Conclusion: Beneath the Snow

Tour Route: Spas-Na-Boru Cathedral to the Red Gate

In our traverse of Moscow, much of what we have seen has been smoothed over by successive Soviet and post-Soviet renovations. The city’s endless blocks of prefab housing units do not suggest a link to the past, or a deep cultural consciousness. Further, many of its “historical” buildings are recent facsimiles, erected in an attempt to reclaim some of the city’s lost heritage. Everywhere within the city, the Soviet legacy is inescapable.

Some sites, however, have survived in unexpected ways. Every absence is keenly felt, from the ancient religious tradition of the Church of the Savior in the Woods to the vanished boundary of the Kitai-Gorod walls. Yet these sites survive in photos, books, and—for an increasingly brief time—the memories of those who saw them. Even in death, some sites lend their names to streets, subway stations, and plazas: thus the Sukharev Tower and the Red Gate remain invisibly present within the Garden Ring. Beneath the snow, Moscow’s lost structures can still be found and remembered.