Who sits in the Kremlin. History of the Moscow Kremlin: Soviet times. Ilyich with a stove

The Kremlin of Dolgoruky was tiny: it fit between the modern Tainitskaya, Troitskaya and Borovitskaya towers. It was surrounded by a wooden wall 1,200 meters long.

At first, this fortress was called a city, and the lands around it were called a settlement. When it appeared, the fortress was renamed to Old city. And only after construction in 1331, the fortress was called the Kremlin, which meant "fortress in the center of the city."

The word "comes from the Old Russian "krom" or "kremnos" (solid) - this was the name of the central part of the ancient cities. The Kremlin walls and towers were usually placed on the highest place.

The word "Kremlin" could also come from the so-called "kremlin" (strong) tree, from which the city walls were built. And in 1873, researcher A.M. Kubarev suggested that this toponym could come from Greek, where "kremnos" means "steepness, a steep mountain above the coast or ravine." The Moscow Kremlin really stands on a mountain on a steep bank of the river, and the words “flint” and “kremnos” could get into Russian speech with the Greek clergy who arrived in Moscow in the late 1320s with Metropolitan Theognost.

Guide to Architectural Styles

The Moscow Kremlin stands on Borovitsky Hill, at the confluence of the Moscow River and. Behind the walls of the fortress with an area of ​​9 hectares, the inhabitants of the surrounding settlements could hide from danger.

Over time, the plantations grew. The fortress grew with them. In the 14th century, under Ivan Kalita, new walls of the Moscow Kremlin were built: outside, wooden, covered with clay, inside - stone. Since 1240, Russia was under the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and the Moscow princes managed to build new fortresses in the center of the occupied country!

The Kremlin under Dmitry Donskoy (after the fire of 1365) was built from white stone. Then the walls had a length of almost 2 kilometers - 200 meters shorter than the current ones.

Fires and an earthquake in 1446 damaged the fortress, and under Ivan III at the end of the 15th century, the Moscow Kremlin was rebuilt. For this, Italian architects were invited - experts in fortification - Aristotle Fiorovanti, Pietro Antonio Solari, Marco Ruffo. They built not just a fortress, but a holy city. The legendary Tsargrad was laid at three corners on all sides of seven miles, so the Italian masters on each side of the Moscow Kremlin put 7 red-brick towers (along with the corner ones) and tried to keep the same distance from the center -. In this form and within such boundaries, the Moscow Kremlin has survived to this day.

The walls of the Kremlin turned out so good that no one has ever taken possession of them.

How to Read Facades: A Cheat Sheet on Architectural Elements

Two water lines and the slopes of Borovitsky Hill already gave the fortress a strategic advantage, and in the 16th century the Kremlin turned into an island: a canal was dug along the northeastern wall, which connected the Neglinnaya and Moscow rivers. The southern wall of the fortress was the first to be built, since it faced the river and was of great strategic importance - merchant ships that arrived along the Moscow River moored here. Therefore, Ivan III ordered to remove all buildings south of the Kremlin walls - since that time nothing has been built here, except for earthen ramparts and bastions.

In plan, the walls of the Kremlin form an irregular triangle with an area of ​​about 28 hectares. Outside, they are built of red brick, but inside they are built from the white stone of the old walls of the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy, and for greater strength they are filled with lime. They were built from half a pood brick (weighing 8 kg). In proportion, it resembled a large loaf of black bread. It was also called two-handed, because it was possible to lift it with only two hands. At the same time, brick in Russia was an innovation at that time: they used to build it from white stone and plinths (something in between brick and tile).

The height of the Kremlin walls ranges from 5 to 19 meters (depending on the terrain), and in some places reaches the height of a six-story building. Along the perimeter of the walls there is a continuous passage 2 meters wide, but outside it is hidden by 1,045 merlon teeth. These M-shaped battlements are a typical feature of Italian fortification architecture (the supporters of the imperial power in Italy marked fortresses with them). In everyday life they are called "dovetail". From below, the teeth seem small, but their height reaches 2.5 meters, and the thickness is 65-70 centimeters. Each prong is made of 600 half-pood bricks, and almost all prongs have loopholes. During the battle, archers closed the gaps between the battlements with wooden shields and fired through the cracks. Whatever the tooth, then the archer, - they said among the people.

The walls of the Moscow Kremlin were surrounded by rumors for underground wars. They protected the fortress from undermining. Also under the walls was a system of secret underground passages. In 1894 archaeologist N.S. Shcherbatov found them under almost all the towers. But his photographs disappeared in the 1920s.

Dungeons and secret passages of Moscow

The Moscow Kremlin has 20 towers. They played a key role in monitoring the approaches to the fortress and in defense. Many of the towers were travel, with gates. But now three are open to the Kremlin: Spasskaya, Troitskaya and Borovitskaya.

The corner towers are round or polyhedral in shape and contain secret passages and wells inside to supply the fortress with water, while the rest of the towers are quadrangular. This is understandable: the corner towers had to "look" in all external directions, and the rest - forward, since the neighboring towers covered them from the sides. Also, travel towers were additionally protected by diversion towers-shooters. Of these, only Kutafya has survived.

In general, in the Middle Ages, the towers of the Moscow Kremlin looked different - they did not have hipped roofs, but there were wooden watchtowers. Then the fortress had a more severe and impregnable character. Now the walls and towers have lost their defensive value. The gable roof has not been preserved either: it burned down in the 18th century.

By the 16th century, the Kremlin in Moscow acquired the appearance of a formidable and impregnable fortress. Foreigners called it the "castle" on Borovitsky Hill.

The Kremlin has been at the center of political and historical events. Here Russian tsars were crowned and foreign ambassadors were received. Here the Polish interventionists and the boyars who opened the gates took refuge. The Kremlin tried to blow up Napoleon, who was fleeing Moscow. The Kremlin was going to be rebuilt according to the grandiose project of Bazhenov ...

What can be compared with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclining on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the forehead of a formidable lord? .. It is the altar of Russia, many sacrifices worthy of the fatherland should be and are already being made on it .. No, neither the Kremlin, nor its jagged walls, nor its dark passages, nor its magnificent palaces can be described... One must see, see... one must feel everything that they say to the heart and imagination!...

In Soviet times, the government was located in the Moscow Kremlin. Access to the territory was closed, and the dissatisfied were "calmed down" by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Ya. Sverdlov.

Undoubtedly, the bourgeoisie and the philistines will raise a howl - the Bolsheviks, they say, desecrate the shrines, but this should not worry us the least. The interests of the proletarian revolution are above prejudice.

During the reign Soviet power the architectural ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin suffered more than in its entire history. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 54 buildings inside the Kremlin walls. Less than half survived. For example, in 1918, on the personal instructions of V.I. Lenin demolished the monument to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (he was killed in February 1905), at the same time they destroyed the monument to Alexander II (then a monument to Lenin was erected on its pedestal). And in 1922, more than 300 pounds of silver and 2 pounds of gold, more than 1,000 precious stones, and even the shrine of Patriarch Hermogenes were taken out of the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin.

Congresses of Soviets were held, a kitchen was set up in the Golden Chamber, and a dining room in the Faceted Chamber. The Small Nikolaevsky Palace turned into a club for workers of Soviet institutions, a sports hall was opened in the Catherine's Church of the Ascension Monastery, and a Kremlin hospital was opened in the Miracle Monastery. In the 1930s, the monasteries and the Small Nikolaevsky Palace were demolished, and the entire eastern part of the Kremlin turned into ruins.

Kremlin: mini-guide to the territory

During the Great Patriotic War, the Kremlin was one of the main targets of aerial bombardment of Moscow. But thanks to the disguise, the fortress "disappeared".

The red-brick walls were repainted, and windows and doors painted on them to mimic individual buildings. The battlements on top of the walls and the stars of the Kremlin towers were covered with plywood roofs, and the green roofs were painted to look like rust.

The camouflage made it difficult for German pilots to find the Kremlin, but did not save them from bombing. In Soviet times, they said that not a single bomb fell on the Kremlin. In fact, 15 high-explosive and 150 small incendiary ones fell. And a bomb weighing a ton hit it, and part of the building collapsed. British Prime Minister Churchill, who arrived later in the Kremlin, even stopped and took off his hat as he passed the gap.

In 1955, the Moscow Kremlin was partially opened to the public - it turned into an open-air museum. At the same time, the Kremlin banned residence (the last residents were discharged in 1961).

In 1990, the Kremlin ensemble was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. At the same time, the Kremlin became a government residence, but retained museum functions. Therefore, uniformed employees are present on the territory, quickly instructing the lost tourists "on the right path." But every year more and more corners of the Kremlin become open for walking.

And the Kremlin is often filmed for cinema. And in the film "Third Meshchanskaya" you can even see the Moscow Kremlin before the demolition of the Chudov and Ascension monasteries.

Mini guide to the Kremlin walls and towers

They say that......The Kremlin walls were built by Ivan the Terrible (Ivan III was also called "The Terrible"). He summoned 20,000 village peasants and ordered:
- To be ready in a month!
They paid little - 15 kopecks a day. Therefore, many died of starvation. Many were beaten to death. New employees were brought in to take their place. And a month later the Kremlin walls were completed. Therefore, they say that the Kremlin is on the bones.
...the shadow of Ivan IV often wanders in the lower tiers of the bell tower. Even the memoirs of Nicholas II have been preserved, how on the eve of the coronation, the spirit of Grozny appeared to him and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
And when False Dmitry was killed in the Moscow Kremlin, Muscovites sometimes began to see the outlines of the figure of the Pretender, flashing in the twilight between the battlements of the walls. They also saw him on the August night of 1991 - before the attempted coup d'état.
And one evening, the watchman who was on duty in the building next to the Patriarch's Chambers raised the alarm (under Stalin there was housing). One of the apartments on the second floor was occupied by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov, and the duty officer was in the hallway of the former Yezhov apartments. Around midnight, the watchman heard footsteps on the stairs, then the jingle of a key in the lock, the creak of a door opening and closing. He realized that someone had left the building and tried to detain the intruder. The duty officer jumped out onto the porch and saw, a few meters from the house, a small figure in a long overcoat and cap, well known from old photographs. But the ghost of the Chekist melted into the air. We saw Yezhov a few more times.
The spirit of Stalin did not appear in the Moscow Kremlin, but the ghost of Lenin is a frequent visitor. The spirit of the leader made the first visit during his lifetime - on October 18, 1923. According to eyewitnesses, the terminally ill Lenin unexpectedly arrived from Gorki to the Kremlin. Alone, without guards, he went to his office and walked around the Kremlin, where he was greeted by a detachment of cadets of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The head of the guard was at first dumbfounded, and then rushed to call Gorki to find out why Vladimir Ilyich was unaccompanied. It was then that he learned that Lenin had not traveled anywhere. After this incident, real devilry began in the leader’s Kremlin apartment: the sounds of moving furniture, the crackling of a telephone, the creaking of floorboards and even voices were heard. This continued until Ilyich's apartment with all his belongings was transferred to Gorki. But until now, the guards and employees of the Kremlin sometimes see frosty January evenings on

The revolution of 1917 is mostly associated with St. Petersburg. Many do not know that in those days when the Aurora fired a blank shot at Zimny, long and stubborn battles were going on in Moscow. The Bolsheviks shelled the Kremlin and many central buildings, armed clashes did not stop on the streets, as a result of which hundreds of people died. I made a selection of photographs by which one can judge what was happening in Moscow in the autumn of 1917.

