Russian Blog
This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
Moscow November 2010
By Vlada 23 November 10
More stories from a Russian teacher in London, or something that may be interesting for you to know, but won’t be mentioned in your Russian lessons!
I haven’t written about Moscow for a while – it’s a difficult subject, and I run the risk of being biased. I love Moscow the way one loves a pair of old comfortable shoes, or an old house that has become so familiar that you do not notice an odd crack on the floor or torn off wallpaper. So it is difficult to watch and analyse it objectively. But as time goes by, my home town changes so much in detail and appearance that it is fascinating to watch. I am always surprised at how dynamic it is – slightly unpredictable and always interesting. If you visited Moscow 10 years ago and think you know it, go back and have a look. You will find a very different city! So what’s new in Moscow in November 2010? Here are some of my observations.
News number 1 is of course that we have a new mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, after 20 years of Yuri Luzhkov. Not a Muscovite, a keen hunter and sportsman, he is said to be a figure closely related to the federal government, whose aim is to “bring Moscow back to Russia”. As all Russians know, Moscow is, and has always been, a state within a state, traditionally and notoriously different from the rest of the country. Will the new mayor be able to change that? I doubt it, but I will keep you posted.
Naturally, the new mayor has promised to improve the traffic situation in the capital. He had to, because the infamous Moscow traffic jams have got out of control completely, and do badly need to be sorted, it’s just that no one knows how to sort them. It has become so bad that driving around freely is only possible on Sundays and at night, and going on any major road at any time of the day will result in sitting in a traffic jam for hours. For a start, the new mayor has suggested that all Moscow civil servants start their working day one hour earlier than other people, at 8 am (this won’t be popular with his staff!). This should take them out of the worst rush hour and free up some space on the roads. He is also promising to make parking in the streets more orderly and more difficult (good luck to him!), as well as introduce more official parking spaces. And he is freeing some space by taking down all the little kiosks at the side of every street leading to a tube station.
The kiosks are loved by some and loathed by others. They sell all sorts of useful stuff – food, fruit and veg, flowers, newspapers, toiletries etc. They look awful and clog up the streets, but one can do all the shopping during the week on the way from work, without ever going to a proper shop or supermarket. You can get your dinner, flowers for your wife, soap and toothpaste for your bathroom, a book to read – all on the way from the tube station. Without them, the city would look better and much more European, but people will miss the convenience.
Another feature of modern times is that the Moscow authorities have been trying to introduce rubbish recycling, but Russians just do not take kindly to this idea; it looks like being tidy and ‘orderly’ goes against the Russian psyche. So however much I yearn to put newspapers in a separate place (I’ve been living in London too long!) they end up being shoved into the universal garbage chute on the landing of the block of flats, together with potato peel and cat litter! There’s a lot in the media about the necessity of introducing recycling, but it looks like the Moscow public is not ready for it.
The Moscow of today is full of work migrants. You can hardly hear the Moscow accent any more in the streets: not because all Muscovites have left, but because they are all sitting in traffic jams in their expensive but slow moving cars, and would rather die of boredom and frustration on the road than go anywhere by public transport! Sometimes I feel like the last of the Mohicans when I travel by tube. Everyone around is clearly not a local. The situation where about one third of the people around you speak hardly any Russian was unthinkable a few years ago. Now it is quite common. Muscovites, as you can imagine, are very grumpy about it, but it is, after all, a sign of success. Moscow is where the jobs are, and where the money is.
A topic much discussed is renaming the police. Soviet and later Russian police have been called Militia (“militsiya”) since the October revolution of 1917. The reason is that the word “police” (“politsiya”) for the Bolsheviks was associated with the oppression and the persecution of the tsarist regime. So by changing the name of the police force to militia they emphasised the fact that the new police is made “of the people and for the people”. And now, after all these years, President Medvedev proposes to change the name back to “police”, because that’s what they’re called in other countries. A lot of people hate this idea, saying that it’s the essence that needs to be changed, its organisation and work ethic rather than the name. Others think that it will bring Russia closer to Western Europe, psychologically, if not actually.
And of course, in the Moscow of 2010 there are numerous new restaurants representing all the possible cuisines of the world (Japanese is the current craze), and more and more very expensive cars, and ever more beautiful women beautifully dressed… There is poverty of course as well, but it’s often hidden behind the glitz and the glamour of the main streets. Moscow is indeed, quoting an old Soviet movie, a city of contrasts, a city where rules do not apply or can be made up as you go – provided you feel strong enough to do it. This is its charm and its danger, ever attractive and slightly scary.