The Big Russian, the Big American, and the Big Icon

First off, my apologies.  It's been quite a while since my last post.  I have been traveling for work and that, combined with the lack of phone or Internet access in rural Russia, prevented me from updating the blog.  On Sunday (October 14th), I returned to Moscow after a week in Pskov.  Pskov is an ancient Russian city of about 200,000 in Northwest Russia, about 20 km from the border of Estonia (Pskov's location can be viewed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pskov_In_Europe.svg).  My colleague here at the ABA, Anton Alferov, and I went to Pskov to conduct an anti-corruption conference for various members of local government, including elected officials, prosecutors, and law enforcement.  We left Moscow via train on Monday night, and arrived in Pskov the next morning -- about a 12 hour trip. We actually didn't stay in Pskov.  After arriving on the train, we drove about 100 km into rural Russia and stayed at a small "resort" (I use that term VERY loosely) near the estate of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (more on him in another post).  I'll post pictures later, but suffice it to say that the place was a dump.  At breakfast one morning, which was served in a communal dining hall by old Russian babushkas, I watched as a 5 month old kitten caught, killed, and ate a mouse about 10 feet away from me.  We also didn't have heat in our rooms and the weather was pretty cold (it's been snowing here the last week or so) so it definitely was quite an experience.

Like most Russian cities, Pskov was built on a river, the Velikaya.  The city itself is almost 1,100 years old.  For Russia, the Pskov region was a bridge towards Europe.  For Europe, it was a western outpost of Russia and subject of numerous attacks throughout history.  In the city center, on the river, stands the Pskov Kremlin.  Amazingly, the kremlin (called by Pskovians the Krom) withstood 26 sieges in the 15th century alone. At one point, five stone walls ringed it, making the city practically impregnable. A local school of icon-painting flourished (this will become important to this post in a bit), and local masons were considered the best in Russia.  In the center of the Pskov Kremlin sits a beautiful Russian Orthodox cathedral.  During Soviet times, the cathedral was dedicated as a museum of atheism, like most other Russian Orthodox cathedrals in Russia.

In 1510,  Muscovite forces took the city. However, as the second largest city of Muscovy, Pskov still attracted enemy armies. Most famously, it withstood prolonged siege by 50,000-strong Polish army during the final stage of the Livonian War (1581–1582). The king of Poland, Stefan Batory, undertook some 31 attacks to storm the city, which was defended mainly by civilians. Even after one of the city walls was broken, the Pskovians managed to fill the gap and repel the attack.  This siege was commemorated in a beautiful Russian Orthodox church icon -- I became very closely acquainted with this icon, as you will see below.

As you can imagine, Pskov's medieval citadel provided little protection against modern artillery, and during World War II Pskov suffered substantial damage during the German occupation from July 9, 1941 until July 23, 1944.  Many ancient buildings, particularly churches, suffered destruction before the Wehrmacht could occupy the city.  When the Russians drove the Germans out of the city on their march to Berlin, the city was essentially leveled.  A huge portion of Pskov's population died during the war, and Pskov has since struggled to regain its traditional position as a major industrial and cultural centre of Western Russia.  Simply put, the city economy is struggling, people are leaving, and the city is dying.

All of this serves as useful background to the most amazing experience I've had in Russia so far.  On Saturday night, we returned from the "resort" to Pskov and the train station at about 4:00 p.m.  Our train left for Moscow at 7:00 p.m., so Anton suggested that we visit the Pskov Kremlin as it was likely that I might not return to Pskov again.  We grabbed a taxi and drove to the Kremlin.  Pictures of the Kremlin and its cathedral are at the right in a new album.  The place was amazing.  We walked the Kremlin grounds and then went into the cathedral.  The interior of the cathedral was stunning.  We stood behind a roped off area of the cathedral and admired all the icons and paintings.  Here is a photo of a small portion of the cathedral. 

