27th April 1984 - Day trip to Zagorsk, evening cocktails, Red Square

Friday 27^th April  Up bright and early. Well, up early. Breakfast was at 8.00 – sausages (frankfurters!). Certainly something different for a change. At 9.00 we got into our buses for our trip to Zagorsk. [Now known by its original name Sergiyev Posad. It was named simply Sergiyev in 1919, then it was changed in 1930 to Zagorsk in honour of the revolutionary Vladimir Zagorsky. The Trans-Siberian Railway passes through the town, as it is between Yaroslavl and Moscow.]

  So, there we were zooming along Peace Prospekt (or Avenue) which is a very old street, first used in the fourteenth century by merchants and such to go into northern Russia. The later czars used to make pilgrimages to the monastery at Zagorsk on holy occasions. They walked, along with a huge procession of their serfs and carriages full of food and empty space (where there wasn’t anything stored, you see). And along the way they built churches which are still standing, and palaces which aren’t because they were made of wood. Out there at that time, or those times past, the countryside was covered in taiga forest where the czars used to go hunting (but not during their pilgrimages to Zagorsk, of corsk).

  There is still a bit of forest (thicker, it seems, than what we saw during the trip) past the outskirts of Moscow, but there are many fields of the collective farms, and the old villages with their old wooden houses and old wooden women sitting outside. Except I didn’t see any women of any description sitting outside any houses.

   Moscow is a city of eight million inhabitants and the same number of Muscovites. It is divided into seven residential area of about a million people each. Everyone lives where it takes no more than thirty minutes to get to their place of work. Most live in condominiums, and the government has discovered that the prefabricated condos aren’t as durable as brick-laid buildings. [The prefabs were named Khrushchyovka, after Nikita Khrushchev, who was leader of the Soviet Union in the early sixties when they were first built. See Wikipedia entry if you’re interested in learning more about them.] Those who have cars park them in: 1) parking lots, covering their cars with car-shaped tarpaulins; or ii) little steel or wooden garages, rows and rows of them (we saw a lot of these from the train (if I haven’t already mentioned that)).

   There’s a great variety of condominiums, some old (like the five storey ones of the fifties, which are due to be pulled down according to The Plan [Five storeys because higher would require the building to have lifts.], and some new complexes which have several huge buildings to accommodate all the people who live there.

   We also passed one of the churches dedicated to the Holy Mother, which was perched atop a hill and is easily recognizable because of its cupolas which are blue decorated with stars. All churches of the Holy Mother have blue cupolas decorated with stars.

  For some reason, the area we pass through on the way Zagorsk to Moscow is called the Second Switzerland, even though it’s quite flat. It’s a resort area amongst the pine forests where there are sanitariums, pioneer camps, health spas and such. There are many collective farms with workers in the fields growing such stuff as potato and cabbage, sometimes a little wheat; and orchards of apple, plum and sour cherry. And cemeteries in amongst the beginnings of a very thick forest, which turned out to be narrow.

  We’ve seen quite a few graveyards, with the graves planted in amongst trees. They generally have blue or green iron railing fences around each grave. The fences are five or six feet high.

  Colours. I saw a bright orange steam roller going past a red-bricked blue-domed gold-crossed church.

  The pioneer camps, and other playgrounds, have playthings painted different colours. Children are sent to the pioneer camps for one to three months each summer, with the fee being 12-20 roubles.

   Bus shelters have Olympic logo cast iron cages, red green yellow blue.

   A pink house with blue fence next to a yellow wall.

   Russian fence-painters are odd-jobbers; they paint the fence (I’m talking about fences that are actually in the process of being repainted), they paint the fence, be it railing or concrete, with no artistic emotion whatsoever. There are times when bits of concrete come adrift from the main body of the wall and hang limply in the air, supported by nothing but crumbs and metals rods inside. Instead of repairing it, the Russian fence painters paint right over the whole lot. They use wide worn brushes and dab the paint on, splashing it all over the place. There are a lot of fences and walls in Russia,

  Still on the way to Zagorsk. Tanya told us (if Tanya was our guide that day. It might have been Tanya) about the wonderful birch tree. Juice extracted from it is healthy and nice. Shoes can be made from its bark. So too can vessels be made – if milk is stored in a vessel of birch bark it will not go sour; and bread will stay fresh in a birch bark breadbox.

