A trip to the 'Main Universal Store'

Moscow's GUM department store was built in the early 1890s, a mix of traditional Russian architectural themes with contemporary glass and iron engineering.

I went through a very distinct phase in my youth when the idea of a "shopping mall" embodied everything I thought was wrong about the world. Such commercialism! how shallow and pointless, all those people wandering around like cattle. Like, man, it's all so corporate.

But as I grew older, and my sense of irony became real instead of forced, I developed a real interest in these places, and not just because they are the emblematic structures of late 20th American public life. They belong to the world, to capitalism and modernity itself. Didn't Walter Benjamin spend his working life on vast, unfinished thought experiment about the arcades of Paris, the forerunner of the modern shopping mall?

Though to be honest, what really changed my mind was living in a small village like Williamstown, where getting to any retail center is major work (I have no idea how people lived there without the internet and Amazon). Whenever I drop off or pick up anyone at the Albany airport, I make time to wander around the Crossgates Mall of Colonie Center, usually withouth buying anything, just to look at things. There is always that weird shudder at Barnes & Noble, when I see in reality a book I've read a lot about.

In Moscow recently, I took my daughter to visit Red Square, and we did the usual things. We watched the changing of the guard at the war memorial, had lunch at Okhotny Ryad, listened for the bells of Spassky Gate.

But I also took her to GUM, the enormous 19th century shopping edifice that occupies the eastern side of the Square. I hadn't been there since my first visit in 2003, and was curious what it looked like now.

The answer, of course, is awfully elitny. The Glavnyi Universalni Magazin enjoys pride of place like no other shopping center in the world. And the inside shows it, with a painfully high-end string of boutiques filling a space that is remarkably beautiful in a very practical way.

The fountain, in the central courtyard of GUM, is decorated for the season.

A funny piece of Soviet nostalgia: the store, with its blank, descriptive name ("Gastronom No. 1") and window full of Soviet-era essentials like flour and sugar betrays its real identity. Inside, you won't find much to be nostalgic about, but lots of incredibly expensive imported wines, cheeses, truffles, and whatnots.

A map of GUM. Notice the trapezoidal shape.

This unique news kiosk reflects the interest of most GUM shoppers: glossy gossip tabs, psychology magazines, business titles, and, of course, a magazine solely about luxury wristwatches.