on august 28, 2023, on the feast of the dormition of the most holy theotokos, patriarch kirill consecrated the two-part icon on the inner western side of the spasskaya tower, one of nine gate shrines that, on the instructions of the president, through the efforts of the st. andrew the first-called foundation, the kremlin commandant, restorers and art historians, were able to return to their historical place, on five towers, at a fateful time for the country. lord, we live in a time when today the spiritual enemy is terrible, who is capable of directing us along such a false path of development human civilization, that at the end of this development there is death. there are very few forces today that are capable of resisting this terrible civilizational development. by the grace of god, russia is such a force.

when in 2007 the st. andrew the first-called foundation came up with the initiative to recreate the gate icons on the towers of the moscow kremlin, they were considered lost, as a result of research in the blind icon cases of the spasskaya and nikolskaya towers behind the metal mesh and plaster , two preserved pictorial images were discovered, and it was a real miracle. but the other gate icons were irretrievably lost. specialists from the interregional scientific and restoration art department carefully examined the icon cases of the fortress wall, but this did not bring results. and then, then, the members of the foundation, the members of the board of trustees of the foundation turned to the appropriate, as they say, authorities with a proposal to consider the issue of.

restoration, which for our country had a special meaning, and in order to understand why, let's visit several very important places, let's start with the historical borderland in the bryansk region. among the dense forests of bryansk stands the svensky monastery, one of the most ancient cloisters in the country. in 1288 , one of the earliest icons of rus', the pechersk mother of god, was found here. the bryansk prince roman,

who returned the ancient russian city of chernigov from lithuania, once began to weaken and sent for the miraculous icon of the mother of god to the kiev-pechersk lavra. the monastery, which had been under the power of enemies so many times, but never lost its living connection with the present rus, sent the revered icon to the prince by river. and this is the very place from the annals where the boat with the relic moored after a long journey. the rowers decided to go to bed for the night , and a miracle happened here. the icon soared from the river to the mountain and was found in the branches of an oak tree. it grew on this very spot, where the gate church is now. then the svensky monastery itself was built here. the image of the cave mother of god on the two-part icon on the inner western side of the spasskaya tower was perhaps the most

difficult for modern icon painters, because all the gatehouses have a strict canon of construction, composition, color, silhouette recognition, calculation of the range of perception. this is... probably the most important icon, which will be in terms of labor intensity in terms of significance, here in this work is a two-part icon of the savior, hand-made at the bottom of the mother of god of the caves, next to the mother of god are two metropolitans, peter and alexei, the most famous, our metropolitans, saints for the moscow kremlin, this is very...

but research has allowed us to restore iconographic programs to determine the time of the most optimal existence of these

those very images, to find out what the destroyed icons looked like, we went to the research institute of architecture... the kremlin, which had not yet suffered from napoleon. and here let's make another very important digression and go to the small town of mozhaisk.

mozhaisk is an ancient outpost of the russian state since vladimir manomakh founded a wooden kremlin here in 1113, it was the largest city and the strongest fortress on the western borders of the muscovite state. it was then that the expression "to drive behind" appeared. mozhai, that is, to drive the enemy out of the russian land. once in the 10th century, the enemy besieged the city and then in the sky. centuries, on which the image of st. nicholas was located, a miraculous carved image, look,

this is exactly how the protector of the mozhaisk and moscow lands was located here from the 14th century, and imagine how deep the connection is, the kremlin and moscow, there the nikolskaya tower with the image of st. nicholas of mazhai protects the heart of our russia, and here st. nicholas of mozhai protects the borders of the moscow principality. european conquerors to the saint was almost irrational. the french partially blew up the nikolskaya tower, but only the icon case with nikola survived, napoleon himself was looking for the image of the saint in mozhaisk. but the residents walled up the revered image in the wall of the cathedral, and a century and a half later this place was found. this is exactly the supposed place where in 1812 - the residents of mozhaisk hid the image of nikola to save it from the invasion of napoleon's army. they laid it with masonry, whitewashed it, so the image was preserved. and in exactly the