The Moscow Bolsheviks immediately convened a meeting of the Soviets of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies. There they created the Military Revolutionary Committee (VRC), which directed all the fighting in Moscow. By the beginning of the fighting, the Military Revolutionary Committee managed to attract troops numbering 15 thousand people to its side.

At the same time, the head of Moscow convened a meeting of the City Duma. The deputies also organized a headquarters for the management of hostilities - it was called the Committee of Public Security (CSS). He had 12,000 troops at his disposal.

WRC is located in the building of the Moscow City Council. Its members sent out an appeal to the soldiers throughout the city, urging them to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks and support the uprising. On the evening of October 25, people who were not indifferent began to gather on the square in front of the building.

And in the Alexander Military School on Znamenka, the city authorities armed the cadet companies. Volunteers from among the students of Moscow University also received rifles. Some of them were sent to guard the weapons depots, while the rest were instructed to go to the defense of the Duma. This is a trench dug by students in front of the Duma building.

From the early morning of October 26, the Bolsheviks began to distribute newspapers throughout the city with their appeal.

At about 9 am representatives of the Military Revolutionary Committee arrived in the Kremlin. They ordered the soldiers to take all the weapons from the Arsenal building and take them out so that they could then distribute them to the workers. But the junkers arrived at the scene just in time. They did not allow the export of weapons. Part of the troops loyal to the Bolsheviks was blocked in the Kremlin. The KOB forces began shelling the Kremlin with rifles and machine guns. They also had artillery pieces, but the command did not allow them to fire, so as not to damage the "monuments of Russian history."

Until noon, the junkers took up combat positions on the Nikitsky Gate Square, on Ostozhenka, Prechistenka, the Strastnoy Monastery Square (now Pushkinskaya Square). There were occasional gunfights here and there. It had practically no effect on the lives of ordinary Muscovites. They walked the streets about their business, asking at the junker posts what was going on.

Barricade at the Central telephone exchange in Milyutinsky Lane.

A barricade of carts and firewood at the Filippovskaya bakery on Tverskaya Street. On October 26, the Filippovskaya bakery and the cafe attached to it were looted. The bakers themselves resisted the Red Guards, but the forces were unequal.

Barricade of the Society for the Assistance of Bailiffs of Okhotny Ryad. Corner of Leontievsky and Tverskaya.

Arbat Square

They were preparing for battles not only in the center of Moscow. In the Alekseevsky cadet school in Lefortovo there was a warehouse of weapons, and the cadets were preparing to defend it. Together with the teachers, they built fortifications all day.

In the morning of October 27, the situation did not change much. Both sides gathered volunteers under their banners and waited for reinforcements. The student detachments that took the side of the KOB began to call themselves the "White Guard" as opposed to the Red Guards. In the center of the city, the forces of the KOB and the VRK fired at each other's positions, the skirmishes did without much loss. And in Lefortovo, the Bolsheviks still managed to capture the artillery workshops.

A photograph of the famous Russian and Soviet photographer Pyotr Adolfovich Otsup. View from the Lubyansky Passage across the square.

Around 18:00, the KOB forces received confirmation that reinforcements had been sent to their rescue from the front. After that, they declared martial law in Moscow and launched an active offensive against the Bolsheviks in the area of ​​the Crimean bridge, Smolensky market and Kudrinskaya square. As a result of the offensive, the Reds were driven back beyond the Garden Ring, about a hundred Red Guards were taken prisoner. The KOB suggested that the VRK lay down their arms and surrender, but the Bolsheviks did not agree. Then the White Guards launched an attack on the Kremlin. They fired machine guns at the battlements of the walls. About 50 people were killed that day.

In the courtyard of the barracks on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya street

On the morning of October 28, the whites continued their attack on the Kremlin. The red regiment besieged there decided to surrender, but at the moment when the junkers entered the gates of the Kremlin, its soldiers again grabbed their weapons. The Junkers returned fire and shot the Red soldiers. According to various estimates, from 50 to 300 people were killed then.

Guard post of the junkers at the Nikolsky gates of the Kremlin

In the building of the Moscow City Council, the Bolsheviks, frustrated by their military failures, were already waiting for their arrest. But the leadership of the KOB decided to show mercy and invited them to resume negotiations in order to avoid new bloodshed. The Bolsheviks agreed and began to play for time. And at this time, reinforcements began to pull up to them from the outskirts of the city. Fresh forces quickly pushed the Whites back to the Boulevard Ring on Ostozhenka, Prechistenka and Tverskaya Streets. The Whites were blocked in the center of Moscow.

Trenches and barricades on Ostozhenka

On October 29, the Whites, in addition to the Kremlin, still held the Metropol Hotel, the theater at the Nikitsky Gates, and positions on Ostozhenka, Prechistenka, and Tverskoy Boulevard. All day in these places there were fierce skirmishes.

Hotel "Metropol", damaged by shelling in October 1917

Mikhail Frunze recalled that his soldiers took special pleasure in shooting at the windows and facades of the Metropol, watching the fragments and bricks fall down with a roar.

The Bolsheviks also began active shelling of the Kremlin. And they, unlike the whites, were not shy in choosing guns. The 7th Ukrainian Heavy Artillery Battalion fired at the Kremlin from Sparrow Hills. Two 48-line guns from the Kotelnicheskaya embankment fired on the Small Nikolaevsky Palace and the Spassky Gates of the Kremlin. Batteries between the Krymsky and Kamenny bridges fired at the Kremlin wall overlooking the Manege. They were going to make a breach at the Trinity Gate.

Howitzer near the Crimean bridge during the shelling of the Kremlin

The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, which took place in those days in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, called for not exposing the Kremlin to artillery shelling "in the name of saving the shrines dear to all of Russia, the destruction and desecration of which the Russian people will never forgive anyone."

Junkers on the Kremlin wall

Cannons are thumping, they are shooting at the Kremlin from somewhere in the Sparrow Hills. A man who looks like a disguised military man says dismissively:
"They're shooting shrapnel, you idiots!" This is fortunate, otherwise they would have rolled out the entire Kremlin.
He tells attentive listeners for a long time about the cases in which it is necessary to destroy people with shrapnel, and when it is necessary to "act blasting."
- And they, fools, roll shrapnel to a high gap! This is pointless and stupid...
Someone is unsure:
- Maybe - they shoot like that on purpose to scare, but not kill?
- Why is that?
— Out of humanity?
“Well, what kind of humanity do we have,” the expert on murder techniques calmly objects ...
... Round, nasty shrapnel bullets drum on the iron of the roofs, fall on the pavement stones - the audience rushes to collect them "for memory" and crawl in the mud.
In some houses near the Kremlin, the walls of the houses were pierced by shells, and dozens of innocent people probably died in these houses. The shells flew as senselessly as the whole six-day process of bloody slaughter and the defeat of Moscow was senseless.

Small Nicholas Palace after shelling

Chudov Monastery

On October 30, the fighting continued. None of the parties achieved any special success that day. The skirmish in the Nikitsky Gate area was especially tense. The Whites held the then Union Theater (the current theater at the Nikitsky Gates) and fired from there at the Red column, which was trying to break through to the city center.

The damaged house of Korobkova on Tverskoy Boulevard near the Nikitsky Gates.

The fighting continued in Lefortovo. Toward nightfall, the Cadets and Junkers decided to leave the Alekseevsky School. Under the cover of commanders, they fled to their homes, and the officers began to make their way to the Kremlin.

The fence of the Alekseevsky cadet school damaged by shelling from Kaluga Square

On October 31, the Bolsheviks already demanded that the Whites stop resisting and surrender their weapons. KOB did not agree, and then the Reds continued shelling the Kremlin. In addition, because of the refusal to surrender, they began to shell the building of the Moscow City Duma, which housed one of the headquarters of the Whites. Junkers and deputies had to move to the Kremlin.

The results of the shelling of the Moscow City Duma

The next day, the Reds ousted the Whites from Ostozhenka, and also completely captured the Duma building and the Metropol Hotel.

On Wednesday, November 1, I tried to get into the office, where I was responsible for a lot of money and documents, but I reached the back streets and alleys only to Lubyansky passage, it was impossible to go any further: shells, shrapnel and bullets were flying along Lubyanka Square. They say that the Junkers are desperately defending the telephone building and the Kremlin, the Post Office and the Telegraph in the hands of the Bolsheviks. He returned home to the music of shots. Overhead and somewhere close, invisibly, bullets whistled, hitting the walls of houses, breaking windows, rattling on roofs, injuring, killing and frightening civilians, as well as crows and pigeons. During this journey, he was subjected to two searches, whether there were any weapons with him ...

Corner of Tverskaya Street and Okhotny Ryad

And on November 2, the Bolsheviks continued to shell the Kremlin. The damage was so great that the COB decided to capitulate.

