When the walls of the Kremlin turned red. When was the Kremlin red and when white? The Kremlin walls turned out so good that no one has ever taken possession of them.

Dolgoruky's Kremlin was tiny: it fit between the modern Tainitskaya, Troitskaya and Borovitskaya towers. It was surrounded by a wooden wall 1,200 meters long.

At first this fortress was called a city, and the lands around it were called a suburb. When it appeared, the fortress was renamed Old Town. And only after construction in 1331 the fortress was called the Kremlin, which meant “fortress in the center of the city.”

The word "comes from the Old Russian "krom" or "kremnos" (solid) - this was the name of the central part of ancient cities. Kremlin fortress walls and towers were usually placed at the highest places.

The word “Kremlin” could also come from the so-called “kremlin” (strong) wood from which city walls were built. And in 1873, researcher A.M. Kubarev suggested that this toponym could come from the Greek language, where “kremnos” means “steepness, a steep mountain above a bank or ravine.” The Moscow Kremlin really stands on a mountain on a steep river bank, and the words “kremn” and “kremnos” may have entered Russian speech with the Greek clergy who arrived in Moscow in the late 1320s along with Metropolitan Theognostus.

The Moscow Kremlin stands on Borovitsky Hill, at the confluence of the Moscow River and. Behind the walls of the fortress with an area of ​​9 hectares, residents of the surrounding villages could hide from danger.

Over time, the plantings grew. The fortress grew with them. In the 14th century, under Ivan Kalita, new walls of the Moscow Kremlin were built: wooden outside, coated with clay, stone inside. Since 1240, Rus' was under the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and the Moscow princes managed to build new fortresses in the center of the captured country!

The Kremlin under Dmitry Donskoy (after the fire of 1365) was built from white stone. Then the walls were almost 2 kilometers long - 200 meters shorter than today.

Fires and an earthquake in 1446 damaged the fortress, and under Ivan III at the end of the 15th century the Moscow Kremlin was rebuilt. For this purpose, Italian architects - specialists in fortification - Aristotle Fiorovanti, Pietro Antonio Solari, Marco Ruffo were invited. They built not just a fortress, but a holy city. The legendary Constantinople was laid out in three corners on all sides, seven miles apart, so the Italian craftsmen placed 7 red-brick towers (together with the corner ones) on each side of the Moscow Kremlin and tried to maintain the same distance from the center - . In this form and within such boundaries, the Moscow Kremlin has survived to this day.

The Kremlin walls turned out so good that no one has ever taken possession of them.

Two water lines and the slopes of Borovitsky Hill already gave the fortress a strategic advantage, and in the 16th century the Kremlin turned into an island: a canal was dug along the northeastern wall that connected the Neglinnaya and Moscow rivers. The southern wall of the fortress was built first, since it faced the river and was of great strategic importance - merchant ships arriving along the Moscow River moored here. Therefore, Ivan III ordered the removal of all buildings south of the Kremlin walls - since that time nothing has been built here except earthen ramparts and bastions.

In plan, the Kremlin walls form an irregular triangle with an area of ​​about 28 hectares. On the outside they are made of red brick, but inside they are built from the white stone of the old walls of the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy, and for greater strength they are filled with lime. They were built from half-pound bricks (weighing 8 kg). In proportions it resembled a large loaf of black bread. It was also called two-handed, because it could only be lifted with two hands. At the same time, brick was an innovation in Rus' at that time: they used to build from white stone and plinth (something in between brick and tile).

The height of the Kremlin walls ranges from 5 to 19 meters (depending on the topography), and in some places reaches the height of a six-story building. Along the perimeter of the walls there is a continuous passage 2 meters wide, but from the outside it is hidden by 1,045 merlon battlements. These M-shaped battlements are a typical feature of Italian fortification architecture (they were used to mark fortresses by supporters of imperial power in Italy). In everyday life they are called “swallowtail”. From below, the teeth seem small, but their height reaches 2.5 meters and their thickness is 65-70 centimeters. Each battlement is made of 600 half-pound bricks, and almost all the battlements have loopholes. During the battle, the archers covered the gaps between the battlements with wooden shields and fired through the cracks. Every prong is a sagittarius, people said.

