Kremlin Senate

The Moscow Kremlin Senate building (Russian: Сенат) was commissioned by Catherine II of Russia and designed by Matvey Kazakov. Construction lasted from 1776 to 1787. The Neoclassical building originally housed the Moscow branch of the Governing Senate, the highest juduciary and legislative office of Imperial Russia. Currently, it houses the Russian presidential administration.

Construction

Catherine II had been a frequent guest in Moscow at the time when the city, neglected by past monarchs, did not have enough state offices. She launched construction of such offices and palaces, including the Senate, that is, the national judiciary administration and the seat of elected administration of the Moscow region.

Construction was started in 1776 by Karl Blank on a large triangular property in the north-east of the Moscow Kremlin, following a 1775 draft by Kazakov. [Russian: [http://rusarh.ru/senat.htm Original drawings by Kazakov] ] The site once housed the Trubetskoy family palace and at least three churches. [Russian: Ильин М., Моисеева Т., "Москва и Подмосковье", М., 1979] In 1779 Blank was demoted, and Kazakov took the lead. He envisaged Governing Senate as the Temple of Law, and designed the structure in a Neoclassical style characterized by symmetry and rigour.

The triangular structure is centered around Rotunda Hall (diameter 24.6 meters, 27 meters internal height), once called "The

According to Ivan Kondratiev, Catherine was so impressed by the building that she gave Kazakov her gloves, saying "I'll pay your bills later, for now - this is a token for your wife". She indeed repaid Kazakov with diamonds, promotion and a pension. [Russian: Иван Кондратьев, "Седая старина Москвы", М, 1997 (первое издание 1893)]

Later, in line with legal reforms of Catherine's successors, the building lost its national functions and became the seat of Moscow Regional Court (Здание Московских судебных установлений).

Modern history

In 1905, terrorist Ivan Kalyayev killed Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov, the military governor of Moscow, near the Senate. This was commemorated by a administration.

Vladimir Lenin had his study and private apartment on the third floor in 1918-1922. Later, the Senate housed Joseph Stalin's study and conference hall. In 1955, Lenin's apartments were opened to public access; in 1994, all exhibits of this museum were relocated to Gorki Leninskiye and the Senate closed its doors to the public again. [Russian: [http://www.nasledie.ru/oboz/N01_02/1_17.HTM Report on relocation of Lenin exhibits to Gorki] ] In 1994-1998, Senate building was converted to house Russian presidential administration. [ President of Russia, official site [http://www.kremlin.ru/articles/buildings.shtml Senate page] ] An indiscriminate reconstruction "from scratch" destroyed Kazakov's interiors. Preservation advocate Alexei Komech reported from the site: "... crushed walls, ripped air ducts and piles of 200 year old bricks remind me of wandering around ruins of Berlin's Reich Chancellery in 1946". [Moscow News, No.6, 2003, [http://www.mn.ru/issue.php?2003-6-35 Russian: www.mn.ru] ] Present-day photographs ( [http://www.kremlin.ru/nav_maps/71877.inc inner courtyard] ) also show that the builders destroyed and paved the chestnut garden that used to grace the Senate's courtyard in the 1970s. ["Moscow. Monuments of architecture. 18th-the first third of the 19th century", Moscow, Iskusstvo, 1975, photographs 56-58]

References