Immediately adjacent to the Moscow Kremlin stands the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, which is often considered the photographic profile of the metonymic headquarters of the Russian government since the 1917 Revolutions.

Actually, its real name is not St. Basil’s and it’s not fully a Cathedral, but that’s part of the fascinating history of this complex and wonderful historical, architectural, and spiritual place, the details of which are surveyed well in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral

It has a name of “Jerusalem” too as is the case with many historical Orthodox Christian temples, which serve mystically as fractals or portals for the Kingdom of Heaven, as do Orthodox Churches at large. St. Basil’s itself is designed with colors also reflecting the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. Its mix of the Byzantine trope of Jerusalem with a “Russian Renaissance” style with Italian influence relates to the development of the concept of Moscow as the cosmopolitan Third Rome of Orthodoxy.

But one of the most beautiful aspects of the tradition of the Temple–in addition to its very survival through the Soviet years (while still a museum it again has been hosting the Orthodox Liturgy since the fall of the USSR)–is the common name for it as St. Basil’s.

St. Basil the Holy Fool, or St. Vasily, was born a serf in 1468 at the portico of a cathedral in what is now Moscow, and traveled to Moscow when he was 15. His begging there involved seeking alms for those poor and hungry but embarrassed to do so themselves. Naked and weighed down with chains for penitence, he was said to have the gift of prophecy. Ivan the Terrible was said to have commented that the one person he was subject to was Basil the Holy Fool, and he rebuked the Tsar for being inattentive in Church. When he died on Aug. 2 (in 1552 or 1557) St. Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow, led the funeral, and he was buried in what became known as St. Basil’s Cathedral. (Info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Fool_for_Christ)

But the seat of arguably the world’s worst modern totalitarian government, the Soviet Union (in terms of its conduct and influence detailed by scholars in The Black Book of Communism), preserved the relics of a holy fool of Orthodox Christianity known for his authority over the greatest tyrant of his age. And survived. Glory to God for all things!