Zamoskvoreche

We decided to celebrate Mila’s nine-month birthday by subjecting her to another grueling trip to the center for a weekend afternoon. We have finally worked out the best ways to get a stroller into and out of the subway, and believe that all of us really benefit from getting out of the neighborhood every once in awhile.

Our goal was to go to the New Tretyakov Gallery by Gorky Park for the last day of a highly-touted show around that featured three or four works from a consortium of European museums. To get there, we took the subway to Barrikadnaya, and since switching trains can be grueling on the best of circumstances, I came up with the bright idea that we should get out there and take the bus along the Garden Ring to get around to the museum. We caught the 79 bus, which did not behave as we had been led to believe by our city map, but eventually got dropped off at Park Kultury, where it was a quick walk over the bridge to the museum.

Just as we stepped out, it began to rain. So we bought some blini and waited under an overpass until it let up. That was when we noticed certain mob activity in the area. Every branch of the security services apparently gets a day to celebrate themselves. On their designated day, the army, border guards, customs servicve, school crossing guards, or whatever get donned up in their old uniforms, go to Gorky Park, and get scandalously drunk and wander in packs singing very loudly and harassing every schoolgirl and young woman that doesn’t get away fast enough. July 29 happened to be Navy Day, so there were mobs of men in the distinctive blue and white striped matroskin shirts and sailor caps roaming about.

Luckily, none of them were particularly interested in visiting an art exhibit, so after we scooted across the bridge during a break in the rain, we got to the vast contemporary art museum on an embankment along the river. It is a vast, marble rectangular box – the sort of soul-crushing late Soviet building that hangs around unloved and underused. It is strange to see facilities so big that its inhabitants are lost as to how to use the space -- it shows how wasteful and inefficient too much planning can be. The actual exhibit itself was a bit of a miss. The works that were sent were not really blockbusters, and by its very nature the exhibit was a weird mish-mash.

Outside, in the back, is the sculpture garden, which is famous as the place where all the Soviet era monuments were dumped after 1991. I’d been there before, in 2003, and it seemed much smaller than I remember. I believe the moment for campy socialist nostalgia may have come and gone.

This shady dude is Felix Dzerzhinsky, the father of the Cheka, who in all of Soviet history is remembered as the most cruel, shifty, and evil of the lot -- and that's just what his fans say about him. This particular statue was the one that was yanked out by the neck by a mob and a few cranes from its place outside KGB headquarters on Lubyanka right after the August 1991 coup. As you can see from the base, he still has his fans.

The park gives you the “best” view of the stupidest f-ing thing on earth. Seriously, you could travel the world and not find a dumber piece of public art anywhere. It sucks so much that it is actually physically impossible to properly capture its shittiness with an ordinary camera. I tried hard, but the abundance of cheesy details in something of such depressing scale (this damn thing is in the same size category as the Statue of Liberty) was too extraordinary for our SureShot. This is supposed to be a triumphal statue of Peter the Great, riding on a tiny little pirate ship atop a giant pillar. As I recall, the people of St. Petersburg refused to allow this thing anywhere near their city center, in which they take great pride. But as Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is buddies with the ‘artist,’ Zurab Tsereteli, he had no qualms subjecting this waste of metal on the people of Moscow.

Afterwards, we took a walk around the neighborhood, which is a relatively unscathed part of the city that can be pretty quiet. Mila allowed us to have dinner at a Yolki-Polki on Klimentovski Pereulok across from the Church of the Roman Pope Clement, which is one of the last great unrefurbished churches in the city. It has a certain sad decrepit charm because of it.

Go north, young Ivan.

Maritime adventure is the order of the week in the Russian media, as the “Akademik Fedorov” and nuclear icebreaker “Rossiya” – “our ships” as the state-run television channels call them – make their way across the forbidding Arctic Ocean to the North Pole. The expedition left Murmansk on Tuesday, led by ‘famous Arctic explorer’ Artur Chilingarov, and has so far survived both some perilous engine trouble on Thursday and some lurking American spy planes on Friday.

In true Victorian fashion, this is not about science, it is about glory, and lots of natural wealth waiting to be exploited. The pole is likely to hold considerable oil and gas reserves (not to mention valuable minerals), and it is in international waters according to a UN agreement. But Russia insists it is part of a distinct geographic feature that originates in mainland Russia, which according to convention makes it Russian territory.

The highlight is going to be a dive by a special mini-submarine, which will potter about on the sea floor, drop a titanium time capsule, and plant a Russian flag there. This will be broadcast live on television. “We want to prove that Russia is a great polar power,” Chilingarov told RIA-Novosti this week.

A part of me just wishes this country would grow up already. But another part of me says… screw you, you can have your acres of barren nothing under a few miles of ice water, we’ve got the moon, bitches! And we do whatever we want, to whomever we want, at all times. The Moon Rulez, #1!

