THE KREMLIN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 15 December 1924, Page 8

THE KREMLIN.

SECRETS OF ITS INTERIOR. STRANGE DISCOVERIES. BURIAL PLACE OF LENIN. Lenin, when he was alive, would have been surprised if anybody had told him that his dead body would have been of great assistance to archaeology. And yet it is so, declares a political observer in the Daily Telegraph. After the death of tlfe apostle of Bolshevism, his friends and colleagues decided to erect in his honour a splendid monument on the Red Place, in front of the Kremlin. Under the monument was to he a crypt in which Lenin’s embalmed body would remained exposed for ever to the respectful and awed admiration of the people. This last part of the plan, bv the way, had to be given up, because It .was very soon that the art of the Bolshevik embalmers was far from being so perfect as that of their Egyptian predecessors. But the monument was erected, and it stands with its back to the great red wall of the Kremlin. Its construction was the cause of an archaeological discovery, which may have results of the greatest historical importance.

First of all, when the trenches were dug for the foundations it was found, that the monument had been planned just across the . great moat which, according to the old chronicles, separated the Kremlin from the city on. this side. This encouraged further research. In the w r all of the Kremlin at the bac-k of the monument is the so-called S.enaterskaja Tower/ which from time immemorial had bc.en filled to a great height with a solid mass of rubble. This was cleared put, and here the excavators had their first surprise.

Having cleared out the tower to the street level, they found that the mass of rubble lay deeper! Layer after layer it was dug out, hut after 50ft had thus been removed, the bottoip had not yet been reached. The whole

tower appeared as a 'great"“vell-like structure/ descending into the bowels of the earth. Immediately the idea suggested itself _ that here was the place of the principal descent which led to the famous subterranean vaults, tunnels and passages of the Kremlin, of which so ■ many mysterious mentions exist in the ancient chronicles and about which popular legends continue to speak even now 7. • Originally the Kremlin was built of wood in the thirteenth century. But

from the fifteenth century clever Italian architects were called in, and for many years succeeded each other in the

work qf erecting stone churches and palaces and enclosing the whole with a great embattled wall, interspersed with numerous formidable towers. The old chroniclers all. agree that these Italian builders matched the Kremlin above the ground with as great a secret as the Kremlin below. From the huge towers vast tirtmels were built towards the river Moskwa, "which flows at the southern base of the hill. Ollier secret passages ran into the city in various directions, so that,-the Krenilin became the junction for a whole system of subterranean communications. Under one of the towers, in a great vault, there was a deep well, out of which at regular intervals the water flowed, and was carried off through the stone-paved passages to the river outside. Under the palaces were tiers of vaults connected ,by staircases and passages, closed by great iron doors with enormous, locks. In one of these vaults Ivan the Terrible kept his famous lengendary library.

The existence of Ivan the Terrible’s library. the fifteenth century is confirmed by German witnesses, who were on one occasion permitted by the Czar to see his invaluable manuscripts. Their evidence shows that the collection of Ivan consisted of works which w.opkT now be priceless, and which even in this time were rareties. For Ivan the Terrible, like many modern. American millionaires, had special agents roaming about Europe in the search for rare hooks and manuscripts. After Ivan’s death in the period of civil .wars nothing was 'healed of the library. But it is-’recorded that in the seventeenth century the Princess Sophia, Regent during Peter the G reat’s - minority, ordered a search to be instituted, and a palace bailiff having found the secret entrance’ deeended thiougli interminable stone passages a where he saw ' ancient colters full of manuscripts. But the civil, war broke out aganr and the secret was again lost. Much later Peter authorised a new search, which failed to discover the way to the library but as is historically confirmed, found in another vault a great hoard of old gold and silver coins. This find was very useful to the Czar, whose exchequer as_ usual, had been emptied by the war’ with Sjveden'. The old English traveller of the sixteenth century, Jenkinson. describes at length the wonderful treasure of gold and silver he saw in- the Czar’s palace. He tells of a dinner where d)0 people sat down to tables groaning under the weight of gold and silr' e i' decorated with wonderful figures and vases made of the same pieeious metals. It is quite possible that deep down in the Kremlin hill a part of this wealth remains where it was hidden away in the time of civil war and stress; It is well known, that under the old Czais the palace of the nobility and the warehouses of the merchants all had their systems of underground vaults, and were connected by passages with each other and with the central point in the K’emlin. There are historical instances’ when, in the time of popular risings in Moscow, the nobles fled to the Kremlin, through these passages, which were also used to allow the garrison to‘sally out at distant points and fall on the rioters unexpectedly. Parts of this m-eat underground system have been and are being discovered all' over Moscow at various times. Possibly Lenin, dead, vill now be the means of clearing* up onc-e for all the secrets of the ancient Kremlin underground. The Soviet Government encourages the excavations in the hope of finding some of the treasures of the old Czars. TrotsUv wants to use the vaults as protection for the civil population no-ainst a gas attack in war.