A chaotic journey across half the planet by train — where bad planning collides with blind luck and sheer stubbornness keeps the story moving.
Chapter Eight: Flashed in Moscow
When I left the swaddled protected comfort of my cushy liberal arts college in Los Angles I was prepared to meet the world with nothing more than Political Science degree of questionable value. I never thought then that I’d be running through Red Square unless someone was chasing me. That was 1985 when it seemed that George Orwell’s Cassandra-esque prophecies might come true. Ronal Reagan had just been caught on camera saying that bombing of the ‘Evil Empire’ would begin in five minutes. He claimed it was a joke, that he didn’t know the cameras were on. We didn’t think it was that funny.
Now, in 2011, I can run unimpeded through the Red Square, right past the meat locker where Lenin is preserved, around the very walls of the Kremlin and over to Gorky Park. The only potential obstacles are hoards of tourists. But they won’t arrive for a few hours still. No state police, GRU or Inter-tourist minders are here to stop me. It’s 7am and the Muscovites are most assuredly not morning people.
There is ample evidence that they are proficient night creatures. I pass several knots of guys sipping ‘one last beer’ for the road. I side step a spot of fresh projectile vomit on the pathway just next to the Kremlin’s main entrance. On a picturesque foot bridge across the Moscow River a long-legged club-goer on her way home flashes me glimpses of her knickers. I don’t think it’s intentional. She seems to be trying to air herself out by fanning her skirt the way an American Indian would use a horse blanket and a smoldering campfire to send smoke signals to his tribe. Her skirt in layered in two parts and she thinks she’s only lifting the top part, not the whole thing. Lucky me. This beats running past sewage filled canals in Saigon.
Below the foot bridge on the other side of the River is a newly carved out urban space we stumbled across yesterday. It pays sometimes not to follow the guide books. They would have had us walking entirely on the Kremlin side of the river. On Sunday afternoons the space below turns into a trendy farmer’s market. Over priced cheese and meats are sold to local yuppie couples with strollers. A lone goose is mysteriously penned into what was once a wooden shipping crate. A small plaza of sorts is cornered by public art studios on one side and oversized wooden bleachers on the other. In the square itself an amateur ping pong tournament is going on. They have referees, scoreboards and hot camera-ready women commentators with wireless headset-mics. Nikita would make a killing here. These guys suck at ping pong. The whole place has that perfect ‘casual cool’ feel. Some architect probably spent many sleepless nights trying to make it appear as something he sketched out on a paper napkin in a flash of brilliance over a bottle of Italian Rose. A DJ spins a rare bit of music we don’t find completely offensive. A propos of everything, his mix samples one of the James Bond theme songs. At the top of the bleachers is the trendy “> Bar Stelka’s” outdoor dining area. (We never figured out what the “greater than”(>) symbol signifies). Wifi is free and we see that 39 people are checked into foursquare. It’s a 4square swarm! Damn this place really is trendy. The next Sergey Brin is probably drinking a Mojito here somewhere.
The white wine is perfectly chilled and the food is great. But it’s the view that astounds us. The Kremlin walls are across the river a short distance to the right. Directly opposite is the massive Cathedral of Christ our Saviour where elderly women cover their heads and wrap false skirts around their waists while waiting for services to begin. The foundation of the church must be four stories tall. On the walls around the Cathedral, bronze statues are re-enacting biblical scenes or other triumphs of Orthodox history. In one of these scenes an Orthodox Patriarch appears to be giving Ivan the Terrible (or someone else important) a massive thump on the head with a Bible so huge he needs two hands to hold it up. If they called him ‘The Terrible’, he probably deserved it.
