Wandering Lizard
Russia

A Trip to Russia - Kremlin - Spring

Some of the most impressive churches in Russia are located inside the Kremlin walls. The role of the Orthodox Church in today's Russia is very obviously in transition. Everywhere in the country churches are being renovated - some as museums and some as active places of worship. Everyone that we met was intensely proud of their churches and the art that they contain, but alongside those that saw the church as a purely cultural value were many others that quite obviously saw it in deeply devout terms. One thing that Communism failed to do during the seven decades of its control of the country was to obliterate faith in God. In purely political terms it is interesting to note that Prime Minister Putin is said to wear a cross around his neck.

The sixteenth century Cathedral of the Archangel in the Kremlin is the burial place of the Russian grand princes and czars who lived before Peter the Great moved the capital of Russia to St. Petersburg at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Among those buried there are Dmitri Donskoi, Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and also Emperor Peter II. Boris Godunov was originally buried there before being moved to the Holy Trinity Monastery in Sergiyev Posad.

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