On that day, having learned about the bombing of the Kremlin, Lunacharsky, People's Commissar of Education, resigned, saying that he could not come to terms with the destruction of the most important artistic values, "a thousand victims", the fierce struggle "to bestial malice", powerlessness "to stop this horror." But Lenin said to Lunacharsky: “How can you attach such importance to this or that building, no matter how good it may be, when it comes to opening the doors to such a social system that is capable of creating a beauty that immeasurably surpasses everything that could only be dreamed of in past?" After that, Lunacharsky withdrew his resignation letter.

During the storming of the Kremlin, the Bolsheviks shot down the upper tent of the Beklemishevskaya tower with a shell. It was later restored by the architect Rylsky.

The Spasskaya Tower with traces of damage by shells, the clock was also damaged by a shell hit in number II.

Nikolskaya tower after the Bolshevik shelling

... the Nikolskaya Tower was half broken, and the image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, revered since 1812 for its intactness from the explosion of this tower by the French, was destroyed by shots without a trace ...

The ancient strongest gates are mangled, broken and burned to a miserable appearance, and in the Kremlin itself, they say, the destruction is even worse. How did the Tatars, Poles and French spare him? Is there nothing sacred for us? It must be so. At least I heard some soldier, walking along Myasnitskaya, oratorically, “that there is their Kremlin, our tea is more expensive ...

Just think what a Russian peasant can reach with his mind! Although, destroying popular shrines, he destroys them all the same in order to destroy someone there, to deprive of life, and not at all in order to destroy something sacred, which for centuries was protected by his ancestors from the invasion of foreign tribes and now destroyed by his sacrilegious hand.

N.P. Okunev, "Moskvich's Diary, 1917-1920"

After the shelling. Small Nicholas Palace

In the Kremlin, shells hit the Assumption Cathedral, the Chudov Monastery, the Church of the 12 Apostles, the Small Palace, and in general, our Holy and gray-haired Kremlin must have suffered more than from invasions of foreign tribes. They write about many destructions, fires, executions, but God bless them! It’s better to say right away that, in general, it would be worse - but it’s impossible. Perhaps these terrible pictures will awaken the conscience of the rebels brother against brother and will not bring the political struggle to a repetition of such horrors...

N.P. Okunev, "Moskvich's Diary, 1917-1920"

Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles

Gate of the Synodal Office

Chudov Monastery

Some of the capitulated junkers, students and officers were killed by the Red Guards on the spot. Those who survived scattered throughout the city. Many of them later joined the White Army. During the next week after the surrender, both sides buried their dead.

The White Guards were buried in the Church of the Great Ascension at the Nikitsky Gate. From the Nikitsky Gate the procession went to the military cemetery on the Petrograd highway, where the dead were buried. Several thousand people came to say goodbye to them.

Under the impression of these funerals, Alexander Vertinsky wrote the famous romance "What I have to say."

The dead Red Guards were buried with much greater honors. Organized for them mass grave at the walls of the Kremlin.

The Council of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned such a burial. On November 17, 1917, he adopted a resolution in which he announced that “in the deliberate burial under the walls of the Kremlin without church prayer of people who desecrated its shrines, destroyed its temples and, raising the banner of fratricidal war, outraged the people's conscience, the Cathedral sees a clear and conscious an insult to the church and disrespect for the shrine."

The fashion for a frontal briefing to the desktop was set by Vladimir Lenin

All the troubles in Russia are due to the fact that Lenin does not lie according to Feng Shui! That's how they joked in Russia at the height of democratic reforms. But you must admit that in every joke, born of the collective consciousness of the people, there is some deep truth ... After all, in fact, the leader of the world proletariat is energetically connected with the Mausoleum. And even more - directly with the main building of the Kremlin, where he lived and worked for a long time. By the way, after his death, all members of the government of the USSR and, in turn, all the first persons of the Soviet state, except for Khrushchev, sat here after his death. And then - the first and only president of the USSR. Despite the fact that none of the leaders of the USSR did not want to enter the office of his predecessor, they all worked in the same building. It is said that Yeltsin, being the first newcomer to the Kremlin already in the post-Soviet era, fundamentally chose an office that faces the opposite direction than the offices of the leaders of the Soviet era. But did the Cabinet No. 1 of the First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin pass by inheritance to his successor, and then to the next successor? This is what I will tell you today. By the way, all the first persons of the Russian Federation in their office used and continue to use the traditional way of arranging furniture for managers, which became popular even under Lenin! Representative Office of the President in the Kremlin

Behind the wall of the Working Room is the Representative (front) office of the President - it is decorated more elegantly and solemnly than all other working rooms. Meetings with heads of foreign states, negotiations are held in the representative office, high state awards are presented. Here are located: a desktop, an oval table for negotiations, by the fireplace - armchairs for conversations in the "one on one" format. On the arms of the chairs are lion heads, a symbol of state power. This office was located in the Small or Oval Hall of the Senate Palace, which is the second most important front hall of the residence (after Catherine's). They say that it was called “oval” already in the 90s, in imitation of the Americans, but it is really oval in shape - in accordance with the “highest architectural fashion” of the 18th century, and was designed by the architect Kazakov much earlier than their Oval Office. So who imitated whom is another question ...

By the fireplace in the Oval Room

A special solemnity is given to the Oval Hall by the architectural design: the color of the walls is pale green with white, an unusual, oval-shaped dome, and crystal chandeliers. The decoration of the representative office is a large malachite fireplace, lined with thin malachite plates, selected so that the natural pattern smoothly passes from one plate to another and it seems as if it was carved from a single piece of stone shimmering in different shades. By the fireplace there are comfortable chairs for one-on-one negotiations, a place for official photography and filming. In the middle - a large oval table for negotiations. The four niches of the Representative Office now house sculptures of Russian emperors of the 18th-19th centuries: Peter I, Catherine II, Nicholas I and Alexander II. The magnificent parquet of the Oval Hall is like a carpet; it was recreated according to old drawings and sketches from dozens of types of valuable and hard woods. Type-setting parquet is a traditional element of the interiors of palace ensembles, and it late XVIII century, this art has become widespread in Russia and has become traditional.

Executive Office in the Oval Hall

Since many fragments of the interiors of the Senate were lost, in 1991 the interior decoration of these halls had to be created anew. Fortunately, almost all the design documents of the 18th century have been preserved. It was thanks to these drawings, plans and drawings that it was possible to identify numerous changes that were made in the design of the hall over the course of two centuries. After a thorough study of archival data, the restorers found that the Oval Hall underwent the most serious changes in 1824. So it was under Yeltsin that the Senate Palace again became a palace (as under Catherine the Great).

Lenin lived on the 3rd floor

After the Senate Palace was built, Catherine II chose a spacious but cozy office in a semicircular rotunda (now it houses presidential library). But the empress did not visit her office often (probably because, as you know, she did not like Moscow at all). Further, during the time of the Romanovs, the reigning persons did not have their apartments in the Senate Palace - for example, the “business chambers” of Nicholas II were located in the Grand Kremlin Palace.

Desk of Nicholas II

But Lenin fell in love with the Senate building - his study (50 sq. m., 2 windows) was on the third floor. Until the summer of 1993, there was a museum-apartment of the leader, who was then moved to Gorki. The main distinguishing feature of Lenin's apartments is the library, which contains almost 40,000 volumes. There were bookcases in almost every room. Lenin preferred the third floor (occupied 4 rooms). Stalin had 5 rooms on the first floor and an office on the second. Brezhnev moved to the third floor. All the general secretaries, right down to Gorbachev, also sat here. The Tsek office was twice as large as Yeltsin's office, who chose a place on the second floor. And its windows fundamentally look in a completely different direction.

Lenin's office was moved from the Kremlin to the museum

Stalinist Empire

Stalin settled in the Kremlin in 1922 - shortly after he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. His office (more than 150 square meters, five windows) was on the second floor. Already in 1933, at the direction of Stalin, the building was replanned for the first time, the interiors were changed: the walls were sheathed with oak panels with Karelian birch inserts, and the same oak doors were installed. There was nothing superfluous on the table: a telephone, a pen, an inkwell, a carafe of water, a glass of tea, an ashtray.

In the left corner - Brezhnev's famous "horned" clock

In the corner of Stalin's office, as well as Lenin's, there was a stove that was heated with wood - central heating in the Kremlin appeared only at the end of the 30s. On the ground floor, Stalin had another study - home. The leader's apartment was also located here, where his children Svetlana and Vasily also lived. They say that during the reconstruction, when they raised the floors in Stalin's office, they discovered a secret passage leading to the dungeon. Perhaps it was just a newspaper duck.

The ugliest office

Khrushchev's office (100 sq. m., 4 windows, 3rd floor) had the same oak panels and doors as under Stalin: having debunked his cult of personality, the new owner did not change the interiors.

Nikita Sergeevich did not have a single bookcase. As the old Kremlin business executives recall, it was the most faceless office, which for 10 years had the same uninhabited appearance. The apartment was cluttered with many gaudy souvenirs that appeared and disappeared periodically. These were models of satellites, airplanes, steam locomotives ... - everything that Soviet and foreign citizens presented to Khrushchev in abundance. And also - numerous vases, including those with portraits of Khrushchev himself. On one of them, Nikita Sergeevich was depicted in the form of a lieutenant general. Brezhnev and "Vysota" Soviet leaders would never agree to move into the apartments of their predecessors. So Leonid Ilyich, when he overthrew Nikita Sergeevich, was equipped with an office (100 sq. M., 3 windows, 3rd floor) away from Khrushchev. In party slang, Brezhnev's apartments were called "The Height". Oak panels on the walls were replaced with lighter ones, with inlays. And on the table appeared the famous horned clock, which, during the life of the Secretary General, flashed in almost all pictures of the TASS newsreels. In the early 80s, when the Secretary General was already moving with difficulty, "electric traction" was invented for him. Not far from the office, a personal elevator was installed (before that, all the leaders used a common one), which was supposed to lower Leonid Ilyich into the basement, and there - on a special electric car (it was something like a wheelchair) Brezhnev was going to be transported to the neighboring building, to the plenums Central Committee of the CPSU. Then both Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko sat in the former Brezhnev office. But their short stay did not affect either the interiors or the interior decoration of the apartments.

