Russian holiday

Some 20 years after I packed away my Russian history textbooks, I planned a trip to Moscow and St Petersburg. I wanted to read my textbooks again. But after days of futile searching, I gave up and looked up travelers’ blogs and accounts of their experiences. Most were not complimentary – a ‘bling crazy capital’ with bad waiters, bad hotel service, the world’s most unfriendly city, gopnik or angry working class youth roaming the suburbs, gangs, mafias, terrorism, Chechnya, the Orthodox Church, excessive policing, high levels of violence against women and whatnot. On TripAdvisor rankings for the top tourist destinations, St Petersburg turned up at a lowly 17th and Moscow, ‘the city by the Moskva river’ didn’t seem to be there at all. I was worried and picked up the most colourful city guides to console myself.

But the first glimpses of Russia take one’s breath away. Once the plane starts the descent for the airport in Moscow, the vast wooded landscape on the horizon, continues on into the four and a half hour journey by train into St Petersburg.  On the roads in central Moscow, and St Petersburg, you notice the penchant for expensive German cars; restaurants and bars buzz near Theatre Square. There are beautiful, smartly dressed women on the streets, magnificent Moscow Malls – GUM, TSUM and the Europeisky, horrific traffic jams and charming and elegant art deco or style moderne in the streets. All this outwardly hides the impact of the Ruble crises and the freefalling economy on real incomes, and the fact that many car manufacturers are considering pulling out of a shrinking Russian car market, with others worried about the loss of jobs at home.



There is also what analysts call ‘the perfect demographic storm’ taking place in Russia. Fertility rates stand at 1.7 births per women now (and indeed one noticed very few prams out in the streets), coupled with high mortality, an aging population, emigration of the well-educated, a shrinking workforce and an influx of the unskilled migrant labour.  Talk to venders at street corners, or those running 24 hour stores, and you realize that a large migrant labour community from the former Russian states is doing the jobs most Russians do not want.  It is estimated that there are roughly 100,000 Tajik and 2.2 million Uzbek migrant workers present. But this population may decline because of new passport restrictions, which require tougher language, culture and history tests, and limit the entry of citizens without an international passport or citizenship of an EEU country (which workers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan do not hold). At the same time, an influx of Ukrainian refugees since 2014 has resulted in the highest asylum applications in the world, according to UNHCR estimates. Their resettlement has already started.

A treat for tourists in Moscow is getting by on the Metro. At every station of this 80-year-old network, which carries over nine million people a day, one also sees works of art and enjoys free wifi, which is included  in a cheap ticket costing 30 roubles (1 rouble equals 1.5 Pakistani rupees). Richly decorated in baroque or art deco, the opulent spaces and corridors are covered in especially designed mosaics, murals and statues, chandeliers and marble. The Mayakovskaya Metro Station served as underground shelters during the Second World War. Lubyanka Metro Station opens into the square with the nondescript yellow KGB Building nearby and is rumoured to be connected by a secret metro line to all the main government buildings in the city! If one has a palate for the absurd, one can always catch the metro to the Dinamo station to see the statue of Laika – the first space dog, who also died in space – on top of a rocket at the Military Medicine Institute.

If you get lost on the Moscow Metro – which you will because hardly anything is written in English, in spite of the confidence you may have in the Metro App – other commuters would be there to help you and point out the direction. But this will generally mean sign language and arm waving, since communication in English is not a strong point for many.

Every now and then in central Moscow, you will come across one of the Seven Sisters, Moscow’s Stalinist empire/gothic fortress style skyscrapers.  Planned and started in 1947 on Moscow’s 800th anniversary year, these include the 27 floor Ministry of Foreign affairs building, the 36 floor Moscow State University, residential building such as the famous 26 floor ‘House on the (Bersenevskaya) Embankment’ containing 500 apartments built for the Soviet party elite and haunted by the KGB, and the hotel – the 34 storey Ukraina.

