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For Kremlin Bells, It's New Chimes

In a reversal of a six-decade-old Stalin edict, the Kremlin's Kuranty clock is to be overhauled in the New Year to allow it to play music on its chimes for the first time since 1935.


The 224-year-old clock will undergo major repairs in 1994, a Kremlin official said this week. The scheduled work includes installing new equipment that will once more allow the chimes to play musical tunes.


Millions of Russians listen intently on television and radio each New Year's Eve for the 12-rings of the Kuranty at midnight before popping open their champagne to welcome the new year.


Stalin, annoyed that the chimes were unable to play the Soviet national anthem, had them disconnected in 1935 and since then the clock has only chimed on the quarter hour and its bells have gonged for the passing of each hour.


President Boris Yeltsin "has a choice of five tunes on his desk and it is up to him to decide which ones he wants", said Alexander Prokopov, chief clock attendant and head of an eight-person team that services the clock. The president is expected to choose a couple of tunes to be played next year.


Two hymns that were played before the Bolshevik Revolution, "Our Lord Is Glorious in Zion" and the "Preobrazhensky March", are on the list Yeltsin is considering, Andrei Oligov, spokesman for the Kremlin Guards, said this week. Those tunes were replaced in 1918 by "The Internationale" and "You Fell as Victims" before Stalin short-circuited part of the clock's chimes.


Prokopov said it will not be necessary to stop the clock while carrying out the repairs.


The Kuranty, located in the Spasskaya tower of the Moscow Kremlin to the left of the Lenin mausoleum, was installed in 1769 and has not changed much since then.


"Only a few worn-out details were replaced", said Prokopov, "but the entire mechanism has remained authentic".


The tower itself was built in 1491 and has been preserved in practically its original state.


To reach the heart of the Kuranty, its mechanism, it is necessary to conquer 125 white stone steps and then climb a 100-step winding metal staircase.


"One of the clock attendants comes up here every morning to rewind the clock and check the time", Prokopov said, noting that Kuranty has a precision swing of five seconds per day.


As the room is not air conditioned or heated, he said, changes in temperature can cause expansion of the clock's metal gears and thus affect its accuracy. To lessen the effect, the pendulum leg is made of wood which does not react to the temperature as much as metal.


Taking up most of the 20-square-meter room, the clock itself is a mass of shiny well-oiled gears, a 1. 5-meter-long pendulum and two chime drums.


As each quarter hour passes, the little drum starts to turn, pulling on its nine strings connected to the bells above to produce the quarter-hour chimes.


Each hour the largest, tenth, bell gongs the corresponding number of times to mark the time.


A bigger tune drum which can handle 30 bell strings has been disconnected since Stalin's edict.


Prokopov said 40 or more bells will be needed to produce the new tunes.


Prokopov said that Kuranty used to operate over 40 bells at once, and only 10 are left today. A few spare ones are sitting on the floor, forgotten.


"It is wonderful how all of them used to hang in this tiny bell-tower and did not collide", Prokopov said.


He also pointed out the 500-year-old wooden beams that cross under the roof and support the bells. "They are made of some evergreen timber type that still looks like it was cut yesterday", he said.


The first mention of a Kremlin tower clock occurred in 1404.


Different clocks were installed in 1621 and 1702, but the last one had fallen apart by 1767.


The current Kuranty, installed in 1769 under Catherine the Great, has four black faces with a diameter of 6. 12 meters, with gold-plated frames, Roman numerals 72 centimeters tall, and hands that are 3. 27 and 2. 98 meters long.


"All the bells are authentic and many of them date back to Catherine the Great", Prokopov said.


"During the Soviet era, some 20-30 bells were given away to museums and we have had little success tracking them down", he said.


Also planned for the summer are cosmetic works on Kuranty's four faces. Last June a roman numeral five fell off the number VII on the side facing Red Square as the metal bolts had corroded, Prokopov said.


"I have attended to this clock for 15 years", Prokopov said, "and we have had no major problems with it".

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