The name kremlin means 'fortress within a city' in Russian, and is often also used metonymically in international politics to refer to the Government of the Russian Federation. Likewise, during the Cold War, it referred to the Government of the Soviet Union, which operated out of the city in the erstwhile Russian SFSR. The term "Kremlinology" is related to the metonym and refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics.
Largely open to the public, the Kremlin offers supervised tours; the accompanying Moscow Kremlin Museums reportedly attracted 1,024,610 visitors in 2023.
Origin: The site had been continuously inhabited by Finnic peoples (especially the Meryans) since the 2nd century BCE. The Slavs occupied the south-western portion of Borovitsky Hill as early as the 11th century, as evidenced by a metropolitan seal from the 1090s which was unearthed by Soviet archaeologists in the area. The Vyatichi built a fortified structure (or "grad") on the hill where the Neglinnaya River flowed into the Moskva River.
Up to the 14th century, the site was known as the "grad of Moscow". The word "Kremlin" was first recorded in 1331 (though etymologist Max Vasmer mentions an earlier appearance in 1320). The grad was greatly extended by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, destroyed by the Mongols in 1237 and rebuilt in oak by Ivan I Kalita in 1339.
Soviet period: The Soviet government moved from Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg) to Moscow on 12 March 1918. Vladimir Lenin selected the Kremlin Senate as his residence. Joseph Stalin also had his personal rooms in the Kremlin. He was eager to remove all the "relics of the tsarist regime" from his headquarters. Golden eagles on the towers were replaced by shining Kremlin stars, while the wall near Lenin's Mausoleum was turned into the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
The Chudov Monastery and Ascension Convent, with their 16th-century cathedrals, were demolished to make room for the military school. The Little Nicholas Palace and the old Saviour Cathedral were pulled down as well.
During the Second World War, in order to confuse the German pilots, the towers were repainted with different colors and covered with wooden tents. Every roof was painted rusty brown so as to make them indistinguishable from typical roofs in the city. The grounds, paved with cobblestone, were covered up with sand. Tents painted to look like roofs were stretched over the gardens, and the facades of the buildings were also painted.
The residence of the Soviet government was closed to tourists until 1955. It was not until the Khrushchev Thaw that the Kremlin was reopened to foreign visitors. The Kremlin Museums were established in 1961, and the complex was among the first Soviet patrimonies inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1990.
Although the current director of the Kremlin Museums, Elena Gagarina (Yuri Gagarin's daughter), advocates a full-scale restoration of the destroyed cloisters, recent developments have been confined to expensive restoration of the original interiors of the Grand Kremlin Palace, which were altered during Stalin's rule.
Overall, during the Soviet rule (1917–1991), 28 out of 54 historic buildings in the Kremlin were destroyed (among them 17 out of 31 churches and cathedrals), most of them centuries-old.
