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The summer of our discontent – Moscow 2010
By Vlada 27 August 10
More info from a Russian tutor in London, or something that you may want to know but will not learn in your Russian course. Just what exactly happened in Moscow (and most of the European part of Russia) this summer?
I was going to write an article about Russian fairy tales in my next blog post but it has turned out this summer, yet again, that Russian reality is much more interesting than fairy tales! So I can’t help commenting on the hottest summer in Russia since records started 130 years ago…
August in Russia is a traditional time for disasters. I have no rational explanation for it, but it’s true. Abominable acts of terrorism, natural disasters, accidents on a large scale, coups d’etat – you name it, we’ve had it in August of other years. So what did this August bring us? Terrifying and devastating fires!
At the end of August Muscovites and lots of Russians living in the European part of the country breathed a huge sigh of relief. The incredible heat wave (38-40 degrees Celsius) lasting for two months has ceased. No more wet towels and sheets; smoke masks and fans.
I flew back to Moscow to see the extent of the fire damage, and to hear terrifying stories about the smog and heat. To my satisfaction, it was business as usual – I couldn’t see any signs of the ordeal Russians had been through (apart from the fact that everyone’s flats were still desperately hot – the latent heat takes weeks to dissipate).
All the same, there’s no doubt it was a full-blown ecological disaster. Here are just some of the facts.
• Without any warning from the Met office, unusual heat settled in Moscow and all the areas around it in the middle of June and lasted, without any breaks (although, mercifully, with a couple of thunderstorms) until the middle of August. Daytime temperatures reached +40 and sometimes +42 degrees Celsius.
• Forests around Moscow are rich in peat. Normally, peat should be covered with water forming a peat bog. But in some areas peat used to be mined, for fuel (instead of firewood) and for agriculture. To make peat mines, bogs were drained and later abandoned without being refilled with water. When the weather gets hot, the temperature inside a peat deposit becomes so high that peat ignites and starts burning, giving out suffocating smoke.
• Peat can burn in the ground, so there is no flame visible, and the smoke from it rises above the ground. It is very difficult to put out or control.
• Peat fires are not new to Moscow – they happen every year when the weather gets hot. This year they ran out of control because of the unusually long heat wave. In living memory, a very similar thing occurred in 1972, with smoke covering the whole city for days.
• When peat fires spread, they destroy hundreds of hectares of valuable forests, killing wildlife and people, devastating villages and crops. This is exactly what happened this year. Not only a lot of animals and birds perished, but some villages were burned to the ground leaving their inhabitants homeless. There are now campaigns in the media to help those who lost their homes and livelihoods. The government promises to build new houses for the fire victims as quickly as possible…
• The beginning of August was the worst. Thick smoke came into Moscow from the south (where there were most forest fires) turning it into a ghost city. It was impossible to see anything or to breathe properly outside. Combined with the 40 degree heat, it created a model of hell’s antechamber. People didn’t dare leave their homes, streets were empty. Ambulances were struggling to cope with the volume of calls from people with heart and breathing problems. Mortality in the city increased threefold. Morgues were full. The price of air conditioners and fans soared.
• Those who did venture out acquired a black sooty moustache under the nose after being outside for a while, and felt sick after inhaling too much carbon monoxide. The concentration of carbon monoxide in the air was 6 times higher than the acceptable level.
• An insignificant but curious fact: my family’s cat, a beautiful and treasured pet, fainted with heat stroke, to the horror of his owners, and had to be brought back to life with smelling salts and water. After that, he was sprinkled with water regularly and made to drink.
• People on the tube were seen fainting. The best places to be were big air-conditioned shopping centres and especially food shops where the staff sprinkled water around and washed everything to keep soot off the groceries.
• Some of my friends only went out at night (the fortunate ones who work as university lecturers, on a summer break with no need to go to work every day) – the best time to leave the house was at 3 am when the temperature was ‘only’ about 30 degrees.