The Kremlin and Red Square keeps you hooked. For 2 days I kept going back, each time with the feeling that I had missed something important here. Located here are the Cathedral Square and St Basil’s Church, the State Museum, Lenin’s mausoleum and the Armoury containing the Diamond Fund or the State collection of Romanov, and church gems and jewels. The Armoury  and Diamond Fund collection include religious objects, exquisitely made crowns, Faberge eggs, royal carriages, gold harnesses, galleries full of gold and silver plates and ornaments. St Basil’s Cathedral in the Red Square, commissioned by Ivan the Terrible, with its twisted onion domes and the frescos, is endearing. The sheer beauty of the golden domed churches, the Patriarch’s Palace and cathedrals inside the Kremlin where Ivan and his son are buried, lend more beauty to the Kremlin. In other parts of the city, these golden domes seem to be inspiring an increasing number of devotees and followers and an increasing popularity and power of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as a riotous outpouring of discontent against the collusion of the Church with the state. This was spearheaded in a ‘punk prayer’ by the girl band, Pussy Riot, in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, three years ago.

The Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery has one riveted. From beautiful icons to the grandest collection of Russian art and early 20th century art, one has the pick. Of the latter, one finds an interesting ensemble of art nouveau, realism, symbolism, fauvism, impressionism and one is mesmerized by all – Foujita  and Pascin, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Gaugin, Corot, Daubigny, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Valtat, Van Dongen, Picasso – and that is just to name a few! But like the Guerilla Girls, one notes that there were more women up on the walls as subjects than as artists.

At Bolshoi, the queues for the next season tickets had already started and we also stood in line to find the last remaining ones outside this Russian classical structure in Theatre Square.  In the evenings one waited in front of this theatre with a statue of Bacchus with his four horses to get a glimpse of the spectacular 3D Circle of Light shows, which had been set up throughout Moscow at key public buildings. The crowds, we noticed, were managed quite well by a not-so-small an army of police.

A stroll through newly revamped Gorky Park, just across the Moskva River, provides a tranquil break. The river here makes a great ice skating rink in the winter months, we were told. The fabulous Gorky House Museum with its art deco design and interiors on Malaya Nikitskaya brings a sense of remorse that there is little or no restoration and preservation of old houses in Pakistan.

They say that it is also Europe’s largest Muslim city. In September this year, along with Turkish and Palestinean presidents, Putin inaugurated a rather grand golden domed Moscow ‘Cathedral’ Mosque, denouncing ISIL and talked of teaching a new brand of religious tolerance and harmony. After the Russian president sparred with his US counterpart in the UN in New York, one read that the Russian Air Force had carried out strikes against rebel positions in Syria. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen Head offered to send in troops against the Islamic State. This is also a new Chechnya under Akhmet Kadyrov’s son.

One can only be in awe of this cold war protagonist which emerged from an unsteady post-Soviet state, still a strong willed international player, easily able to take on a policy line opposing the west on Syria. One is constantly reminded that this is Putin’s Russia – a man who likes horse-riding barebacked, karate and swimming, whose face appears on souvenir mugs and whose bust sells in souvenir shops alongside that of Lenin, Stalin and Peter the Great.

The Russia I encountered in a week in Moscow still reminds me of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gorky and Pasternak. I saw the familiar red walls of the Kremlin near which Lenin lies in state, the symbolic hammer and the sickle, the star, the double headed eagle… they will remain with me as fond and familiar childhood memories. But I also felt a rush of blood, an attachment to a country I had so far only seen through western eyes. It all holds you in thrall and you understand a little why Putin and Lavrov are smug and confident.

Russia may not be the desired destination for the tourist on a weekend break or a shoe-string budget. It is not a hard country, but it is not for ‘generation selfie’ either, who are ticking ‘things to do’ off a list. This was once land of the ‘Czar of all the Russias’ and no small pushover. Considering the Romanov wealth and art displayed in museums and palaces, Soviet symbols of excesses, hardships, successes and the revolution – it is a heaven for culture vultures. You need time to savour it slowly and brace yourself for heartache at the end of the sojourn. You will long to go back.

And so here I am, unable to drown Lara’s theme that’s been playing in my head and wondering what the hell happened to socialism.