The scrappy, snow-covered outer suburban vegetable allotments and that unique remnant of Soviet planning: car garages in snowy-sludgy fields on the edge of town, were the outskirts of St Petersburg in the 4pm-ish dusk.
Driving from Finlandsky Station (with Lenin's glowering statue still looking intently across the River Neva at the city and the country he was about to revolutionise) there were massive traffic jams as bridge lanes were closed to mount the New Year illuminations. Yuri ("I speak nyet Anglaskee") had the car radio on local FM playing "Walk Like An Egyptian" and "Wichita Lineman" as he battled through barging cars and stranded trams. His apartment was my 'home stay' with his forthright wife, Tatiana. I soon found why Yuri was a man of few Russian words as well.
Over massive cooked breakfasts, Tatiana would hold forth on world politics, raising her voice over "EuroNews" (dubbed into Russian with selective English "commentary" from Tatiana). I was not spared (as my political opinions quickly became Neutral), so nor will you be spared(!). Here is a modest sample from 4 breakfasts which followed the truck ramming into the Christmas market in Berlin:
"The Chinese are destroying the planet; we are only guests here so why destroy what we have? All terrorists are Muslims. It's all that's common from Chechen to now. Europeans are weak saying: "Come in!" to Syrians and others. They are asking for destruction. This is my opinion only." (By this stage I had "shut down" any mental references to Russians's "Good Works" in the Middle East to focus on omelette, rye bread and homemade jam). "Angela Merkel, she is weak. What did she expect? You ask in Muslims: this is what you get. This is my opinion only.... And that Trump. You are lucky. You are at the safe end of the world. Americans and Obama don't negotiate. They PRETEND but do not start from a reasonable position so negotiation can not happen..."
You can imagine that the brisk three hour walking tour/route march of down town St Petersburg with the forthright Tatiana was similarly bombastic with lots of "you musts" as we strode/power-walked the inner city from the Hermitage Museum through the New Year lights to the river and Nevsky Prospekt, and past various restored cathedrals (formerly "store houses" under the Soviets). Kazan Cathedral had been "converted" in Soviet times into the Museum of Religion and Superstition and has now reverted to a holy museum site with much intent icon kissing.
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A full day at The Hermitage palace/museum is still overwhelming for the breadth and depth of artworks and for the gaudy restored palatial rooms of the Tsars. The pomp of the place is disturbed somewhat by primary school groups, each child dressed as their favourite ancient character, posing and grimacing while doting adults photograph them in front of a relevant sculpture, portrait or sarcophagus. A primary school group was plonked on the parquet floor in the middle of vast room of Ancient Roman sculptures, yawning as their tour guide did her best to vividly re-enact the tales of the relevant emperor or general. An interesting number of artworks is labelled: "Provenance: Berlin, 1945".
Across the vast square (being "son and lumiered" and beyond the barricades around a huge and twinkling blue temporary tree for New Year festivities) is the old Horse Guards' Barracks. It is now repurposed as part gallery of Impressionism and Post Impressionism (wonderful...) but also as a restoration of the grand Tsar's Horse Guards' quarters (complete with banqueting paraphernalia) and the Tsarist Tax office. It's bizarre as you wander at random from one to the other on the same floor....
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More Homestay Lady's Breakfast Wisdom:
"I liked Putin as he was, not how he is now so much. He needs to sort out the problems in Russia, Not Overseas. That Yeltsin. That YELTSIN, gave away Russia's wealth to the cronies and oligarchs. I agreed with Perestroika when Gorbachev started. But not what happened. Huge inflation. No jobs. Money to the rich. I was patent lawyer. Then worked in research with aeronautics and space. Jobs go. Now I work as tour guide. There was a huge brain drain and jobs and knowledge are gone. At least Putin forces oligarchs to bring money back to employ Russians. This is my opinion only: Putin is trying to sort out the crooks in Ukraine and Syria. He should be spending more time on Russia. maybe Donald Trump will be good for us. It is only MY opinion BUT... Angela Merkel said: "Welcome Muslim Terrorists". So weak. So stupid Europeans. It will cause another rise of the militant Right. And now the Sochi Air crash: so many good people; a doctor who did only good for Syrian children; a famous army band on their way as volunteers for Russian New year in Syria. It is just my opinion but looks like terrorism."