Around town; July 22

Mila made one of her rare forays into the center of town on Sunday, when we went for a walk with our friends from Williams, Anna and Ian, who are in town.

We started from Pushkinskaya. Here is Mila with her mom and the Metal Man (that's Pushkin, if you haven't read Bulgakov).

Here's Mila enjoying the sites on Tverskoi Bulvar.

The view of the apartment block at Kudrinskaya Square, one of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers that ring the city center, as seen looking west on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa.

We stopped for an early dinner at the Starry Phaeton, an Armenian place that has put tables in the courtyard of an old mansion that allegedly was the one Tolstoy' had in mind for the Rostov's Moscow house in War and Peace.

Here's Kudrinskaya in the setting sun, looking east from Ulitsa Krasnaya Presnya.

And here is Mila in her carriage in front of the monument to the heroes of the 1905 Revolution, with her trusty Octopus sidekick looking on.

But would he put mayonnaise on salad?

This may be just another effort by a multinational corporation to introduce a new processed snack food into a the market, but at its heart this ad is pure Russian kookiness. Brazilian football superstar Ronaldhino is in line at an airport, and tries to steal potato chips from a Russian girl. She recognizes him, and makes him repeat after her: "I love mushrooms and sour cream." Not only is this a flavor combo I think only a Russian could love, I especially like the aggressive pushing of native foodways regardless of how untranslatable they are (kind of like when Olga tries to get me to eat salo). I also don't think Ronaldhino's people told him what was going on when he showed up on the set, giving it all a certain method-acting realism. Although I've never had this flavor of Lays chips -- and don't plan to keep an eye out for them -- the 'bacon' and 'green onion' varieties are actually really good.

A trip to the Don River, part 2

We spent most of our time in the town of Novocherkassk, the former capital of the Don Cossacks, about twenty miles northeast of Rostov-on-Don. Mila and I got to do a lot of walking around the great Eurasian steppe in the few days we were there. The home where we stayed was on the outskirts of the town on the main road to Rostov, called Baklonovsky Prospekt. It is the kind of space that in America would be littered with fast food joints and other strip mall stuff. Here, there were just a few gas stations. We rumbled in the stroller along the broken pavement past the bus station, a boarded up restaurant, a large mound of earth with stone steps leading up to the top of it. We were told later this is a Scythian burial mound, or some such. Either way, pretty rotten view from the top. Then on past an institute for research into viniculture and enology.

Then you reach a little square, featuring a stadium on one side, and a memorial to cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on the other, as Novocherkassk is where cosmonaut training equipment was manufactured.

From there, the prospekt a pleasant boulevard, with a recently paved walkway along the middle. After another half an hour of walking you get close to the center of the city.

One time we got far enough to turn onto Pushkinskaya Ulitsa. The side streets are very pleasant, lots of trees and old, single-story wooden buildings, many brightly painted. It is very quiet and peaceful. Eventually we found ourselves on the main street, Moskovskaya Ulitsa. For a city of about 100,000 people, it was busy in an unforced way. Provincial Russia remains left behind in tough economic times while Moscow and St. Petersburg continue to advance. Yet here was a city center that is thriving – people walking about, businesses open, no empty storefronts. And it is very amusing to think about the extraordinary efforts every small town in America has to go to to “revive their downtown/waterfront/whatever.” If only Americans hadn’t spent the last half of the twentieth century building and planning for cars instead of people everything would be fine. What if we hadn’t been obsessed about building housing on single lots miles away from the center, spending fortunes on highways and parking lots instead of on walkways, bikepaths, and streetcars? There are very specific and enduring reasons people live in communities, and every dead American downtown is a testament to what happens when you forget it.

On our last day we went into the center of Rostov-on-Don, and went down to the embankment, where the Don flows not quite so quietly, as huge ships make their way upriver from the Black Sea to the Volga. We walked up very steep Soborny Pereulok toward the market and the cathedral, and walked around the narrow streets in the center. The city is a major provincial center, but unlike Moscow and St. Pete, it still hasn't quite found its way. The buildings are at once dignified and old, but crumbling badly.

You get a warped sense of things when you live in the center of a nation, especially if the city happens to be as warped as Moscow. It is strange how one city can dominate the political, economic, and cultural life of a nation so completely the way the big capitals of Europe do. In New York, you feel like you are on the lunatic fringe of America, in Washington, like you on some weird island where the rest of the country sends their emissaries to argue about things. This is the reason why I like Philadelphia so much – it was an actual place, with its own customs, idioms, and not just a jumble of characteristics imported from somewhere else.