  Ah, but here at last we are a Zagorsk; in particular, the Trinity-St. Sergiy Monastery which was built in the 1340s and had twelve metre high stone fortifications built around it two centuries later. It had played a major role in the history of Moscow, being good in the defence from invaders though it is seventy kilometres north.

  The outside walls are rather massive, come to think of it, and are white with green roofs. Inside are several different churches and cathedrals which are very picturesque.

   There is also, inside, the Zagorsk History and Art Museum where one is urged to put on slippers

over one’s shoes so that the parquet floor doesn’t receive any damage from any hobnails in the vicinity.

Inside one of the buildings at "Zagorsk" (Photo by Silvia)

        On exhibit are paintings of czars and other noble people; a house front with intricate floral carvings; a beehive shaped like a bear; some starling houses shaped like people; distaffs, the use of which is not clearly known by myself or my pen, Ben; beautiful woven cloth – trés colorful – and a double-headed eagle, gilt, quite large, and the wood used is lime; some early royal carriages.

   We went inside a church with beautiful icons on the walls. There was a sort of service going on, with a priest chanting away at the end of the sarcophagus of the founder of the monastery and a whole lot of old women. Some were sitting in tall narrow seats against the wall. Very high-ceilinged dome, letting in light. There were also chandeliers with little electric light globes behind coloured glass. Very pretty. However, as with other walls, outside and in, the mural needs renovating.

   The bells chimed, the crowds gathered. A procession with priests and what were, I suppose, novice seminarians. (In spring they have a holiday to choose wives for the seminarians, though I doubt that this was it – no potential brides).

 We had lunch at the Intourist pectopah across the valley – borsch, meat and chips (again) with cabbage and carrot. Ice cream. [I remember we heard a crash from the entrance to the kitchen as one of the servers dropped a tray of bowls filled with ice cream.]

   After the repast, we went over to the berioska shop near the monastery. I bought three packets of cards, 4.84 roubles, and then went wandering, taking photographs. Curses! Not enough time to go back inside to take pictures.

  At 2.00pm we left, heading for el hôtel. Ours was one of the hospitality rooms, so we had a whole lot of luggage brought in to look after. At 5.00, we went off to the National Hotel on Marx Prospekt, facing 50^th Anniversary of the October Revolution Square. This was for our Moscow Cocktail Party with representatives of such things as Australian-New Zealand-United Kingdom-USSR Societies. They had questions on postcards to answer. My answer on Lake Baikal was worth a little face made of leather which I think is supposed to represent a folk spirit of L. Baikal.

Intourist postcard - Kremlin Walls with the Kutafia Tower (front) and the Troitskaya Tower

Intourist postcard with my question and answer on the back. I must have had a phenomenal memory. Or my little green Australian Government notebook with me.. 

 

  After the party I went to Red Square via the pedestrian subway – no one’s fool enough to try to walk through the traffic – to watch the changing of the Guard at 7 o’clock.

  I then joined Sandy, Adrianne and David McKinnon and we went to the GUM Store which is amazing and crowded and parts of it are under repair. We stayed in there for less than an hour, meeting various people who were also there. We watched the guard change again. It’s very precise but not exceptionally exciting except if you like that sort of thing.

  Then I walked around beautiful St Basil’s with Sandy ‘cos the others didn’t want to go. Then we went back to the bus at the National and then back to the Cosmos so that we could go to Leningradski Voksal so that we could get on the train to get to Leningrad. We waited on the bus, we waited on the platform. The train came, we got on and off we went at 11.20 or some time.

    

Another recent postcrossing card from someone who lives in Moscow.

[Someone had said St Basil's wasn't worth going inside - possibly because it was in a state of disrepair or something like that. However, these show the insides very well. Have a look!]