from the ground up as a socialist city, it is still useful to look at this policy as it relates to Soviet-era urban planning. In the Soviet period, whole cities were designed to fit the centralized theoretical structure of state socialism. Hartmut Häussermann gives an account of this process in East Germany:

Instead of single, privately owned buildings there would be blocks of socially owned establishments, designed according to a single concept, which repre-sented the team spirit of the socialist community, in contrast to the contradictory and fragmented capital-ist community. The ornate buildings should encour-age the inhabitants to identify with their city and with socialism. (215)

James Bater likewise wrote: ―the Soviet city became both an instru-ment and example of directed social and economic change; it served to legitimate the ideology of the state itself‖ (134). While Bater was speaking more to the concept of socialist urban planning, the intent extends to political and cultural symbols as well. Daniel Tarschys states that, in terms of using symbols to mold public opinion and le-

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gitimizing authority, communist states did not choose between intel-lectual and emotional means, but simply ―hammered at the whole key-board‖ (175). If one considers the history of this process in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Moscow, it is a difficult statement to argue with: at various times, and often simultaneously, the state has utilized many different doctrines: Marxist-Leninist, Slavophile, populist (Ries 22ff), nationalist, and, currently, religious, among others. Though the initial doctrinal approaches of community and collectivity (David Smith 71-72, 77, 79) are no longer the driving philosophy of contem-porary Russian urban design, the state-driven hegemonic aspects re-main in full force.

Moscow, however, also retained some of its older landmarks, though they were modified (physically or ideologically) to better suit socialist purposes: street names were changed; churches were demol-ished or, in rare cases, converted into museum space; and existing mu-seums had their subject matter altered. Skyscrapers were built in the Stalinist ―wedding cake‖ style, statues of Soviet heroes were placed in all prominent areas and squares, and the symbols of the state were etched into nearly every new construction. This was done in accor-dance with Soviet policies of atheism, internationalism (referring to the international brotherhood of all working peoples shot through in reality with Russian chauvinism), and communist ideology, as well as with the need for the Soviet government to create a clean break with and contrast to the Russian pre-revolutionary past. New civil ceremo-nies for marriage, funerals, and other life-events were created to re-place religious ones, even including the construction of special ―palaces‖ to replace churches as ceremonial centers (Lane 253). Thus, the ―top-down‖ engineering of Soviet society was well entrenched in the form of both the city and society, with holidays, rituals, and the commemorative landscape serving as a form of ―institutional remem-bering‖ (Kathleen Smith 5). The state saw the glorification of itself, its accomplishments, and its leaders in stone, on paper, and in the flesh (i.e., Lenin) as a means of creating a new sacred order, and with it new sacred space.

Yet in Moscow, as in many Russian cities, a clean-slate ap-proach was never used, resulting in a mix of architectural styles with ideological transformations that were never quite complete. In the Soviet era, the watchful eye of the secret police and control of mass media and education enabled the state to have some control over pub-lic memory as expressed in the new and re-defined monumental archi-

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tecture, while in the Russian Federation, the relative freedoms in place since 1991 have created an atmosphere for the interaction of often conflicting public and private memories. Still, despite the presence of a renewed Orthodox Church and encroaching Western-style market-ing, the process of monument building in the Russian Federation con-tinues along the Soviet model of shaping and establishing the hierar-chy of collective memory, rather than its preservation (Khazanov, ―Post-Communist Moscow‖ 301; Wolfe 250). Even the recent con-struction boom, since stalled along with the global economy, has worked along these lines; Moscow‘s powerful mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has taken to creating a ―modern‖ Moscow at the expense of classic, often neglected architecture, much to the chagrin of local and interna-tional critics and preservationists (Mikhailov, Lotareva, Rakhmatullin, et al. 6; Binney, Bollerey et al.).

Red Square serves as a perfect example of this conflict of ide-ologies. The Square, while significant due to its proximity to the Kremlin at the center of Moscow, was remade (or, if one prefers, re-imagined) by the Soviet state into its most holy ground, the very cen-ter of the universe. This transformation can be traced from the ori-gins of the area now known as Red Square to its current state of flux, the result of the fall of the USSR and the calling into question of much of its history.