The walls of the Moscow Kremlin were surrounded by rumors of underground wars. They defended the fortress from undermining. There was also a system of secret underground passages under the walls. In 1894, archaeologist N.S. Shcherbatov discovered them under almost all the towers. But his photographs disappeared in the 1920s.

There are 20 towers in the Moscow Kremlin. They played a key role in monitoring the approaches to the fortress and in defense. Many of the towers were drive-through, with gates. But now three are open for travel to the Kremlin: Spasskaya, Troitskaya and Borovitskaya.

The corner towers have a round or multifaceted shape and contain secret passages and wells inside to supply the fortress with water, while the remaining towers are quadrangular. This is understandable: the corner towers were supposed to “look” in all external directions, and the rest - forward, since they were covered from the sides by the neighboring ones. Also, the passage towers were additionally protected by diversion towers. Of these, only Kutafya has survived.

In general, in the Middle Ages, the towers of the Moscow Kremlin looked different - they did not have hipped tops, but there were wooden watchtowers. Then the fortress had a more severe and impregnable character. Now the walls and towers have lost their defensive significance. The gable roof also did not survive: it burned down in the 18th century.

By the 16th century, the Kremlin in Moscow acquired the appearance of a formidable and impregnable fortress. Foreigners called it a “castle” on Borovitsky Hill.

The Kremlin has been at the center of political and historical events many times. Russian tsars were crowned here and foreign ambassadors were received here. The Polish interventionists and the boyars who opened the gates for them took refuge here. The Kremlin tried to blow up Napoleon fleeing from Moscow. The Kremlin was going to be rebuilt according to Bazhenov’s grandiose project...

What can be compared with this Kremlin, which, surrounded by battlements, flaunting the golden domes of cathedrals, reclines on a high mountain, like a sovereign crown on the brow of a formidable ruler?.. It is the altar of Russia, on it many sacrifices worthy of the fatherland should be and are already being made.. No, it is impossible to describe neither the Kremlin, nor its battlements, nor its dark passages, nor its magnificent palaces... You must see, see... you must feel everything that they say to the heart and imagination!..

During Soviet times, the Moscow Kremlin housed the government. Access to the territory was closed, and the dissatisfied ones were “calmed down” by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya. Sverdlov.

Undoubtedly, the bourgeoisie and the philistines will raise a howl - the Bolsheviks, they say, are desecrating holy places, but this should least of all bother us. The interests of the proletarian revolution are higher than prejudices.

During the reign of Soviet power, the architectural ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin suffered more than in its entire history. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 54 structures inside the Kremlin walls. Less than half have survived. For example, in 1918, on the personal instructions of V.I. Lenin's monument to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was demolished (he was killed in February 1905), and at the same time the monument to Alexander II was destroyed (a monument to Lenin was later erected on its pedestal). And in 1922, more than 300 pounds of silver and 2 pounds of gold, more than 1,000 precious stones, and even the shrine of Patriarch Hermogenes were taken from the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin.

Congresses of the Soviets were held, a kitchen was set up in the Golden Chamber, and a dining room was set up in Granovita. The Small Nicholas Palace turned into a club for workers of Soviet institutions, a gym was opened in the Catherine Church of the Ascension Monastery, and a Kremlin hospital was opened in the Chudov Monastery. In the 1930s, the monasteries and the Small Nicholas Palace were demolished, and the entire eastern part of the Kremlin turned into ruins.

During the Great Patriotic War, the Kremlin was one of the main targets of aerial bombardment of Moscow. But thanks to camouflage, the fortress “disappeared.”

