Moscow maze weaves history with future

People who have lived in Moscow their entire lives still have not seen all of it.

The city… People who have lived in Moscow their entire lives still have not seen all of it.

The city itself is the fourth largest in the world, with an official population of 11.5 million, but commuters and unregistered residents swell the metropolitan area to an estimated 20 million people. The streets, buildings and territory have been added to and built upon for more than 850 years, forming an impenetrable maze.

I arrive in the Russian capital from St. Petersburg, a thoroughly organized city built all at once. In short, St. Petersburg appears artificial. Moscow grew up and grew big over time, much like a tree, expanding its branches and roots throughout the soil.

The roots are the city’s extensive subway networks, 10 lines that weave under the city with a circular route connecting them all. Moscow subway stations are unlike the stereotypical dark and dingy stops seen in New York or Washington, D.C. Many of Moscow’s stations look like museums or shrines to famous Russians.

Pushkinskaya Station is dedicated to the notable poet Aleksandr Pushkin. Mendelevskaya Station hangs designs of molecules and atoms from its ceiling, honoring Dmitri Mendelev, the Russian scientist who developed the periodic table.

Although subway service is reliable now, a joke from the Soviet area says, “Moscow can have beautiful subway stations because they never have trains.”

Now, the trains are running and their cars are usually packed to the doors. I am lucky enough to get a seat on my journey to the center of Moscow. Within two stops, the train car is filled to capacity.

An old woman, hunched over three shopping bags, limps onto the train and pushes into the crowd. I get up and offer her the seat, but she insists on standing. The men in the car look at me as if I am insane. I suppose that one of the subway rules is “everyone for themselves.”

I emerge into the sun at Okhotny Ryad Station, next to Red Square and the heart of Moscow. I picked the wrong day to see the area. The streets are swarming with officers of the MVD, the national police. A concert is being planned, and Red Square is barricaded for security reasons.

For more than a decade, Russians have been at war with the southern breakaway republic of Chechnya. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the Russians were fighting a war on terror on their own ground. Several bombings took place in Moscow streets and subways, and the Chechen siege of a Moscow musical theater in October 2002 ended in disaster when 129 people died after federal troops gassed the theater. Last year’s attacks on airliners and an elementary school in southern Russia killed more than 400 people, and the Russian people see no end to violence in sight.

Around Red Square, the streets are lined with trash. Public garbage cans were removed because they were ideal places to hide bombs. The line to visit the Kremlin, the ancient seat of the Russian government, often takes six hours because of the metal detectors and search procedures. During special events, police barricades make travel in the city difficult.

I walk around the blockades to the Moscow River, where the towers of the Kremlin are reflected in the water. As the skies darken, the lights of buses and cars on the highway below blur, and St. Basil’s Cathedral, the hallmark building of Moscow, is illuminated by spotlights from Red Square and the Kremlin.

Nearby, a woman wanders around, looking as if she is lost. I ask her, in broken Russian, if she is all right, and she replies in French that a man stole her purse and she cannot find the rest of her tour group. We walk to the barricades, where she tells me what happened in French, which I relate to an MVD officer in English. He translates her story into Russian for his commander. I imagine how confused the commander must be by the time the information is in his native language.

After the French woman has been taken care of and Yevgeny, the English-speaking officer, is off duty, he asks me to join him for a drink. We get back on the subway at Ploshchad Revolutsii Station, a monument to the 1917 Communist revolution. It is still decorated with Soviet icons and symbols.

“No more of that for us,” Yevgeny says.

He takes me to a small tavern far outside the city, near Ryazansky Prospekt. The scene is much like an American bar. A group of portly men, each with a can of Baltika beer, watches a soccer match on a small television. A young man and woman make out at a corner table. Yevgeny’s entrance draws everyone’s attention momentarily, as would be expected with a policeman. They focus on me, however, a foreigner penetrating their inner sanctum. The men grimace briefly and chuckle to each other.

I had only one option: I bought everyone a drink.

It was not that expensive; a draft beer costs only 30 rubles (about $1). The men lightened up and began arguing about sports with me, through Yevgeny’s laborious translation. One could not understand the virtues of American football over soccer, although he did like that “it’s a mock war, since everyone beats each other up.”

One man was a professor at Moscow State University before communism fell in Russia. He bragged that the university’s main building was the only school building in the world taller than the Cathedral of Learning.

“I think Moscow cheated,” I asserted, “because there’s a tall antenna on top.”

He became ominous for a moment, but that was cured by another beer and telling him that even without the tallest schoolhouse in the world, Moscow would have enough attraction for a lifetime.