Catching up - our last morning in Moscow

On our final morning we headed for the New Tretyakov gallery of modern art. Traffic was rated at 7 on the Moscow 10-point scale – 10 means no traffic is moving in the city. Leaving at 9.30 we began to worry about our 5.15 flight. However, our driver found an alternative route and we worked our way around the worst traffic jams to get to the Gallery only 15 minutes late.

The Gallery has an outstanding collection of early 20th century Russian avant-garde art, when Russian artists like Malevich & Serov were developing new styles. Our art students had time to take photographs and make sketches which they will be able to use in their studies. The rest of us just enjoyed the wonderful collection. Of particular interest to the historians were the socialist realist paintings of the 1930s and 1940s, showing the benefits of the socialist system and some of the penalties of not. A favourite is ‘Another bad mark’ by Fyodor Reshetnikov - look it up!

Outside the museum is a statue park where various communist leaders who have been removed from public places have found a home.: Lenin and Stalin of course, also Felix Dzherzinsky, the first head of the secret police whose headquarters we had passed on the first day, and from where he had been removed when Communism collapsed.

Catching up - our last night in Moscow

On our last evening, we took the Metro from the station near the hotel into the city centre, to walk to Red Square. It was an interesting walk, 20 minutes longer than planned as our leader managed to head the wrong way from the Metro station. We were fortunate to be rescued by a Muscovite who spoke good English and guided us back on to our route. We came through past St Basil’s to Red Square to marvel at the Christmas-like decorations of the GUM shopping centre.

After taking in the sights and having some refreshment we went round to Revolution Square Metro station admiring the statues of Lenin and the ordinary revolutionaries of 1917. Two changes of line brought us round to Komsomolskaya Station with some of the most impressive decorations of the Metro, built to honour the young people of the Komsomol, or Youth organisation of the Communist Party, who had helped build the Metro, along with slave labour from Stalin’s purges. Then it was a quick journey back to the hotel.

Catching up from Moscow - last afternoon

In the afternoon of our last full day, after our lunch in Arbat, Galina took us on a tour of the Metro to show us some of the notable stations in the system that was built under Stalin in the later 1930s. We learnt why the Metro became so famous – for its rapid and efficient service as we moved from line to line, and the remarkable decorations of each station – each individual in its design. We saw how powerfully the revolution was celebrated along with the development of the country in its various regions and economic sectors.

Our journey ended at the pre-Revolutionary English Club, an eighteenth century building that now houses the Contemporary Political History Museum, that begins its story in the late19th century. Using surviving materials it goes through the end of the Tsarist period with its economic successes and political stresses, leading to the two revolutions in 1917.  There was so much to see that we decided to focus on the Stalin period, seeing a variety of propaganda examples and recreations of ordinary life.

We finished with the post-war period, and it was interesting to see how Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods were treated. The Gorbachev section was closed – perhaps for some revision…

Arrived at Heathrow -- ETA Oakham 2140++

We have arrived on time at Heathrow. A good flight after a fantastic time for all in Russia

Update - unfortunately the coach was delayed by an accident on the motorway, so the driver needs to take a 30min break on hte way back. Traffic is heavy so ETA in OAkham is 2140 at the earliest and this may well slip.

War and Peace in Moscow

Our first visit on our second day in Moscow was to Victory Park & Great Patriotic War Museum, on a hill on the outskirts of Moscow of significance as all invaders have approached this spot. Inside the Museum we were shown around by the Museum’s excellent guide Nina, who explained the main areas of the Museum, its Hallo Remembrance and its Glory Hall to the Soviet military effort in the war of 1941-45. She told the stories detailed in dioramas of fighting in Leningrad, Kursk and Berlin. Then we had time to explore this fascinating museum.

Just over the road, past the spot where Napoleon waited in vain for the keys of Moscow to be brought to him, is the Borodino Panorama Museum our next stop. Here we larnt of the struggles between the French and Russian exactly 200 years ago and the final Russian triumph, with Napoleon's retreat.
Particularly fascinating were the English cartoons of the time.

Our morning full and complete we headed for the city and Arbat, the main tourist area for shops and some food.

Night in Soviet Moscow

After our evening meal we set out across the road from our hotel, the Cosmos, to the Soviet Cosmonaut memorial. This spectacular monument reaches 110m high showing a rocket going into space, with a frieze around the base showing the contributionof workers and scientists - inspired by Lenin - in creating the Soviet space programme. We saw large busts of the heroes of the space programme including Yuri Gagarin, the firsyt man in space.

Behind it is the Park of Economic Achievements built in Soviet times, with a huge arch at its entrance and pavilions for each republic of the Soviet Union. Again all the Soviet symbolism we could admire was fascinating.

Our final stop was to the huge Worker and Peasant Woman scuplture, nearly 25 metres high on top of its pedestal, contructed for the Paris exhinition of 1937.

The Kremlin

Refreshed and ready for more we met by the great statue of Marshal Zhukov on his horse as he led the victory parade in 1945.
Past the tomb of the unknown soldier, we went through the gate through one of the towers into the Kremlin itself. First we saw the Armoury, and the Tsar’s Palace, later taken over by the Communist Party leaders as residence and offices and now the offices of President Putin. We walked past this on one side and the smart glass and steel Palace of Congresses, built in the Soviet era, on the other.

Next we came across two symbols of Russia’s power as it established its empire: the Tsar’s gun and the Tsar’s Bell. These huge pieces of cast bronze are each the largest of their kind in the world, and reinforce the sense of great power exhibited by the Kremlin.

The Kremlin is very much at the heart of the Tsarism. We were shown its three cathedrals – all dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries:  the Cathedral of the Dormition, where all the Tsars were crowned. Then its neighbour, the Cathedral of the Assumption, where all the Tsars were baptised and married and finally the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, where all the Tsars before Peter the Great were buried.

After these spectacularly decorated churches we continued our tour to the walls overlooking the Moscow River, and then back to the coach as the afternoon was ending and it was time to get to our Hotel.