The red brick walls were repainted, and windows and doors were painted on them to imitate individual buildings. The battlements on top of the walls and the stars of the Kremlin towers were covered with plywood roofs, and the green roofs were painted to look rusty.

The camouflage made it difficult for German pilots to find the Kremlin, but did not save them from bombing. In Soviet times, they said that not a single bomb fell on the Kremlin. In fact, 15 high-explosive and 150 small incendiary bombs fell. And a bomb weighing a ton hit, and part of the building collapsed. British Prime Minister Churchill, who later arrived in the Kremlin, even stopped and took off his hat as he passed by the gap.

In 1955, the Moscow Kremlin was partially opened to the public - it turned into an open-air museum. At the same time, residence in the Kremlin was prohibited (the last residents left in 1961).

In 1990, the Kremlin ensemble was included in the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage sites. At the same time, the Kremlin became a government residence, but retained its museum functions. Therefore, there are uniformed employees on the territory who quickly guide lost tourists “on the right path.” But every year more and more corners of the Kremlin become open for walks.

The Kremlin is also often filmed for film. And in the film “The Third Meshchanskaya” you can even see the Moscow Kremlin before the demolition of the Chudov and Ascension monasteries.

They say that......The Kremlin walls were built by Ivan the Terrible (Ivan III was also called “The Terrible”). He called 20,000 village men and ordered:
- So that everything will be ready in a month!
They paid little - 15 kopecks a day. Therefore, many died of hunger. Many were beaten to death. New workers were brought in to take their place. And a month later the Kremlin walls were completed. That's why they say that the Kremlin is standing on its bones.
...in the lower tiers of the bell tower the shadow of Ivan IV often wanders. Even the memories of Nicholas II have been preserved, how on the eve of the coronation the spirit of Ivan the Terrible appeared to him and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
And when False Dmitry was killed in the Moscow Kremlin, Muscovites sometimes began to see the outlines of the Pretender’s figure flashing in the twilight between the battlements of the walls. He was also seen on the August night of 1991 - before the coup attempt.
And one evening, the watchman on duty in the building next to the Patriarchal Chambers (there was housing there under Stalin) raised the alarm. One of the apartments on the second floor was occupied by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov, and the duty officer's post was located in the hallway of the former Yezhov apartments. Around midnight, the watchman heard footsteps on the stairs, then the jingling of a key in the lock, and the creak of a door opening and closing. He realized that someone had left the building and tried to apprehend the intruder. The duty officer jumped out onto the porch and saw, a few meters from the house, a small figure in a long overcoat and cap, well known from old photographs. But the ghost of the security officer melted into thin air. We saw Yezhov several more times.
The spirit of Stalin did not appear in the Moscow Kremlin, but the ghost of Lenin is a frequent guest. The spirit of the leader made his first visit during his lifetime - on October 18, 1923. According to eyewitnesses, the terminally ill Lenin unexpectedly arrived from Gorki to the Kremlin. Alone, without security, he went to his office and walked around the Kremlin, where he was greeted by a detachment of cadets from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The head of security was at first taken aback, and then rushed to call Gorki to find out why Vladimir Ilyich was unaccompanied. Then he learned that Lenin had not gone anywhere. After this incident, real devilry began in the leader’s Kremlin apartment: the sounds of moving furniture, the crackling of a telephone, the creaking of floorboards and even voices were heard. This continued until Ilyich’s apartment with all his belongings was transported to Gorki. But until now, security and Kremlin employees sometimes see on frosty January evenings

65 years ago, Stalin ordered the Moscow Kremlin to be repainted red. Here are collected pictures and photographs depicting the Moscow Kremlin from different eras.

Or rather, the Kremlin was originally red-brick - the Italians, who in 1485-1495 built a new fortress for the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III Vasilyevich on the site of the old white-stone fortifications, erected walls and towers from ordinary brick - such as the Milanese Castello Sforzesco castle.