• Everyone who could leave the city did so, going to visit relatives outside Moscow or on holiday if they were lucky enough to get a last minute holiday package.
• However, Russians are very stoical and resilient people who do not succumb to panic and fear easily (we’ve been through so much that a few puffs of smoke is not a big deal). Even on the worst days, Moscow functioned as normal: public transport ran as usual, people went to work, shops and restaurants were open and even the street vendors were out. You could get a take away if you ran out of food and were too scared to venture outside. It would be delivered with a bit of soot on top but still edible!
The question now widely discussed in the media is – why could it not be prevented or predicted? And was it the first disaster of this scale caused by global warming, or has it all happened before? The answer is – it could be prevented but wasn’t, through habitual Russian carelessness and lack of organisation. “A Russian man will not cross himself until thunder strikes”, says an old Russian proverb. We like to react to events when they have already happened, not before they are likely to happen. Why couldn’t the Met office warn us? Probably for the same reason!
And has it happened before? Yes, many times, but not as bad as this year in people’s living memory. I am just old enough to remember the summer of 1972 (very vaguely, I was a young kid), with smoke and fires all around Moscow. But here is an extract from a historical record from 1533, documented by the famous Russian historian Karamzin. “... from the 29th of June till September not a single drop of rain fell on the ground. Bogs and brooks dried up; forest fires were raging; the sun was dull and could not be seen long before the time of sunset. In broad daylight people could not even recognise each other’s faces and were suffocating from smoke. Travellers could not see their way; birds could not fly in the air…” Imagine the crop failure and the famine that must have come after that!! Sounds much more scary than the summer we’ve just had!
So if you are going to Moscow in August, check the latest news and the weather forecast. But remember, it will be business as usual as long as it is possible to breathe at all! Even your Russian course, were you to plan one, would not be cancelled…
The Russian capital in recession – 10 observations from a Russian teacher
By Vlada 12 September 09
More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons.
In Russian lessons in the last few months, my students have often asked me – is there a recession in Moscow as well? And if there is, what is it like? Well, the world is becoming smaller and smaller and we are connected more and more closely – so yes, we have recession too, and it’s worse than in the West (apparently), according to economists. And then you arrive in Moscow and can’t help wondering – where is this widely advertised recession and what are the signs of it? The prices are increasing as fast as ever, shopping centres and restaurants are packed with people, the glitz and the glamour are still there…
Here, for example, is an extract from a menu of a sea food restaurant in the centre of Moscow: “Bouillabaisse Imperial – for 4 persons – 24600 roubles (500 pounds); Lobster Florentine per 100 grams (!) – 890 roubles (20 pounds); Langoustine (flown in from France) per 100 grams – 1790 roubles (36 pounds)”, etc… And it was not empty when one of my friends was there recently!
At first sight, Moscow is as prosperous as it was a year ago. You need to look a bit deeper to see the problems. So I’ve just looked, and here are my 10 observations:
1. There are fewer people on the underground. Great news if you are a visitor! A year ago the public transport system was so overloaded that it was impossible to travel on some tube lines in the rush hour, and even at night the underground trains were full. With the coming of recession some people who lost their jobs in Moscow have gone back to their home towns.
2. The city generally feels a bit roomier and emptier, although the famous traffic jams are still horrendous, unbeaten by the crisis.
3. The construction and property industry is affected most of all. There is less building going on, and a lot of migrants working in construction have lost their jobs and are trying to find jobs elsewhere.
4. Property prices have dropped a bit (but not much), and there are more properties available. The cost of renting has gone down, and there are a lot of articles in the press about how to rent a flat cheaper in the recession.
5. Generally, prices are growing which doesn’t make much sense to me because in theory there should be sales in the shops, but I haven’t seen any. The price of food and most consumer goods is at the same level as in London; the price of clothes is higher. However, transport fares and utility bills are still much lower than in Europe (and especially the UK!)