The Pre-Soviet Era (1434-1917)4

While the current form and function of Red Square is rela-tively recent, the sometimes colorful history of the Square itself goes back to the late fifteenth century, when it was occupied by buildings of the trading quarter, or posad. In 1493 the long, narrow strip of land this occupied was laid bare by a fire. Grand Prince Ivan III ordered this area left open to protect the Kremlin from fire, creating a buffer zone between the moat (dug in 1508-1516) to the west, and by the torg, or market, of Kitai-gorod (from the Turkic for ―walled place,‖ the city‘s mercantile quarter) to the east. This area was first known as the pozhar, or burnt-land, and eventually was integrated into the torg. Eventually, it began to be called Trinity Square, after the church that stood on its southern slope, leading down to the Moskva River.

Red Square was from the start a center for city commerce, primarily for the purchase and trade of agricultural goods and live-stock. Bridges were built connecting the Kremlin towers to the open area and to roads beyond; thus, the primary approach to the Kremlin

MEMORY 53

was via the torg. During the reign of the early tsars, the future Square underwent a number of changes and additions that cemented its role as the hub of Moscow. In 1534, the lobnoe mesto (roughly, the ―skull place‖ or place of execution) was built, from which official proclama-tions were read and prisoners sentenced and sometimes executed. The latter half of the sixteenth century saw the construction of the first stone buildings of the Upper Trading Rows in the torg, and of the Square‘s most famous landmark, the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, commissioned by Ivan IV to commemorate the conquest of Kazan', a powerful khanate in the middle Volga region. Between 1625 and 1630, construction was completed on Spasskaia (Savior) Tower and the Church of the Kazan' Mother of God, and the name Krasnaia ploshchad' came into common use, the Russian krasnaia at the time be-ing the root of the modern words for both ―beautiful‖ and ―red.‖ The name was made official by royal decree in 1658. The northern bound-ary of the Square was established with the building of the Voskre-senskie (Resurrection) Gates, also known as the Iberian Gates and Chapel, in 1689. In 1713 Peter I moved the imperial court to his newly-built capital, St. Petersburg—symbolic of both his effort to bring Russia closer to Europe and to modernity, as well as of his dis-like for Moscow. To Peter, Moscow was symbolic of the past; his desire was to move forward and create a world power on par with Western Europe.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Red Square took on much of its current shape. The moat was filled in by 1814, and replaced with a boulevard in 1822. The Imperial (now State) Histori-cal Museum was built on the site of the University in 1883, and in 1892 the first electric lights were added to the Square. Beginning in 1910, a public tram ran through Red Square. By the time of the Revo-lution in 1917, the Square had already served as a site of public trade and gathering, had hosted religious festivals centered around its vari-ous churches, and had witnessed the crowning of each Romanov tsar within the Kremlin. It was the first of these roles, however, that was by far the one most associated with the Square itself on a day-to-day basis.

The Soviet Era (1918-1991)

In the Soviet period Red Square was ideologically trans-formed into the very center of the communist universe: the return of the government from Petrograd (later Leningrad, now once again St.

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Petersburg) to the old capital was accompanied by the creation of a whole new set of state ritual that could be carried out on this vast brick square. Red Square immediately became a regular site for meet-ings, demonstrations, and parades. Moreover, 238 fallen Bolsheviks were interred in common graves along the Kremlin wall, and with the addition of the Lenin Mausoleum and communist necropolis in the 1920s, the ground was formally sanctified by the presence of the state‘s founder and heroes. This both altered the focus of the Square, centering it on the new shrines on its western edge, and created an ideological shift away from the festive (connected with both religious and secular holidays) and commercial nature of the past to a ritual-oriented, state-sanctified ceremonial center. The boulevard had been closed with the installation of the necropolis, followed in the 1930s by the cessation of the tram route and the relocation or demolition of several of the Square‘s prominent structures, including the Church of the Kazan' Mother of God and the Voskresenskie Gates at the north end (both rebuilt by the city in the 1990s), to better suit the new ori-entation of the Square and to allow better access for military equip-ment and parade participants. Access for pedestrians, however, re-mained restricted for much of the Soviet era, including the closing of the Upper Trading Rows until the 1950s, when they reopened as the famous GUM department store. Additionally, the presence of several Orthodox Christian structures was a challenge to the jealous religion of state Marxism-Leninism. Only St. Basil‘s Cathedral, which was transformed into a museum, managed to survive the imposition of the new sacred order, though various Soviet design projects had called for its destruction as well.