The Kremlin became white only in the 18th century, when the fortress walls were whitewashed according to the fashion of that time (like the walls of all other Russian Kremlins - in Kazan, Zaraysk, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov the Great, etc.).

J. Delabart. View of Moscow from the balcony of the Kremlin Palace towards the Moskvoretsky Bridge. 1797

The White Kremlin appeared before Napoleon's army in 1812, and a few years later, already washed from the soot of warming Moscow, it again blinded travelers with its snow-white walls and tents. The famous French playwright Jacques-François Anselot, who visited Moscow in 1826, described the Kremlin in his memoirs “Six mois en Russie”: “With this we will leave the Kremlin, my dear Xavier; but, looking back at this ancient citadel again, we will regret that, while correcting the destruction caused by the explosion, the builders removed from the walls the centuries-old patina that gave them so much grandeur. The white paint that hides the cracks gives the Kremlin an appearance of youth that belies its shape and obliterates its past.”

S. M. Shukhvostov. View of Red Square. 1855 (?) year

P. Vereshchagin. View of the Moscow Kremlin. 1879

Kremlin. Chromolithograph from the collection of the US Library of Congress, 1890.

White Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, 1883

White Nikolskaya Tower, 1883

Moscow and the Moscow River. Photo by Murray Howe (USA), 1909

Photo by Murray Howe: peeling walls and towers covered with a “noble urban patina.” 1909

The Kremlin greeted the beginning of the 20th century as a real ancient fortress, covered, in the words of the writer Pavel Ettinger, with a “noble urban patina”: it was sometimes whitewashed for important events, and the rest of the time it stood as it should be - with smudges and shabby. The Bolsheviks, who made the Kremlin a symbol and citadel of all state power, were not at all embarrassed by the white color of the fortress walls and towers.

Red Square, Parade of athletes, 1932. Pay attention to the Kremlin walls, freshly whitewashed for the holiday

Moscow, 1934-35 (?)

But then the war began, and in June 1941, the commandant of the Kremlin, Major General Nikolai Spiridonov, proposed repainting all the walls and towers of the Kremlin - for camouflage. A fantastic project for that time was developed by the group of academician Boris Iofan: walls of houses and black holes in windows were painted on white walls, artificial streets were built on Red Square, and the empty Mausoleum (Lenin’s body was evacuated from Moscow on July 3, 1941) was covered with a plywood cap , depicting a house. And the Kremlin naturally disappeared - the disguise confused all the cards for the fascist pilots.

We're used to seeing Moscow Kremlin red - with red walls, towers, battlements - and many people perceive the brick coloring of the country's main fortress as something integral, they say, there is a red wall on Red Square. But is this really so?

Actually, no: in the past it was customary to whitewash the walls and towers of the Kremlin.

But they did not immediately begin to whitewash the Kremlin. In the years 1482-1495, when Italian architects were building the Moscow fortress, no one had any thoughts of making it white: then the Kremlin walls and towers were considered primarily a fortification structure, and it would have been strategically wrong to whiten them - after all, if anyone hits the wall shell, the degree of its damage would immediately become noticeable to the enemy. In addition, building red-brick fortresses was simply in the traditions of the Italians: for example, in Milan, not long before, a brick building similar to the Moscow Kremlin was built Sforza Castle(Castello Sforzesco) - and even the battlements on its walls were exactly the same.

It was decided to repaint the Kremlin white much later - at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, when its walls and towers lost their fortification significance. For reasons of beauty and following the fashion trends of that time, the fortress was whitewashed - like many other Russian Kremlins.

However, this does not mean that the Kremlin was always snow-white: the walls of the fortress were whitewashed on the occasion of holidays, celebrations and various important events (the coronation of kings, for example), the rest of the time they could be shabby and, again, look more red than white . In addition, individual towers - for example, Spasskaya and Nikolskaya - were not always painted white and were left in red for decorative purposes, that is, in some periods of its history the Kremlin could be partially white and red at the same time.

