Kremlin Zoria

The night after the wedding we all went to see the Kremlin Zoria, a festival of military music inspired by the Edinburgh Tattoo, but held in Red Square. This was the first Zoria--the word is Russian for tattoo--and ran for four nights only. It was organised by a history teacher called Vitaly Mironov who travelled in the 1990s to Paisley and fell in love with Scotland, and its culture, history and approach to military reverance, which he thought had a lot on common with the Russian attitude. He helped bring the Russian Navy Band to the Edinburgh Festival in 1998, and was helped by Brig. Mel Jamieson in organising the Moscow event.

Kremlin Zoria

And pipe bands stole the show! There were 350 pipers, drawn from Scotland, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and other places. "It is great to see not only Scottish bands, but all our people," I remarked to Tanya, surprising her that I should consider "our people" to include "folk from furth of Scotland". The absolute highlight of the evening was this gentleman playing Amazing Grace, later accompanied by the other 349.

Kremlin Zoria

This was the Russian President's Guard. There were also troops dressed up in Napoleonic-era costume, as well as Germans, Italians, Danes and many others. My impression of this group was that they were not so well-drilled as the old Kremlin guards that I remembered from Soviet times marching out to Lenin's tomb and back again.

Kremlin Zoria

Some of the other spectacular acts came from the Caucasas and Central Asia.

Kremlin Zoria

Is there anything to write? An extraordinary moment.

Kremlin Zoria

Of course, being Russia, it all ended with fireworks.

Kremlin Zoria - the true spirit of piping

In the stand, we sat near a small group of Transvaal Scottish officers, some porcine and white, others super-porcine and black. The blacks looked bureaucratic but dignified; the whites sort of half-furtive, half-apologetic. In the queue to get out, I asked one of the black Generals what he thought of Moscow. "Very nice," was all he would say. Polite but cold. By contrast, I overheard one of the white officers--they all seemed to have "pips for Africa"--saying to another, "Hey! Let's all meet in the same bar we were in last night." After we walked out of Red Square, we found (yet another) Baltika tent with lots of Transvaal Scottish pipers and drummers standing round drinking beer. I bought a glass myself, while waiting for Tanya and the others to catch up--they were watching Italian flag-wavers performing very artistically in medieval costume outside the old Lenin Museum building over the way. On the spur of the moment I shouted out to the musicians, in half-remembered Afrikaans, "Play us a tune, man! Give us Sarie Marais!" They looked duly astonished, but a couple of them laughed, conferred, picked up their instruments and started playing the great song: "Bring my terug na die ou Transvaal / Daar waar my Sarie woon". Others quickly followed suit. The Italians were over the way with their fifes and drums, making a cultured but moderate noise, but when the pipes got going they took over the whole square. They gave us Flower of Scotland and many other old favourites, including Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, with the drums played like tom-toms. The whole show carried on for the next half an hour. The crowd which quickly gathered staying until exhaustion set in, close to midnight. I don't think the Russians had ever seen anything like it--a brilliant finale to an amazing evening. This was, for me, the true spirit of piping: informal, noisy, lightly alcohol-fuelled and politely swaggering. Thinking about it always reminds me of the great pipe tune: "A hundred pipers and a' and a', a hundred pipers and a'! / We'll up and gie them a blaw a blaw, we'll up an' gie them a blaw!!!"

Moscow miscellaneous

Red Square -- where else? (These Moscow misc. pictures were not all taken on the date given.)

Moscow miscellaneous

How times have changed! Outside the History Museum, I spotted Lenin hanging out with Nicholas II. When the lion takes time out to have a smoke with the lamb, can the Age of Aquarius be far behind? Later, when Valdimir Ilich took his cap off, it occurred to me that he bore a striking resemblance to Maxwell MacLeod.

Moscow miscellaneous

Summer is here and fountains are everywhere. These are on the branch of the river that flows past one of my teaching places, opposite the statue of Repin in Bolotnaya Square, on the Vodo-otvodny Canal, not far from the Kremlin. The bridge in the picture is known as the Luzhkov Bridge, after the Mayor of Moscow, since 1992, who enables everything and who calls forth bridges where hitherto bridges ran there none. The tented structure to the left is a summer restaurant, which is erected in spring and will be dismantled in the autumn.

Moscow miscellaneous

This is a view of the Ivan Veliky church in the Kremlin from the square outside Kropotkinskaya metro station, taken from the base of Engels's statue.

