moscow

St.Basil's Cathedral

Lenin's Mauseleum

Moscow, Russian Federation. June 2000.

Moscow is one seriously crazy city. Only in the USA have I seen such extremes of poverty and wealth existing side by side. The difference is that in Russia there seems to be no middle ground.

The presence of the Russian Mafia could be seen everywhere. Store detectives at the designer boutiques in the city centre stood at the door idley fingering their Kalashnikovs; whilst a block away limbless ex-soldiers and wizened little babushkas begged in the entrance to the subway.

Yet, despite this, and despite a crime rate that rivals that of Manchester, England (hi guys!) I felt pretty safe in Moscow. Even when utterly lost and wandering round the Soviet era housing project far from the centre where I was staying.

There seemed to be no tourists here. Even in Red Square I only saw a couple of coach loads quickly ushered into the Kremiln and then out again and back onto their buses and whizzed away.

Maybe this had something to do with the Chechen war, or because of visa quotas. I dunno. Either way it gave the city centre an "eeirie calm".

Oh well.

Despite all this Moscow was a beautiful and fascinating city. Ornate Eastern Orthodox churches stood next to Socialist Realist statues and reliefs, whilst the pretty awesome constructivist towerblocks stood out on the skyline. The metro system is as stunning as its reutation suggests (but I would seriously reccomend that you learn the cyrillic alphabet before heading into it...)

Lenin was only show in the mornings and I had to queue for a long time. He is still a very serious business. No cameras, no talking, no smiling, hands out of your pockets etc etc. Not that any of the Russians ahead of me had any intention of doing these things on their pilgrimage. Inside is a jaw dropping example of the power of soviet design and architecture.

Sadly I can tell you little more about the city centre because of I had a little trouble with the Russian security forces (!)

Read about that here