There are some dates that hurt to remember. One of these is December 5. Ninety years ago, communist authorities blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

The first explosion was so powerful, the shock wave was felt at a distance of several kilometers. However, the cathedral survived. It was the second blast that took it down — at midday.

Witnesses recalled that the whole scene resembled a nightmare. “Through gaping doors that stood wide open, beautiful marble statues were dragged out, ropes around their necks. Some of them were thrown down from higher levels, down into the mud and dirt”, Vladislav Mikosha, who was a cameraman shooting the destruction of the cathedral, recalled. “Marble Angels paused above the city and then crashed to the ground, their wings, arms, and heads breaking off.”

The officially announced reason the government gave for this barbaric act, was their plan to use the site for construction of the palace of Soviets – a giant skyscraper crowned with a statue of Lenin. The palace was never built, and the site was used for an open-air swimming pool.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was restored. “We should not forget our past, however shameful or tragic it may be,” warned Vladimir Legoyda, Head of the Synodal Department for the Russian Orthodox Church’s Relations with Society and Mass Media. “And today, travelling by the Moscow metro and passing through the stations 'Kropotkinskaya' and 'Okhotny Ryad', we would do the right thing if we’d pause even for a tiny second, to remember that the marble on the walls of the most beautiful subway in the world, comes from a Cathedral that was blown up by the communists.”