Gorbachev's cabinet was bursting at the seams

Gorbachev, having become General Secretary in April 1985, refused to enter the former Brezhnev office - an apartment (100 sq. M., 5 windows, 3rd floor) was equipped for him between Leonid Ilyich's "Vysota" and Khrushchev's office. Of course, perestroika and redevelopment immediately began on the Gorbachev floor, and a moire design appeared in the office - the walls were covered with silk in pastel yellow tones. For the first time, expensive furniture made of Karelian birch was brought in, and it was changed several times. Kremlin business executives recall a "symbolic incident": in the spring of 1991, during a heavy downpour, the ceiling leaked in the Secretary General's office. The caretaker interprets this in their own way: not only the USSR was destroyed, the residence of the general secretaries was also bursting at the seams.

Yeltsin ordered a table from Italy

Boris Yeltsin moved to the Kremlin immediately after the coup - in September 1991. Feeling that the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was losing control over the country, the President of Russia, without much thought, laid claim to the main Moscow residence. At the end of 1991, after the collapse of the USSR and Gorbachev's departure from the Kremlin, Yeltsin moved into the General Secretary's office. Morals in the Kremlin began to change from the end of 1993. First of all, according to the observation of his associates, the changes were due to changes in the character of Yeltsin himself. Regal manners began to awaken in the former first secretary of the regional committee. At this time, the president started a grandiose repair of the 1st building. The inner circle, catching the change in the boss's character, practically imposed on him a pompous imperial style, replete with stucco, gilding and furniture with bent legs. Cossack drawings were brought to light, according to which it was supposed to reconstruct the 1st building. All the old partitions inside the building were destroyed - only the outer walls were not touched. Window openings and vaulted ceilings, parquet and oak panels were removed; furniture that belonged to Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and other historical residents of the Kremlin was sold at auction. The museum-apartment of Lenin was moved "to a settlement" in Gorki. After the repair, most of the premises of the 1st building began to be occupied by the president's apartments - working and representative. Yeltsin's office is a room on the second floor (75 sqm, 3 windows) with a small reception area. By a strange coincidence, the footage of the presidential office became almost the same as that of the royal office, located in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Furnishings: 205 cm custom-made work desk in Italy and conference table.

On December 31, 1999, these apartments were inherited by Vladimir Putin. It was here that Dmitry Medvedev moved in on May 7, 2008. The former manager of the President of the Russian Federation Pavel Borodin (it was he who carried out the reconstruction) claims that in 1993, before determining the “deployment” of office No. 1, bioenergy therapists were specially invited to the Kremlin, who confirmed that these 75 sq. m on the 2nd floor in the center of the residence - the best energy place in the building of the former Senate. Maybe for this reason, little is changed in the presidential office over time: along the walls are the same bookcases with reference books and encyclopedias. Of the decorations - only a few ceramic goblets on the floor.

Sources: tabloid.vlasti.net; kp.ru

Unlike the Tower of London, the Escurial of Madrid, the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau in France, a huge number of medieval fortresses in Western Europe that have long been turned into museum complexes, the Moscow Kremlin has been the main center of Russian statehood for centuries, fundamental decisions for the country were made here, people's destinies were decided. .

The Kremlin of the 15th-16th centuries was the residence of the boyars, palace masters, merchants, the courtyards of distant monasteries were located here. The development of the Kremlin until the 16th century was very cramped, so Ivan III had to take measures to improve the Kremlin territory: straight streets were laid from the Spassky and Nikolsky Gates to Cathedral Square.

From the middle of the 16th century, all the fullness of the supreme state, legislative, executive and judicial power was concentrated in the hands of the king, and the actions of the authorities were carried out on behalf of the king and by his decree. The tsar exercised his power through the Boyar Duma and the Order of Secret Affairs (since 1646). The Boyar Duma was subordinated to the Discharge, Local and Ambassadorial orders. The order of the Secret Affairs was subordinate to the king. The Palace orders were subordinate to the king and the order of the Secret Affairs. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia had his own orders.

All these orders were headed by the boyars, as well as clerks and duma nobles. In the middle of the 17th century, the command corps stretched in one line from the Archangel Cathedral to the Spassky Gates. In the first quarter of the 18th century, Peter I canceled orders and introduced a system of colleges in Russia.

After the Troubles, under Mikhail Fedorovich and especially under Alexei Mikhailovich, the Kremlin as a royal residence reached its peak. The royal chambers occupied only one floor of the Terem Palace, the rest of the premises had a state purpose: the Boyar Duma gathered in the Cross Chamber, the church court sat in the Throne.

Before the fire of 1737, the Kremlin housed many public city institutions, such as the Medical Office and the Main Pharmacy.

The courtyards of the nobility and the clergy occupied too large an area, and therefore could no longer be located within the Kremlin, therefore they were gradually pushed back to the areas of Kitay-Gorod and the White City. In the second half of the 18th century, the nobles finally moved out of the Kremlin.

As you know, since the time of Peter, who moved the capital to St. Petersburg, Moscow was called "the capital". And even though the whole main imperial and bureaucratic life is two hundred extra years flowed on the banks of the Neva, the Moscow Kremlin was not mothballed. Spiritual and cultural life continued here. Not far from the Kremlin, in the building of the Sukharev Tower, there was a school of mathematical and navigational sciences created by the decree of Peter I, which was administered by the Kremlin Armory. Simultaneously with the Navigation School, foreign language courses were opened under the Ambassadorial Prikaz, the Moscow Chamber of Burmese was created, which was called upon to collect taxes from all Russian cities, so that it gradually began to perform the functions of the main treasury. In 1806, the commandant of Moscow and his office settled in the Poteshny Palace, before the revolution the Moscow Court of Justice, which considered political cases, and the Moscow District Court were located in the Senate building, and officials of the Court of Justice with their families lived in the Cavalier Corps.

For centuries, the Kremlin has been the sacred center of the country. Back in the reign of Ivan Kalita, the Spassky Monastery was founded here next to the Church of the Savior on Bor. At the beginning of the XIV century, the metropolitan court moved to the territory of the Kremlin. In 1365, Metropolitan Alexy founded the Monastery of Miracles, located closer to Cathedral Square. The history of its foundation is connected with the miraculous healing through the prayer of Metropolitan Alexy Khansha Taidulla, the mother of the Golden Horde Khan Dzhanibek. AT XV-XVI centuries along with the Trinity-Sergius, Joseph-Volokolamsk, Kirillo-Belozersky monasteries, the Chudov Monastery was one of the largest in Russia. In 1407, the widow of Dmitry Donskoy, Princess Evdokia, founded the Ascension Monastery in the Kremlin, which became the burial place of the Grand Duchesses and other representatives of the Grand Duke's house. Already under Ivan III, in 1490, the Spassky Monastery was moved outside the Kremlin walls. Since the end of the 16th century, the Kremlin has been the residence of the Patriarchs of Moscow and All Russia. Under Patriarch Nikon next to royal palace new Patriarchal chambers were erected here, and after the establishment of the Holy Synod in 1721, the Synodal House.

Until 1918, the Kremlin remained the center of Orthodox life; services were held daily in its 25 churches and cathedrals. On January 23, 1918, the Soviet government adopted a decree "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Societies", which was later included in the collection of legalizations (1918. No. 18) under the title "On the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church." The decree determined that "no church and religious societies have the right to own property, they do not have the rights of a legal entity, and all the property of church and religious societies existing in Russia is declared public property." Since that time, the cathedral bells in the Kremlin fell silent, the domes were deprived of crosses, and the temples were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture.

At one time, Alexander I bought a metropolitan house from the Chudov Monastery and, having rebuilt it, presented it to his younger brother Nikolai. The future Emperor Alexander II was born in the Nicholas Palace in 1818. Emperor Nicholas called Moscow "the gracious ancient capital." He often visited the Grand Kremlin Palace he built, where on the first floor there were royal family, and the second floor was used for ceremonial receptions. It is no coincidence that under Nicholas I the first long railway in Russia was laid from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Usually, the visits of the imperial family to the Kremlin were associated with the coronation of a new monarch in the Assumption Cathedral. At this time, the imperial court also moved to Moscow. Coronation festivities lasted for many days, accompanied by balls, masquerades, and theatrical performances. The last solemn arrival of Nicholas II to the Kremlin with his family and retinue took place on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty, which was widely celebrated in 1913. And on August 18, 1914, the entire imperial family gathered in the Grand Kremlin Palace in connection with the outbreak of the First World War. Contemporaries recalled that on that day the Kremlin was filled with a huge crowd, whose roar drowned out the roar of Ivan the Great's bells.

In March 1918, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, Moscow was again declared the capital. A special resolution was adopted on the relocation of the government and party leadership from Petrograd (Smolny) to Moscow (Kremlin). The new leadership of the country was located in the building of the Senate, the Red Banner was raised over the Kremlin. On March 12, 1918, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR V. I. Lenin and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya. M. Sverdlov entered the Kremlin through the Trinity Gates.

Thus, in the spring of 1918, the ancient Kremlin acquired new life and new residents.

From the Trinity Gate to the right along the wall of the Kremlin, Palace Street stretched, built up on both sides of the Officers, Kitchen, Grenadier, three Cavalier, Children's and Maid of Honor buildings, the Poteshny Palace and other buildings, which gradually began to be populated by new residents.

In October 1918, the Ascension Monastery was closed. The nuns, headed by the abbess, were evicted from the Kremlin and assigned to the church of the Lefortovo hospital. The Chudov Monastery was also empty. And new guests also moved into the cells of monks and nuns.

L. D. Trotsky in the book “My Life”, describing the Kremlin life, admitted that the new Kremlin housing made a strange impression on him: “With its medieval wall and countless gilded domes, the Kremlin, as a fortress of the revolutionary dictatorship, seemed like a complete paradox. True, the Smolny, where the Institute for Noble Maidens used to be located, was not its past intended for workers, soldiers and peasants' deputies. Until March 1918, I had never been to the Kremlin, just as I did not know Moscow at all, with the exception of a single building: the Butyrka transit prison, in the tower of which I spent six months in the cold winter of 98–99. As a visitor, one could contemplatively admire the Kremlin's antiquity, the Grozny Palace and the Faceted Chamber. But we had to settle here for a long time. The close daily contact of two historical poles, two irreconcilable cultures both surprised and amused...