Moscow is home to about one in 14 Russians, which is amazingly disproportionate considering that the country itself occupies a sixth of the planet. It is a nice place to get away from, especially as it becomes more like Calcutta or Lagos and less like New York or London everyday. It is a relief to get away from all the elitny bullshit for awhile. Only once in the whole week we were away did I see some jerk’s gleaming Mercedes parked on the damn sidewalk outside a restaurant with mirrored windows and uniformed security guards – and that was on a relatively tony part of the Don River embankment in Rostov.

Baklonovsky Boulevard...

Some shots of the center of Novocherkassk...

A stained glass window of a heroic Red Cossack at the Don Cossack Museum. As Olga noted, no word of the Whites they were fighting against, those mysterious strangers from parts unknown....

A trip to the Don River, part 1

Before I get into our trip down south, a few words about Vnukovo, the Moscow region’s oft-overlooked third airport. It is neither as infuriartingly inept as Sheremetyevo nor as nearly western as Domodedovo. The domestic terminal is a small Soviet holdover, impossibly plain and simple, with the same dull stone interiors you see in every building from the Soviet period. The proportions are graceless and bulky, and I learned recently are the result of some seriously kooky architectural thinking. Right-thinking Soviet architects apparently convinced themselves that such mathematically proportionate designs, devoid of any human elements, is a continuation of some lost thread in design from ancient Egypt. It is supposed to fill you with a sense of timeless awe. In reality, it makes you feel you are lost in the ruins of a tomb built by tasteless space aliens.

But we’ll give credit where it is due: it is a fantastic place to have to wait if you are a mother with a small child. After we checked in Mila got hungry, as expected, and Olga planned to decamp to the nursing station for awhile. Throughout America, every mother knows that public spaces for nursing never amount to more than a natty armchair in a public bathroom. Not at Vnukovo. After checking in with the first aid station so the nurse could certify Mila did not have chicken pox (we were given a formal little receipt with an official stamp to bring back with us), Olga and Mila were treated to a multi-room suite, with cheerful painted walls, lots of windows and sunlight, a few bathrooms (with showers!), a kitchen, a sleeping area with little cots, and a big playroom full of toys. The coup de grace, however, were the tiny, fully functional toilets with little bows for kids to use.

Unfortunately, fathers were not allowed, so while Mila and Olga had a sensible lunch, I had to wait outside in the terminal hall. I still notice in Russia things that you just never see in the States. For example, I looked over the balcony and happened to see some men’s sports team from North Korea in line at the check in counter, all decked out in Fila sports gear. I do not know what sport they play – but one that involves emaciated men with hollow eyes.

The flight was alright, we arrived safe and sound in Rostov-on-Don. On departing and arriving, they still had that retro way of getting on and off the plane, by going out on the tarmac and climbing up and down the ramp. It is nice when the first thing you see when you walk out of the plane is the warm air, golden sunset, and the smell of shashlik in the air (I’m not the only person who noticed this, by the way). This was a particularly poignant note, as it was the Fourth of July and my heart was longing to grill up some meat products and hang out on the porch for awhile.

Two years

It has been two years since we registered our collective effort toward peace, happiness, and prosperity by going to ZAGS to get married.

Last year we celebrated on our porch in Williamstown, with a few anticipatory kicks from our future family member. This year, we'll follow her around as she zips about the floor and cracks herself up by joking around with her pacifier.

It has been a great year for our growing family, and an even better one lies ahead.

Putin goes to Kennebunkport

I’ve been following with great interest about the informal summit in Kennebunkport the past few days. Olga and I usually go to Maine at least once a year, and since we are likely to miss this year’s trip, reading up on the visit has given me a chance to turn my thoughts fondly to the soulful, rocky Maine coast -- where the bracing, salty winds of the severe battleship grey Atlantic turns one’s thoughts to life, eternity, and our short time on this earth. And about eating lobsters three meals a day. The summit appears not to have yielded much in practical terms, but it gives me yet another chance to scold some of the Wizards of American Punditocracy for continuing to harp about a resuscitated Cold War. I realize it is a quick and convenient way to frame one’s deep thoughts about relations between Russia and the West, but no, the Kremlin is not laboring to restore the Soviet Empire. Russia’s ample and very serious problems at home and with its neighbors are not solely engineered by Putin and a shadowy cabal of FSB agents and oligarchs (and might we add their allies in the international business community? BP and PwC, we’re looking in your direction…). Every fair poll will tell you Putin’s popularity is about 70 percent, so blame the Russian people if you are going to blame anyone. But in fairness, also give them credit for ending the Soviet Union without sparking nuclear Armageddon. Time to drop the talking points from the last Heritage Institute seminar on what’s wrong with Russia and start coming to grips with messy post-ideological thinking. In real-life, Lenin is going to stay dead.