Kremlin stars

The symbols become a part of the state and the ruling ideology of the former USSR, complementing the official coat of arms, which is complex in its image.

Double-headed eagles were the state symbols of both the former Imperial and of present-day Russia, and since the beginning of the 17th century they had been present on the tops of the tents of the four Kremlin towers.

On May 7, 1918, after the Revolutions of 1917 and when Moscow was now the center of the Soviet Russia, the symbol of the "star of Mars with a plow and a hammer" was approved by the order of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs led by Lev Trotsky.

[1][2] On December 31, 1931, during a meeting of the secretariat of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, it was decided to allocate 95,000 rubles for the removal of eagles and their replacement with red stars.

[citation needed] On November 7, 1935, The Council of People's Committee of the USSR decided on removing four double-eagles located on the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya, Borovitskaya, and Trinity towers of the Kremlin wall, and two eagles from the building of the Historical Museum due to the ruling of Stalin that they ran counter to the rule of the Soviet ideology.

These stars replaced huge copper two-headed eagles, installed in pre-revolutionary times, which were a part of the Coat of Arms of Imperial Russia.

The installation of the first Kremlin stars did not meet the designer's expectations since the surfaces of the semi-precious stones lost their luster and required re-faceting.

Three decades later, from May to November 1974, a comprehensive plan for the restoration and reconstruction of Red Square and the historical and architectural monuments of the Kremlin was carried out, which included the first major overhaul of the stars.

In 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev called for the return of the two-headed eagle to the Spasskaya Tower after the unveiling of the plastered Icon of Spas Smolensky (Christ the Saviour).

[5] The Communist Party of the Russian Federation asked the leadership of the State Duma to a request a clarification of the situation, and received an answer from the Kremlin commandant Sergei Khlebnikov: The star will be remain in its place.

People's artist Fyodor Fedorovsky redefined the shape and pattern of the stars, he proposed the ruby color of the glass.

The durability and rigidity of the construction was designed to withstand the maximum pressure of a hurricane wind equaling 200 kgf per square meter (2 kPa).

This frame was designed to withstand the pressure of the hurricane wind, it rested at the base on a pipe, in which bearings were located for the rotation of the star.

This glass had to be resistant to external factors such as weather, sudden temperature changes, nor to collapse under the influence of solar radiation.

Bright and uniform illumination of the star's surface was achieved by a team of specialists from the lighting laboratory of the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute under the leadership of Professor Sergei Meisel and candidates of technical sciences N.V. Gorbachev and E.S.

Lamp bulbs were made of heat-resistant molybdenum glass, inside there were two parallel-connected spirals, the temperature of the filaments of which reached 2800 °C.

During the Iron Curtain era, some Eastern Bloc countries placed similar stars in their public facilities as symbols of their political adherence.

Vector representation of a Kremlin star
The red star at the Spasskaya Tower
The double eagle at the Spasskaya in 1902.
The dislocated eagles in 1935.
The original gemmed star located at the top of the North River Terminal's spire in Moscow.
The ruby star on Borovitskaya tower was installed in 1967 for a short time, amid numerous replacements between 1937 and 1974.
The Kremlin star depicted on a 1984 Soviet New Year postage stamp
A Kremlin star