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Lobnoye (or Forehead) Mesto stands on the Red Square near Moscow Kremlin. In the medieval times its was used for public executions of criminals as well as proclamation of important laws that were signed by a monarch. Lobnoye Mesto can be translated as a 'forehead place'. It is a clear reference to Golgotha or 'place of the skull' in Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ was said to be Crucified. Saint Basil Cathedral was often referred simply as a 'Jerusalem' as a reference to the Holy City near Golgotha.
Initially, the term “Place of the Skull or Forehead”
appeared in the Russian translation of the Gospel of John: “And, bearing
his cross, Jesus Christ went out to the place called the Skull, in
Hebrew “Golgotha”. This definition was used when describing the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher in the monument of pilgrimage literature of the
XII century "The Life and Walking of Abbot Daniel from the Russian
Land".
According to modern researchers, the idea of building the
Execution Ground in Moscow belonged to Metropolitan Macarius. The
concept involved the construction of a complex on Red Square, the center
of which was the Pokrovsky Cathedral, symbolizing Heavenly Jerusalem.
This assumption is confirmed by the fact that in the 17th century the
temple was sometimes called Jerusalem, and the Spassky Gate - Jerusalem.
The exact date of construction of the Execution Ground is unknown.
In the annals, it was first mentioned in 1549, when the young Tsar Ivan
IV used the platform for a public appeal to the elected Zemsky Sobor,
while formally the Tsar addressed his speech to Metropolitan Macarius.
Subsequently, the Execution Ground was used during the Christian
rite of the Procession on a donkey, which took place on the feast of the
Lord's Entry into Jerusalem. There are numerous descriptions of the
ceremony in the notes of foreigners. Stanislav Nemoevsky, who arrived in
the capital in 1606, writes about this as a well-established tradition:
“on the night of Palm Sunday, the Grand Duke [Tsar] on foot, out of
duty, leads his horse under the Metropolitan [Patriarch], and from here
he blesses the people.”
The ceremony, until its abolition by the
decision of the Council of 1678, was considered a major event in the
life of the capital. Moreover, representatives of diplomatic missions
were required to attend the celebration. The transfer of festive dishes
from the royal table to the envoys was considered a symbol of royal
mercy. It is noteworthy that in 1661 Polish aristocrats who were
captured during the Thirteen Years' War and were in a Moscow prison
became forced witnesses of the ceremony. Although the tsar did not give
treats to the captives, he inquired about their health through Artamon
Matveev.
The place of execution is located opposite the Spasskaya Tower near
the Pokrovsky Cathedral and is a round stone platform with a diameter of
13 m and a height of 1 m with a stone parapet. Initially, the Execution
Ground was built of brick, in 1599, during the reign of Boris Godunov,
it was rebuilt in stone and surrounded by a lattice. At the same time,
the Tsar Cannon was installed nearby on a wooden carriage. The fact of
her being on the square is confirmed in the description of the Swedish
envoy Stanislav Nemoevsky, who arrived in Moscow in 1606: “Near ...
there is a large and long tool in which a tall man can sit down without
bending, I myself experienced it.” Also, images of the Tsar Cannon are
documented in engravings and drawings by European travelers of the 17th
century. The Lobnoye Mesto acquired its present appearance after the
restoration in 1786.
The earliest known image of the Execution
Ground dates back to the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich in the album of
Adam Olearius in 1638. In 1659, in the second volume of Blau's
Cosmography, a detailed map of Moscow was published listing the main
sights of the city. Under No. 3, "Nalobnemeest" is indicated, which is a
transliteration of the term "Execution Ground". While in previous
documents, foreigners called this site "Theatrum Proclamationum", that
is, "area for announcements."
The significance of the Execution Ground in the
political life of Russia changed dramatically during the Time of
Troubles. With the death of Fyodor Ioannovich, the last tsar of the
Rurik dynasty, various parties used the place to organize the crowd.
On the large expanse of the square, thousands of citizens could be
gathered in order to send them directly to the royal chambers.
