This question still causes heating debates among the historians. There is so called Lobnoe Mesto right in front of the main gateway of the Kremlin - the Spaskaya Tower. If you check the dictionary - the typical translation for Лобное место will be 'execution place'. However this could be misleading. This translation is not literate, but rather definition of the meaning attribute to this place. It is claimed that at Lobnoe Mesto the Russan Tsars executed the enemies of the state. But was it really so?
Lobnoe Mesto appeared in the 16th century as a place where the Tsar's directives were read out loud. The stone dais was constructed to draw the attention to a speaker. Ivan IV the Terrible made a debut on Lobnoe Mesto in 1549 with his passionate speech to stop the feuds between the noble families. Since then till Peter I the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1712 Lobnoe Mesto was the platform for public and politic debate. It was here where the names of new heirs to Tsar family and new Heads of Orthodox Church were publicly announced. In 1612 announced here the defeat of Polish-Swedish invaders.
But where then did the cut the heads of the rebels off? One of the option: on Vasil'evskiy Spusk: in 1689 Streltsy military rebels were executed there, in 1671 the leader of peasants rebels Razin was executed there.
If those are the stars of the Kremlin Towers. There are 5 stars on the tops of the 5 biggest towers: Spaskaya, Troitskaya, Nikolskaya, Borovitskaya, Vodovoznaya.
The ruby stars shine 24/7 and they are actually a subject for heated public debates. There are those who insist to substitute the stars - a symbol of Soviet legacy - with the eagles that used to top the towers before the Revolution of 1917. The opponents insist on keeping the stars, because they've been there since 1935 and already became a part of the history. My opinion: lets keep the stars - they are the inalienable part of Moscow's image.
Each star weights about a ton and in each of them there is 2 bulbs of 5 000 W. The star-rays are between 3 and 3.75 m. When you make your promenade in the Kremlin and if it is windy you may notice that the stars rotate. The fixing of the stars to the tops of the towers is done in a such way that they smoothly rotate around their axises.
The control panel is situated in one of the towers to ensure non-stop star shining. In each star there are two bulbs to guarantee that if one fails the star will not fade. In addition the Kremlin has a separate energy supply so the energy block outs will not effect the star-shining. Each 5 years the stars are washed and undergo tech-control.
In 70 years of history the stars were turned off only once - in 1996 when the movie "Barber Of Siberia" of Nikita Mikhalkov was shoot in the Kremlin. During the WWII the stars kept shining and during the siege of Moscow in 1941 the stars were concealed in specially made covers.
Stumbe it!
Recent Comments