6. It is said that a lot of office workers have lost their jobs or had to agree to pay cuts.
7. In Russian, recession is often called “crizis” (crisis). All shops and traders are actively using the theme of recession in advertising. Here are a couple of slogans I saw and heard in supermarkets: “Recession to the bourgeoisie, food to the people!” “Come and check out our crisis-busting prices!” “Anti-crisis sale is on!” All the discounts are called “anti-crisis prices”.
8. The consumption of beer and (I would imagine) vodka is soaring. Just like in the West, people are drowning their sorrows in alcohol, and it wouldn’t be Russia if they didn’t…
9. On TV, the “crisis” is constantly mentioned, but often in a cheerful manner, especially in TV ads. In newspapers, it is much talked about in various contexts: useful tips about what to do when you lose your job, how to survive in recession, how to save money etc are published along with serious analytical articles about the reasons and the outcomes of recession on a global scale.
10. The most remarkable thing though, is that most Russians, especially the older generation, are not really scared by the “crisis”: for people who have lived through the collapse of their country and its whole economy, seen the disintegration of the country’s ideology and way of life, a little thing like a recession is just a bit of a nuisance, really. I know how they feel – I am one of them!
Memoirs of a Russian teacher: Moscow 1988.
By Vlada 19 July 08
or is 20 years enough to make a city unrecognisable?
More stories from a Russian tutor in London, or things you may be interested to know but won’t learn in a Russian course.
The other day one of my students said that I am not old enough to remember the Soviet Union. I was very flattered (I wonder if he actually meant it or just wanted to be kind) but I remember it all too well, both the Soviet Union in its traditional state and the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse and chaos.
Moscow 1988 was an interesting place to live in, often for the wrong reasons. I am going to tell you a few facts of life in those days. But first, can you imagine Moscow without any advertising, any commercial kiosks selling stuff, without traffic jams or too many cars, without any glamorous restaurants or hotels, no places to have a meal for a tourist, no public toilets, but with huge queues in empty shops? That’s what it was like! It had its charm, though. You could stroll down the huge spacious streets and enjoy a sunny day without bumping into millions of other people trying to do the same, you could travel on the tube without being squeezed to death, and actually drive around, and not sit in solid traffic jams. But you couldn’t buy anything, apart from basic stuffs, or have a decent meal in a restaurant (it’s hard to imagine now!), or go abroad on holiday.
And the facts are:
• A young new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had just been elected. It was a shock for the country. Not only was he young and full of energy (all the previous guys were ancient and trying to rule the country from their deathbeds), but he also had a glamorous well-educated wife who started appearing everywhere with him, a thing unheard of for a Soviet leader. And – shock, horror! – he decided that Russians drank too much and imposed restrictions on selling vodka. What was he thinking, God knows, but he couldn’t think of a better way to make Russian people hate him. And most did, with a passion, and still do, after all these years. Not just because of the vodka ban, of course.
• Something very awful was happening to the Soviet economy. Of course, in the Soviet times we could never buy anything fancy and nice easily but in 1988 shops became completely empty. You could still buy the basic stuffs like bread, milk or potatoes, but the moment something less basic, like, say, cheese or sausage appeared on the counters, the queues got horrendous.
• Especially enormous queues were seen outside wine shops because vodka could only be sold after 2 pm, and there were a lot of people who needed it earlier!
• Decent clothes had to be bought either through connections (friends and relatives who had access to warehouses or the back entrance of shops) or from the black market dealers who resold them at huge prices, having bought them from people with access to imported goods, foreigners or those who could travel abroad. If one didn’t have the right connections, other options were making your own clothes, or having them made in the tailor shop where they usually came out rather different from what you had asked for.
• People had money but not much could be bought for money. Every citizen was given a set of vouchers which you had to show in the shop, in addition to paying money. Different vouchers were given for different sorts of goods. So you felt like they should be used before they expire, and as a result I still have a number of totally unnecessary objects, acquired in the late 80-s, in my Moscow home.