Before the revolution, officials of the Kremlin lived in the Cavalry Corps, opposite the Poteshny Palace. The entire lower floor was occupied by a high-ranking commandant. His apartment is now divided into several parts. Lenin and I settled across the corridor. The dining room was shared. Fed then in the Kremlin very badly. Instead of meat, they gave corned beef. Flour and cereals were with sand. Only red chum caviar was in abundance due to the cessation of exports. It is not only in my memory that the first years of the revolution are dyed with this unchanging caviar.

The musical clock on the Spasskaya Tower was rebuilt. Now the old bells, instead of "God save the Tsar," slowly and thoughtfully called the "Internationale" every quarter of an hour. The entrance for cars went under the Spasskaya Tower, through an arched tunnel. Above the tunnel is an old icon with broken glass. In front of the icon is a long-extinguished lamp. Often, when leaving the Kremlin, the eye rested on the icon, and the ear caught the “Internationale” from above. Above the tower with its bell towered the gilded double-headed eagle, as before. Only the crown was removed from him. I advised hoisting a sickle and a hammer over the eagle so that the gap in time could be seen from the height of the Spasskaya Tower. But they never got around to doing it...

In my room there was Karelian birch furniture. Above the fireplace, the clock under Cupid and Psyche chimed with a silvery voice. Everything was inconvenient for work. The smell of idle nobility emanated from every chair. But I also approached the apartment on a tangent, especially since in the early years I only had to spend the night in it during my short raids from the front to Moscow.

Almost on the first day of my arrival from St. Petersburg, we talked with Lenin, standing among the Karelian birch. Cupid with Psyche interrupted us with a melodious silver ringing. We looked at each other, as if catching ourselves on the same feeling: from the corner we were overheard by the lurking past. Surrounded by him on all sides, we treated him without respect, but without enmity, a little ironically. It would be wrong to say that we are accustomed to the environment of the Kremlin - for this there were too many dynamics in the conditions of our existence. We didn't have time to get used to it. We looked askance at the situation and said to ourselves ironically and encouragingly to cupids and psyches: weren't they waiting for us? There's nothing you can do, get used to it. We accustomed the situation to ourselves. ”

First of all, the new inhabitants of the Kremlin renamed Palace Street into Communist Street. In the same 1918, the Kremlin was closed to the public.

Initially, V. I. Lenin, like his associates Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin, Molotov and many others, occupied a two-room apartment (No. 24) in one of the Cavalier buildings, which has survived to this day. But soon he moved to the more spacious dwelling of the Prosecutor of Judicial Regulations, in the building of the Senate. The apartment was located in the part closer to the Trinity Gate, on the third floor. Lenin lived here with his wife and sister from 1918 to 1923, and until 1939, members of his family continued to live here.

The decision to open the Lenin Museum-Apartment was made only during the time of N. S. Khrushchev, perhaps on his personal initiative. True, by that time the interior decoration of the premises had already been lost, and it was entrusted to restore it to the architect G. G. Savinov. The museum was opened to the public in 1955. Its main attraction was Lenin's personal library with 18,000 volumes. A grand piano has been preserved in the interior of the apartment, and in the kitchen - a shelf with saucepans made of the first Soviet aluminum. But at the same time, the situation, of course, was far from Spartan. In 1995, in accordance with the decree of the Prime Minister, the Kremlin Apartment Museum moved to Gorki, where from now on it occupies a separate building on the territory of the manor park.

In the apartments of all the Kremlin inhabitants there was furniture left here from the previous life. I had to eat from dishes with the royal coat of arms: the commandant simply could not find another.

The building of the Arsenal housed the barracks and administrative services of the Commandant's Office of the Kremlin.

The protection was entrusted to the Latvian riflemen with their submission to the commandant of the Kremlin. In September 1918, they were replaced by machine-gun courses from Lefortovo, which in January 1919 were renamed the First Moscow Machine-Gun Courses for the training of the command staff of the Red Army. Thus, a school of red commanders was created here, who were then called the Kremlin cadets. Since 1930, the Kremlin cadets served at post No. 1 at the entrance to the Lenin Mausoleum. In 1935, the tasks of protecting the Kremlin were transferred to the Battalion special purpose, who fully assumed the duties of protecting members of the Soviet government and became subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR. In the same year, the battalion was reorganized into the Special Purpose Regiment, and in 1936 into the Separate Kremlin Regiment. On March 20, 1993, by decree of President Boris N. Yeltsin, it was transformed into the Presidential Regiment.

In September 1918, a special telephone room of the Kremlin appeared, where a 100-number switchboard was installed, and in January 1922, an automatic telephone exchange was launched under the command of the Moscow Kremlin. In 1930, the first high-frequency communication lines Moscow-Leningrad and Moscow-Kharkov were put into operation.

In April 1929, at the initiative of the commandant of the Kremlin R. A. Peterson, a government commission, which included K. E. Voroshilov, V. V. Shmit, A. E. Yenukidze, examined the buildings of the Chudov and Ascension monasteries and decided to demolish them , clearing the site for the construction of the Military School of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with an underground shooting range for machine gunners. True, already in October 1935, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee school was evacuated from the territory of the Moscow Kremlin. And in this part of the Kremlin, inaccessible to visitors, next to the Spasskaya Tower, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with the Kremlin Theater is located. In the 1950s, the building was transferred to the Supreme Soviet and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Today this building is called the 14th building.

There were not so many premises suitable for habitation in the Kremlin, and therefore the highest party functionaries and government officials since 1918 lived in the best hotels in the city: in the Metropol, National, Central and Savoy, which were transformed into the so-called House of Soviets.

In the Kremlin, everyone lived very modestly, like in a large communal apartment. Children raced around the Kremlin squares on bicycles, bawled, got in the way. Then they grew up, they had to be taken to school. Over time, it became more and more difficult to live and work here, especially to maintain order. In 1931, the families of major party leaders began to move here, and by 1937, almost no one was left here. In the 1930s, those who were not repressed were moved to city apartments. Only Stalin remained to live in the Kremlin, but even he spent most of his time at the Near Dacha in Volynskoye.

Not far from the Kremlin, across the bridge, in 1931 a huge house was built, with the light hand of Yuri Trifonov, known to everyone as the House on the Embankment, where many Kremlin families moved.

Today everyone knows about the fate of this dark gray gloomy house hung with memorial plaques on Serafimovich Street. It was built according to the project of the architect Boris Mikhailovich Iofan as an exemplary house of the future, in which high-ranking Soviet party and state officials were supposed to live: members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Commission of Soviet Control, the Committee of Party Control, people's commissars, deputies of people's commissars, heads of central departments. Later they were joined by the first Heroes of the Soviet Union, employees of the apparatus of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the Comintern, and the People's Commissariat of Defense.

By the way, the same architect owned the project of the Palace of Soviets, which in 1931 was going to be erected on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior. According to his project, a sanatorium was built in Barvikha (1931–1935), as well as Soviet pavilions at the World Exhibitions in Paris (1937) and New York (1939).

For the construction of the "House of the Central Executive Committee" in 1927, a government commission was formed, headed by A. I. Rykov, at that time chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It included the secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR A. S. Yenukidze, the author of the project B. M. Iofan, and the deputy chairman of the OGPU G. G. Yagoda. All four received apartments in the new house, but only B. M. Iofan lived to old age, the rest were repressed in 1937–1938, as, indeed, were many of its other tenants.

The house is located on an area of ​​more than three hectares and was built for almost four years: from 1928 to 1931. There were 505 huge 7-12-room apartments with small kitchens: the people who lived here, of course, never ate in the kitchen, but there was enough space to cook for one family. Another thing is when in the 40s almost half of the apartments in the House on the Embankment became communal, in such kitchens conflicts traditional for communal apartments, and with them scandals and gossip became inevitable. And only thirty years later, during the overhaul, the apartments were made 4-5-room, and the communal apartments were settled.

In the apartments of the House on the embankment there was the same furniture, made of bog oak according to the project of the same B. M. Iofan. These were tables, chairs, beds, sideboards, etc. with metal inventory numbers. Instead of a garbage chute, there was a freight elevator, the shaft of which went to the kitchens and in which special employees traveled, collecting bags of garbage put up by the residents.

It had its own canteen, library, gym, food and department stores, Kindergarten, nursery, laundry, dispensary, post office and savings bank. In the right wing of the house there was the Club of the Council of Ministers (now the Variety Theatre), in the left - the cinema "Drummer", designed for 1500 spectators.

At different times, the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Postyshev, the first secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Shvernik, the aircraft designer A. I. Mikoyan, Lenin's ally P. N. Lepeshinsky, military leaders M. N. Tukhachevsky, G. K. Zhukov, I. X. Bagramyan, F. I. Tolbukhin, the famous Donbass miner A. G. Stakhanov, Chelyuskin pilots M. V. Vodopyanov and N. P. Kamanin, Lenin’s secretaries E. D. Stasova and Fotieva, writers Demyan Bedny and Boris Lavrenev , poet Mikhail Koltsov, head of the ensemble I. A. Moiseev, academicians T. D. Lysenko, V. I. Burakovsky, N. N. Blokhin, V. I. Shumakov, V. P. Glushko and many, many others.

Before the war, the house was considered a special facility and was under the command of the NKVD. The watchmen were full-time employees of the committee, they had the keys to all apartments. Just like that, it was impossible to get into the house from the street, and it was forbidden for guests to stay for a long time: they had to leave no later than 23.00. The fate of each of those who lived in it is worthy of both respect and regret.

After the war, the idea of ​​gathering all the outstanding contemporaries under one roof was abandoned, and memorial plaques began to appear on the walls of the house. Now everyone knows that there were wiretaps, although before it was hard to believe. I was convinced from my own experience that wiretapping was carried out in apartments: shortly before the collapse of the USSR, I got an apartment in one of the Tsek's houses. Our housemates subsequently turned out to be iconic figures of the new Russia. But then, in the mid-80s, and B. N. Yeltsin, and G. A. Zyuganov, and many others were not yet so famous and did not occupy their high posts. Not so long ago, my wife and I started a renovation in our apartment, and the finishing guys showed me the “bugs” implanted in the walls. They listened - they didn’t listen - it’s another matter, but they set it just in case. In a word, they guarded, that is, they protected, but at the same time they did not trust. So it is no coincidence that the fate of many of those who lived in the House on the Embankment did not work out.