same way, more than 100 years later, unknown restorers saved it under a layer of plaster on nikolskaya and ispasskaya towers of the kremlin icons, which from the first days began to irritate the bolsheviks so much. notes of the kremlin commandant, pavel malkov: dirty, blackened, almost entirely with broken glass and long-extinguished lamps. and i had the idea to get rid of the icons sticking out on the kremlin towers and cathedrals,

constantly an eyesore. however, i decided to ask vladimir ilich or yakov mikhailovich, here the opportunity presented itself. and here is what else malkov writes in his memoirs: leaving the entrance of the council of people's commissars, we called the tsar bell drew level with the annunciation cathedral. here i asked vladimir ilyech whether the icons should be removed. he said it right. they should definitely be removed, but they couldn't be removed right away, the public resisted, because the gatehouses had not only spiritual and artistic value, they were a symbol of the struggle of the moscow state for sovereignty and independence.

ancient pskov, which for centuries held back the onslaught of the west, is called the house of the holy trinity. on the gates of the pskov kremlin you can still see the icon of the holy trinity, it is not identical to the one that was recreated on the troitskaya tower of the moscow kremlin, but their spiritual protective connection. undoubtedly. now i am doing gilding work on the image of the trinity icon for the troitskaya tower of the moscow kremlin. then this gold will be beautifully divided into blackenings. the wings of angels will be gilded, all the halos of saints will be gilded. you see a unique document. this is a passport of the monuments of the moscow kremlin of the early 20th century. in the inventory of the fortress walls and towers of the kremlin, employees of the central state restoration workshops

left sensational information for researchers. in 1930, the frescoes above the spassky, well here nikolsky troitsky gates are covered with plaster through a net. and just relying on this very point from this passport, well, we thought that on the troitsky gates everything was still preserved. but the study of the walls did not give any results. the holy trinity artists were created anew, painted faces, constantly harmonized with the canon, we take as a basis some works, icons, in this case the royal masters, from which we make copies of the recreation. this image

the most important for our country. quite recently , andrei rublev's masterpiece, the icon of the holy trinity, returned to the lavra of st. sergius of radonish, where the abbot of the russian land blessed prince dmitry donskoy for the victorious battle of kulikovo. president vladimir came to bow to the great shrine of iraq with the relics of the founder of the monastery. from the east, south, north and west, their location above the defensive towers had a deep meaning, and they spread out sweetly,

more than 10,000 are buried here, this is a cave. saints and saints, the ancient pskov-pechersk monastery is guarded that rest in the underground caves, we remember all the souls of us, we will make eternal. and in the towers of the monastery there are five gate icons. and here there is a living connection with the moscow kremlin. the fortress walls of the moscow kremlin, they symbolize the borders of the state. accordingly, each of the towers of this

fortification structure is an outpost of our state. the same outpost is ... mskovo-pecharsky monastery, the westernmost borders, which are connected with centuries-old events, the offensive from our, let's say, unfriendly countries, heroic defense of our state, our fatherland. the security connection of the pskov land, it probably echoes in these gate icons, which are in the pechersk monastery and in the moscow kremlin.

archival photographs helped to recreate the kazan mother of god with angels on the inner side of the nikolskaya tower. and this is one of the early images of the kremlin strelnitsa, which we are showing on television for the first time. such an unusual image for modern perception of the nikolskaya tower, decorated with the coronation catherine ii, became another important piece of evidence in the painstaking research. now the restorers knew for sure that it really was in this place.

according to photographs, it was necessary to recreate the image completely repeating all the scales of the figures of the movement of the details, in general , what was there was recreated in the greatest possible detail. 100 years ago.

