Churches along the streets were “renovated and decorated” for the occasion, reported the abbot of Pokrovskaya Georgievskaya Church on Varvarka street, priest Nikolai Tsvetkov, in his tribute to the empress Alexand ra Feodorovna. After these large festivities and up until the revolution, Zaryadye continued to live its petty commercial petit bourgeois life.
In March 1918 by decision of the first Council of People’s Commissars, the capital of the new government of the Russian Soviet Republic was relocated to Moscow. The authorities of the “first government of workers and peasants” established themselves in seized office buildings and Moscow business centers: financial, banking, commercial bureaus and luxury hotels of the former “Moscow City” in the Kitay-Gorod quarter between Ilyinka and Varvarka streets and on Staraya Square.
In 1922, after the decisive victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, Moscow became the capital of the USSR, which resulted in the city receiving a powerful impulse for architectural development. It was obvious that the old petty craft and trade Zaryadye could not be preserved in its customary form. The new mode of government, which set the task of dismantling the former ways and completely reconstructing society’s organization, needed to transform the city land scape.
One of the most important questions in the architectural agenda of the new Moscow was the future fate of the Kitay-Gorod Wall. Its construction from 1535 — 1538 was led by the Italian architect Petrok Maly Fryazin, who used the most advanced European principles of fortification of the time for its design. The overall length of the wall exceeded two and a half kilometers with a height from 8 to 12 meters and a thickness around 6 meters that made the wall especially resistant to artillery fire. The wall had three levels for “fire combat” for its defenders — deep niche embrasures for heavy artillery in foot battles and wide galleries with firing slits above, intended for small caliber cannons and muzzle loading firearms. Initially the Kitay-Gorod Wall had 12 differently shaped towers. Three towers, which included the Varvarka and Kosmodemyanskiy Gates in Zaryadye had zwingers, sleevelike passage breaks in the wall design that were set up to improve its defenses.
Dimensional drawings of Varvarskie Gates and Kitay-gorod adjoining part by P. Ragulin, Petrakov, 1933.
the Kitay-Gorod Wall was besigied only during the Time of Troubles from 1611-12, and not by enemies but by the First and Second People’s Militia, which liberated Moscow from Polish-Lithuanian interventionists.
The besiegers resorted to firing artillery on the wall and bombarding the city with heated shots. The decisive assault took place on 22 October 1612. Unable to withstand the onslaught, the Polish garrison first retreated to the Kremlin and then after 4 days finally capitulated. The walls and the towers, damaged in many places as a result of the fighting, were thoroughly repaired only in 1629. Before the repairs a survey of the wall was taken by a nobleman named Aladiniy: “At the Varvarka Gate the wall was smashed in from cannons in ten places and not patched up... From the Varvarka to the Kosmodemyanskiy Gates that leads to Vasilevskiy Meadow along the city wall the distance is 147 sazhen (1 sazhen = 2.1 meters). Along the enclosure there are two homesteads of patriarchal clerks. From Kosmodemyanskiy Gate to Naugolnaya tower it is 13 sazhen. In the corner of the same Naugolnaya Tower is the temple of the miracle maker Nikolai and the saint martyr Irina. From Naugolnaya Tower near the Moscow River to the Glukhaya Tower the city wall measures 119 sazhen. Between the towers, the gates to the Moscow River are now sealed with wood.” By that time the Kosmodemyanskiy gate was already closed for passage, having earlier served as an exit from the former Velikaya Street, which by the beginning of the XVII century had lost its former significance. This is reported in Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich’s “building book”: “...Zachateyskaya Street (formerly Velikaya Street) was ordered to be made 4 sazhens (in width) because it is not a through street. The Vasilevskiy Gate (Kosmodemyanskiy, exiting onto Vasilevskiy Meadow) is closed and cannot be passed through.”
Later the Kitay-Gorod Wall and towers were repeatedly rebuilt — the passageways in the towers were changed or completely closed, and new gates in the wall were made. In the 1680s under the rule of Fyodor Alekseevich, the main towers, including Varvarka Gate, were built up with elegant tent shaped tops.
