Destroyed temple-monument

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On September 19, 1904, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) consecrated the construction site of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Miusskaya Square. This giant 21-domed cathedral was supposed to be the second largest after the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

As reported in the book of Mikhail Vostryshev “Orthodox Moscow”, the construction of the temple was conceived in memory of a historical event – the abolition of serfdom on February 19, 1861 by Emperor Alexander II, in honor of his patron saint:

“On May 30, 1861, the Governing Synod issued a decree on the construction of the temple, which, among other things, stated that the authorities were obliged to “find a place for the future temple where it would be mainly visible to the people as a monument, and at the same time, if possible, corresponded to the best need.

On the basis of a decree, a Committee was created at the Chudov Monastery to accept and store donations for the construction of the Alexander Nevsky Church in Moscow. By 1894, the fees amounted to one hundred thousand silver rubles, which was less than a fifth of the required amount. After lengthy discussions of the future location of the temple (places were offered on the Old Triumphal Gates Square or at the Ilyinsky Gates), the Moscow City Administration in 1895 provided land free of charge – three thousand square sazhens in the southern part of Miusskaya Square.

The initial design of the cathedral was drawn up by the chief architect of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra Alexander Latkov, but since the plan was based on a circle, the church authorities rejected it as non-canonical.

In 1890, the architect Alexander Pomerantsev (the most famous of his buildings in Moscow were the Upper Trading Rows (later GUM)) proposed a project for the cathedral, which he developed using a drawing by the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. In 1900, Alexander Pomerantsev presented the second draft of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which was less expensive to implement. This option was accepted.

According to the project, according to Mikhail Vostryshev, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was to be the second largest after the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, about 45 meters high and square in plan:

“The huge, complex structure of the vault rested only on the walls and had no internal supports. Along the southern and northern walls inside there were galleries with arcades, above which there were choirs on the model of ancient Byzantine temples, in particular Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. (…) The number of domes was supposed to be the largest of all Russian churches – twenty-one.

Unfortunately, the collected money was not enough to implement such grandiose plans, so the construction was constantly postponed. In this connection, the Metropolitan of Moscow Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) consecrated the place of laying the cathedral only on September 19, 1904.

“With extraordinary solemnity, with a crowd of many thousands of people, a prayer service was performed on Miusskaya Square on the occasion of the beginning of the construction of a temple here in the name of the faithful and V. Prince. Alexander Nevsky in memory of the liberation of peasants from serfdom. The celebration of the consecration of the place of the future temple began with a liturgy in the Assumption Cathedral, which was performed by the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. Then, under the leadership of the Metropolitan, a religious procession took place from the Assumption Cathedral. The procession passed through Red Square, past the Iverskaya Chapel, along Tverskaya Street. On Miusskaya Square, His Eminence Vladimir addressed the assembled people with a speech in which he touched upon the history of the liberation of the peasants from serfdom – an event to which the future temple should be a monument. Then the Metropolitan congregated served a prayer service, ”this is how this event was described in a note published the next day in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper.

However, again due to lack of funds, the laying ceremony of the cathedral was postponed for another 9 years and took place only on September 22, 1913, the year of the anniversary celebration – the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. St. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and the very next year the First World War began, which, in turn, slowed down the pace of construction.

“By 1915, the main volume of the temple without domes and detailed decoration was completed. The architect Alexander Pomerantsev considered the construction of the cathedral dedicated to his patron saint to be the work of his life, sought to speed up the work, even transferred his savings to the construction, ”according to Mikhail Vostryshev’s book Orthodox Moscow.

As described in the article of the historian and Moscow expert Elena Lebedeva “Temple in the name of the Holy Right-believing Prince Alexander Nevsky in Miussy”, published on the Pravoslavie.ru portal on March 3, 2005, in November 1915, in the built lower floor, a chapel was consecrated in the name of St. Apostle Arkhip, on whose feast the Highest Manifesto on the liberation of the peasants was signed, and divine services had already begun there (later it was re-consecrated in the name of St. Tikhon of Voronezh).

“After the October Revolution, construction was interrupted. At the same time, the Committee for accepting and storing offerings for the construction of the temple, which had been working since 1861, was abolished.

“In the book The Red Wheel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that Muscovites proposed using the grandiose unfinished cathedral on Miusskaya Square for meetings of the Constituent Assembly in the hope that it would meet in Moscow, and not in St. Petersburg.

In the 1920s, services in the cathedral ceased, and it began to be used as a warehouse. In particular, after the demolition of the building of the panorama on Chistye Prudy, the Borodino panorama by the artist Franz Roubaud, rolled into rolls, was stored in it,” writes Mikhail Vostryshev in his book Orthodox Moscow.

In 1925, according to the historian and Moscow historian Elena Lebedeva, “the idea was born to create the first Soviet crematorium in the cathedral in the course of the propaganda of the revolutionary “red burial”, but the re-equipment of the colossal Alexander Nevsky Cathedral turned out to be a very expensive and unprofitable project, and the crematorium was set up in the temple of Seraphim of Sarov Donskoy Monastery. Meanwhile, the unfinished temple on the Miussy, “with domes rusted from time to time, with black, long slits of unglazed windows,” as the newspapers described it, constantly attracted attention, and the question of its use was often raised. Another insanity was the proposal to create a “pantheon of the Comintern” in it, but quite simple ideas were also put forward, such as opening a museum exposition “the establishment of Soviet power in the Far East” in the building of the temple, or a food unit for an orphanage, or an archive, or a Radiohouse.

The project of rebuilding the former cathedral into the Radio House was proposed in 1934 by architects Alexei Dushkin and Arkady Mordvinov. There, as reported in the book by Mikhail Vostryshev, it was planned to “conduct experiments on the development of acoustic systems for the Palace of Soviets, since the pillarless interior space was three times larger than the volume of the Bolshoi Theater hall”:

“While the discussion was going on on how to adapt the temple, a warehouse was placed in it, into which the cast-iron parts of the Arc de Triomphe were brought after its demolition in 1934. The details (the chariot of Victory, warriors, reliefs and other works by sculptor Ivan Vitali) were then transferred to the Museum of the All-Union Academy of Architecture located in the Donskoy Monastery.

In the 1950s the walls of the temple, partly already collapsing from time to time, were blown up. On the site of the cathedral, using partially its walls and bricks, in 1960 the House of Pioneers of the Frunzensky District was erected according to the project of architects Yuri Sheverdyaev and Karo Shekhoyan.

Sergei Ishkov.

On the picture: project of a temple in memory of the liberation of the peasants.

A photo russian-church.ru

Message Destroyed temple-monument first appeared on Moscow truth.

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