The centerpiece of this new order was the Lenin Mausoleum. Almost immediately following his death in 1924, the preserved Lenin came to serve as a physical connection to the roots of Soviet power, a source of legitimacy that the Soviet authorities drew on not only through quotation and citation, but also every time they stood atop the Mausoleum to review parades or troops on Red Square. Films and television broadcasts showed viewers across the Soviet Union the same thing: the General Secretary of the Communist Party, their leader, symbolically standing alongside Lenin (Handelman 42-44).

The massive and bombastic Lenin cults also helped to serve this function (Tumarkin 263-264). The Mausoleum became the pri-mary shrine of these cults, a site of pilgrimage—often obligatory—for the faithful and non-faithful alike. During the extremely elaborate

MEMORY 55

funeral services, it was decided that a permanent tomb worthy of ―the greatest man who had ever lived‖ would need to be built. The basic requirements outlined by the Commission for the Immortalization of V. I. Lenin were a central hall and viewing area, an underground space for the lab and machinery, a waiting room for visitors (which was never built), and a rostrum from which speeches could be read. A wooden mausoleum, designed by A.V. Shchusev, was completed in May 1924 and opened to the public on August 1. Over the next two years, the Commission conducted a Union-wide competition to design a more permanent, stone mausoleum and memorial, but the public suggestions were eventually ignored, and it was decided that Shchusev‘s wooden mausoleum would be recast in stone. The new Lenin Mausoleum, which stands to this day, was completed in 1930. A ―necropolis‖ would later be created along and within the Kremlin wall—a place where the USSR‘s greatest leaders and heroes would be buried. People would wait in line on Red Square, for hours in some-times unbearable cold, to view Lenin. Foreigners had the option of waiting in a special, faster and shorter line (Tumarkin 191-205).

The Soviet ritual complex, especially that involving Red Square, has been described by Don Handelman in terms of Clifford Geertz‘s Balinese cockfight: a ritualized representation of the ideal form of society. In the Soviet Union, however, this was consciously planned: a true invented tradition. Red Square represented, quite liter-ally, the center of the Soviet universe. At its center stood the Lenin Mausoleum, and with it the political and military elite of the country, ―above the marchers, centrist and static … pillars of the state resting on the foundation of the ancestor of the revolution‖ (Handelman 43). The marchers, meanwhile, were arranged in strict hierarchical order and (aside from the designation and privilege of rank) strove for uni-formity and machine-like precision. The collective, or nation, was thus presented to itself by the state in its ideal form as a model for life. In this sense, the symbolism is highly overt: the Party leaders literally stood atop Lenin‘s grave, though presidents Yeltsin, Putin and Med-vedev have avoided doing so.

It is perhaps fitting that theatrical metaphors have been used when speaking of Red Square, given the meticulous planning and ri-gidity of Soviet-era pageantry‘s made-for-broadcast—whether live or on film—nature. Indeed, all Soviet pageantry falls firmly into the cate-gory of invented tradition aimed at presenting not just the military might of the state, but at creating its own legitimacy and establishing a

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hierarchy of collective memory. In essence, the Soviet symbolic and ritual complex was designed to aid in the creation of a public—former General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev‘s euphemistic ―new Soviet peo-ple‖—and the eradication of civil society, by way of constant expo-sure and centralized planning. This included: the state control of me-dia and education; the existence of a large and brutal secret police force; the creation of huge public works and vast amounts of monu-mental architecture devoted to Soviet heroes, leaders, and principles; the destruction of existing monumental architecture that conflicted with these; and the creation of new civil religious institutions based on Marxism-Leninism to replace traditional Russian Orthodox practice. It was a seventy-year long experiment in social engineering that, while an overall failure, has left its indelible mark upon contemporary post-Soviet society.