White Kremlin in photographs

Fortunately, photography caught up with the time of whitewashing, and modern Muscovites have access to a sufficient amount of photographic evidence in which the towers and walls of the Kremlin are depicted as both white and red.

In Noël Lerebourg's colored daguerreotype, which was taken in 1842 and is considered the oldest known photograph of Moscow, the walls and towers - Borovitskaya, Vodovzvodnaya and Blagoveshchenskaya - of the Kremlin are captured in pure white.

Photo: Lerebourg daguerreotype, 1842, pastvu.com

In a photograph from 1856, the Kremlin's Vodovzvodnaya Tower appears bright white - perhaps whitewashed shortly before on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II.

In the photo of 1895-1897, the Kremlin is already multi-colored: the Vodovzvodnaya tower is still brightly whitewashed, the Blagoveshchenskaya and Tainitskaya - as well as the wall along the Moscow River - look shabby, but the Borovitskaya tower and the adjacent wall seem to have no traces of whitewashing at all, or it is completely came off or was cleaned.

Photo: view of the Moscow Kremlin from the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, 1895-1897, pastvu.com

The Spasskaya Tower on a postcard from approximately the same years - 1895-1903 - is red with decorative white elements: apparently, it was not whitewashed in those years for aesthetic reasons. The wall adjacent to the tower looks shabby, that is, only the tower was left red - the wall around it was whitewashed.

Photo: Red Square and the Moscow Kremlin (Spasskaya Tower), 1895-1903, pastvu.com

A photograph from 1908 again shows Vodovzvodnaya, Blagoveshchenskaya, Tainitskaya and Borovitskaya towers and the adjacent Kremlin walls shabby: they were clearly whitewashed, but quite a long time ago.

Photo: view of the Moscow Kremlin from the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, 1908, pastvu.com

White Kremlin in paintings by artists

In addition to photographs, the white Kremlin walls can be seen in paintings by artists from different years.

Friedrich Hilferding's colored drawing "Spasskaya Gate and Intercession Cathedral" (original - 1787) presents the viewer with a red Spasskaya Tower with decorative white elements and white adjacent walls. The top of the Alarm Tower is also painted white.

In the drawing by the artist of Italian origin Giacomo Quarenghi (1797), the Spasskaya Tower and the adjacent walls are depicted as white.

On Fyodor Alekseev’s “Red Square in Moscow” (1801) - one of the most famous and discussed images of Red Square - the Spasskaya Tower and the Kremlin walls are depicted white, but already quite darkened.

The Kremlin is presented in an interesting way in the paintings of Maxim Vorobyov, painted in 1818 and 1819: the painter depicts it from the side of the Ustinsky Bridge (1818), then from the side of the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge (1819) - in fact, from opposite angles. All the towers and walls visible in the paintings are white and slightly shabby.

One of the most famous images of the white Kremlin was the painting “View of the Kremlin” (“View of the Moscow Kremlin”) by Pyotr Vereshchagin, painted in 1879. It depicts a view of the fortress from the side of the modern Sofia Embankment: all visible towers and walls of the Kremlin are brightly whitened.

When did they stop whitewashing the Kremlin?

When and why the Moscow Kremlin stopped being whitewashed is a rather controversial question, on which one can only unequivocally answer that this happened during the Soviet years.

There is an opinion that the Kremlin turned red for ideological reasons - they say, for a “red” government, a red Kremlin. There are also speculations that the walls were repainted by special order of Joseph Stalin after the end of the Great Patriotic War.

In reality, the white color of the Kremlin did not bother the new government too much: in any case, immediately after the Revolution, no one was going to repaint the walls, and they continued to peel uncontrollably until the beginning of the war, when, in order to camouflage the fortress, they were painted to look like urban buildings. After clearing the “camouflage,” the Kremlin simply did not continue to be whitewashed: was this dictated by banal simplicity (after all, leaving it red and slightly tinting it for restoration is much easier than whitewashing), the desire for historical aesthetics (after all, the Kremlin was originally red after all), or ideological considerations - unknown.

