The theater at the Moscow Ball Bearing Factory was thoroughly, impressively renovated. Walls once pocked with bullet holes were newly patched and painted. The red seats, once stained with blood, had been replaced with plush blue ones. Metal detectors had been installed. “Nord-Ost,” the Russian musical that became popular and then, tragically, notorious, returned to its stage on Feb. 8 in what the authorities at the time declared a defiant triumph over terrorism. On Saturday night, however, it will close, a victim, after all, of the guerrillas who seized the theater in October and held nearly 800 people hostage for two days and three nights. The theater siege — called, by some, Russia’s Sept. 11 — remains a lingering, indelible memory, its effects still reverberating more than six months later, despite the authorities’ best efforts to move on. At least 129 of the people inside died, most of them from the debilitating gas used by commandos during the daring, but deadly raid that also killed at least 41 guerrillas. “The most horrible thing is that those who came here came not to see the show,” said Andrei M. Subotin, one of the actors who had been on the stage the moment when more than 40 Chechen gunmen stormed the theater. “They came to see the place where it happened, the stage, the hall where the hostages spent those nights.” Full Story
About OODA Analyst
OODA is comprised of a unique team of international experts capable of providing advanced intelligence and analysis, strategy and planning support, risk and threat management, training, decision support, crisis response, and security services to global corporations and governments.