A day in the Siege Museum and Russian State Political Museum quickly places you in the context of Leningrad and the darker history of the 20th Century. The Siege Museum is silent, with just enough English labels to comprehend the nearly 3 years' plight of the population, surviving (if that is the word) on a diet including sawdust bread and leather soup. The Nazi atrocities (and some within the besieged city) are graphic, as is the official loathing of the evil Finns. The Political Museum, on the other hand, appears more even-handed and dispassionate as it pulls no punches about the stages of revolution from 1800 to 1917, cults of Lenin, Stalin and "failed cult" of Brezhnev and the disasters of collectivisation, many purges set to achieve predetermined quotas to provide slave labour in the gulags and the enforced starvation of Ukraine peasants. (Russians still see the Ukraine as "outer Russia" says one tour guide. Join the dots.)
Gorby is presented as a "big picture" thinker who could not control what he had unleashed. Yeltsin is presented as the saviour of democracy for standing up to the tanks and thwarting the coup attempt, but as the destroyer of the economic system and creator of the oligarchs. One comment on the first elections following the fall of communism was that the population was not prepared for the media spin of the campaign and voted accordingly. Putin and Medvedev are, of course, now heroically sorting it all out in the mould of historic Russian "strong men"...
Christmas night: I took my homestay lady's advice and ate in a local restaurant. At the table I was greeted in English: "Helloo. I am your waiter. My name is Killu..." Avoiding the "Waltzing Matilda Chardonnay" for a Russian Rose, I was rewarded with a Riesling-like, wonderful warming wine: honey and ambrosia...: "Cabernet Franc Elegance". I returned for more. In the background screen above the bar, old Russian B&W movies were playing. One was set in the old American South, complete with Mississippi riverboat, and blacked-up Russian happy "darkies" playing accordion and singing in white-teethed harmony.
One Russian tradition that remains is the employment of armies of older ladies to watch... They are, expectedly, throughout the galleries and museums, but can also be found, uniformed, in little glass cages at the bottom of Metro escalators, staring morosely at security camera screens or at the ascending/descending humanity (and occasional dog) on the interminably long and deep ride to/from the trains. One tour guide patiently explained that the safe depth for avoiding nuclear fallout is 65 metres.... In St Petersburg it's because the Metro travels under rivers and canals, leading to very long distances between stations and a very long emergence back to the frosty open air. One new employment opportunity is the army of uniformed security screeners at every entrance to a public building, metro and rail station.
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It seems I have been in the almost-great presence of the Putin. It's 5.45pm and I'm walking back from the intricate mosaics of St Isaacs Cathedral and there is traffic gridlock. Rock-solid traffic gridlock with a few bleating car horns. Nevsky Prospekt (the main shopping drag) is utterly free of traffic. The army of police-on-radios is quite happy for us to pause when crossing to photograph the magnificent new year lights reflected in the wet asphalt and trolley bus clutter. I wandered towards the vast square fronting The Hermitage to be politely halted by a team of armed police and security personnel with more crackling radios. A distant array of sirens and red/blue flashing lights approaches from Dvortsovy Bridge: half a dozen police cars, half a dozen white vans with smoky-black windows, half a dozen security cars and a surrounding motorbike flotilla. The entourage takes a lazy left turn into and around the square. After pausing briefly at The Hermitage entrance, they sweep diagonally towards Nevsky Prospekt and head east. The blocked peak hour traffic is let loose to find its way home.
Tatijana briskly informs me later that Vladimir Putin is hosting his visiting mate, the President of Kazakhstan, on a full-on guided tour of St Petersburg.