One way or another, from the restoration on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Moscow in 1947 to the present day, the fortress remains red.

Everyone has already heard that the Kremlin was white. Many articles have already been written about this, but people still manage to argue. But when did they start whitewashing it, and when did they stop? On this issue, statements in all articles diverge, as do the thoughts in people’s heads. Some write that whitewashing began in the 18th century, others that at the beginning of the 17th century, and still others are trying to provide evidence that the Kremlin walls were not whitewashed at all. The phrase is widely circulated that the Kremlin was white until 1947, and then suddenly Stalin ordered it to be repainted red. Was it so? Let's finally dot the i's, fortunately there are enough sources, both picturesque and photographic.

Let's understand the colors of the Kremlin: red, white, when and why —>

So, the current Kremlin was built by the Italians at the end of the 15th century, and, of course, they did not whitewash it. The fortress retained the natural color of red brick; there are several similar ones in Italy; the closest analogue is the Sforza Castle in Milan. And whitewashing fortifications in those days was dangerous: when a cannonball hits a wall, the brick is damaged, the whitewash crumbles, and a vulnerable spot is clearly visible, where you should aim again to quickly destroy the wall.

So, one of the first images of the Kremlin, where its color is clearly visible, is the icon of Simon Ushakov “Praise to the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. Tree of the Russian State. It was written in 1668, and the Kremlin is red.

The whitewashing of the Kremlin was first mentioned in written sources in 1680.
The historian Bartenev, in the book “The Moscow Kremlin in the Old Time and Now” writes: “In a memorandum submitted on July 7, 1680 to the Tsar, it is said that the Kremlin fortifications “were not whitewashed”, and the Spassky Gate “were painted in ink and white in brick". The note asked: should the Kremlin walls be whitewashed, left as is, or painted “in brick” like the Spassky Gate? The Tsar ordered the Kremlin to be whitewashed with lime..."
So, at least since the 1680s, our main fortress has been whitewashed.

1766 Painting by P. Balabin based on an engraving by M. Makhaev. The Kremlin here is clearly white.

1797, Gerard Delabarte.

1819, artist Maxim Vorobyov.

In 1826, the French writer and playwright Francois Anselot came to Moscow; in his memoirs he described the white Kremlin: “With this we will leave the Kremlin, my dear Xavier; but, looking back at this ancient citadel again, we will regret that, while correcting the destruction caused by the explosion, the builders removed from the walls the centuries-old patina that gave them so much grandeur. The white paint that hides the cracks gives the Kremlin an appearance of youth that belies its shape and obliterates its past.”

1830s, artist Rauch.

1842, daguerreotype of Lerebourg, the first documentary image of the Kremlin.

1850, Joseph Andreas Weiss.

1852, one of the very first photographs of Moscow, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is under construction, and the walls of the Kremlin are whitewashed.

1856, preparations for the coronation of Alexander II. For this event, the whitewash was renewed in some places, and the structures on the Vodovzvodnaya Tower were given a frame for illumination.

The same year, 1856, view in the opposite direction, the one closest to us is the Taynitskaya tower with the archery facing the embankment.

Photo from 1860.

Photo from 1866.

1866-67.

1879, artist Pyotr Vereshchagin.

1880, painting from the English school of painting. The Kremlin is still white. Based on all the previous images, we conclude that the Kremlin wall along the river was whitewashed in the 18th century, and remained white until the 1880s.

1880s, Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower of the Kremlin from the inside. The whitewash is gradually crumbling, revealing the red brick walls.

1884, wall along the Alexander Garden. The whitewash was very crumbling, only the teeth were renewed.