During the Brezhnev era (1964-82), the sacred nature of Red Square was expanded beyond its traditional physical borders. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin‘s western wall was un-veiled in 1967 as both a part of the extensive mythology, which has become preeminent in post-Soviet national narratives, surrounding the memory of the ―Great Patriotic War‖,5 as well as the focus of a Soviet-era wedding tradition that continues in the present day: the newlywed couple lays flowers at the Tomb after the ceremony.

The Soviet ritual and monumental complex was nothing short of propaganda in stone and performance, and, to continue the theatri-cal metaphor, Red Square was stage center. What started with the mass graves and the Lenin Mausoleum continued, as future Soviet heroes and leaders were added to the necropolis, either ensconced in the walls in urns or buried below marble busts between the wall and the Mausoleum. If one looks at Marxism-Leninism as a form of state religion, then Red Square and the neighboring Kremlin rapidly be-came its most sacred ground.

The Post-Soviet Era (1992- present)

Red Square at present is showing signs of returning to its pre-revolutionary role as a public gathering place for commerce, cultural events, and, as always, tourism. During the first decades of post-Soviet history, the casual observer will have noticed changes both sub-tle and jarring occurring on and to Red Square. Foreign witnesses of the Cold War generation no doubt share memories of the military parades that rumbled across the Square to celebrate Soviet holidays

MEMORY 57

and in commemoration of great achievements, as shown on television news reports around the world; though this memory is rapidly rele-gated to the pages of history books and archival footage. Any time that a show of unity or strength was needed, the Soviet Union‘s most hallowed ground played center stage.

Though symbolically at the center of Soviet cosmology and geographically at the center of downtown Moscow, the prestige of Red Square was largely a Soviet creation, and thus, like many of the achievements of the Soviet state, the idea of Red Square as interna-tionally hallowed ground has come under increasing scrutiny, and has led to a certain desacralization of the Square (at least in the political sense), begun even in the perestroika period as the lines to view Lenin‘s embalmed remains diminished and pro-democracy rallies claimed nearby Manezh Square as their staging ground (Khazanov, ―Post-Communist Moscow‖ 291). Since 1997, however, Manezh Square has been the site of a massive, partially subterranean shopping center, the democratic value of the site usurped by consumerism. Debate in the political and religious spheres has centered on the presence of the Lenin Mausoleum and communist necropolis at and within the Krem-lin wall, essentially making Red Square a graveyard, but the public also has a vested interest in the definition of this marketplace-turned-ceremonial ground in the new Russia. The physical remainders from the Soviet era clash with a renewed commercial, cultural, religious and even recreational presence that has necessitated a reevaluation of this heart of the nation in various segments of society, among them the state and city governments, artists and architects, and the Orthodox Church, as each seeks to compete with or replace the hegemony left over from Communist rule. Thus, Red Square has come to play a cen-tral role in the negotiation of a new Russian identity among these and within the population at large.

In recent years, Red Square has once again taken on the qual-ity of a public gathering place, especially popular, as always, among tourists from near and far. It was the site of Moscow‘s major millen-nial celebration as broadcast the world over. It has seen events rang-ing from jazz, classical, opera, and the aforementioned rock concerts; hosted a circus; been the stage of military parades on Victory Day (the major post-Soviet state holiday, commemorating victory in World War II; and visible to the public only via extensive television cover-age); and even been the site of an ice skating rink, complete with skate rental, changing rooms, refreshments, grandstands for several thou-