opposite the nikolskaya tower, also destroyed by the bolsheviks and recreated in 1993, the kazan cathedral, where the great shrine of the same name is located, before which minin and pozharsky prayed, the icon itself saved russia in the troubled time. the kazan icon of the mother of god was an all-russian shrine; on the days of its celebration , a crowded religious procession headed by the tsar and the patriarch would take place from the kremlin, therefore. it is not surprising that a copy of the kazan icon of the mother of god was also installed above one of the kremlin gates, on one of the nikolskaya towers, overshadowing this nationwide procession. the images of the equal-to-the-apostles constantine

and helena, grand duke vladimir, and the blessed princes boris and gleb appeared on the kutafya tower back in the 17th century. and this is how, writing down every detail, checking with canonical images. the entrance, on it there is also a small icon case with an icon above the passage, which is located directly above the nest arch, the previous gatehouses were painted on wood and retained their color only due to endless restoration, the recreated icons were decided to be painted on a brass base,

centuries, and its history is closely connected with the first temple of moscow. that church was previously wooden, the church on the pine forest, in that forest and rublennaya, these are the chronicle lines about the first temple of moscow, which really in the xix

century , the church of st. john the baptist was built here from sosiny on borovitsky hill. then it became stone and during the construction of the great kremlin palace, by order of nicholas i, it was moved to the second tier of the borovitskaya tower. if you mentally draw a line from the site of the first kremlin temple and the borovitskaya tower. on the one hand, the completed image of prince vladimir on kutafya, the lines converge in the figure of the baptizer of rus on the borovitsky hill, whose figure faces south, towards chersanes, where rus was baptized. this is where the kiev prince came, pagan, the king, the heir to byzantium, left here. and now we are fighting for the values ​​that the prince found here, right here, in this font of chersanus. we pray for victory, and through victory we will receive peace.

the copy of the korsun icon, which vladimir received at baptism , has been praying in ancient izborsk for many centuries. izborsk is a city of russian statehood, it was founded by rurik's brother truvar, and today a stone cross rises above the prince's grave, so it was no accident that vladimir transferred the copy of the icon here, to the city whose patron saint was here at... a truly amazing echo of the kremlin icons. saint nicholas above the gates of the city fortress. father dmitry, and how long has the mounted icon been in this place? since

the foundation of the fortress, in 1341, that is , more than 700 years. yes, but let's return to the important two-part icon on the spasskaya tower, with which we began our story, its upper plot is associated with... the icon, famous for its healings, which gave the name to the main tower of the kremlin, was brought to the capital by order of tsar alexei mikhailovich from the trinity church, now in its place is the savior cathedral of kirov. the tsar himself solemnly, surrounded by the clergy , solemnly met this image on red square, which was. transferred by him through the fralovskiye dedy gates of the ruspensky cathedral of the kremlin. so the spasskaya tower is the only one where christ is depicted from

both sides at once. and although the savior from vyatka gave the name to the central kremlin tower, the main state view of the kremlin is still the savior of smolensk. in 1514, grand duke vasily. the third father of ivan the terrible takes smolensk by storm returns the original russian city after a century of lithuanian occupation. here on the banks of the dnieper not only a barrier to the military expansion of the west was erected, but the rights of orthodox christians were protected from the oppression of the catholic gentry.

smolensk is called the key to moscow, on the passage gates of its towers there are icon cases reminiscent of the gate of the capital. perhaps the arrangement of the icons on the towers of the moscow kremlin served as a model for the gate icons of the smolensk fortress wall, but the reverse process is also possible, this is also certain. in in honor of the return of the city vasily ii builds on the water.

together they defended the state during all the fateful trials. and during the prayer on the borodino field, this icon was carried along the rows of russian troops, maleben was served in front of it. the intercessor is carried by the mother. smolensk mother. yarodiya.

another mysterious story is connected with the smolensk savior, once there were two stone chapels near the spasskaya tower, in one of them a copy of the gate icon was kept. in 1925, the spasskaya chapel was closed, it was located at...

the iconostasis of gravity of its center holds the borders of the state, where the future of russian civilization is being decided today. it was here that people came to worship the image of st. nicholas, now many soldiers who are leaving for the north-eastern military district come here, ask for the blessing of prayers, and together with them we hold prayers for the preservation of soldiers, their lives, the victory of our russian fatherland. being even on the border, and here we sometimes have a lot of unrest, and we feel protected precisely by the prayers of the holy mother of god, to ask, like that prince raman, to ask for healing and insight for that slavic the people who today, one might say, have gone blind, i would like these people to see clearly, so to speak, to come to such a point, to say that first,