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On the Sapsan fast train to Moscow, I am surrounded by an extended and LOUD Singaporean family, sounding like a pack of multi-aged, entitled Lee Lin Chins as we zip between industrial towns and through snow gusts across neat snow-covered fields.
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Olga is my grandmotherly Moscow Homestay hostess. She too had been a scientist prior to the collapse of government jobs under Yeltsin. Her excellent English meant she could retrain as a tour leader and guide. She is now 70 and happy to host people from across the world (evident from the massive postcard collection in the guest room and cluster of toy marsupials and boomerangs....). I'm seven storeys up (thankfully with a lift this time) in a clutch of Stalin-era apartment buildings which surround the Moscow Victory Arch (commemorating Napoleon's failure to secure Moscow). This is adjacent to the war memorials in Park Poberty. The sullen gravity of the local park monuments is undermined somewhat by the creation of a pop-up New Year village and Kremlin ice slide for the kiddies....
Thank you, Bill, for the recommendation of The Museum of the Great Patriotic War, which was walking distance from my home stay and the Moscow Gate. The wartime dioramas are impressive. The hall to commemorate Hero Cities is breathtaking in its scale. The displays are as pro-Russian as you could expect, given the scale of the tragedy, loss and political decision making with what was left of the armed forces after the 1930's purges. There are a few odd omissions, such as the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler and the takeover of the Baltic States. One display does make clear that Stalin had prior warning of the German invasion of the USSR, and dismissed it with: "Tell your German source to go and get fucked!". The evil Finns are "commemorated" and nothing evilly Nazi/Fascist is underestimated. About half of the museum is a temporary exhibition, lauding the Chinese and other nations for keeping "Japanese Fascism" at bay, allowing the European powers to sort out their own mess first (and for Stalin to engineer post war Eastern Europe as Soviet satellite states. Non-Communist governments in Korea, Vietnam and China are all referred to only as "Provisional" governments...
Thirty five years ago, I was in Moscow on a tightly controlled Intourist Tour. (Intourist was a branch of the security service, so any contact with "real" Russians was distinctly limited as were our own movements...). At the time, Lenin's tomb was "closed for renovation"; today it was open. My somewhat satirical guide for the morning ("If you have seen Swan Lake, then you have seen the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; the moves are the same... Their officer is there, supervising at all time: they are not allowed to sneeze") …was happy to take me there. If you are slightly "Aspy", you will be pleased to know that I have "collected the set" of the embalmed trifecta: Lenin, Mao and Uncle Ho. Should I contemplate travelling to Cuba in the near future????
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The Wisdom of the Moscow Tour Guide:
Along the Kremlin Wall are the graves and plaques and sculpted busts of the (Soviet) powerful and famous: Yuri Gagarin, a scarily young-looking Brezhnev ("He was good looking in his youth," says my helpful walking tour guide...) and a severe Stalin, awash with red flowers for his birthday. The Stalin-era architecturally kitsch skyscrapers are pointed out to me: "There were meant to be eight, one on each hill of Moscow, but Khrushchev turned the last one into a ground level swimming pool after denouncing Stalin... There were many Americans here 2 years ago. Now there are none because of Obama's sanctions. But the Chinese are EVERYWHERE!!!! My generation hated Soviet jeans and bad Soviet fashion. I made own clothes so as to not look like everyone else. With Soviet jeans, I would hand stitch patterns so they were MY Soviet jeans. Ah, the light is on in the Kremlin Tower. Putin is there. He drives past your homestay every night, past the Moscow Arch to his home. Every night he sees Napoleon's defeat on the road to his home."
The GUM department store, which I remember as lots of empty blue-painted shelves ("a monument to Soviet shortages" according to my guide book) with a few boots, and some stray cans of beetroot, has now become designer-label-up-market. There are not many low-rent punters in winter puffer jackets to be seen here. They are greatly outnumbered by elegant fur coats, stoles, hats... On the third floor is "the only bargain" in the place. Reasonably priced food at a Stalin-themed coffee shop. My guide became all nostalgic at the sight of the Soviet era fruit drink dispenser ("only ever the same two flavours across all the Soviet Union") and the window of 1960's electrical goods such as wooden radiograms and early transistors.