• Advertising was unheard of, either on the telly or anywhere else. When I first got to America in 1990, and started watching a film, I honestly thought that the girl running around with some washing powder was part of the movie.
• It was still a criminal offence to have foreign (hard) currency without a special reason for it, or change foreign currency in the street. In banks, you could only change currency if you could show proof that you were travelling abroad, and the maximum sum you could change was the equivalent of $200. The official exchange rate was 66 kopecks to the US dollar, so the rouble was supposed to be high and stable (the truth was of course very different).
• Relations with foreigners were liberalised. In 1988, one could already bring foreign guests to one’s place openly, without fear of being watched, and engage in correspondence with foreigners. A letter from/to the US took 2 months to get there, and to Europe – about a month. There was no automatic dialling system to call abroad, so you had to go to the central post office and “order” a conversation through an operator, or do it through an operator from your home phone.
• You could get English or Russian lessons for as little as 3 to 5 dollars per hour! Even if you include an air ticket to Moscow and back, it would have been much cheaper than learning Russian in London! I am surprised more foreigners didn’t speak perfect Russian!
• Borders were open a year or two later, and hordes of people went abroad for various reasons, some of them never to return. The only ticket provider, the state airline Aeroflot, sold tickets months in advance, there were huge waiting lists and people had to turn up in person every morning for a month to tick their name on the waiting list, otherwise they were thrown out of the queue. Before that, one could only travel abroad for work or as part of an official delegation.
• The first McDonald’s opened in Moscow in 1990. Admittedly, it’s not the best place to eat in any city, but in those days it was the only place where a tourist could come for an easy snack and a visit to the loo. Those were the days!
Which Moscow would I prefer to live in? Of course the modern day one! It turns out that 20 years is enough to make a city unrecognisable, and whatever you say about the modern problems, they are nothing in comparison to what we’ve been through.
10 facts about shopping in Moscow
By Vlada 30 June 08
More stories from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may be interested to know but won’t learn in a Russian course.
Russians love to shop, and that’s a fact. I am the first to confess that a bit of retail therapy can take away even the occasional Russian gloom and thoughts of a failed life, traditional for any Russian intellectual (see Chekhov and others). I know it’s very shallow but I can tell you why we love shopping: anyone over the age of 30 could not do it until quite recently! So we are now trying to make up for lost time. We spent our young years making our own clothes, or ordering them made-to-measure (I know it sounds chic to an English ear, but doing it in Soviet tailor shops was no fun at all!), and wearing the wrong size/colour shoes because you were lucky to get decent ones even in the wrong size! We weren’t allowed to travel either, to do the shopping abroad. As a result, all the shopping centres in the world (Milan and Paris are favourites) you can see crowds of enthusiastic Russian consumers, buying whole wardrobes. The longed-for and deserved opportunity to go shopping has finally come our way! And yet:
Fact 1: Moscow is NOT a shopping destination. The culture of western-style shops is only developing, and shopping is much less fun than in the West. So if shopping for clothes is a priority on your holiday list, I wouldn’t advise going to Russia!
Fact 2. Shopping for food is becoming more and more similar to the West. Only a few years ago, we had to run around a hundred different small shops to get different kinds of groceries (shops used to be specialised in a very old-fashioned way). Now we have big supermarket chains with different price levels: the cheapest ones are called “Pyaterochka” (“A Fiver”) and “Kopeika” (a “Kopeck”, a penny); middle-range ones are “Perekrestok” (“Cross-roads”), “Billa” and “Spar” (both foreign brands); an expensive one is “Sedmoi Kontinent” (“The Seventh Continent”). The most expensive supermarket in Moscow is called “Azbuka Vkusa” (“The A to Z of Taste”), and it’s a kind of shop where rich people send their chauffers with a shopping list and where one can get even the most exotic foods: fresh lobsters (bearing in mind that Moscow is thousands of miles away from where those lobsters are caught), authentic dishes from different cuisines of the world, all possible varieties of French cheeses etc. All the simplest foods cost 3-4 times more than in other shops, and it always smells of freshly baked bread and is pleasantly empty.
