At the front of the barricade on a specially constructed podium to provide elevation, a film crew were busy setting up tripods and cameras-discussing which angles to best capture the demolition. Particular attention was paid to ensure they caught all five cupolas, and there was earnest speculation as to whether the timber domes would smash in the air as they crashed into each other or not until they hit the ground. It would depend, they reasoned, on the skill of the experts laying the dynamite inside.

Lazar wondered if there could be sadness too among the crowd. He looked left and right, searching for like-minded souls-the married couple in the distance, both of them silent, their faces drained of color, the elderly woman at the back, her hand in her pocket. She had some item hidden in there, a crucifix perhaps. Lazar wanted to divide this crowd, to separate the mourners from the revelers. He wanted to stand beside those who appreciated what was about to be lost: a three-hundred-year-old church. Named and designed after the Cathedral of Sancta Sophia in Gorky, it had survived civil wars, world wars. The recent bomb damage was a reason to preserve, not to destroy. Lazar had contemptuously read the article published in Pravda claiming structural instability. Such a claim was nothing more than a pretext, a spoonful of false logic to make the deed palatable. The State had ordered the church’s destruction, and what was worse, far worse, was that the order had been made in agreement with the Orthodox Church. Both parties to this crime claimed it was a pragmatic decision, not an ideological one. They’d listed a series of contributing factors: damage by Luftwaffe raids. The interior required elaborate renovations that couldn’t be paid for. Furthermore, the land in the heart of the city was needed for a crucial construction project. Everyone in a position of power was in agreement. This church, hardly one of Moscow’s finest, should be torn down.