Red Square to be turned into park

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, NOV. 28. In a revolutionary break with Soviet traditions, Russian authorities have announced plans to turn Red Square into a kind of winter recreation park, complete with an ice-rink, a New Year fir tree and ice sculptures.

The idea would have been considered sacrilege in Communist Russia, where Red Square was a holy symbol of Soviet power and the nation's prime site for military parades and official workers' demonstrations. It also served as a Communist necropolis, with the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin still lying in a granite mausoleum and scores of party and state dignitaries buried in graves along the Kremlin wall.

Russia's first post-Soviet leader, Mr. Boris Yeltsin, stopped staging military parades and banned demonstrations from Red Square, but it has largely retained its solemn and austere look. Mr. Yeltsin's proposal to rebury Lenin and other Soviet leaders away from Red Square met with angry protests from the Communist Party and were eventually shelved.

In recent years, Red Square has become a popular place with young Moscovites who swarm it on Dec. 31 to greet in New Year with champagne to the chimes of the Kremlin's clocks. However, it is the first time that Red Square will be home to a public skating rink and an ice sculpture contest. In addition, authorities plan to put up a huge illuminated fir tree and a large video screen to broadcast music, cartoons and traditional presidential address to the nation on New Year.

The plan is in line with the Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin's low-profile policy of de-ideologisation of Russian society and building bridges to pre-Communist Russia. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Red Square was a market place and a 17th-century engraving of Red Square shows a hill of ice built in the middle of it to celebrate Maslenitsa or Butter Week, a winter-parting Russian holiday.

Other recent Kremlin proposals for Red Square have included creating an elite hotel and auction complex to sell precious gems and metals from the Government's vaults.

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Section  : International
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