Later, by order of Khrushchev, mansions were built on the Lenin Hills so that you could visit each other through the gate. And Budyonny went to Voroshilov to play the harmonica. Even later, the "Kosygin's house", "Gorbachev's house" appeared. But since the Brezhnev era, members of the Politburo no longer lived together. An attempt to recreate the idea of ​​a house for associates was made during the first presidential term of B. N. Yeltsin. But it also turned out to be unsuccessful, very soon everyone fled from the house on Autumn. Psychologically, this is very difficult and unjustified: both at home and at work, to see the same faces and carry on the same conversations. You can’t switch, you can’t relax, and if you also take into account that work does not happen without disagreements, it becomes clear that they are automatically transferred to the home hostel. True, for the security service, of course, it is convenient when all the guarded are concentrated under one roof.

So, already in the 30s, everyday life gradually left the Kremlin, and it turned exclusively into an administrative center.

Pets left the Kremlin together with their families: cats and dogs, and they have not been here since. But there are squirrels and many different birds. Of course, the crows are especially noticeable: everyone knows how they love to ride, sliding down on their tails, from the Kremlin domes and what consequences this leads to - the crows peel off the gold leaf with their paws. In order to keep them away from such fun, the Kremlin had to acquire a hawk that "patrols" the sky over the golden domes. When reconstruction was carried out in the 1990s and the Kremlin communications that had not changed for decades were torn apart, it turned out that they were inhabited by hordes of rats, which had to be dealt with much more seriously than with crows: among other things, the rats even once gnawed through the government communications cable.

The name of the Council of People's Commissars, or Government House, firmly stuck behind the Senate building. Here, on the second floor, there was a three-room apartment and I. V. Stalin's study, which consisted of a spacious reception room and a small work room. In the reception room sat the head of the bodyguard V. N. Vlasik, Stalin's first assistant A. N. Poskrebyshev and assistant L. A. Loginov. In the middle of the room, on a large table, lay Soviet and foreign newspapers and magazines.

Then came the so-called dressing room, where colonels and security officers were on duty, who offered visitors to hand over their weapons, if any. There was also a hanger for members of the Politburo.

The windows of Stalin's office overlooked the Arsenal. The white walls were clad in light oak paneling. Carpet. A large desk littered with books. Bulky, dark wood furniture. Long table covered with green cloth.

The apartment also overlooked the Arsenal and was also furnished with dark bulky furniture; it was located in the northern part of the building, near the Nikolsky gates, which were never opened. In the front door, two duty officers stood on either side of the doors, checking passes.

After Stalin's death, the premises of the first building were never overhauled. His office became the cabinet of the chairmen of the Council of Ministers: G. M. Malenkov, N. S. Khrushchev, A-N. Kosygin.

And the third floor, in addition to the Museum-apartment of Lenin, was given over to the reception room of the general secretary and his office, since it was in the Kremlin that Politburo meetings were held on Thursdays. Another office of the general secretary was located in the building of the Central Committee of the party, which lived in 1922 and the first half of 1923 on Vozdvizhenka, and then moved to a huge house on Staraya Square, where the fifth floor of the house was reserved for the secretaries of the Central Committee. The Kremlin housed only that subdivision of the General Department of the Central Committee, which served the Politburo. The rest of the premises were the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Council. The meetings of the Politburo were usually held in the meeting room of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. By the way, this hall was called Red under Lenin, because it was covered with red wallpaper and the chairs in it were upholstered with red plush. Under Stalin, wallpaper was replaced with oak panels, and plush with leather.

In the mid-1930s, the Kremlin carried out a “reconstruction” in two gigantic halls of the Grand Kremlin Palace, Alexander and Andreevsky. The stucco molding was knocked down with miners' jackhammers, the decor was destroyed, in a hurry to turn the former splendor into a dull long room with wooden desks, where, after the 1936 elections, sessions of both chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR traditionally took place. Twice a year for three days. Later, however, there were also congresses of creative unions: the Union of Writers, the Union of Composers.

It is impossible not to admire the dedication of the museum specialists who worked here in the 1930s and who preserved the stucco fragments by hiding them in the cellars. Already in our time, when, by decree of President B. N. Yeltsin, restoration work began to be carried out in these halls, those fragments were very useful.

It is surprising that the St. George Hall and the Faceted Chamber survived then: in those years, everything from clothing to protocol was dominated by the style of the revolutionary era, the desire for utilitarian simplicity.

When on March 27, 1990, at the III Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, M. S. Gorbachev was elected President of the USSR, his office was still the office of the General Secretary, which was located on the third floor of the Senate, where Politburo meetings continued to take place. Aides to the president, members of the Presidential Council, a new structure that was entirely subordinate to the president, who determined its composition and size, moved here. The Presidential Council then included state and public figures A. N. Yakovlev, E. M. Primakov, V. G. Rasputin, Ch. T. Aitmatov, N. I. Ryzhkov and a number of others.

But until the end of 1990, the Kremlin primarily remained the Government House. The building of the Senate belonged to the apparatus of the Council of Ministers and its administration. The office of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. I. Ryzhkov was traditionally located in the former office of Stalin.

On December 26, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the law "On Amendments and Additions to the Constitution of the USSR in Connection with the Improvement of the System of State Administration", which abolished the Council of Ministers and replaced it with the Cabinet of Ministers. Ryzhkov's government ceased to exist de jure. After the approval of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the post of Prime Minister of the USSR V.S. Pavlov (January 14, 1991), all his deputies and the former apparatus of the Council of Ministers moved from the Kremlin. And from the Old Square to the Kremlin, the apparatus of the President of the USSR began to move, headed by V. I. Boldin. In fact, this is where it was formed. Initially, it was assumed that it would be small so as not to duplicate the powerful apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

But already at the IV Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR on December 27, 1990, the vice-president of the USSR was elected, and in March 1991 the Presidential Council was dissolved and a new body was formed - the Security Council, then the institute of presidential assistants and advisers was created. At the same time, much was borrowed from the US presidential model. The scheme of presidential structures underwent significant changes many times, as a completely new institution of power was created. The third floor of the already presidential Senate was still retained by the Politburo.

Much has been said and written today about the GKChP. There are many strange things in this whole story. I think that in 20–30 years, researchers will describe in detail how it all happened, but for now, maybe the time has not yet come.

On August 20–21, the signing of the Union Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States and the delimitation of powers was scheduled in Novo-Ogaryovo. But history decreed otherwise.

In August 1991, I rested in the Valdai sanatorium of the Fourth Main Directorate of the Ministry of Health and on the 19th evening I was supposed to return to Moscow. At the same time, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR A.I. Lukyanov, who lived in a distant state dacha, also rested there. On the morning of August 19, having heard the first messages, I began to call Moscow, but it turned out that the telephones of the government communications were switched off, but using the city number I easily got through to Boldin's reception. "Come back, we'll see there" - that's the only information that I received at that time. I was in Moscow in the evening, when tanks were already in the city.

The end of August 1991 was marked not only by the collapse of former symbols and monuments throughout the country, for many, including the inhabitants of the Kremlin, it was a time of disillusionment. On August 23, in the White House, B. N. Yeltsin called "for the period of the formation of democracy, to dissolve the governing bodies and nationalize the property of the CPSU, to dissolve the KGB." And on August 24, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his post as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. On August 29, the Supreme Soviet banned the activities of the Communist Party and seized party property.

I was struck by the courage of those 200-300 Democrats who came out in the August days with posters to the Old Square. They, of course, had no weapons. They shouted at the Central Committee employees: “Get out immediately! The Communist Party is banned! In the building on the Old Square at that hour there were at least one and a half thousand people. At least ten percent of them were armed. I am convinced that if they had something to defend, they would easily disperse the crowd. Meanwhile, these people hurriedly left their offices, threw away fax machines, documents, protecting only their own safes. They were ordered to vacate the premises before four o'clock, and they complied with this demand of the crowd, as soldiers follow orders.

Many services of the apparatus of the President of the USSR by that time did not yet have premises in the Kremlin and were located in the building of the Central Committee of the CPSU. However, even today a number of divisions of the presidential administration of Russia are located on Staraya Square.

The Protocol Management Service of the President of the USSR, which I headed, was also located in the former premises of the Central Committee. We represented the apparatus of the incumbent president of the Soviet Union and had nothing to do with the Central Committee. When people from the square came into my office and demanded that I leave, I replied that I would leave when I packed my things and sealed the rooms. Those who came, although they were cultured and well-mannered people, were very excited, but I did not hear any threats against me from them. My colleagues and I stayed in the building on the Old Square until we prepared the items and documentation for shipment. G. Kh. Popov was then the mayor of Moscow. I called him, and he sent his representatives, in the presence of which the premises belonging to the apparatus of the President of the USSR were sealed. And only at 20.00 I calmly left the building on Staraya Square and headed for the Kremlin. Despite the turbulent events that were taking place, all our material values ​​turned out to be in complete safety, even the storeroom of gifts, where really valuable things were kept.

The next morning, at the appointed hour, trucks were brought to us, and the officers attached to them helped to load and unload our property. On that day, together with several employees of the USSR President's Office, I moved to the Kremlin, to the first entrance of the first building, where we temporarily settled in small rooms on different floors.

Life went on. MS Gorbachev also made visits both abroad and around the country. On October 23–24, we visited Spain, then France, where we met Francois Mitterrand. Who would have thought that in just two months the Soviet Union would be gone!

In November - early December, Gorbachev went to Kyrgyzstan, where he was on a working visit and where he had many meetings with workers at enterprises and scientists. People expressed their attitude to the events that had taken place, waiting for some kind of decision. And it was obvious that everyone in their hearts regretted that the Union was collapsing. However, the results of the Ukrainian independence referendum once again confirmed that the former Union would no longer exist.

