Moscow Guide
Red Square
Red Square (Krasnaya ploshchad)
The name Krasnaya ploshchad – Red Square – has nothing to do with Communism, but derives from krasniy, the old Russian word for "beautiful", which probably came to mean "red" due to people's thirst for bright colours during the long, drab winter months.
For much of its history, the square was a muddy expanse thronged with pedlars, idlers and drunks – a potential mob that Vasily III (1505–33) sought to distance from the Kremlin by digging a moat alongside its wall, spanned by bridges leading to the citadel's gates. Like the Forum in ancient Rome, the square was also used for public announcements and executions, particularly during the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and the anarchic Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. The square lost much of its political significance after the capital moved to St Petersburg in 1712, but remained an integral part of Moscow life as the site of religious processions and the Palm Sunday Fair.
It was the Bolsheviks who returned Red Square to the centre of events, as the Kremlin became the seat of power once again, and the square the setting for great demonstrations and parades on May 1 and November 7 (the anniversary of the Revolution). The most dramatic was the November 7 parade in 1941, when tanks rumbled directly from Red Square to the front line, only a few kilometres away; on June 24, 1945 they returned for a victory parade where captured Nazi regimental standards were flung down in front of the Lenin Mausoleum, to be trampled by Soviet Marshals riding white horses.
Today, the square is as likely to host pop concerts or the New Year festival of ice sculptures, but old-style parades and pageantry still occur on May Day, Victory Day (May 9), Russian Independence Day (June 12) and the Day of Reconciliation and Accord (Nov 9) – the latter intended to deny Red Square to the Communists, whose own march is obliged to terminate elsewhere.