Yesterday the public was made aware of the fact that a big hole has been dug under Zaikonospassky monastery on Nikolskaya Street, just 10 meters away from the Kremlin. The ditch was dug secretly by OOO Stargrad. The director of Stargrad Boris Petrosyan has a respectable restaurant in the monastery’s building and also other several commercial facilities.     

Zaikonospasskiy monastery and adjacent to it Slavian-Greek-Latin Academy (17-18 cc.) are the architectural monuments of the federal significance. No subterranean works are allowed there. Now the prosecutor’s office will be engaged in this case, considering the “threat of destroying of Zaikonospasskiy monastery”.   

Some note should be made here, though. The matter is that the huge basement under the monastery has been being dug for long, and all the interested persons were aware of that. The question is why the Moscow prosecutor’s office has been procrastinating the time and actually has allowed Stargrad to finish the works.  

In April, when there was a scandal about eviction of the Russian State Humanities University from a building on Nikolskaya Street, the Novaya Gazeta correspondents visited the building site inside Zaikonospasskiy monastery. The works had been practically finished by then and one could see the building machinery, air pits and the lopsided walls of the ancient monastery. If desired, Moskomnasledie (organization responsible for national heritage protection in the capital) could easily find the pretext for inviting the prosecutor’s office to start investigation. Besides, as it was explained to us by the churchwarden Gennady Samoylov, the restoration works at the monastery are supervised by Valery Shevchuk personally, and he is the head of Moskomnasledie. How can it be that he did not notice anything? 

It appears that at that moment there was no necessity of driving the restaurateur Petrosyan into the corner. And right now seems to be the right moment.

The suddenly exposed 17m ditch adjacent to the Red Square is nothing but an outcome of a serious business conflict. Mr. Petrosyan has been long asked to leave the territory in a friendly way. He has persisted and now the prosecution workers are to visit him. 

Although Mr. Petrosyan is a strange figure, he is somewhat a grieved party too. He had managed to get a piece of Zaikonospasskiy monastery in the troubled years. There he organized a retail trading in the restored underway passage from Nikolskaya Street to Teatralnaya underground station. He managed to arrange successfully all the works with Moskomnasledie. Besides, Petrosyan was also loaded with rather expensive obligations under an investment contract. According to the documents in Novaya Gazeta disposal, he was made a contractor for restoration of Slavian-Greek-Latin Academy building on Nikolskaya Street. He was also to build an orthodox school. And he was to donate to the church’s needs half of his profits out of commercial use of the monastery basements.       

That means it’s from the very beginning that it was intended a commercial use of the underground facilities. 

Possibly, such heavy encumbrance seemed to the businessman to be an excuse, and he continued digging under his restaurant which occupies the former stable of Zaikonospasskiy monastery. Until a certain time it did not make anyone concerned, though Moskomnasledie attempted sluggishly to reprove the restaurateur who had let himself go.     

Everything changed when the new manager, that’s the Russian Orthodox Church, came to the monasteries. Seemingly, it had its own plans for the underground premises.  

It was talked long ago about necessity of restoration of the half-ruined blocks of Zaikonospasskiy monastery and Slavian-Greek-Latin Academy. “As far back as the 90’s we had developed a conception of restoring the monasteries” tells the architect Alexei Klimenko. “Nikolskaya Street was considered in that project as a whole object, as a street dedicated to enlightenment”. 

For many years no one had cared about that conception, and later other more pragmatic plans appeared. Respectable Norwegian investors expressed their wish to invest into a large-scale project. At the monasteries area, it was intended to construct a hotel, restaurants and numerous shops, besides the newly built churches. That was going to be a big object of tourist infrastructure. And that’s not the worst thing that might happen to the half-ruined monuments. Nevertheless, no one spoke then about saving them fully.  

Norwegians got in touch with the representatives of the town church, who had wanted for long to get the territory of Zaikonospasskiy monastery. Those people were quite satisfied with the project of an amusement area with an orthodox bias. They only hinted that it would be nice to free the territory from numerous tenants (Russian State Humanities University, Godunov’ restaurant, and many others), and even better it would be organizing passing the territory under the charge of the Russian Orthodox Church.      

The investors solved that problem and relevant regulation was issued in 2006. Plus, the investors paid the expenses of preparatory works. Plus, there were appetites by the church officials. The European-style delicate business correspondence by the investors and the monastery looks just amazing! One of the letters tells how Norwegians, allegedly, accepted the churchwarden’s wife as an employee with the salary of 90,000 rubles, and also the grandchild of Pyotr, the Father Superior, with the blessing given by the Father himself. Besides, $300,000 intended for development of the project, just disappeared.      

When the foreigners began to demand that the partnership must be signed officially, all contacts with them were just stopped and a new investor appeared. “We did not expect to get such a stroke exactly from the church” say now Norwegians.  

And that’s not only Norwegians! The leadership of the Russian State Humanities University had not expected either that the Cossack-like dressed guards of the town church would be driving them away from the lecture rooms with shouts “Out with you, Jewboys!”   

The businessman Petrosyan either was not ready for permanent pressure by DPNI. His OOO Stargrad continues writing letters to the patriarch about inadmissibility of provoking interconfessional and ethnic hostilities, and also about its willingness to “amend the project of reconstruction, arranged with Moscow government”.  

But the Russian Orthodox Church does not keep abreast with the developments on Nikolskaya Street. 

Gennady Samoylov, the churchwarden of Zaikonospasskiy monastery and the anchorman of this entire “architectural operation”, refused giving any comments.