On December 24, 1991, Mikhail Sergeevich said goodbye to his employees, and on the 25th he addressed the people. In his television speech, M. S. Gorbachev announced that he was ending his activities as president of the USSR, and also said that he believed in his fellow citizens, wished them all the best, and ten minutes later, in the presence of Defense Minister Marshal E. M. Shaposhnikov, gave B. N. Yeltsin a case with codes for a nuclear attack. In a few days (December 30) Soviet Union would celebrate his 69th birthday.

On December 27, B. N. Yeltsin occupied the office of M. S. Gorbachev in the Kremlin, over which, two days earlier, the state flag of the USSR was lowered and the tricolor flag of the Russian Federation was raised.

Machine Services Russian President housed in the 14th building back in August, immediately after the putsch. When, after 1991, the entire complex of buildings, including the Senate, was put under reconstruction, the actual residence of the first president of the Russian Federation was located in the building of the former Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Today, the deputy heads of the presidential administration and its main apparatus work in the 14th building. And the Senate building is the residence of the President Russian Federation. In addition to the president, only his secretariat and the head of the administration are here.

Speaking about the inhabitants of the Kremlin, one cannot fail to mention the employees of the Kremlin museums, which store a unique collection that clearly represents the history of Russian culture. During all periods of the two-century history of the Kremlin vaults, museum workers have always done their best to preserve the priceless treasures entrusted to them.

By the 40th anniversary of October, it was planned to open a museum of gifts to Stalin in the building of the Armory, designed to testify about " major events era of revolution and socialist construction. In addition to gifts, they were going to demonstrate the double-headed eagle from the Spasskaya Tower, "pierced by soldiers' bullets", royal standards, revolutionary banners, and other similar relics. But there were so many gifts to Stalin that this idea had to be abandoned.

Since 1918, the Kremlin has long remained a closed object. On its territory there was a strict access control. And only on December 9, 1953, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. M. Malenkov signed a decree allowing Soviet citizens to freely visit the Kremlin as a historical relic. Today we can say that this resolution was the first step towards the liberalization of the Soviet regime.

Access to the Kremlin was opened only seven months after the adoption of the relevant resolution in the summer of 1954. Here it was possible to see only the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell. After some time, the cathedrals were opened, the last “declassified” was the Armory. But really, I think, the Kremlin opened in the days International Festival youth and students, held in Moscow in the summer of 1957.

Since then, every day, except Thursday, from 10 am to 6 pm, the Kremlin is open to visitors. Thursday as a day off was a legacy from Soviet times, since it was on Thursdays that the Politburo met in the Kremlin. Millions of Russian and foreign citizens have the opportunity to get acquainted with the Armory, historical relics and shrines of the Kremlin churches, and visit the Museum in the former Patriarchal Palace applied arts and life of Russia in the 17th century. On the basis of the state museums of the Moscow Kremlin in 1991, the State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve "Moscow Kremlin" was established.

In recent years, the tradition of holding an annual reception in the Alexander Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, held by the president in honor of the best graduates of military academies and universities of all military branches, has been established. Also at the end of June, the All-Russian Ball of Secondary School Graduates is held in the Kremlin. If the president manages to find time, he will definitely come to greet yesterday's schoolchildren and wish them happiness and success.

The commandant is responsible for order in the Kremlin. The state of all buildings is monitored by the Commandant's Office together with the presidential administration. Basically, the territory is cleaned by the economic part, where, as a rule, civilians work, who sweep, clean and scrub from early morning until late at night. They also have the appropriate equipment. However, there are exceptions, like in 1998, when a hurricane knocked down a lot of trees, so that even the Kremlin walls were damaged. In such cases, the Presidential Regiment is involved in the work, which normally performs completely different tasks.

A few years ago, it was impossible to imagine that times could come when spiritual life would return to Cathedral Square, that prayers would be heard in the Kremlin cathedrals, and not only the roar of voices of numerous tourists, but also the sounds of music and opera arias would be heard on the Kremlin squares. .

Today, the 5,000-seat venue for holding party congresses of the State Kremlin Palace has found a new life. It has been turned into the Kremlin Ballet Theatre, founded in 1990 by the famous Russian choreographer, People's Artist of Russia Andrei Petrov.

By May 9, 2005, a large-scale reconstruction of the sixth floor of the State Kremlin Palace was completed. It was there that a memorable government reception was held in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory, which was held by the President of the Russian Federation and which took place after the parade on Red Square. The reception was attended by veterans of the Great Patriotic War, prominent statesmen and public figures of Russia, as well as heads of state and government who came to share this holiday with all citizens of the Russian Federation. In 2006, the full reconstruction of the GKD will be completed, which is carried out gradually, starting from the lower floors, where engineering equipment has already been replaced, unique lighting equipment has been re-installed, and the interior of the auditorium has been changed. The palace was not completely closed, because at present it is the largest concert venue in the country. A decision was also made on the reconstruction of the 14th building of the Kremlin, where the office of the presidential administration is located. It hasn't been renovated since the 1930s. The interior will also be updated in the hall where the president reads his annual message to the Federal Assembly.

Notes:

Cit. Quoted from: Titlinov B.V. The Church during the Revolution. M.; L., 1923. S. 109–110.

Trotsky L. My life: An autobiographical experience. M., 1991. S. 338–340.

At first there were quite a lot of them, and they lived, as a rule, rather modestly. And then the Kremlin began to slowly "clean up". To begin with, they evicted everyone who had nothing to do with the Soviet government, and settled "their own".

LENIN SATELLITED STALIN IN THE APARTMENT OF HIS MISTRESS

The eviction, which took place in the summer of 1920, took place in a revolutionary way. Within a week, more than half of the 1,100 residents of the Kremlin were resettled - those who had nothing to do with Soviet institutions. “In the Kremlin, as well as throughout Moscow,” wrote Leon Trotsky, “there was a continuous struggle over apartments, which were not enough. Moscow was then filled with a "peripheral mass" that poured into the capital from numerous places and towns.

As soon as the living space was vacated, the first thousand “friends” were moved into it, and six months later, 2,100 Soviet employees were already registered in the Kremlin. Who exactly lived behind the Kremlin wall was a state secret for a long time. Personal and other data about the inhabitants of the Kremlin began to be classified from the middle of 1918, and even now they are in hard-to-reach archives.

Ilyich at first lived in the National Hotel, but already in March 1918 he moved to the Kremlin, and on January 19, 1919 he registered in apartment No. 1 of the former Senate building.

Naturally, he wanted all his comrades-in-arms to be, as they say, “at hand”. Moreover, under Lenin, not only residential buildings were inhabited, but also the Kremlin towers, guardhouses, cathedrals and even the bell tower of Ivan the Great. Naturally, Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Kamenev, Sverdlov, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Molotov, Tsuryupa, Mikoyan, Lunacharsky, Clara settled next to the founder of Leninism (as they say now - “within walking distance”) Zetkin and others.

An interesting fact: in the building of the Poteshny Palace (it is located on the right hand if you go to the Kremlin through the gates of the Trinity Tower), very decent apartments (apartment No. The story of the allocation of the apartment becomes more understandable if you read Lenin's note to the commandant of the Kremlin Pavel Malkov: “T. Malkov! The giver of this, comrade. Inessa Armand, member of the CEC. She needs an apartment for 4 people. As we spoke today, you will show her what is available, that is, you will show the apartments that you had in mind. Lenin.

One can argue a lot about what kind of relationship the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars had with the said lady, but to clarify, I will quote another Kremlin resident of those times and also the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (since 1930) - Vyacheslav Molotov. In the mid-seventies, talking with the writer Felix Chuev, he said: “Interesting. Armand. Inessa Armand. Lenin writes: “Dear, dear friend! Hello dear friend!" I remember Inessa Armand well. Non-Russian type. A pretty woman. In my opinion, so, nothing special ... Lenin treated her very gently. Bukharin told me directly that this was Lenin's passion. He was very close to Lenin, and probably knew Inessa well.

And when the writer asked Molotov a question about how he assesses Krupskaya's attempt to transfer Inessa Armand from Moscow somewhere far away, Ilyich's ally answered bluntly: “Of course, this is an unusual situation. Lenin, simply put, has a mistress. And Krupskaya is a sick person.”

The development of the situation is well known: in August 1920, Lenin sent Inessa to rest in Kislovodsk, "to Sergo" (Sergo Ordzhonikidze was entrusted to take care of her). In those days, as, indeed, today, it was restless in the North Caucasus. When the next shooting began, Ilyich decided to return Armand to the capital. But she only reached Beslan, where she quickly caught cholera and died suddenly. According to other sources, Inessa died in Nalchik on September 24, 1920, but this does not change the essence of the matter.

After the body of Inessa Armand was brought to Moscow in a lead coffin, according to Lenin's instructions, she was buried in a necropolis near the Kremlin wall. And the faithful Nadezhda Konstantinovna remained nearby ...

The apartment of Ilyich's beloved was empty for only a few months. In January 1921, “thanks to the intervention of V. I. Lenin,” Stalin and his wife moved from their cramped apartment in the Freylinsky corridor of the Grand Kremlin Palace to the spacious apartment No. 1 of the Poteshny Palace. The very one, designed for four people, in which Inessa Armand lived.

The apartment, according to some reports, was not good. It was in it that on the night of November 9, 1932, Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide. Vyacheslav Molotov in the summer of 1975 recalled the reasons for her suicide: “Jealousy, of course. I think it's completely unfounded. There was a hairdresser, to whom he (Stalin. - Auth.) Went to shave. The wife was unhappy with this. A very jealous person ... What do you remember? Stalin raised the pistol with which she shot herself and said: “And a toy pistol, shot once a year” ... ... “I was a bad husband, I had no time to take her to the cinema,” said Stalin.

Immediately after the suicide of his wife, Stalin changed his apartment, moving to another apartment in the Poteshny Palace, and then moved to the 1st building of the Kremlin. True, he rarely visited his Kremlin apartment, since already in December 1933 he finally moved to the Near Dacha in Volynskoye.

By the way, shots were fired in the Kremlin in pre-war times more than once. In the thirties, the son of the “all-Union headman” Mikhail Kalinin and the commandant of the Kremlin, the personnel security officer Fyodor Rogov, shot themselves ...

