GUEST COMMENTARY - In the liberal nineties, the Kremlin was supposed to become a museum – today it is once again the center of brutal power

"The earth, as you know, begins in the Kremlin," wrote legendary Soviet writer Vladimir Mayakovsky in a children's poem in 1927. And in 1937, the most important Stalinist propaganda poet, Vasily Lebedev-Kumach, composed the highly patriotic line, "The morning paints the walls of the old Kremlin with soft light, the entire Soviet land awakens with the dawn," to a melody by the composer brothers Pokrass.

All children born in the Soviet era have these words etched in their minds. In this way, the Kremlin gained the reputation of being not only the architectural icon of the Soviet state, but also the heart of the communist fatherland.

Even in the post-Soviet decades, the Kremlin has not lost its legendary importance – after all, it has been the official residence of the Russian President since 1992 and is thus the symbol of power par excellence.

Located on the Moskva River, the Moscow Kremlin, built initially of wood and then of stone on a 25-meter-high hill, was repeatedly devastated by Mongol-Tatar invaders. After the end of the 15th century, the medieval castle was transformed into a citadel, serving first as the residence of the Grand Dukes of Moscow and then, until the capital was relocated to St. Petersburg in the early 18th century, the Russian Tsars. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the Metropolitan and later the Patriarch of Moscow also resided here.

Essentially, the Kremlin is a fortification complex consisting of a triangular boundary wall with twenty towers. This was built from 1485 to 1499 and remains well preserved to this day. The architectural ensemble within it includes sacred and secular buildings from various eras, many of which exhibit foreign influences. In the 15th and 16th centuries, various parts of the Kremlin were designed and built by Italian engineers and architects, notably Aristotele Fioravanti, Marco dei Frisoni, Pietro Antonio Solari, Aloisio da Milano, and Aloisio Lamberti. The similarity to the Castello Sforzesco in Milan is obvious.

The Kremlin's cathedrals and towers, especially the 15th-17th-century Spasskaya Tower, co-designed by Scottish architect Christopher Galloway, are as famous as the 16th-century Tsar Cannon and the 18th-century Tsar Bell, which reflect the Kremlin rulers' desire for grandeur but are also symbols of the inefficiency of power because their excessive size prevented them from being used.

For almost two centuries, St. Petersburg was the capital, reflecting the Europeanization of Russia initiated by Peter the Great. In 1918, after the communist October Revolution, the Bolsheviks moved the political center to Moscow. The Kremlin now also became red on a symbolic level and, as the official seat of the Soviet government, became a monument to state omnipotence. The party leadership had an apartment in the Kremlin, and Soviet leaders found their final resting place at the Kremlin Wall near Red Square.

Thus, the Kremlin also became a cemetery, a necropolis of the communists. It all began with the construction of a mausoleum for Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, on the Kremlin side in the middle of Red Square. Its shape resembles an ancient Egyptian step pyramid. The mummy of the revolutionary leader remains enshrined there to this day, and can be viewed by lifelong communists, curious onlookers, and tourists.

What a bizarre constellation: In the heart of Russia, an archaic cult of the dead is practiced, while just across the street, in the GUM luxury department store, built in 1893 in the historicist Russian style, homage to consumerism is paid, and in winter, the lust for life is celebrated on the glamorous GUM artificial ice rink. Incompatible elements converge here, yet they reflect Russia's late and incomplete modernization and the persistently unclear relationship between elites and the masses.

The Kremlin is a sacred place for Russia. However, it is partially open – at certain times, the Kremlin museums are open to the public, and concerts are also held in the State Kremlin Palace. The Kremlin is a popular patriotic destination, just as Red Square, between St. Basil's Cathedral with its onion domes and the State Historical Museum, constantly attracts many walkers and tourists. At the same time, however, the Kremlin is a closed and secretive place. Putin is here in person, protected by a powerful special service – the Federal Guard Service (FSO). There are many areas of the Kremlin that are closed to the public.

In the liberal 1990s, as a journalist who wasn't even a member of the Kremlin pool, I participated in private briefings in the Kremlin and interviewed the then-democratic presidential advisers and other officials. Once, as two colleagues and I were returning late at night from an interview with Anatoly Chubais, the then head of the administration, the enormous Spassky Gates creaked open onto Red Square. It was a truly mystical experience.

These were moments of political openness that hadn't happened for a long time. One of my academic acquaintances, who briefly held a high position in the government apparatus under Putin, recounted with horror that the atmosphere inside the Kremlin was very special. The walls exuded an aura, and it wasn't very pleasant to work there. One sensed the undead souls of the people's commissars executed by Stalin who used to frequent this place. It doesn't have to be Oscar Wilde's "Canterville Ghost" yearning for redemption.

The fact is that Putin, like Stalin, likes to work at night. So it's no coincidence that he delivered his statement about Russia's willingness to talk in Istanbul spectacularly at 1:30 a.m., without showing any signs of fatigue. Putin propagandists recently released a film in which the leader cares so deeply about his people that he doesn't sleep at night. The adoring audience was shown Putin's opulent Kremlin apartment, where he himself gave a tour of a "court" reporter. The most piquant moment occurred in the kitchen, when the autocrat opened the refrigerator, which contained kefir.

It's worth mentioning here that there's a popular Russian political commentator, Professor Valery Soloviev, who has been predicting the imminent end of the regime for years. According to him, the real Putin has long been dead, and his body is stored in a large freezer, while his doppelganger has taken over his role as sole ruler. When the film was shown on television, a joke immediately circulated: Putin opens the refrigerator—and there sits Professor Soloviev.

Long since a pedestrian zone, Red Square has become an arena for spectacle. In 2003, Paul McCartney performed here after the Beatles were banned in the USSR, and ice hockey was played there. Thirty-five years ago, the last Soviet "workers'" demonstrations took place here, and every May 9th, the grand military parade celebrating the victory over Nazi Germany takes place here. Here, the people bid a long farewell to Lenin. In the crush at Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, more than 500 people died. Embalmed, Stalin was laid to rest next to Lenin in a glass coffin. On the night of November 1, 1961, at Khrushchev's orders, his remains were removed from the mausoleum and reburied in a grave by the Kremlin wall.

He is joined here by the last Soviet leaders: Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. Khrushchev found his final resting place in the Novodevichy Cemetery, which is open to the public. Also buried there, a few hundred meters away, are Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, mortal enemies, yet each, in his own way, led Russia down the path to democracy.

"The Kremlin says," "The Kremlin believes," "The Kremlin denies": These metonymic phrases usually conceal statements by Putin's Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. They express the awareness that there is a higher power within the Kremlin, one that is difficult for outsiders to assess, one that not only maintains an iron grip on vast Russia but also constantly keeps the world on tenterhooks.

Once upon a time, in liberal times, at the end of Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, proposals arose to relocate parts of the government to Moscow's periphery. Some planners even suggested converting the Kremlin entirely into a museum. The goal was to emphasize Russia's democratization at a structural and architectural level. There was also a debate about removing Lenin, eternally exposed in death, from the mausoleum and burying him next to his mother.

These plans were never realized. In 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin after a four-year interregnum. Since then, the Kremlin has once again become a symbol of inscrutable Byzantine power, framed by Italian medieval towers and surrounded by the tombs of dead tyrants along its walls. And so, as Marx once wrote, "the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." For today's Russia, this means that the view of the future is obscured, and history is often reversed.

Andrei Kolesnikov is a journalist and author. He lives in Moscow and is a columnist for The New Times and writes for the online newspaper Novaya Gazeta. – Translated from English by A. Bn.