58 STUDIES IN SLAVIC CULTURES

sand spectators, and full markings for international hockey matches, sponsored by GUM since 2006 (Fig. 2). A sense of religious sacred-ness has returned, as the Orthodox Church has reasserted its presence in the rebuilt Church of the Kazan' Mother of God and Voskresenskie Gates, and has played a very active role in the debate over the propri-ety of staging the aforementioned events on a square that is still con-sidered by many to be a cemetery, owing to the continued presence—despite the efforts of Yeltsin and others during his administration (Corney 18-22)—of Lenin and his fellow Soviet luminaries. Their presence also makes the Square a rallying point for the communists and nationalists, who view the Mausoleum and necropolis as a shrine to the days of glory, and regularly congregate there to mark Lenin- and Soviet Union-related anniversaries. Each year, a staunch but steadily dwindling number of Communist faithful gather at the Mau-soleum to honor Lenin‘s birthday, April 22. Finally, the Square has once again become a site of commerce, though of a variety vastly dif-ferent from that practiced centuries ago. It is dotted with small stands where locals will take tourists‘ photographs for a small charge—a practice now threatened as digital and cell phone cameras become more widely available, many of these small entrepreneurs have taken to selling batteries instead. The entire Kremlin area is patrolled by multi-lingual tour guides who eagerly approach any visitor to the Square, selling walking or bus tours of the city. On another level, the Main (formerly ―State,‖ though the Russian acronym remains the same) Department Store, GUM, which occupies the Upper Trading Rows across the Square from the Kremlin, now sells everything from American jeans and European shoes to mobile phones and other per-sonal electronics such as MP3 players and digital cameras, DVDs, and

Figure 2. Ice skating rink and Christmas/New Year‘s tree on Red Square. December 2006. Photo by author.

MEMORY 59

designer suits and sportswear. I can provide an example of just how far the commercializa-

tion of the Square has gone. St. Basil‘s Cathedral sits at the top of the Vasil'evskii Spusk, which slants downward to the Moskva River and a busy roadway at the southern end of Red Square; thus, the cathedral‘s southern foundation forms a large brick wall visible to traffic. In au-tumn of 1996, this wall also showed passersby something else: a large, black billboard adorned solely with a dramatic, white ―swoosh‖ to mark the opening of a prominent American athletic shoe manufac-

turer‘s new Mos-cow store. For a time, Russia‘s most well known land-mark was brought to you by Nike (Fig. 3). Today, as in Soviet times, the Lenin Mausoleum remains the center of a great deal of attention. The cur-rent regime, like Yeltsin‘s before it,

is faced with a perplexing two-part question: what to do with Lenin, and what to do with the Mausoleum? While Nikita Khrushchev could simply order Stalin removed from his place in the Mausoleum beside Lenin in the middle of the night in 1961, Yeltsin and his successors have had to deal with things that were quite simply of no concern to the Soviet regime. If the debate were only about the building and its erstwhile occupant, perhaps Yeltsin would have been able to follow through on promises to bury Lenin, but it in fact is a deeper question-ing of the place of Lenin—physically and ideologically—in a post-Soviet Russian national identity. These debates are intertwined, how-ever, and a rash move by any side is likely to produce emotional re-sults. While the primary vanguard of Lenin‘s defense is the Commu-nist Party, opinions have been weighed in from nearly every group with a stake in filling the post-Soviet ideological vacuum. While all parties and the public are engaged in this sometimes very heated de-bate, the question of Lenin, as with all great Russian debates, can be

Figure 3. Nike billboard at St. Basil‘s Cathedral, Red Square. September 1996. Photo by author.

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encapsulated in the time-honored Russian question, ―what is to be done?‖ The camps can be broken down into three broad categories: those who support burying Lenin and demolishing the Mausoleum; those who favor burying Lenin and maintaining the Mausoleum; and those who insist that both should remain on Red Square in some form; though they cannot always be arranged along purely political lines. Each side claims to have its own answer and, at least so far, very little has happened.