Kitay Gorod wall running from Varvarka gate to the corner tower at the end of the 19th century. Fragment of a dimensional diagram.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the medieval wall had decayed badly, and in many playces, especially in Zaryadye, it was completely built upon with annexes. At the beginning of the 19th century along the Moskvoretskaya Embankment several dozen grain warehouses were attached to the wall from the outside by a solid line — small-scale bread storage based on a stand ard design by the architect Joseph Bové. From the inside private multi-unit homes and tenement backyards were closely adjoined. Their owners and tenants used the wall for housekeeping needs, attaching storage areas and pantries to it. In the 20’s a group of street children settled in some of the towers. In his article from 1925 “Toward repairing the Kitay-Gorod wall”, the renovator, painter, and art critic Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar wrote: “in many places the wall seems to have disappeared without a trace, and rediscovering it will take a proper excavation. In some places it has even been completely razed to the ground, and in its place new structures erected.”
In 1925 to a large extent due to the initiative of the “Old Moscow” society, in accordance with a decision by the Moscow City Council, the Central State Restoration Works initiated a grand scale project to reconstruct the Kitay-Gorod Wall. In the process of the reconstruction the dilapidated granaries along the Moskvoretskaya Embankment were demolished, and the inner space from the Zaryadye side were cleared of annexes. For the first time in a long time the Kitay-Gorod Wall’s passage to Zaryadye was freed up, covered with a sphalt and once again became a walkway. On the outside along the Moskvoretskaya Embankment trees were planted and a footpath was laid.
Other parts of the Kitay-Gorod Wall were less fortunate. Despite all the projects integrating the wall into the new city land scape and numerous appeals from the architectural and restoration community, the decision was made to demolish most of it.
In 1934 the section from Vladimirskiy to Varvarka Gates was dismantled, including the gates. Only small sections on Revolution Square survived behind the Metropol hotel and in Zaryadye along the Kitay-Gorod pathway and Moskvoretskaya Embankment, including the Kosmodemyanskiy Gate, Naugolnaya Tower, and Polukruglaya Tower in the wall along the embankment.
The Kitai-Gorod fortification walls and towers in Zaryadye, shown in a newsreel of 1947
After the war in 1947, by decision of the Cabinet Council of the USSR, Zaryadye was designated as a construction site for one of eight skyscrapers planned for erection in Moscow for the 800th anniversary of the city’s founding. At the height of the skyscraper’s construction on 16 April 1951 the upper part of the Kitay-Gorod Wall collapsed along the Moskvoretskaya Embankment between the Prolomniy Gate and Polukruglaya Tower. The cause of the collapse of the section of the wall was from construction equipment vibrations and also vand alism by construction workers who had broken the wall to install temporary construction communication lines. The length of the collapsed section was about 45 meters. Even earlier two small sections of the wall had collapsed along the Kitay-Gorod passage. The question arose of how to proceed with a half destroyed historical and architectural monument of national importance.
Dimensional drawings of the Kitai-Gorod walls and towers in early 19th-century Zaryadye. The damage caused in 1812 is still visible.
The Moscow City Executive Committee and the Construction Board of the Palace of Soviets came out for the rapid demolition of the wall, for which they created an engineering and technical commission. At the same time the Academy of Sciences and Architects’ Union were against demolition and for restoring the remaining parts of the wall and towers in Zaryadye, for which they also created a commission to defend their position. In letters to the Council of Ministers and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks, the architects explained that “preservation of the ancient fortress wall next to a gigantic new structure from the soviet era will create a bright architectural combination in this part of the city” and proposed “stopping the demolition and taking immediate action to restore this unique monument, including it in the new plan for Zaryadye.”
Stalin personally presented the point to the “war commission”. By order № 3489 of 20 February 1952 he granted the Construction Board of the Palace of Soviets the right to dismantle the walls and towers along the embankment and passage, obligating the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to exclude the Kitay-Gorod Wall as a location on the list of architectural monuments.
Руинированный участок Китайгородской стены по одноименному проезду до реставрации ,1966 г.
Toward the autumn of 1952 only part of the wall along the Kitay-Gorod passage had not been completely dismantled. It stood in a ruined state until the 60’s. Then during construction of the Rossiya hotel — the latest grand structure of the soviet era — the renovator Pyotr Baranovsky saved the wall from demolition and restored the last remaining section of the ancient fortress wall.