Unwilling to take its place among the Cathedral of Christ the Savior's ordinary patrons, Stolichny Bank on Thursday offered to gild its onion domes.
At a meeting of the cathedral's supervising committee, Stolichny Bank president Alexander Smolensky presented Patriarch Alexy II with a one-kilogram gold ingot in a velvet box.
To follow are another 49 ingots, in total $500,000 worth of gold that will end up -- literally or figuratively -- on the domes of Mayor Yury Luzhkov's grandiose brainchild.
"It is my great joy to present the patriarch with this modest gift, in memory of the great days when these gold domes stood over all Russia," Smolensky said quietly to officials from the patriarchate and the city government. Contrary to statements from the bank, Luzhkov himself did not attend.
"I gave it to make sure that we will not turn back," Smolensky added to reporters after the ceremony. "I am only sorry that [the ingot] carries the mark 'U.S.S.R.'"
Ten minutes later, Patriarch Alexy excused the banker and Smolensky rushed away in his black Cadillac. But during the brief ceremony, planners from both sides praised the ever-warmer relationship between the city government and the church hierarchy, which has found its symbol in the reconstruction project for a cathedral demolished by Stalin in 1931. They also highlighted the role played by Moscow's more prosperous businessmen.
The only person who didn't seem delighted Thursday was the painter and ardent nationalist Ilya Glazunov, who was angry at his exclusion from a cathedral commission, and -- shortly after Smolensky's departure -- sniffed, "The original cathedral had 400 kilograms of gold on its cupolas. Now we are glad to get 50."
In fact, they may not even need that much. Early in the meeting, Mospromstroi director Vassily Moroz said new technology has made gold domes both impractical and unnecessary. A modern builder would opt for titanium nitrate, which resembles gold and lasts longer, said Moroz, whose company is the project's chief contractor.
One could top the titanium with a thin layer of gold, but that would only require between 12 and 15 kilograms, Moroz added.
Wherever the ingots go, the question of funding for the about 10 percent came from banks, said Sergei Semenenko, deputy director of the Fund for the Reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Thursday's high-profile donation was a public-relations coup for Stolichny Bank, which two weeks ago announced a rapid expansion throughout Moscow.
Founded in 1989, Stolichny is now one of the strongest of the first wave of Russian banks that opened during the Gorbachev era.
A recent survey of the Russian banking industry by the Rating Information Survey ranked it the 15th most powerful bank in Russia.
Throughout his career, Smolensky, 41, has championed not-strictly economic causes such as retrieving Russian art from abroad, reconstructing local churches and, legend has it, housing an orphaned tiger in a bank warehouse.
In tandem with Thursday's ceremony, Stolichny Bank announced that it has closed an agreement to handle all the patriarchate's accounts, which "will make it possible to more effectively handle the finances of the cathedral and its believers," read a bank press release.
The original cathedral -- the cost of which added up to 15,125,163 rubles and 89 kopeks -- relied heavily on funding from the imperial Romanov family, according to an official history released by the patriarchate. Over the 40 years it took to build the original structure, the pace of construction often varied directly with the quantity of a year's donations.
This time around, the project has met with more skepticism. Yakov Krotov, a journalist raised in the Russian Orthodox faith, said the patriarchate's growing ties with City Hall and industry are bound to "discredit the church in the eyes of anti-clerical intellectuals."
Indeed, even within the Orthodox community, the church is frequently viewed as an act of mayoral self-aggrandizement "just like the Egyptian pyramids," Krotov said.
"Still," he went on, musing about the projects and structures that have occupied the cathedral site, including a swimming pool, "as the Bible says, God acts through the heart of the Pharaoh. And it's certainly better than an empty pool."
At a meeting of the cathedral's supervising committee, Stolichny Bank president Alexander Smolensky presented Patriarch Alexy II with a one-kilogram gold ingot in a velvet box.
To follow are another 49 ingots, in total $500,000 worth of gold that will end up -- literally or figuratively -- on the domes of Mayor Yury Luzhkov's grandiose brainchild.
"It is my great joy to present the patriarch with this modest gift, in memory of the great days when these gold domes stood over all Russia," Smolensky said quietly to officials from the patriarchate and the city government. Contrary to statements from the bank, Luzhkov himself did not attend.
"I gave it to make sure that we will not turn back," Smolensky added to reporters after the ceremony. "I am only sorry that [the ingot] carries the mark 'U.S.S.R.'"
Ten minutes later, Patriarch Alexy excused the banker and Smolensky rushed away in his black Cadillac. But during the brief ceremony, planners from both sides praised the ever-warmer relationship between the city government and the church hierarchy, which has found its symbol in the reconstruction project for a cathedral demolished by Stalin in 1931. They also highlighted the role played by Moscow's more prosperous businessmen.
The only person who didn't seem delighted Thursday was the painter and ardent nationalist Ilya Glazunov, who was angry at his exclusion from a cathedral commission, and -- shortly after Smolensky's departure -- sniffed, "The original cathedral had 400 kilograms of gold on its cupolas. Now we are glad to get 50."
In fact, they may not even need that much. Early in the meeting, Mospromstroi director Vassily Moroz said new technology has made gold domes both impractical and unnecessary. A modern builder would opt for titanium nitrate, which resembles gold and lasts longer, said Moroz, whose company is the project's chief contractor.
One could top the titanium with a thin layer of gold, but that would only require between 12 and 15 kilograms, Moroz added.
Wherever the ingots go, the question of funding for the about 10 percent came from banks, said Sergei Semenenko, deputy director of the Fund for the Reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Thursday's high-profile donation was a public-relations coup for Stolichny Bank, which two weeks ago announced a rapid expansion throughout Moscow.
Founded in 1989, Stolichny is now one of the strongest of the first wave of Russian banks that opened during the Gorbachev era.
A recent survey of the Russian banking industry by the Rating Information Survey ranked it the 15th most powerful bank in Russia.
Throughout his career, Smolensky, 41, has championed not-strictly economic causes such as retrieving Russian art from abroad, reconstructing local churches and, legend has it, housing an orphaned tiger in a bank warehouse.
In tandem with Thursday's ceremony, Stolichny Bank announced that it has closed an agreement to handle all the patriarchate's accounts, which "will make it possible to more effectively handle the finances of the cathedral and its believers," read a bank press release.
The original cathedral -- the cost of which added up to 15,125,163 rubles and 89 kopeks -- relied heavily on funding from the imperial Romanov family, according to an official history released by the patriarchate. Over the 40 years it took to build the original structure, the pace of construction often varied directly with the quantity of a year's donations.
This time around, the project has met with more skepticism. Yakov Krotov, a journalist raised in the Russian Orthodox faith, said the patriarchate's growing ties with City Hall and industry are bound to "discredit the church in the eyes of anti-clerical intellectuals."
Indeed, even within the Orthodox community, the church is frequently viewed as an act of mayoral self-aggrandizement "just like the Egyptian pyramids," Krotov said.
"Still," he went on, musing about the projects and structures that have occupied the cathedral site, including a swimming pool, "as the Bible says, God acts through the heart of the Pharaoh. And it's certainly better than an empty pool."
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