я не понедельник: ГУЛАГ

Another stellar outing with the AAS crew began at the foot of Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин (Alexander Pushkin) on a sunny, Friday afternoon in April. We were to visit a monastery as well as the ГУЛАГ museum with our own, private tour guide.

Pushkin Square

Высокопетровский монастырь (High Monastery of St. Peter) was our first stop. Unbeknownst to me, I had already been very close to the monastery and had no idea what was hidden behind the wall. Mr. U and I had visited the Moscow Museum of Modern Art that is located on the opposite side of the street, facing the monastery entrance, when we first arrived in Moscow in 2011. It goes to show you that there are hidden treasures everywhere.

What surprised me the most was the tranquility that envelops you instantly once you cross the threshold and enter the monastery grounds. The calm is such that almost immediately you forget that you are in the heart of Moscow, a city with a population of 12+ million people in constant motion.

Established in the early 14th Century, the monastery has seen many iterations and its many buildings reflect the shifting architectural styles that have come and gone throughout the ages. One church interior is decorated with iconography and imagery that is rendered in such a way that it is reminiscent of Seurat's pointillist style of painting. One wall is entirely dedicated to the portraits of Николай II, the last Царь of Russia, and his family. The main icons adorning the altar are rendered in three dimensions which is a departure from the normally flat icon with metal embellishments around the figure. I have never seen a church quite like it. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Николай II church exterior

on the grounds

Our appointment time with the ГУЛАГ museum now looming, we continued on foot through the streets of Moscow towards the "by appointment only" State Museum of History of Gulag. Ten minutes later we found ourselves walking through a passageway and emerging into a courtyard strung with barbed wire, naked light bulbs in simple shades and a solitary guard tower. Looking up towards the blue sky through barbed wire, one was meant to imagine the desolation and despair felt by the prisoners in the Russian forced labour camps.

Forced labour camps were in operation throughout the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, housing prisoners for terms ranging between five years to life sentences. Prisoners were held for a large range of reasons that spanned from political transgressions to petty theft. There are conflicting statistics as to exactly how many prisoners cycled through the system between the 1929-1953. There are estimates in the 14 million range. Some camps were home to both men and women (segregated, of course), some to women and children only and another was filled with the wives, sisters, mothers and daughters of political prisoners, held on suspicion of collaboration.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, the strength of the ГУЛАГ system began to decline with prisoners finding ways to circumvent the crumbling system leading to the abolishment of the penal system.