"CLEANING" THE KREMLIN: FROM STALIN TO KHRUSHCHEV

Of course, the Kremlin did not accommodate everyone. In the twenties, more than 5,000 people worked in various institutions located inside the Kremlin wall. And they lived not only there, but also in the city - apartments were specially allocated for them at different addresses, but, as a rule, not far from the place of work. And in 1928, the construction of the famous House on the embankment began. Then it was still not Serafimovich Street, but All Saints Street. It was, apparently, the first large house specially built for the party-state elite. Officially called "the house of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR," it was more of a residential complex that occupied an entire block.

The entire infrastructure was autonomous: a shop, a hairdresser, a laundry, a first-aid post, a post office, a savings bank, a nursery and a garden, a club, a library, a gym, a dining room. Naturally, it had the maximum possible and few amenities available to anyone at that time: central heating, hot water supply, gas, elevators (passenger and freight), telephone, radio. Ensuring security and order was carried out by its own commandant's office. Already in 1931, the first tenants moved into it, who were “members of the government, members of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Central Committee of the Party, leaders of the Comintern, old Bolsheviks, people's commissars and their deputies, heads of main departments, top military leadership, diplomats, prominent scientists, writers, eminent figures arts." In parentheses, we note that the "turnover" in this building was quite serious. Hundreds of residents of this seemingly elite house, having lived in it for a year or two, moved to Kolyma to fell wood, or even were shot at all ...

The Kremlin, of course, also did not escape a serious "purge". After the assassination of Kirov in 1934, the so-called "Kremlin case" began to unwind. As a result, already in May 1935, Stalin approved the draft sentence for 108 convicted "Kremlin".

Those who were under suspicion, but not yet convicted, moved outside the Kremlin. The reasoning of the authorities was ironclad - the need to ensure the safety of the leaders of the Soviet state. As a result of mass eviction by June 1935, only 374 residents (102 families) remained in the Moscow Kremlin. And just in the period 1936 - 1939. 463 people were discharged from the Kremlin. Information about 31 people was transferred to the new registration book.

Not only employees, but also many high-ranking residents left the Kremlin apartments. Some moved to the House on the Embankment and other elite buildings, while others did not need a residence permit in principle. In 1936-1939 Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other leaders of the so-called "opposition" were shot. Some were taken to prison directly from the Kremlin. In 1938 - 1939. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to resettle the command and command staff of the Kremlin's commandant's office and all civilian workers and employees from the Kremlin. Only “commanders, military commissars and chiefs of staff of a special-purpose regiment and a separate command battalion, as well as some other chiefs, were allowed to stay on the territory of the Kremlin. The houses of the Moscow Council on 1st Meshchanskaya Street were allocated for the evicted (more than 300 apartments in total).

During the Great Patriotic War, the housing problem in the Kremlin was in a frozen state. In 1941, nine leaders of the USSR were registered in the Kremlin and had apartments. Stalin, as we have already mentioned, officially lived in apartment No. 1 of building No. 1. Voroshilov - in apartment No. 19 of building No. 9 (BKD apartments), Kaganovich in apartment No. 1 of building No. 20 (Children's half of the BKD). And the most "densely populated" building was No. 5 (Cavalersky). The Cavaliers were Molotov (apartment No. 36), Mikoyan (No. 33), Voznesensky (No. 28), Zhdanov (No. 34), Andreev (No. 22), Kalinin (No. 30). Another 68 apartments were occupied mainly by personal pensioners, relatives of Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Ordzhonikidze and others, as well as families of the leadership of the commandant's office, the NKGB - the NKVD ...

HOW THE KREMLIN IS NEARLY REBUILDED CLEAN

In the post-war years, the Soviet leadership suddenly became preoccupied with "perestroika". They decided to rebuild the Kremlin and Red Square. Although this attempt was actually not the first under Soviet rule ...

I will allow myself a slight digression from the topic, remembering an anecdote that appeared in the mid-nineties. “The resurrected Stalin appears at a meeting of the State Duma. The communist majority gives him the floor. The “leader of the peoples” says: “I have two proposals: the first is to shoot the traitorous democrats without exception. The second is to paint the Kremlin wall green. Any questions?" After a long pause, one of the deputies stands up: “Comrade Stalin, why exactly in green?” Slyly smiling through his mustache, the Generalissimo replies: “I knew that we would not have disagreements on the first issue!” You, dear readers, will be surprised, but part of this anecdote has real historical grounds. In December 1932, the curator of the Kremlin commandant's office, Abel Yenukidze, came up with a very innovative and, moreover, radical project. For the purpose of "relief design of the Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin against the general background of the Kremlin", he proposed "to paint the Kremlin wall in light gray from the outside along the line from the Arsenalnaya to the Beklemishevskaya tower." According to Yenukidze's calculations, 80,000 rubles were required to repaint the walls. Stalin, Mikoyan, Molotov, Kaganovich supported this idea, as did the rest of the Politburo members, a few days later. This "non-proletarian", in any case in color, event was scheduled for the spring of 1933. But it was not carried out, and the Kremlin remained red.

And the most ambitious project for the reconstruction of the Kremlin and Red Square was considered by the Council of Ministers of the USSR on June 13, 1947. As a result of the discussion, a government decision was adopted, which, if implemented, would completely change appearance Kremlin and Red Square. Judge for yourself. The decision provided for the following works to be carried out in 1948 - 1953.

In the Moscow Kremlin:

• reconstruction of the Arsenal building to accommodate the apparatus of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, as well as the government archive;
• restructuring of the 3rd building (barracks) for living quarters;
• demolition of buildings No. 6, No. 7 (Poteshny Palace), No. 8 on Kommunisticheskaya Street. It was planned to build a new four-five-story building for members of the government (12-15 apartments) on the vacant site;
• covering the courtyard of the BKD to create a conference hall of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for three thousand seats; the existing meeting room of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was turned into the Hall of the Order Soviet awards;
• leaving only the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin. All other domestic and captured guns were transferred from the Moscow Kremlin;
• replacement of pavement asphalt pavement and paving stones with granite;
• elimination of all outbuildings and sports grounds in the Tainitsky Garden and creation of a park;
• construction of a monument to V. I. Lenin.

On Red Square, it was planned to carry out the following reconstruction works:

• design of the monument to the Victory in the Great Patriotic war 1941 - 1945;
• relocation of the State Historical Museum to the place of the corner of Red Square and October 25 Street (currently Nikolskaya Street. - Auth.). Accommodation in the GUM building;
• installation of granite guest stands at the Lenin Mausoleum;
• opening on the site of the building of the Historical Museum of the Victory Monument.

Of everything planned by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the period up to 1953, only one event was carried out. In order to improve Red Square and create a common ensemble, in combination with the Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin, work was carried out to cover the guest stands at the Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin with granite slabs. In general, the project was grandiose. What was worth only one "advancement" of the Historical Museum! And the opening of the Victory Monument in its place?

But the most curious thing is the construction of a super-elite residential building in the Kremlin. It is difficult to imagine the true scale of the planned “four or five-story” building, for which three Kremlin buildings had to be demolished. One can only guess what area the 12-15 apartments mentioned in the document for members of the government would have. And, despite the fact that the construction of this house was planned in the first post-war years, it is difficult to doubt that the infrastructure, decoration, and security would be at the highest level there. And it’s also extremely interesting who would get these fifteen apartments ...

But, as we already know, the Poteshny Palace and buildings remained intact and were even restored. The Historical Museum and the Arsenal were not touched, and the Victory Monument was not built ... Some points of the mentioned decision of the Council of Ministers, however, were partially implemented, but after 1953. For example, a monument to Lenin was erected in the Kremlin, outbuildings and sports grounds in the Tainitsky Garden were removed ...

THE LAST DEPLOYES

After Stalin's death, the question of liquidating residential premises in the Kremlin was a foregone conclusion. This was largely due to the fact that Khrushchev, who became the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in September 1953, never lived in the Kremlin himself. And if the first person does not live "behind the wall", then other high-ranking citizens had to slowly move. And not always voluntarily. In May 1955, Vyacheslav Molotov moved to Granovsky Street (now - Romanov Lane. - Auth.). Anastas Mikoyan left the Kremlin with him. Then, in 1957, the turn of Lazar Kaganovich came. In 1958 - 1960, the families of the deceased leaders of the Soviet state, Dzerzhinsky, Ordzhonikidze, and other personal pensioners left the Kremlin. Until the last, “First Marshal” Klim Voroshilov fought for his Kremlin apartment. And, by the way, he really became the last one to leave his apartment. This event happened in November 1962, and Voroshilov lived in the Kremlin walls for more than thirty-seven years.

Now, of course, there are no apartments in the sense that we understand the word in the Kremlin. But people live there. Firstly, there is a residence for distinguished guests, and secondly, the Presidential Regiment is stationed there, and the president and some other high-ranking officials, if something happens, have somewhere to sleep - there are rest rooms in their offices. Although leaders still prefer to live outdoors. Even if they work in the Kremlin...

When working on the material, the book "The Moscow Kremlin - the citadel of Russia" and the texts of Felix Chuev's conversations with Vyacheslav Molotov from the book "Molotov: Semi-powerful ruler" were used.

Kremlin building numbering list (1926)

1. Government building (1st building)

2. Arsenal

3. Barracks (demolished)

4. Large Officer Corps (demolished)

5. Cavalry Corps (demolished)

6. Amusing building (corner)

7. Amusing building (palace)

8. Amusing building (former pharmacy)

9. Apartments Upper, Lower, Stable building

10. Small Officer Corps (demolished)

11. Kitchen building (demolished)

12. Grenadier Corps (demolished)

13. Patriarchal Palace and Synodal building

14. Chudov Monastery (demolished)

15. Small Nicholas Palace (demolished)

16. Service (Service) building (demolished)

17. Ascension Monastery (demolished)

18. Housing at the Spassky Gate (residential) (demolished)

19. Corps at the Spassky Gates (guardhouse) (demolished)

20. Grand Kremlin Palace

21. Armory

22. Building at the Borovitsky Gate (guardhouse) (demolished)

23. House near the Church of the Annunciation (demolished)

In addition, demolished or blown up:

1. Monument to Alexander II

2. Church of the Annunciation

3. Church of Constantine and Helena

4. Wood burning cabinet