The first major event of the Time of Troubles, which took place
at the Execution Ground, was the appeal of False Dmitry I. On June
1, 1605, Gavrila Pushkin and Naum Pleshcheev read it out. In his
letter, the impostor accused Boris Godunov of attempting to
assassinate Tsarevich Dmitry, and declared the heir to the throne,
Fyodor II, a traitor. False Dmitry I promised to provide governors
with new estates, grant royal favor to the nobles, provide tax
benefits to Moscow merchants, and guaranteed a peaceful life for
“all Orthodox Christianity”. When the envoys finished reading the
appeal, the Muscovites "rejoiced with great joy, sending glory to
God, and there was a great noise and a cry in them, and it was not
clear who was saying what." After that, the exalted crowd rushed to
the Kremlin. Fyodor Godunov, his mother and closest associates were
arrested. On the same day, robberies began in Moscow in the homes of
political associates of the deposed tsar.
On June 20, 1605,
False Dmitry I approached Moscow. He was met on the outskirts of the
city by representatives of the urban aristocracy, and the
townspeople were waiting for the "saved tsar" at the Execution
Ground. Approaching the crowd, the impostor "dismounted from his
horse and came to the crosses, and ordered to start singing prayers,
and those Latin Lithuanians sat and blew trumpets and beat
tambourines." Then the new “tsar” went to the Kremlin, and Bogdan
Belsky, accompanied by princes and boyars, went out to the crowd
standing on the square. From the Execution Ground, he delivered a
solemn speech in which he thanked God for the miraculous salvation
of the king.
Less than a year later, a crowd of angry
Muscovites killed False Dmitry I, after which the extermination of
his associates began, primarily from among the Polish-Lithuanian
aristocracy. On May 28, 1606, the day after the coup and massacres,
the bodies of torn foreigners began to be dumped on the Execution
Ground. According to the memoirs of a contemporary Pole, the corpses
lay for three days.
Soon Vasily Shuisky was "elected" tsar.
To legitimize his power, he also turned from the Execution Ground to
the people who had gathered on Red Square. The new government made
efforts to debunk the cult of the impostor. The plan succeeded, as
an archive of False Dmitry I was found, including letters in Polish
written by Yuri Mnishk. The documents were urgently translated into
Russian, and then publicly read from the Execution Ground.
In
subsequent years, the economic and political situation in the
country worsened, which led to the appearance of False Dmitry II.
Even with a large army, the new impostor could not enter Moscow,
although he tried to take the city by storm. In the midst of a
military confrontation in 1608, a group of Moscow conspirators,
among whom was Prince Roman Gagarin, tried to overthrow Vasily
Shuisky. They also tried to use the Execution Ground by bringing
Patriarch Hermogenes there and hoping to receive his blessing. But
the bishop did not cooperate with them. The boyars also showed no
sympathy for the rebels. Gagarin and his supporters went to the
king, but their forces were not enough to break into the palace. The
coup attempt failed and the conspirators left for Tushino, where the
headquarters of False Dmitry II was located.
On July 27,
1610, Zakhary Lyapunov, having agreed with Prince Golitsyn to
overthrow Vasily Shuisky, went to Red Square, accompanied by Ivan
Saltykov and a certain nobleman Khomutov. They went up to Lobnoye
Mesto and demanded the arrival of the patriarch and the duma boyars,
“and as the crowd of people was so great that they could not fit on
this square, the aforementioned Lyapunov, Khomutov and Saltykov
shouted that everyone should go to the field outside the city, and,
having gone beyond the outpost, they removed Shuisky from power
there.
The last stage of the Time of Troubles shows the
importance of the Execution Ground in the public mind. In November
1612, after a long siege, the Novgorod militia liberated the Moscow
Kremlin from the Poles. On November 27, two religious processions
led by Minin and Pozharsky moved from different directions to
Kitay-Gorod. Both processions united at the Execution Ground, where
Trinity Archimandrite Dionysius held a prayer service. From there,
the procession went to the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin.
On February 21, 1613, the Zemsky Sobor decided to choose a new king.
On this day, Lobnoye Mesto was used for the last time in obtaining
popular approval. Archbishop Theodoret and boyar Vasily Morozov
asked the people who had gathered on Red Square who should be king.
