the Kremlin triangle. Between 1535 and 1538, the construction of brick walls around the larger trading district of Kitai gorod (Chinatown, lying to the east of the Kremlin) gave Red Square its own defensive system, and the moat was soon drained. Within a few years of the conquest of Kazan by Ivan IV in 1552, work began on the most renowned of Moscow’s architectural monuments, the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat, popularly called Saint Basil’s (1555-1561). With the consecration of this complex structure, Red Square gained a focal point that has remained to this day.
The first ruler to attempt to bring order into the chaotic trading zone of Red Square was Boris Godunov, who in 1595 ordered the construction of brick trading rows on the east side of the square. These rows, designated Upper, Middle, and Lower, faced the east wall of the Kremlin and descended almost to the bank of the Moscow River. Tsar Boris also commanded the rebuilding of Lobnoe mesto, the site from which state proclamations were read. First mentioned in 1547, this wooden platform was rebuilt as a circular limestone form with a low parapet. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the area near Lobnoe mesto became notorious as a place of state executions.
The deliverance of Moscow from the Time of Troubles (1598-1613, an interregnum that included the occupation of the city by Polish forces) in the early seventeenth century was commemorated by the construction of the Church of the Kazan Mother of God (consecrated in 1636, razed in 1936, rebuilt in 1990-1993). In the same period, Red Square was repaved with flat logs, and during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, its north boundary was given a more imposing form with the construction of the brick Resurrection Gate (1680; razed in 1931 and rebuilt between 1994 and 1996). By the latter part of the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great embarked on another campaign to rid the square of wooden structures. As part of this process, the trading rows were expanded and Lob-noe mesto was shifted eastward to its present position.
In 1804 the square was repaved with cobblestones, but not until the rebuilding of Moscow after the 1812 fire was the dry moat filled and planted with trees. With the surge in Moscow’s economic and cultural significance in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Red Square underwent a fundamental change that included the building of the Historical Museum (1874-1883) and the expansion of the Upper and Middle Trading Rows (1888-1893 and 1889- 1891, respectively).
After the shift of the Soviet capital to Moscow in 1918, Red Square became the site of the country’s major demonstrations and its cobblestones were replaced with flat, granite paving blocks. The Lenin Mausoleum, first built of wood (1924) and then in its current form (1930), became the most visible symbol of the regime. On November 7,
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1941, ranks of soldiers marched past the mausoleum tribune directly to the front during the deciding phase of the Battle of Moscow. During the postwar period the world’s attention continued to be riveted by the Red Square parades, but perhaps the most startling event occurred on May 28, 1987, when Mathias Rust, a teen-aged German pilot, landed a small plane in the center of Red Square. The repercussions of this act, which Rust proclaimed a gesture of peace, extended not only to the Defense Ministry but to the entire Soviet governing apparatus.
In the post-Soviet area, Red Square continued to be a place of public demonstrations and tours. Although debates have continued about the role of certain features, such as the Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square seems to be one of the few areas of Moscow that will retain its present form into the twenty-first century. See also: ARCHITECTURE; CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL; KREMLIN; MOSCOW
Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Murrell, Kathleen Berton. (1990). Moscow: An Architectural History. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD
bellious provinces, along with thousands of captured White Russian officers and their families. White Russians were the counterrevolutionaries; the color white was a symbol of the old order and the color red was a symbol of revolution and communism.
Red Terror was carried out by a new institution, called the Cheka (an abbreviation of the Russian for “extraordinary commission”). The Cheka was a state institution, subordinate only to the Communist Party Central Committee. It was a political police force that did not enforce the law but instead administered systematic terror arbitrarily. Local Chekas, especially in the Ukraine, were notorious for their cruelty, and for mass executions carried out in the summer of 1919. It was a party instrument for the conduct of legalized lawlessness. Settling of accounts and personal gain were often motives for denunciation. New concepts entered the lexicon, among them “enemies of the people,” “hidden enemies,” and “suspect social origin.” The long term consequence of Red Terror was a disregard for individual guilt or innocence, the institutional-ization of a class-based approach to justice, the designation of “suspect social groups,” fear and intimidation of entire population and, subsequently, an even greater wave of state-sponsored terror under Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. See also: BOLSHEVISM; DZERZHINSKY, FELIX EDMUNDO-VICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF; TERRORISM
RED TERROR
Initiated in 1918, Red Terror was a state policy of the Bolshevik government to suppress, intimidate, or liquidate real or potential adversaries of the regime. It started on September 5, when the survival of the Bolshevik regime was threatened by foreign and domestic foes. Individual guilt did not matter; belonging to a suspect social class did. It was, in other words, a class-based approach not to justice but to settling accounts with potential enemies. Its first victims were former tsarist officers, policemen, aristocracy, opposition parties’ leaders, and property owners who had enjoyed privileges under the old regime. In 1918 about fifteen thousand were executed. In 1919, other social groups were targeted: former landlords, entrepreneurs, and Cossacks, attacked for their suspected anti-Bolshevik attitudes. In 1920 the policy was extended to peasants in reBIBLIOGRAPHY Brovkin, Vladimir. (1994). Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Courtois, St?phane et al. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, tr. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer, consulting ed., Mark Kramer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution. London: Oxford University Press. Leggett, George. (1981). The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police. New York: Oxford University Press. Maximoff, G.P. (1979). The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counterrevolution. Orkney, UK: Cienfigos Press. Melgunov, Sergey. (1974). The Red Terror in Russia. West-port, CT: Hyperion. Pipes, Richard. (1995). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.
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Swain, Geoffrey. (1996). The Origins of the Russian Civil War. London: Longman.
The Referendum of April 1993 was the first and second-to-last referendum in new Russia, if one counts the national vote on the constitution in December 1993. It was held as a result of opposition between President Boris Yeltsin and the Congress of People’s Deputies. Yeltsin, who was highly popular at the time, relied on direct mandate, which he received two years earlier in the elections, and the Congress made active efforts at limiting his power, changing the constitution in its favor. Not one of the referendum questions provided for direct action; thus they were only significant as cards in a political game. There were four referendum questions: 1. Do you have confidence in Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation? (“yes”: 58.7%; “no”: 39.3%); 2. Do you approve of the socioeconomic political policy conducted by the president of the RF (Russian Federation) and by the RF government since 1992? (“yes”: 53%; “no”: 44.5%); 3. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for the president of the RF? (“yes”: 49.5%, or 31.7% of all voters, “no”: 47%, or 30.1% of voters); 4. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for RF delegates? (“yes”: 67.2%, or 43% of voters; “no”: 30.1%, or 19.3% of voters).
With 64 percent participation, all questions but the third (concerning early presidential elections) had a majority of “yes” votes; however, less than half the voters responded to the questions concerning early presidential