Fact 3. You can now buy absolutely anything in supermarkets, but in the last six months the prices of food went up by about 30-40%, and people are rather worried by that. With the “bread line” income in Moscow estimated as 8.5 thousand roubles (£170) per month, some people struggle to make ends meet. In Soviet times, of course, we had the opposite picture – people had enough money to buy food, and the prices were very low, but you couldn’t buy much! Only the simple basic groceries were easily available. So it’s never ideal…
Fact 4. The foods that are still significantly cheaper than in the West are of course vodka (£2-6 per bottle, depending on the kind) and caviar, but black caviar goes up in price every year and now costs about £50 for a small can (10 year ago it was £5) and there is a limit on its production because sturgeon has become an endangered species. Red caviar is still plentiful and quite cheap but it’s not as nice!
Fact 5. Shopping for clothes is a bit of a problem. On the one hand, big shopping malls out of the centre offer a rather dull range of not very good quality clothes at affordable prices. On the other hand, fashion boutiques in the centre, such as the famous GUM (“the State Department Shop”) in Red Square or all the shops in Tverskaya Street are incredibly expensive and exist for tourists and very rich people. They offer endless designer clothes, jewellery and Swiss watches, and look very empty. Being a Muscovite, I haven’t been to the GUM for 12 years…
Fact 6. Shopping for shoes and bags is a pleasure but you’ll have to go out of the centre into big shopping malls where ordinary Russians shop, and speaking Russian is a must (that’s where your Russian lessons will come in handy!). Shoes and bags are mostly Italian or made in Russia using Italian designs and are much more interesting than what one can find in London in high street shops. Shoe prices are about the same as in London, and a good quality Italian leather bag costs £100-150 depending on the size.
Fact 7. Almost all the big chain high street Western shops such as Marks and Spencer, Next, Zara, Monsoon and others are now present in Russia but their contents are completely different from their English counterparts. The prices there are a bit higher than in England and the choice of things is a bit disappointing.
Fact 8. Apologies to the anti-fur activists, but every Russian wears at least something made of fur. If you’d like a Russian souvenir for cold weather, then a hat made of rabbit costs about £40 (nice and fluffy but not durable, so will last only a couple of years), ottar –about £80, mink – £120-150 (the latter two will last for a long time). A long mink fur coat costs from 2.5 to 5 thousand pounds, a short one – 1-2.5 thousand pounds. Fur items are mainly made in Greece, Italy, and surprisingly, Russia! The same rule applies there – prices in the boutiques in the centre are very different from the ones in the “common” shops in the outskirts.
Fact 9. What are the traditional Russian souvenirs to take home? Matreshka dolls – the ones consisting of several little dolls hidden in one, you can get them in different sizes in most gift shops and even bookshops. Russian crafts: brightly painted lacquered boxes for storing jewellery and brightly coloured wooden dishes and plates that can actually be used for eating out of, as well as for decoration. Thin woollen scarves made in Pavlov Posad are, I think, very pretty and last forever (I have one that’s 15 years old, and it still looks great!) Golden jewellery is not very expensive in Russia (unless you go to one of the shops in Tverskaya street in Moscow!). Traditional Russian gold is slightly rose coloured, rather than being purely yellow, the choice of jewellery is large and some things are very pretty.
Fact 10. And finally, specially for students of Russian, the biggest shop for books and textbooks is called “Biblio-Globus” in Lubyanka (follow the signs from Lubyanka tube station, it’s 3 min walk) It has a large choice of books in Russian and other languages, a big section on learning Russian as a foreign language, a basement full of video and audio materials and assistants that can help. It also gets quite crowded in the evening so it’s best to go there in the morning or during the day. The cheapest large book shop in Moscow is called “Molodaya Gvardia” (“The Young Guard”, after a famous Soviet book), situated near the tube station Polyanka. If you buy a lot of books it makes sense to go there because the price difference can be quite significant. They have a section dedicated to Russian learning materials as well.