1897, artist Nesterov. The walls are already closer to red than to white.

1909, peeling walls with remains of whitewash.

The same year, 1909, the whitewash on the Vodovzvodnaya Tower is still holding up well. Most likely it was whitewashed for the last time later than the rest of the walls. From several previous photographs it is clear that the walls and most of the towers were last whitewashed in the 1880s.

1911 Grotto in the Alexander Garden and the Middle Arsenal Tower.

S. Vinogradov. Moscow Kremlin 1910s.

1911, artist Yuon. In reality, the walls were, of course, a dirtier shade, the whitewash stains more obvious than in the picture, but the overall color scheme was already red.

1914, Konstantin Korovin.

The colorful and shabby Kremlin in a photograph from the 1920s.

Kremlin. Chromolithograph from the collection of the US Library of Congress, 1890.

And the whitewash on the Vodovzvodnaya Tower was still in place, mid-1930s.

But then the war began, and in June 1941, the commandant of the Kremlin, Major General Nikolai Spiridonov, proposed repainting all the walls and towers of the Kremlin - for camouflage. A fantastic project for that time was developed by the group of academician Boris Iofan: walls of houses and black holes in windows were painted on white walls, artificial streets were built on Red Square, and the empty Mausoleum (Lenin’s body was evacuated from Moscow on July 3, 1941) was covered with a plywood cap , depicting a house. And the Kremlin naturally disappeared - the disguise confused all the cards for the fascist pilots.

“Disguised” Red Square: instead of the Mausoleum, a cozy house appeared. 1941-1942.

"Disguised" Kremlin: houses and windows are painted on the walls. 1942

During the restoration of the Kremlin walls and towers in 1947 - for the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Moscow. Then the idea arose in Stalin’s head to repaint the Kremlin red: A red flag on the red Kremlin on Red Square - so that everything would sound in unison and ideologically correct.

Kremlin workers carry out this instruction of Comrade Stalin to this day.

Late 1940s, the Kremlin after restoration for the 800th anniversary of Moscow. Here the tower is clearly red, with white details.

And two more color photographs from the 1950s. Somewhere they touched up the paint, somewhere they left peeling walls. There was no total repainting in red.

1950s These two photos are taken from here: http://humus.livejournal.com/4115131.html

Spasskaya Tower

But on the other hand, everything turned out to be not so simple. Some towers stand out from the general chronology of whitewashing.

1778, Red Square in a painting by Friedrich Hilferding. The Spasskaya Tower is red with white details, but the walls of the Kremlin are whitewashed.

1801, watercolor by Fyodor Alekseev. Even with all the diversity of the picturesque range, it is clear that the Spasskaya Tower was still whitewashed at the end of the 18th century.

And after the fire of 1812, the color red was returned again. This is a painting by English masters, 1823. The walls are invariably white.

1855, artist Shukhvostov. If you look closely, you can see that the colors of the wall and the tower are different, the tower is darker and redder.

View of the Kremlin from Zamoskvorechye, painting by an unknown artist, mid-19th century. Here the Spasskaya Tower is whitewashed again, most likely for the celebrations of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856.

Photograph from the early 1860s. The tower is white.

Another photograph from the early to mid 1860s. The whitewash of the tower is crumbling in some places.

Late 1860s. And then suddenly the tower was painted red again.

1870s. The tower is red.

1880s. The red paint is peeling off, and here and there you can see newly painted areas and patches. After 1856, the Spasskaya Tower was never whitewashed again.

Nikolskaya Tower

1780s, Friedrich Hilferding. The Nikolskaya Tower is still without a Gothic top, decorated with early classical decor, red, with white details. In 1806-07, the tower was built on, in 1812 it was undermined by the French, almost half destroyed, and restored at the end of the 1810s.

1823, fresh Nikolskaya Tower after restoration, red.