The crowd expressed support for Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. A few
days later, a rite of cross-kissing took place there: this is how
the boyars and Cossacks swore allegiance to the new monarch, who at
that time was in Kostroma.
The main events of the Streltsy rebellion of 1682
unfolded in the Kremlin, but the rebels dragged the bodies of the
aristocrats close to the Naryshkins on May 15 to Red Square and threw
them near the Execution Ground. A few months later, the archers, wanting
to justify the crime, obtained permission to install a civil monument
(the first in Russia) near the Execution Ground. It was a wooden
quadrangular pillar, on top of which copper plates were erected with the
names of the killed boyars and a description of their injustices towards
the archers. By autumn, the government of Princess Sophia decided to get
rid of both the instigators of the rebellion and the reminder of the
bloody events, so already on November 2, 1682, the pillar was
dismantled.
During the rebellion, an attempt was also made to use
the Execution Ground to consolidate the forces of the Moscow
schismatics. After the end of the military rebellion, Old Believer
preachers appeared among the archers, calling for an open theological
dispute with the official church. They chose Red Square as the venue for
the discussion, but in the end, the meeting of representatives of the
"new" and "old" faiths took place on July 5, 1682 in the Faceted Chamber
of the Kremlin. The only result of the dispute was mutual accusations of
heresy. Immediately after the meeting, the Old Believers turned to the
assembled townspeople from the Execution Ground and announced their
victory in the dispute. The government of Princess Sophia was not going
to put up with the schismatics, and over the next few days, the archers,
on her orders, arrested the most active Old Believer preachers.
For most of the 17th century, no executions were
carried out on Red Square, but in popular memory, any significant events
were associated with the Kremlin. This can explain the appearance of the
legend that Stepan Razin was executed at the Execution Ground, although
in reality the sentence was carried out on Bolotnaya Square. In his
memoirs, the Hanoverian resident at the Russian court Friedrich
Christian Weber, who visited Russia at the beginning of the 18th
century, retold the urban legend.
Actions to intimidate political
opponents were repeatedly held on Red Square during the reign of Peter
I. On March 4, 1697, he ordered the remains of Ivan Tsikler, Alexei
Sokovnin and three other conspirators executed in Preobrazhensky village
after an attempt on the life of the tsar to be put on public display.
Near the Execution Ground, a new wooden pillar with five spokes was
installed, on which severed heads were strung. On the pillar were fixed
metal boards with the text of the guilty verdict.
After the
Streltsy rebellion of 1698, 799 archers were sentenced to death. The
main executions took place in Preobrazhensky, but some of the
conspirators were executed on Red Square. Only on one day, February 13,
1699, 30 death sentences were carried out on a scaffold installed near
the Execution Ground. The heads of the executed and the tablets
describing the crime were again left in the square. Executions were
carried out only in the southern part of Red Square, which is probably
why eyewitnesses of the events called the Execution Ground as a
landmark. This explains the formation of the stereotype about using the
site as a scaffold.
With the transfer of the capital from Moscow to St.
Petersburg, Red Square and the Kremlin lost their political
significance. At the same time, the pillars with the indictment boards
remained in the same place for many years. Only in 1727, by decree of
Peter II, the old execution tools were dismantled. Since then, Red
Square has never been used for executions again.
Over the next
two centuries, the Lobnoye Mesto was restored at least three times. In
1753, the repair work was led by the architect Dmitry Ukhtomsky. In
1786, the restoration was carried out under the supervision of the
architect Matvey Kazakov. At the end of the 19th century, cast-iron
gates were installed, made based on the Golden Lattice of the Terem
Palace.
The Moscow merchants, led by Zyuzin, proposed to rebuild
the Lobnoye Mesto into a chapel with the installation of the Shumaevsky
Cross and trading premises under it.
In 1900-1901, the Execution
Ground was restored, and the iron fence surrounding it was removed.
Until the revolution of 1917, Lobnoye Mesto remained a landmark area
for Orthodox rites. Religious processions, moving from the Spassky
Gates, stopped at the site. A bishop ascended to the Lobnoye Mesto to
perform a prayer service and bless the parishioners.
