I had to send a few faxes back to the States in the past few days, and though there is certainly an easier way to do it, I decided to go all the way down to the Central Telegraph building downtown. This gigantic building opened in 1929, and dominates one corner of Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s Broadway. It is just a few block north of the Kremlin.
For decades, this was the only place to get a telegraph, a letter, or a phone call into or out of the USSR, and as a public space it is just as you would imagine: imposing and designed to make you feel insignificant. But I personally have an odd affinity for Soviet architecture. Many buildings from this time are very close to the cutting edge of design in the early twentieth-century (especially the constructivist Iszvestia Building a little further north on Pushkinskaya, though it is hard to tell anymore through the thick layer of billboards now encrusted on it). Central Telegraph is not the best example, but it is impressively overwhelming and pompous, if not inspiring or uplifting. And it is easier to like it now that the ideology that informs it is gone, just like it is easier to dig Mayan pyramids now that people are no longer climbing them to cut the still-beating hearts out of prisoners to make offerings to the gods.
The place always reminds me of a story Daniel Schorr told in his autobiography, Staying Tuned. He was the CBS bureau chief in Moscow for awhile during the Khrushchev years. The only way to get your stories back to the West was to type them up, bring them to the censors department at the Central Telegraph building, and stick it through a slot. A few minutes later, your copy would be spat out another slot with all the redactions and ‘corrections’ scribbled on it. You then took that paper to the telegraph office where it would be sent west. It didn’t take long for the foreign correspondents to notice that different censors behind that wall did their jobs very differently. Things that one would black out would go through untouched by another. So the correspondents tried to unlock what the censors schedule was by using specific phrases and remembering what time they went in to figure out when the ‘easier’ censors were working.
Today, the Telegraph remains imposing on the outside, but the rest is a little more mundane. The main entrance leads you to a simple ‘Pochta’ not much different than any other except that it is open much more. In the lobby there is a pharmacy and a small jewelry shop. And like every other public way or shopping space, there is a shop that sells cellphones (Seriously, how many cellphones does the average Russian buy every year?)
I keep thinking about this this weekend. On Sunday our broadband internet connection blacked out, which is one way to make you appreciate how connected we are here, even in an ordinary residential neighborhood outside the center of town. Everyday I can check the Red Sox scores, read British newspapers, and spend awhile watching YouTube when I get homesick. It reminds you how no matter how bleak or weird things are around here, they were much worse not so long ago.
For decades, this was the only place to get a telegraph, a letter, or a phone call into or out of the USSR, and as a public space it is just as you would imagine: imposing and designed to make you feel insignificant. But I personally have an odd affinity for Soviet architecture. Many buildings from this time are very close to the cutting edge of design in the early twentieth-century (especially the constructivist Iszvestia Building a little further north on Pushkinskaya, though it is hard to tell anymore through the thick layer of billboards now encrusted on it). Central Telegraph is not the best example, but it is impressively overwhelming and pompous, if not inspiring or uplifting. And it is easier to like it now that the ideology that informs it is gone, just like it is easier to dig Mayan pyramids now that people are no longer climbing them to cut the still-beating hearts out of prisoners to make offerings to the gods.
The place always reminds me of a story Daniel Schorr told in his autobiography, Staying Tuned. He was the CBS bureau chief in Moscow for awhile during the Khrushchev years. The only way to get your stories back to the West was to type them up, bring them to the censors department at the Central Telegraph building, and stick it through a slot. A few minutes later, your copy would be spat out another slot with all the redactions and ‘corrections’ scribbled on it. You then took that paper to the telegraph office where it would be sent west. It didn’t take long for the foreign correspondents to notice that different censors behind that wall did their jobs very differently. Things that one would black out would go through untouched by another. So the correspondents tried to unlock what the censors schedule was by using specific phrases and remembering what time they went in to figure out when the ‘easier’ censors were working.Today, the Telegraph remains imposing on the outside, but the rest is a little more mundane. The main entrance leads you to a simple ‘Pochta’ not much different than any other except that it is open much more. In the lobby there is a pharmacy and a small jewelry shop. And like every other public way or shopping space, there is a shop that sells cellphones (Seriously, how many cellphones does the average Russian buy every year?)
I keep thinking about this this weekend. On Sunday our broadband internet connection blacked out, which is one way to make you appreciate how connected we are here, even in an ordinary residential neighborhood outside the center of town. Everyday I can check the Red Sox scores, read British newspapers, and spend awhile watching YouTube when I get homesick. It reminds you how no matter how bleak or weird things are around here, they were much worse not so long ago.
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