As your plane lands in Moscow, stop yourself from thinking that you’ve landed in the capital of the former USSR, the heart of the socialist sixth of the world, Stalin’s headquarters behind the Iron Curtain. This is Russia, in all its overwhelming, capitalist and often garish glory. If you are a soviet history buff,

prepare to be disillusioned as remnants of Soviet Russia, although very much in place, might seem like white noise among the glistening facades erected courtesy Gazprom money, the English speaking youths on roller blades and the McDonalds that can be found every fifty feet.

Despite the average Russian middle class’s negative opinion of Communism (as per my limited research), the remnants of Soviet legacy have not been consciously wiped out, and are actually well maintained. In fact modern Moscow is laced with old buildings, both of the imperial Russian Classic and Soviet Constructivist/ Realist styles, and memorials and statues in boulvars (grassy walking tracks trailing all over Moscow), of both sovietskii and pre-revolution literary figures such as Pushkin and Dostoyevsky.

Thus, all remnants, Tsarist or Soviet, needed to recreate and relish a preferred period of Russia’s past are well in place for one to conveniently do so. As a Soviet history buff, my attention in Moscow was almost always selective; attending to every engraving of the revolutionary hammer and sickle that met my eye, and thus here I shall narrate all that in Moscow which lent me my much-sought-after ‘Soviet feel’.

Upon landing and taking the Aero-Express from the airport to the city, your tour begins at its final stop, the Kievskaya station of the renowned Moscow Metro. The Moscow Metro is a tour in itself; it was inaugurated in the 1930s to be the ‘Palaces of the People’ as per egalitarian socialist ideals.

An inside view of the Moscow metro station

Every station thus is a marvelous relic: stations such as Kievskaya with stunning murals depicting the October Revolution and everyday sovietskii narod, Belorusskaya and Mayakovskaya with stunning ceilings and Revolutsii Ploschad with bronze statues of revolutionaries are just some of the few awe-striking stations that introduce you to the magnificent Socialist Realist architecture. To narrow down your stations-to-see list from the 195 vokzal operating today, those that were commissioned to be built before the 1950s can be visited since after this period, owing to USSR’s economic duress in the cold war, the Khrushchev administration ordered more modest stations to be built.

The Moscow Metro induces the coveted ‘Soviet feel’, the awe of which can be best embellished with a trip to the VdnKh Exhibition that hauntingly represents the “rise and fall of the Soviet dream”; it does so by evoking nostalgia through tributes celebrating the USSR’s socialist ideology and its scientific achievements through elaborate fountains, statues and beautiful pavilions representing every Soviet Republic in the CCCP.

In the vicinity of this mesmerizing exhibition stands the towering Ostankina TV tower offering a great view of the city, the Sputnik memorial standing upon the Cosmonautic Museum in the namesake park, the historic Cosmos hotel built to strike awe in the delegations visiting the 1980 Olympics, and my favourite, the legendary 78 feet high steel statue of the Worker and the Collective Farm Girl which was originally built to be the USSR’s official entry to the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.

Duma/White house

The city of MOCKBA (pronounced Moskva-the C and B being the cyrillic equivalent of the latin S and V respectively-a lesson you shall find helpful when stranded in the Metro one day), has been fabled as the Third Rome since the 1400s. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the first (modern day Roma, Italy) and the second Rome, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey), and therefore cannot personally draw parallels, though one commonality is their location atop seven hills.

The Moscow Metro induces the coveted ‘Soviet feel’, the awe of which can be best embellished with a trip to the VdnKh Exhibition that hauntingly represents the “rise and fall of the Soviet dream”.

Moscow’s hilly terrain can be best appreciated by visiting the Vorobyevy Gory which serves as an ideal observation deck, giving views of sites such as the Luzhinski, originally the Central Lenin Stadium which hosted the historic 1980s Olympics, and what I believe to be Moscow’s most stunning representations of its rich history and strong character, the Stalin Skyscrapers: seven sprawling, spectacular, almost identical skyscrapers in the Stalinist-Gothic design scattered across the city. One of these beauties would be behind you at the observation deck, housing the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and this along with the other six magnificos lends great character to a Moscow that is now laced with Dubai-esque skyscrapers and malls.

