Cherkizovsky Market


Ultimately, the construction of the stadium was inspired by more than purely sporting considerations. Not only was the stadium intended to be bigger than Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, and its peculiar asymmetrical form designed to hold grandiose military parades at which the columns of tanks could roll into the stadium unhindered from the parade ground to the east. It was also conceived as part of a vast military infrastructure covering the entire Soviet Union. Situated seventeen kilometres to the east of the Kremlin, a bunker beneath the stadium was designed as an intermediary stop-over point in case Hitler should launch a surprise attack on Moscow and the Soviet Command have to be evacuated to Samara, 1,000 kilometres away in the Urals. Consequently, sports events in Izmailovo have always been part of a far greater system of deceptions and compensatory gestures. Cultural events are just as important as strategically embedded building structures for preserving this system. Events such as these helped to sustain policies that were imitated with ever greater rapidity when the RGUFK site was converted into one of the largest informal trading centres in the Russian Federation.

Cherkizovsky Market was a product of the politics of individual initiatives promoted by Perestroika. Under its banner, members of the state sports institute began to use the grounds and buildings commercially. In June 1989, Sergei Korniyenko and a ‘collective of enthusiasts’ leased the stadium buildings. Under the terms of the contract, the spectators stands and the sports fields are to be available for events such as Spartakiade 2000 (‘For a United and Healthy Russia in the 21st Century’). The remaining spaces, like those beneath the stands, can be used commercially. FOP, the Sports Health Enterprise founded in 1989, proved to be extremely innovative. Nowadays, in conjunction with the New Historical Cultural Centre Izmailovo (NIC Izmailovo, founded in 1995), it operates enterprises as diverse as an arbalest shooting range, the Aero Fitness Club, various bars, the Lux Sauna, the Alain Beauty Salon (up to ‘European standard’) and the Preobrazheniye (Transformation) School for the Spiritual Development of Man, which is run by a cosmic artist-healer.

Furthermore, FOP played a vital role in the ‘rediscovery’ of Stalin’s old bunker. In 1994, the Iron Division club helped to organise a museum exhibition which was taken over from the Central Museum of the Armed Forces and opened as a branch on 1 September 1999. Adjacent to the bunker rooms, FOP operates a Georgian-style restaurant called Visiting Stalin, as well as a concert hall (holding 200 people) used for performances by the Prince Sergei Korniyenko Orchestra. Even though the bunker was apparently never used by Stalin himself – just as the stadium never performed the function originally anticipated – one can now book a bunker tour for a little over 100 US dollars. The price includes a visit to the reconstructed conference hall of the Supreme Command of the Red Army, as well as to Stalin’s study and recreational and leisure areas, plus a dinner at ‘Stalin’.


Studies