With the transfer of the capital of the RSFSR to
Moscow in March 1918, rallies and military parades began to be
regularly held on Red Square, during which the Execution Ground was
used as a pedestal for monuments. It is known that by May 1, 1919, a
wooden sculptural composition "Razin with a gang", made by Sergei
Konenkov, was installed there. Vladimir Lenin attended the festive
event, after the opening of the monument, he delivered a short
speech from the Execution Ground in memory of Razin. Since the
sculpture was originally designed for display at the First
Proletarian Museum, it was removed from the square two weeks later.
From 1928 to 1940, during public holidays, a sculptural group
"International Solidarity" was installed at Lobnoye Mesto. It was
created as a temporary decoration for Red Square, so the decorators
used short-lived cheap materials such as plywood.
For the
Victory Parade on June 24, 1945, a 26-meter fountain, topped with a
statue of a worker and collective farmer, was installed at Lobnoye
Mesto, surrounded by vases with fresh flowers. Since 1965, when
Victory Day was included in the list of public holidays, Lobnoye
Mesto has been used to install the decorative design of the square.
The place of execution during the Soviet era was associated with
incidents. So, on November 6, 1942, near the Execution Ground,
Corporal Savely Dmitriev fired from a rifle at the car of the
People's Commissar for Foreign Trade of the USSR Anastas Mikoyan.
During the incident, neither the People's Commissar nor the security
guards were injured. The investigation established that Corporal
Dmitriev acted independently and was not associated with enemy
intelligence.
On August 25, 1968, a peaceful anti-war action
took place at this place, which went down in history under the name
"demonstration of the seven." Participants, representatives of the
Moscow and Leningrad intelligentsia: Konstantin Babitsky, Larisa
Bogoraz, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Vadim Delone, Vladimir Dremlyuga,
Pavel Litvinov and Viktor Fainberg protested against the entry of
ATS troops into Czechoslovakia. Exactly at noon, the protesters sat
down at Lobnoye Mesto and unfurled posters written in Russian and
Czech: “For your and our freedom”, “Long live free and independent
Czechoslovakia” and others. A few minutes later, KGB and MOOP
officers who were on Red Square arrested the protesters. In fact,
eight people protested. Since the eighth participant, 21-year-old
student Tatyana Baeva, did not hold banners, she managed to convince
investigators that she was not involved in the incident. She was
released pending trial.
On August 25, 2013, on Red Square
near the Execution Ground, a group of 12 people unfurled the slogan
"For your freedom and ours." Among the 12 was a participant in the
demonstration on August 25, 1968, the poet and human rights activist
Natalya Gorbanevskaya and the brother of Vadim Delon, a participant
in the same demonstration. Everyone except Gorbanevskaya was
detained and later released.
On November 17, 2013, a series
of peaceful protests took place on Red Square near Lobnoye Mesto, in
which a total of eight civil activists took part. All of them were
detained by the police.
The tradition of erecting the Lobnoye Mesto as a
Christian symbol did not spread widely to other Russian cities, with the
exception of Astrakhan (where the Lobnoye Mesto directly adjoins the
cathedral).
In Peter's Petersburg, this was the name given to the
territory near the Sytny Market, where executions were carried out. In
the 18th century, the scaffold was erected behind the Kronwerk,
approximately on the site of the current Music Hall. The last public
execution on this square took place on September 15, 1764. Such a
measure of punishment was determined by the court in the case of Vasily
Mirovich, second lieutenant of the Smolensk regiment, who tried to
release the deposed heir Ivan Antonovich from the Shlisselburg prison.
Until the middle of the 19th century, in the city of Petrozavodsk,
on the outskirts of the Petrovsky Sloboda (now the square on Kuibyshev
Street), there was a “frontal place” - a scaffold, for carrying out
public punishments of the guilty artisans of the Cannon-Foundry. It is
known that in 1708, three fugitive gunsmiths were publicly “executed” at
the place of execution. During the XVIII-XIX centuries, public corporal
punishment-execution of the delinquent workers of the plant was carried
out here. In 1850, the scaffold was dismantled and a hay market was
opened on this site.