Moscow miscellaneous

This is the same church viewed from near the famous Дом на Набережной or House on the Embankment. This was an elaborate, Washington-style apartment house built in the mid-1930s just across from the Kremlin, where Stalin's elite lived--or did until they were whisked away in the early-morning bread vans for a less luxuriously existence, first in the Lubyanka and later, if they were very lucky, in the lumber camps or salt mines of Siberia.

Moscow miscellaneous

This is the small but charming Church of St Nicholas, with the west front of the House on the Embankment behind it, larger but less attractive, though one of the most desirable and expensive addresses in Moscow today.

Moscow miscellaneous

This, of course, is the grand-daddy of all Moscow churches, St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square (see also the first picture in this section). It was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1555 to commemorate the capture of the Khanate of Kazan on the Volga from the Tatars, a victory which cleared the way for Russia's expansion into Siberia. It is said that Ivan was so pleased with the final result that he had the architect, Postnik Yakovlev's, eyes put out and his hands cut off so that he could not build anything comparable for anyone else. Rumours of this sort came to the ears of Queen Elizabeth I of England, whom Ivan once expressed a wish to marry. Apparently they influenced her decision to refuse the Tsar's hand. (Where, I have often wondered, would they have lived if they had got married? It is hard to see her in Moscow or him in Whitehall Palace.) Four hundred years later, Stalin was asked by Lazar Kaganovich whether it would not help facilitate military parades to have St Basil's demolished as part of the Soviet reconstruction of Moscow in the 1930s. Stalin is said to have curtly dismissed the suggestion.

Moscow miscellaneous

Moscow not only has churches and cupolas, but cars: three million of them at the last count. This is part of the so-called Garden Ring, near the Paveletskaya railway and metro stations. The ring was originally a defensive earthwork surrounding the city about a mile and a half from the Kremlin. After Napoleon, it was made into a boulevard with gardens in the middle. Stalin had the gardens ripped out and a ten-lane trafficway built. That was large then; now it is far too small. Parking is free in Moscow--no meters, no yellow lines, no wardens--so if you can stand the jams, it makes sense to drive. Massive numbers of people do, and so the jams expand. It's a cruel world when you're allowed to seek your own convenience, rather than being forced onto the crowded (though cheap and very fast) metro, the often dilapidated trams or the busses with their blaring music and even greater crowds at rush-hour (часпик).

Moscow miscellaneous

The reason there is so much traffic in Moscow, is because there are so many people. Fifteen million of them, I gather. Since I last visited, in 1991, the population of the city has grown by more than the entire population of Scotland. This picture gives some idea of the consequences. The Kremlin is in the middle, with the Ivan Veliki tower "conspic.", as they say on the Admiralty charts. This picture was taken from the 29th floor of the Swissotel, south-south-east of the Red Square.

Moscow miscellaneous

This one was taken from the roof of the Foreign Languages Library, one of my favourite places in Moscow. I like it not because of the the Foreign Languages Library, which is old-fashioned and hard to use, but because of, first, the English Language Law Library on the top floor, which is run by Olga Sukhova, a lady who deserves a medal for being one of the most helpful state employees in Russia (or anywhere). Secondly, I like it because of the American Centre on the second floor, run by another very helpful person who deserves credit, Marissa Fushille, from El Paso, Texas. She runs the best English-language lending library in Moscow (with a lot of interesting material on the American legal system), making the British Council (downstairs) look hick and provincial--it is also embarrassingly unfriendly in a wannabe-snooty, "red brick" ex-pat English sort of way. You get the impression that the "Anglo" staff there would be happier in Torremolinos drinking bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and moaning about greasy, emaciated dagos with 9" hips...

Moscow miscellaneous

This the St Basil's and the Saviour's Gate of the Kremlin from the same vantage point. In the background is the Ukraine Hotel

Moscow miscellaneous

For all the humans, and their chaos, life still goes on.

Moscow miscellaneous

This is Mikhail Frunze, a Romanian revolutionary who became head of the Red Army after achieving many striking successes against the Whites in the Civil War. He subsequently fell out with Stalin and died, apparently of accidental chloroform poisoning, in 1925 while being operated on for stomach cancer. Many believe Stalin engineered the accident. This statue stands opposite a Russian army artillery academy, and when I sat on the bottom step to rest my camera on my knee to take the picture without blurring the picture, the officer on the door of the huge building came down to tell me I was on the "territory" of the Russian Army and that photographing, even pointing away from the building was forbidden. When I said ничего, and carried taking my pictures, he smiled rather sheepishly and walked back up to his place on the door.