Well, Moscow is not a shopper’s paradise but it has its moments. I can’t wait for my next trip, to go shopping!
Facts and figures: Is Moscow really the most expensive city in the world?
By Vlada 31 May 08
Facts about life in Moscow from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but won’t learn in a Russian course.
I am a Muscovite and I’ve never lost touch with my city or my family and friends all the years I’ve lived in London. And in the last couple of years I keep hearing, from my students and from the media that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world. And every time I think: surely, it’s some mistake? It’s one of those ‘truths’ created by foreign visitors and ex-pats working in Moscow, the luckless victims of “they saw them coming”, who get charged top dollar for the simplest services and goods. I’ve always thought that nothing can compare with the high cost of living in London! Is Moscow really that expensive?
Last time I was there (a few days ago), feeling quite rich while paying Moscow prices being used to London ones, I decided to have a look at some bills and write down pure facts and figures.
Fact 1: Ordinary Muscovites have more disposable income than Londoners.
Income tax is 12%. People don’t have mortgages or expensive insurances, they don’t pay a huge council tax. Most people don’t take out loans or use credit cards. Being in debt is thought to be scary. Interest rates on mortgages and loans are huge – up to 40% (it’s a new thing, there is no culture of borrowing money from banks, people don’t have a credit history or rating, and the Western-style banking system is only developing at the moment). People live in flats given to them by the Soviet state for free, or they’re inherited from families who got it from the state for free. The flats are small but they are free of rent or mortgage.
Fact 2: All utility bills are subsidised by the city council, for households where 1 person has up to 33sq metres of living space (and most people have less). Repairs to the communal areas and maintenance of buildings are paid for by the council. Rubbish is disposed of via garbage shoots, on the American system. The trash flies into the basement and is collected every day. Hot water is unlimited (you can run it all day and it won’t run out!), it can be metered (see below) or paid for on a small fixed charge.
Fact 3: Heating is communal. Water for radiators is heated in gigantic boilers in separate buildings and pumped to blocks of flats. Central heating is switched on in October and switched off in April. It cannot be adjusted in every individual flat, so if you are too hot you open the window, and if you are too cold you can use an additional electric heater. The central area of Moscow is heated best, with an average inside temperature of about 22-23 degrees C. English people are usually too hot in Russian houses (see my blog on cultural differences!). The suburbs are not heated as well, and a couple of my friends who live in small towns there have cold flats.
Now for the figures:
Figure 1: the price of food shopping.
In the last half a year food prices rose by 30-40%, and people are of course concerned about it, just like in the UK!
Here are the prices of some basic foods, given in roubles and in pounds, roughly based on the current exchange rate of 1 pound to 48 roubles:
•a loaf of white bread: 15-20 roubles (35p)
•1 litre of milk: 37-45 roubles (85p)
•meat – 200-300 roubles (£4) per kilo, depending on the kind
•1 whole chicken: 150-160 roubles (£3.50)
•sausage (German style, much loved by Russians): 310 roubles (£6) per kilo
•cold cooked ham (“buzhenina”): 400-600 roubles (£8-12) per kilo
•fish (sea fish is sold frozen, as Russia is an inland country): 100-150 roubles (£2-3)
•25 teabags of decent tea – 40-50 roubles (£1)
•vodka: 100-300 roubles per half a litre bottle, depending on the kind (£2-6)
•vines from Spain, Portugal, Chili: 200-400 roubles (£4-8)
There are different classes of supermarkets and shops, so the price of food may vary quite a lot. The cheapest food is sold in rough food markets in residential areas, away from the centre.