I have always had difficulty deciding what I think about monumental religious artifacts. Whether they are orthodox cathedrals like this, the pyramids of Egypt, the Buddhist stupas of Myanmar encrusted with an entire country’s wealth in gold, or even the thousands of stone churches dotted across rural France, the same dilemma faces me. On the one hand, they are undeniably beautiful works of art. Often they are testament to man’s engineering genius throughout the ages. On the other hand, I see them and I think, “What a stupendous waste of wealth”. Couldn’t the leaders and the far too wealthy of their times have found a more useful way to show off their power? Libraries, train stations or sports stadiums can just as easily leave an impressive mark that we were here on the planet. They at least give a little bit back to the people who were taxed directly and indirectly when creating these wonders. And if we can’t have something vaguely utilitarian then make it something beautiful and impressive but completely useless, like the Eifel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate or that huge fiberglass Bob’s Big Boy at the original drive-thru in Los Angeles. I suppose worship counts as ‘utilitarian’ in some people’s mind but I am too suspicious of the way these organizations extort the funds to build palaces for their gods and priests. The orthodox are no exception. Sometimes more than half the church’s space is barricaded behind a wall of mementos and other paraphernalia. The priest faces this with his back to the parishioners (standing room only in the little bit that is left for them). He supposedly spends half the time of a six hour service behind the wall. No one knows what’s back there. There could be a pizza oven and a comfortably worn leather sofa for all we know.
Then I realize: “Uh Oh. This kind of thinking puts me on a team with some of the world’s most notorious despots, like Stalin or Hitler. Hitler would have gladly razed this entire beautiful city. And Stalin really did destroy this Cathedral we are admiring from behind our crisp glasses of sauvignon blanc. He blew it up in 1931. There are pictures to prove it. It took over a year to pick up the ruble. He had plans to build a worker’s palace of some sort but got distracted with wars and putsches. In the 50’s Kruschev turned the crater into a huge public pool. Hardly the impressive monument I had in mind but certainly utilitarian. Then, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Patriarch did a quick whip-around the country. The newly devoted opened their wallets and the cathedral is back. And I am glad. It’s beautiful. I guess that makes me a hypocrite of some variety. If I had good defense counsel in this self-made court I now accuse myself in, I would hope that they mention the splendid works that Stalin did construct. Useful to the masses and accessible for the price of a subway ticket are the Moscow metro stations: true works of art, and what better place to display than the corridors and halls where millions of people pass through every day. Add to this the Gotham City like gargantuan complexes that are strategically ringed around the city. They are huge, beautiful and clearly made to be used, not worshiped. Any one of them could contain all the services and functions of most small towns around the world.
It strikes me though that this violent rejection of the recent past, replete with tearing down the predecessors most recent works on political correct (or politically in-correct) grounds is not terribly productive. It seems to me that the Russians haven’t benefited from some of the painful advances that were made under their socialist experiences. The Chinese, by contrast, seem able to build on foundations like universal education, literacy, food security and basic infrastructure gained at enormous costs under leadership no more pleasant than Stalin. They are using that foundation to finally make the Great Leap Forward that another despot promised them. The Russians, it seems, have once again had to take a giant step backwards in order to start moving forward once more. It’s a shame. But it does seems to be working twenty years later. The city is beautiful and this time no one is trying to erase all evidence of the recent past. Lenin statues stand next to resurrected orthodox chapels. Bold Hammer & Sickle reliefs worked into the corners of stone buildings built in 1935 face the Czars double eagle engraved on equally impressive granite buildings across the street.
We expected dull, grey and boring. We found very little of that. Our guide books said there were no hotels with anything approaching character or soul. That’s not true. In a panic before boarding the last train we found the 8 room hotel Schevkov. It is situated in the Christie Prody area of town just a kilometer or so from the Kremlin. Odile says it resembles Paris’s 9th arrondissement (excluding Pigalle) before it became fashionable. Perhaps this is just a little pocket of re-gentrification but we can feel hope and progress when walking the streets in this neighborhood.
Towards the end of my run, on my way back towards our 18th century flop house, I finally see someone who is not coming back from a party. He is entering the working (as in not tourist) gates of the Kremlin. He is tall, straight backed and has a purposeful gait. He carries a square leather brief case The kind with two brass clasps and three-number revolving combination locks. Without doubt he is military, or at least ex-military. I’ve spent enough time around these people to recognize them from a distance. He looks a lot like Daniel Craig (who is really better casted as a Soviet agent than a British one). I think he may be in charge of Russia’s nuclear codes. I am glad that there are still level headed adults in charge of important things like this.