1883, white tower. Perhaps they whitewashed it together with Spasskaya for the coronation of Alexander II. And the whitewash was renewed for the coronation of Alexander III in 1883.

1912 The White Tower remained until the revolution.

1925 The tower is already red with white details. It became red as a result of restoration in 1918, after revolutionary damage.

Red Square, Parade of athletes, 1932. Pay attention to the Kremlin walls, freshly whitewashed for the holiday

Trinity Tower

1860s. The tower is white.

In the watercolor of the English school of painting from 1880, the tower is gray, the color given by spoiled whitewash.

And in 1883 the tower was already red. Painted or cleaned of whitewash, most likely for the coronation of Alexander III.

Let's summarize. According to documentary sources, the Kremlin was first whitewashed in 1680; in the 18th and 19th centuries it was white, with the exception of the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya and Trinity towers in certain periods. The walls were last whitewashed in the early 1880s; at the beginning of the 20th century, the whitewash was updated only on the Nikolskaya Tower, and possibly also on Vodovzvodnaya. Since then, the whitewash gradually crumbled and was washed away, and by 1947 the Kremlin naturally took on the ideologically correct red color; in some places it was tinted during restoration.

Kremlin walls today

Today, in some places the Kremlin retains the natural color of red brick, perhaps with light tinting. These are bricks from the 19th century, the result of another restoration.

Wall from the river side. Here you can clearly see that the bricks are painted red. Photo from Ilya Varlamov's blog

All old photos, unless otherwise noted, are taken from https://pastvu.com/

Alexander Ivanov worked on the publication.

And this is what the Kremlin would look like now if it were still whitewashed

In fact, there are many more illustrations of the white Kremlin than were in the original post - I added something, and that’s not all.

The Moscow Kremlin, which we can admire today, was built by Italians from red brick in 1485–1495 by order of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III Vasilyevich. It was not plastered or painted, so the original color of the walls and towers was red.

Fortresses with similar architecture can be found in Europe, for example in Verona and Milan. The most characteristic element, the battlements on the wall in the form of a swallowtail or the letter M, was considered a symbol of imperial power. The pope's opponents, the Ghibellines, had it in their fortresses. The Guelphs, who recognized papal authority above secular ones, built castles with rectangular battlements, so in those days it was possible to distinguish the owner’s belonging to one or another clan.

In medieval Italy, the question of which power is more important - secular or spiritual - was very relevant. In the literal sense, many copies were broken. Since the Milanese architects carried out the order of a representative of secular power, they considered that the imperial sign would be closer to the Russian ruler.

Moscow white stone

It is quite possible that the phrase “White stone Moscow” appeared back in the 14th century under Dmitry Donskoy, when the most important sections of the wall and tower of the originally wooden fortress were replaced with stone ones. White stone fortifications twice saved the city from enemy invasion. In the 15th century, these walls were dismantled or used as foundations during the construction of the brick fortifications that we see today.

In the 18th century, following the fashion trends of the time, the color of the walls and towers was changed, and the brick was whitewashed. This happened not only in Moscow, almost all fortresses in Russian cities were painted white. Napoleon in 1812 saw the Kremlin white. After the fires it was repaired and painted white again.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Moscow Kremlin remained formally white, that is, it was whitewashed for various events, but most of the time its walls looked shabby, covered with a “noble urban patina.” Even after the events of 1917, he remained white; this did not bother the Bolsheviks at all.

When did the Kremlin turn red?

In June 1941, it was decided to disguise the Kremlin as residential areas. Windows of houses were painted on the walls, the mausoleum was covered with a plywood cap in the form of an ordinary city building. By the way, everything was done efficiently - German air raids did not cause any damage.
For the 800th anniversary of Moscow, in 1947, the Kremlin was restored, and the walls and towers, by order of Joseph Stalin, were painted red, which harmonized well with the spirit of that era. Since then, the color of the walls of the Moscow Kremlin has been maintained red, periodically tinted to make it look elegant.