These seven majestic buildings have become my personal symbols Moscow instead of the quintessential though beautiful multi-coloured, onion-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral in the Red Square, which is often mistaken for the Kremlin located right adjacent to it. In the Kremlin, between 11 and 12 am, there is an impressive Change of Guard parade featuring a handful of military men on handsome horses synchronizing their gunfire to the parade music of a live band.

The ‘Red Square’ also houses the State Historical Museums along with the mausoleums of Lenin, Stalin, and Soviet notables, all of which ironically are a stone’s throw away from the splendid GUM mall, which serves perhaps as the most blatant expression of consumerist capitalism overlooking the graves of communism.

The domed towers of Red Square

Communism may have lost its command but its legacies, especially in its former capital haunt Russia to date. Some of these include the statue of Marx facing the Bolshoi Theater bearing the slogan “Workers of the World, Unite!”, the ‘horror house’ -House on the Embankment, the KGB headquarters in whose basement both suspects and top officials like Beria were shot at point blank range and the Muzeon Sculpture park, where statues from all over Moscow were dumped after the collapse of the Soviet state.

Another recurring theme across Moscow is the Great Patriotic War (World War Two), important because it consolidated USSR’s domestic and international might in 1945 and induced the national tragedy of 24 million war casualties. Park Pobedi (Victory Park) is perhaps the best tribute to the war hosting war artillery, an intricately detailed Obelisk and an impressive memorial depicting four distinctive soldiers each representing an Allied Power against the backdrop of the United Nations emblem.

Centrally located in the park is a museum whose exterior reminded me of state buildings in Islamabad and the Jinnah Airport, with their marble lined exterior, melange of strong lines and graceful arches, colossal doorways and long rectangular window panels. Robert Kaplan too had drawn such a parallel, hailing Pakistan’s state buildings’ design as a cross between Stalinist and Mughal architecture.

Park Pobedi also offers panaromic views of Moscow given its location atop the Pokolniskaya Hill, the highest hill in Moscow. Pokolniskaya translates to ‘bow-down’ as visitors in early tsarist times are said to have bowed down to it in order to pay their respects to the city. Also Napoleon in 1817 had waited for the keys to Moscow, albeit in vain, on this very hill. On account of World War I’s centennial last year I witnessed a new memorial erected by the state to commemorate Russia’s war effort, a gesture which seemed an acknowledgment, a much delayed one, of its Pre-Soviet past. The Park also houses a mosque, synagogue and a church on its beautiful forest grounds.

Beautiful, dark and deep forests in public parks are a healthy change from the city concrete and the manicured landscapes that parks usually boast, aside from being refreshing to stroll around in. Expect to sometimes find camping waste in the hearts of these forests which could include everything from broken bottles, blunt syringes and hilariously enough, articles of clothing; “Welcome to a Russian Forest!” a Russian friend had amusingly bellowed at such a sight.

Such forestry can be found in the Sokolniki, Izmailovo and Gorky Parks, the latter being a lively recreational park offering movies, concerts, and paddle boating aside from gardens and jogging tracks. The Gorky park runs along the majestic Moskva Reka or Moscow River which flows across the length of Moscow like a bloodline and can be cruised upon to navigate through Moscow’s most stunning sights. A jaunt along the river, where by evening hundreds of people are practicing salsa and socializing, is a sensational experience, and one which is likely to induce ideas about relocating to the very lovely and amiable Moscow.

Moscow also boasts a bustling, cut-throat night-life, restaurants, Soviet era planetariums and arcades, an ethnically diverse population (diaspora of the Former Soviet Union/Central Asia), and a multitude of cultural offerings such as ballet, theatre, exhibitions, events and an impressive list of museums and galleries,. For the art lover or anyone seeking a crash course in Art History, an audio guided visit to the world famous Tretyakov and Pushkin museums, are a perfect way to do so, especially on a hot summer day.

By the end of my six weeks in Moscow, I had at heart become a novihn-muscovite, particularly because of the routine I enjoyed therein as a student which allowed me to immerse well socially and culturally. I thus strongly recommend a trip to Russia as a student, even of a a week long language course in order to appropriate your cultural experience more judiciously. Despite its unexpected eccentricities such as no maximum retail prices (MRPs) of consumer goods, Russia is elegantly crude in a extremely appreciable way. I remember consoling myself with one proverb as my plane gathered speed in taxi while taking me away from my Moskva perhaps for the last time: “ ”: all roads lead to Moscow.

The writer is a student aspiring to be a historian, and is an avid fan of Soviet History and academic tourism.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 11th, 2015

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