Figure 2: the price of transport
•Tube card for 1 journey, regardless of distance – 19 roubles (40p)
•Bus, trolleybus, tram – 17 roubles for 1 journey (35p)
•Taxi: for an official taxi that you book on the phone – 450 roubles (£9.50) per 30 min. For cars you hail in the street – 100-150 roubles (£2-3) for about 10-15 min journey, 200 roubles (£4) for 20-30 min and so on. Bargaining is common and you agree the price before getting in the car.
•Suburban trains: 200 roubles (£4) for a return ticket to a suburban town 40 min away from the city centre (sort of London –Woking). Can one travel from London to Woking for £2? Shall I remind you of the London train prices or is it too painful to think about? For the money I pay to get to work from Surrey to central London every day I could travel to work in Moscow from the outskirts to the centre for a month!
Figure 3: tariffs for telephone
•Line rental – 125 roubles (£2.50) per month
•Unlimited talk on landlines – 350 roubles (£7) per month
•If you choose to pay by the minute – 25 kopecks (0.005p) per min
•Calls from landlines to mobiles – 1.50 roubles (0.03p) per min
Figure 4: (and the most interesting one) tariffs for communal services.
Every time I pay London bills I become enormously homesick! And here is why:
•Average flat insurance, provided by the city council: 30-40 roubles (80p) per month. It means that if your pipe leaks because it’s too old, you won’t have to pay the neighbour for repairing the leak damage. Or if the flat burns out, you won’t be paid any damages but the city is supposed to find you another accommodation to live in (whether it will is another question!)
•Gas, fixed price per person: 20 roubles (40p) per month.
•Water: 60 roubles (£1.20) per 1 cubic metre of hot water and 15 roubles (30p) per 1 cubic metre of cold water if you have it metered, if not, the price is fixed per person – 330 roubles (£7)per month.
•Electricity: 2 roubles (4p) per kilowatt, an average household bill per person per month is about 500 roubles (£10).
•Entry phone system: 45 roubles (£1) per month
•Central heating: 12 roubles (25p) per sq metre of living space per month – regardless of the time of the year. So if you have a 50 sq metre flat, the cost of heating per month will be 600 roubles (£12).
•Maintenance of building and council tax – 200 roubles (£4) per month
One unpleasant thing about the communal maintenance is that hot water is switched off for 3 weeks for maintenance every summer, so in that time it’s impossible to take showers and most people heat water in big pots to have a wash!
So, if you live on your own in a small flat with a kitchen and a bathroom, your total average household bill per month will be about 1500 roubles (£30). No comment…
Figure 5: And last, but not least! The rate for Russian lessons – 1000–1500 roubles per hour (£20-30), also cheaper than in London!
Figure 6: the minimum income
Bread line income: 8000 roubles (£160) per month, impossible to live on and much criticised, but people do live in Moscow with this level of income.
Average state pension: 5000-7000 roubles (£100-150) per month. You are allowed to work and get the full pension at the same time, and even live abroad and have a second citizenship and receive the state pension if you worked in Russia all your life. Most pensioners either work or are supported by their children.
All this said, it’s true that there are a lot of very expensive places and very rich people in Moscow. The capital city collects and attracts all the rich and the super-rich from the whole of Russia and the ex-Soviet states, and if you stay in hotels, rent big flats and eat in top-class restaurants, it is incredibly expensive! An average Muscovite though, even a middle-class one, can eat out in Pushkin Café about twice a year and go to more modest restaurants on other occasions. But most people prefer to cook and eat at home, entertain friends and go on social visits that don’t cost much.
It’s true that if you are foreign and don’t speak Russian (learning Russian helps a bit!), you can, and probably will, be taken advantage of, and may leave Moscow thinking that it’s the most expensive city in the world. But I personally have just thought that of Florence, having recently been on holiday there. I can guarantee that it was a LOT more expensive than Moscow. So take reports about Moscow costs with a pinch of salt.