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# Artist Boris Kustodiev on Easter in Moscow, the Kremlin cathedrals and the sound of bells
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/a-v-pervyi-den-paskhi-posle-etoi-velikoi-radostnoi-nochi-poidesh-v-kreml-a-tam-na-prigreve-na-solnyshke-sidiat-otdykhaiut-stranniki-bogomoltsy/
- Published: 2021-05-02T10:53:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:55:41.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, Books, Moscow, Mores, People, Ethnography

“And on the first day of Easter, after that great and joyous night, you go to the Kremlin, and there, in a sheltered spot, in the sun, sit the pilgrim wanderers, resting. They peel crimson-dyed eggs, and the coloured shells lie scattered all around, and somehow this goes so well with the tender, barely sprouted little green grass: red with green, after all, is harmony. I remember those shells to this day. And all of it in the sun. I cannot see it without the sun.

Then they neatly gather up the shells, leaving no litter. And having rested, they rise and go from cathedral to cathedral: the Dormition, the Annunciation, the Archangel; to the Saviour behind the golden grille, to John Climacus beneath Ivan the Great, to the Ascension Convent, to the Chudov Monastery, to Constantine and Helena, to the Joy Unexpected, all of this in the Kremlin. And then to the Iberian Mother of God, and on and on to the Holy Places of Moscow, for she was full of them. How touching it is, what a pure heart there is in it. Wondrous, lovely!

And in the churches, after the sorrowful, heart-gripping melodies and chants of Holy Week, everything changes at once: joy, merriment, recitatives that are almost dance tunes. And the words of the chants themselves say so: ‘Rejoice, ye people.’ Surely there must have been Easters with foul weather, yet my memory has kept none of them. I always remember only the sun.

From morning until vespers, all through Bright Week, golden-domed Moscow rings with a merry peal. And spring, spring too is ringing and rejoicing; what a season, what a marvel! But how can one tell it all! I have no words for it… And in my soul the spring bells ring, and I feel them still.

They ring at St Nicholas the Wet, at the Protection in Goliki, at the Trinity on Listy, at St Nicholas in Kapelki, at St Nicholas in Tolmachi, at St Nicholas on Hen’s Legs, at St Nicholas in Pyzhi, at the Dormition on Mogiltsy, at St Nicholas of the Carpenters, at St Nicholas on Bolvanovka, at the Resurrection in Kadashi, at St Nicholas on Derbenovka, at the Saviour in the Pinewood.

And everywhere, everywhere, from all the forty times forty churches, a merry peal.”

From the memoirs of the artist Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev