Christ the Savior Cathedral

Our next stop was Christ the Savior Cathedral. If you've been watching the news lately you saw this church as the site of Boris Yeltsin's funeral. The Cathedral was originally built by Tsar Alexander I to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon. The communists destroyed it when they came to power and planned to build a "palace of the people" on the site. Years dragged by and the "palace" was never built. One story goes that Stalin himself delayed the project because it was supposed to have a 20 foot tall statue of Lenin at the top. Because of his jealousy of Lenin, Stalin didn't want him honored in such a way so he prevented the building from going up. When Nikita Kruschev came to power he had a large public swimming pool complex built on the site. When communism fell and the Russian Orthodox Church regained its power as the state religion the Cathedral was reconstructed with the same plans as the original.
Icons are an important part of Orthodox worship. When blessed by a priest these images of saints are supposed to have special power to work miracles and help prayers reach God's ears. There is a famous icon of Christ in the lower part of the Cathedral that is the only religious object to have survived the destruction of the original building. It is a hauntingly beautiful head of Christ; when we were there many people were stopping to light candles and pray in front of it. I was able to buy a small copy of that icon and one of Saint Sergei at the souvenir counter.
Because of preparations for Orthodox Christmas Eve in the main sanctuary we didn't get to see that part of the building but the lower chapel was awe-inspiring. We had the opportunity to stay downtown and attend the Christmas Eve services at the Cathedral but we would have had to take the subway back to the hotel later that night. About half of us opted to go back to the hotel on the bus and watch the services on TV. We probably got a better view of the service and didn't get stuck in a corner where we got our feet stepped on and couldn't see or hear anything!