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Riding the Moscow Metro still tests directional, crowding and Cyrillic alphabet skills. The Soviet era over-the-top decoration remains, although a few heroic statues seem to have gone. Those remaining at Ploshad Revolutsii are groped/rubbed by passers-by depending on their wish in life. So knees, elbows, feet, the young child, sailors' guns (!) have rubbed, shiny gold areas amongst the dark bronze. The built-in speakers in extensive escalators now play optimistic music from the Russian classics or Russian jazz. Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" wafted through Sportinyava station at the Olympic park. At Prospekt Mira, impassive commuters were descending elegantly to the Benny Hill chase theme of "Yackety Sax"...
Most public squares, including Red Square, are being taken over by pop-up Winter Villages for New year. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the brief solemnity of the changing of the guard (if you do not think of "Swan Lake") gives way to the background racket of new year crowds and live bands playing "La Cucaracha", and "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow".
My Moscow homestay lady gets political (she has talk radio on from 7.30 each morning): "That Obama: at the end he is very active! He expels 40 Russian diplomats, so now Russia will do the same." (They didn't).
The New Tretyakov Gallery houses Russian art from the 20th Century, from Russian Impressionists and Constructivists to the Socialist Realism approved in the 1930's. Thankfully "those" official paintings of the lauded Stalin surrounded by applauding crowds are limited to one (huge) room, with a large window overlooking the even more confrontingly huge Peter The Great nautical memorial on the Moscow River. It was apparently offered to the Americans as a Columbus Memorial and they, rightly, declined the kind offer. Google it and you will see why.... So now it's Peter The Great.
Outside of the gallery is an expansive sculpture garden, largely made up of Communist era heroic monuments of workers and leaders such as an overly "medalled" portly Brezhnev, busts and heads of other leaders, bronze heroic workers and ornate hammers and sickles. In the darkening afternoon, in the snow, it looked to be what it was: a grave yard of Communism.
In the post-war gallery at the New Tretkov: one of the more avant-garde artists is quoted as saying that by the 1970's it was getting difficult to express irony through art, as Russian life was becoming one big irony...The Political Museum in St Petersburg had expressed this as the growing gap between the uplifting and utopian propaganda, and the daily reality lived by most Russians. Even the Gorbachev years were: "freedom with ration cards"...
"We lived our Soviet lives by a unified set of rules that applied to everyone. Someone stands at a podium. He lies, everyone applauds, but everyone knows he's lying and he knows that they know he is lying. Still he says all that stuff and enjoys the applause. We had no doubt that our generation would go on living that way..."
- An anonymous interviewee quoted in "Second Hand Time: The Last of the Soviets" by Svelana Alexievitch, which I am reading voraciously as I travel across Russia towards Vladivostok.
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In the massive rebuilding of Moscow, and preparations for the World Cup in 2018, the "Gulag Museum" seems to have been "disappeared" (ironically), as had some other guidebook sights. The trade-off seems to be more signs in English, none of which pointed to where I wanted to be...
If I say the word: "Lubyanka" to you, what comes to mind? If you said Winter Sales, you'd be correct. Opposite the old KGB Building is the former Soviet childrens' store "selling items made for children in factories across Russia". It is now "made over" into another up-market emporium. From across the street, a brilliantly lit winter shopping street leads straight into the maw of GUM, and the Red Square winter market. I spent the last night in Moscow strolling with the excited crowds in the build up to new year. (You might be recovering from Christmas, but for Russians, it is all about to happen.) Kids were loving the ice slides sculpted as the Kremlin or the Stalingrad war memorial.
Tomorrow I make "your own way" by crowded metro to the Kazanski Station for Train 56 to Krasnoyarsk, getting off at Yekaterinburg on New Year's Eve... a HUGE night in Russia.
Should you get this email you will know I have arrived and have, at last, found wifi.
And a happy new year to you...
Andrew