As Anton and I were checking out the cathedral, a small, old Russian man with a name tag on walked up to us.  At the conference, several Russians had commented on Anton's and my size, referring to us as "the big Russian" and the "the big American."  Apparently, the old man in the cathedral thought the same thing.  He started chattering with Anton in Russian for about a minute or so.  After their discussion, Anton turned to me and said that the man wanted our help in moving one of the icons in the cathedral.  Anton and I agreed, and were escorted under the rope and into the cathedral.  We both thought we'd be moving a small statue or something. We followed this guy into the recesses of the cathedral and into a small work room where several women were working on the icon -- and it definitely wasn't a small statue or something.  The icon was what can best be described as a humongous shadow box.  Built of sturdy oak, it was about five feet high and four feet wide.  Under the glass, thousands of tiny jewels (pearls, diamonds, rubies, etc., you name the gem and it was there) were arranged in a mosaic showing a battle scene from the Polish siege I described above.  The icon itself was about just under 500 years old -- older than my country, as I later mentioned to Anton.   The Russian women had adorned the icon with a frame of fresh red roses and white carnations.  As Anton and I moved into position to pick up the icon off the work table it was laying on, my first thought was "Wow, this thing is really beautiful."  As I picked up with Anton (we were the only two who moved it -- the man looked like he was 90 years old and the women were too busy barking at us in Russian to help with the manual labor), my second thought was, "Shit, this thing is REALLY heavy."  I'd guess that it weighed about 350 pounds -- seriously awkward and heavy and made even more so by the fresh flowers that had been placed on the frame.  Anton and I started to shuffle out of the work room and through the back halls of the cathedral.  Anton and I both had our laptop bags slung over our shoulders, further complicating matters.  Two of the women quickly relieved us of that problem.  At one point, we had to move from the sides to the ends of the icon to make it through a door, not an easy task given the weight, roses, and Russian women flitting about.  At that point, I seriously thought that we were about to drop a 500 year old, completely priceless icon. We finally made it out into the cathedral and managed to place the icon upright on a stand near the tombs of two Russian Orthodox saints that were 2,000 years old.

Turns out the icon was only recently returned to Russia.  The Germans took it with them as they fled the advancing Red Army, and German Chancellor Schroeder recently presented it back to Putin in a big ceremony a few years ago.  Talk about some serious history -- all entrusted to a Russian and an American who had only walked into the cathedral 10 minutes earlier.  I asked Anton if 30 years ago (during Soviet times) anyone in Russia would have believed that a Russian and an American would be working together to move a priceless church icon in the Pskov cathedral.  He laughed and thought not.  But he did say that it was a definite sign of progress -- and that the world was a whole lot smaller today than it was during the Cold War.

Comments

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[Kolya]

Interesting story, thanks for posting it. Two small corrections, though. First, if the icon commemorated the 1581-82 siege, then it's closer to 400 than 500 years old (the siege ended 425 years ago.) Second, there cannot be any Russian saints that are 2,000 years old. Russia did not exist back then and Rus (which, roughly, encompassed parts of what is now Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) officially became Christian under Vladimir about 1020 years ago.

[Dmitri]

Jeff,
write up all your work and publish it in book form.
I love your style of writing and take on life out there.
Great blog!
Why no post recently?

[Grig]

Jeffery,
What happened to you?
More than a month since the last post!

[The Pakistani Spectator]

We have compared the Putin with Pakitani President Musharraf at the following address:

http://pakspectator.blogspot.com/2007/11/putin-vs-musharraf.html

Would you please comment for the benefit of the Pakistani readers there?

regards.

[John]

Wow Jeff! Quite a story. It is quite a thing to be in a place with such a long history, relative to our own here in the U.S.

Keep the stories coming!!

[John]

Wow Jeff! Quite a story. It is quite a thing to be in a place with such a long history, relative to our own here in the U.S.

Keep the stories coming!!

[Jennifer]

Does Woody ever work or sleep?
Glad to see your Manton plow skills are being put to good use--beats carrying my water, doesn't it?

[Woody]

First, that is simply an incredible story about you cattin' around as the "Movers of Pskov."

Second, I hope to God that somehow your good work over there offsets the lunacy of Putin embracing a misogynistic, bigoted despot like Ahmadinejad. The man (I use the term loosely) deserves a special corner in hell just for personally standing watch over 52 Amercians for 444 days, not a handshake from the leader of Mother Russia.