Plans for the future of Lenin and the Mausoleum have ranged from total removal of all traces, returning Red Square to its original appearance—a problematic proposal at best, given the dubious resto-ration of the ―original‖ appearance of the Cathedral of Christ the Sav-ior and other parts of historic Moscow in recent years (Khazanov ―Post-Communist Moscow‖ 295-298)—to preservation in perpetuity; with all manner of suggestions in between. The late Patriarch Aleksei II suggested, along with others, the creation of a ―modest, guarded‖ pantheon into which all the Soviet luminaries could be placed (Kadzhaya and Shestopal 12-13; Volkov 1); it has also been suggested that the sarcophagus be walled up and Lenin‘s preservation stopped, creating a Russian version of Napoleon‘s crypt in Paris (Bryant 17). The most radical proposal, and the most sacrilegious from the com-munist point of view, came from State Duma Deputy Yulii Rybakov in 1997. His idea consisted of turning the Mausoleum into a ―monument to the victims of totalitarianism,‖ leaving Lenin on dis-play because ―our Russian earth should not receive such a traitor; let his mummy remain on display as a warning to us and to future genera-tions‖ (―Mausoleum‖ 1). While he has broached the matter on occa-sion, Prime Minister Putin has made no major moves or decisions regarding the Mausoleum‘s future, and President Medvedev has to date made no definitive statement on the matter.

As with much of Russia‘s future, the fates of Lenin and his Mausoleum remain very much in the dark. It is this uncertainty, to an extent, that is responsible for Lenin‘s continued presence at the heart of Russia‘s capital, perhaps even more so than the need for remem-brance of the past or as a symbol of the communist dream. The sense of nostalgia runs high today as many Russians seek an escape from the challenges of modern life. The unchanging Lenin can be seen as a symbol of that stability, good or bad, and in the air of political and economic uncertainty that are part of everyday life in post-Soviet Rus-

MEMORY 61

sia, the Lenin Mausoleum has proved to be both a source of unimag-inable divisiveness as well as stability.

The post-Soviet era has seen a spatial broadening of the type of sacred memory that had previously been highly concentrated on Red Square: Park Pobedy, the vast Victory in World War II complex outside the city center is a recent example of the attempt to create a sacred space, designed during the Soviet era but not opened until after the fall of the USSR. In the past twenty years there has also been a boom in the reconstruction of Russian Orthodox churches, such as the massive Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the rebuilt Church of the Kazan' Mother of God on Red Square.

Returning once more to the theatrical metaphor, Red Square has the potential to serve as center stage in the re-negotiation of Rus-sianness, at least among Muscovites. It is a concrete example of the conflicting messages confronting the post-Soviet citizenry that, while potentially exacerbating a crisis of identity, also serve as a medium, by means of which all sides are able to articulate their views. On the Square, or within walking distance of it, are churches, cemeteries (including the Kremlin necropolis), war memorials (including the Un-known Soldier and the monument to World War II Marshal Georgii Zhukov), and even the Solovetskii Stone, a memorial to the victims of political repression, that sits near the former KGB (and current FSB) headquarters at the Lubianka. All of these represent very different types of sacredness to different people, whereas in the past state-ascribed sacredness predominated. Even more: in the atmosphere of state and city patronage that is responsible for the production of monumental architecture and sacred space in Moscow, they could even be considered actors representing the voice of authority—what should be remembered and revered is presented in space and stone from on high, and brought into contact with personal memory and what truly is remembered and revered.

The answer to the question of Red Square‘s continued sacred-ness, unsatisfying though it may be, is that it depends greatly upon one‘s definition of ―sacred.‖ The sacred status of Red Square was largely a Soviet creation, so in this sense the desacralization of Lenin has resulted in a desacralization of the Square itself. Prior to the Soviet era, Red Square was a site for gathering, for worship (the Orthodox Church does not hold the entire site as sacred; though there are a number of historic and working churches that today extend their ―sacred‖ aura over the Square; in pre-Soviet times it was the churches

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within the Kremlin walls—where the tsars were crowned and, for many years, buried—that held the greatest importance), and even for commerce. In these senses, there are a great many similarities be-tween today‘s Red Square and that of one hundred years ago. The ―global‖ sacredness of the site, the sacredness that was ascribed by the Soviet state, is what is now in question.

Notes 1. Vladimir Putin is a self-confessed Beatles fan. 2. The rules on silence and decorum inside are still strictly enforced by

members of the State Kremlin Guard, though minus the pomp and cir-cumstance of the Soviet era

3. Siloviki are government officials appointed in massive numbers under the Putin regime with roots in the old Soviet security forces, such as the KGB and the military

4. Historical references are from Anisimov and Bondarenko; along with personal observations.

5. That is, built around the suffering and victory of the people of the USSR.

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