Moscow Sculptures: Children are the Victims of Adult Vices

By Jack Brummet, Arts & Travel Ed.

In Moscow a few years ago, I had to talk my Kremlin guide into taking me to see these sculptures on the Moscow River. She said they had always spooked her and she waited up the street while I took them in. 

The sculptures by Mihail Chemiakin, "Children are the Victims of Adult Vices," depict 13 vices: alcoholism, child labor, indifference, drug addiction, prostitution, sadism, ignorance, pseudoscience, war, poverty, theft, capital punishment, and violence.

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Tilda Swinton with rainbow flag in front of St. Basil's

By Pablo Fanque, Russian Ed.

In early July, Tilda Swinton took this photo in front of St. Basil's in Moscow. Don't know if that police car happened to be there or if they were tracking her.

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The Lenin Library (Библиоте́ка и́мени Ле́нин) Metro station in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor

The Biblioteka Imeni Lenina (Библиоте́ка и́мени Ле́нина - The Lenin Library) is one of the ten  Moscow Metro stations (on the Sokolnicheskaya Line) I visited.  I especially liked the mural of Lenin.  

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The Kremlin Clock Tower

By Jack Brummet, Russian Travel Editor

The 500 year old Kremlin Clock (Russian: Кремлёвские часы; Kremlyovskiye chasy) is an often rebuilt clock on Spasskaya Tower in The Kremlin. The clock dial is above the main gates leading into Red Square. The clock chimes on the quarter hour, and bells toll each full hour.  According to various historical accounts, the clock on the Spasskaya Tower appeared between 1491 and 1585.  It has been tinkered with, rebuilt, music added, clockworks re-engineered, and of course, the clock dials have been updated, re-gilded, and more. 

It was pretty cool seeing it in person, although there were so many other fantastic buildings, churches, and sculptures that it almost becomes lost among all the other great sights.  I remember when I was young, they would often show the clock tower in reports on The Kremlin (our cold war enemies).  U.S. News, however, would more often show some grim, great Soviet building (there are only a couple of that style)--they almost never showed the great churches or towers.

 

The four Kremlin clock faces are 20 feet in diameter, with one on all four sides of the tower. The Roman numerals are two and a half feet tall.  The length of the hour hand is nearly ten feet, and of the minute hand nearly eleven feet. The total weight of clock and bells is 25 tons (or about 1/8 the weight of the gigantic Czar Bell on the plaza.  

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The largest trompe l'oeil tarp I saw in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor

While I was in Moscow, I wrote about all the buildings under construction covered with those trompe l'oeil tarps. Like this one, hung on a building in the neighborhood where I stayed:

Here are two photos I took at The Kremlin, one side under construction, and one still open to the public. . .

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Karzan Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor

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Some random and unexplained shots from my neighborhood in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor

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Ring my bell: The Tsar Bell/Царь–колокол (and one more Russian "biggest ever)"

By Jack Brummet, Kremlin Editor

The Tsar/Czar's Bell is 20 feet tall and sits on a little stone pedestal on the Kremlin grounds.  It was commissioned by Peter the Great's niece,  Empress Anna Ivanovna.  It was broken while they casted the bronze, and has never been rung. It weighs nearly 200 tons.  That broken chunk you see resting on it weights eleven tons itself.

The bell was cracked when there was a fire with the superstructure (which was wooden) while it was being tempered and decorated.  After a year or so of cooling, the fire broke out in 1737.  The guards poured water onto the bell and structure in order to save it.   The water caused 11 cracks in the bell, and the chink you see broke off.

For some period of time, the bell actually served as a chapel; you walked in through the doorway created by the cracked section.  And it has sat in the same spot on the Kremlin grounds for 260 years.  Naturally, like with their world's largest cannon, it's the biggest and baddest ever.  But is it a bell if it is still unrung?

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Photographs of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor

[click photos to enlarge]

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Shukhov Tower (Шуховская башня) in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor





Just down the block from our office in Moscow is the Shukhov Tower (Шуховская башня), an awesome broadcast tower in Moscow designed by Vladimir Shukhov. It's 525 feet tall (Seattle's Space Needle is 605 feet) and seems especially big because there are no tall buildings in the vicinity.  It was built from 1920–1922, during the Russian Civil War.  The tower sections are "hyperbolic steel gridshell of single-cavity hyperboloids of rotation made of straight beams, the ends of which rest against circular foundations." [tech details via Wikipedia]



It's funny -- my Russian friend just kind of shrugged it off when I first saw it and raved about how cool it was.  When I looked it up, I found that it is old and historical, and even endangered. The tower is visible, but not accessible to tourists. 

Shukhov Tower is under threat of demolition, and is number one on UNESCO's "Endangered Buildings" list [UNESCO is also the keeper of the great World Heritage sites list].  There is now an international campaign underway to save it.

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The Czar's Cannon in The Kremlin

 By Jack Brummet, Russian Travel Editor

The Czar's cannon, a 40 ton machine, was mostly, they say, created to spook the enemy.  No one knows for sure, but it was probably fired once (a 1980 study found traces of gunpowder).  It was build in the 16th century of 100% brass and is over 17 feet long.   The cannon could not actually shoot the one ton balls sitting in front.  They were also created to spook the enemy.  The cannon probably shot a load of smaller balls.  Compared to cannons I've seen in the U.S. and other countries, it is elaborately decorated, including an elaborate equestrian carving of a Czar.  Our guide said that Napoleon Bonaparte considered taking the cannon back to France as swag after the French invasion of Russia.

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Moscow: The soldier's dog and his lucky nose

By Jack Brummet, Russian Travel Editor


In the Revolution Square subway station (it is beneath the square), there are 76 bronze sculptures lining a central hallway.  One of these sculptures is either titled "border guard with a dog" or "solder with dog."   It has to be the most popular statue of the Moscow metro. Muscovites believe that rubbing the dog's nose brings luck. As you can see, the nose is polished to a fine shine by the hands of people passing by.  Of course, I rubbed his nose too.  It must have worked.  Everything went well today.  I remember there is a statue of John Harvard in Harvard Square where I think you rub his foot for good luck.

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Five Onion Domes on Moscow's St. Basil's Cathedral

This shot was taken on the backside of St. Basil's Cathedral...I will post more photos once I've had the chance to edit them... /Jack

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