Russian Roulette
Rise in economy, decline of communism make for a mixed capital
MOSCOW -- The last time I had been in V.I. Lenin's neighborhood, back when there was a Soviet Union, there was a huge neon sign not far from the Kremlin that proclaimed ''Communism is Winning!" When I returned this spring, I didn't need to ask who had won while I was away.
All along the road from Sheremetyevo Airport, near where the Red Army stopped the invading Germans six decades ago, casinos are promising Vegas-style payouts. ATMs are on every street corner and advertising billboards are everywhere. In the modern, and expensive, ''biznizmen"' hotels, it's high-speed Internet and high-heeled hookers.
In little more than a decade, this sprawling capital has turned into Karl Marx's worst nightmare.
''Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones," Marx wrote in ''The Communist Manifesto" in 1848.
This is not your father's Motherland, and it hasn't been for a while now. There are no lines to buy meat or vegetables. Nobody's offering to change rubles for dollars or buy your jeans outside the Prospekt Marksa subway station. In fact, there is no Prospekt Marksa subway station anymore, not since the capitalist revolution.
Make no mistake, the capitalists run this town these days. In 1986 when I was here, Mikhail Gorbachev was pushing perestroika. Now, Russia's capital has more billionaires than any city but New York, hotels can cost several hundred dollars a night, and shops along Tverskaya Ulitsa (Tverskaya Street) are stocked with everything from silk, to cognac, to perfume.
The new prosperity, though, has been a cruel joke for most of the city's elderly, the generation that survived the Stalinist purges, fought in the Great Patriotic War, and shouldered the massive rebuilding job that followed.
The babushkas and dyedushkas were the losers when the market economy arrived and their socialist subsidies were cut, inflation soared, and their fixed pensions became pittances. They stand outside the Metro stations now, peddling cheap pens and plastic shopping bags. Russia's greatest generation stands with its nose pressed forlornly against the shopwindows of the bourgeoisie.
The shopping has never been better here. Though some cheap old favorites remain, like Dom Knigi (House of Books) and Detsky Mir (Children's World), GUM, the massive century-old department store for the masses on Red Square, now features Estee Lauder and Benetton. Yeliseyevsky, on Tverskaya Ulitsa, is a gourmand's paradise, stocked to the ceiling with choice meats, caviar, cheeses, vodka, wine, and candy.
Even by Western standards, Moscow is an expensive city these days, with tabs in many hotels and restaurants quoted in euros. A room at the National Hotel can run as much as $350. Dinner for four at Shinok, a Ukrainian restaurant with a barnyard in the middle, costs $500.
The push-pull between then and now, between the way things were under communism and the way they are under capitalism, is still playing out. Lenin, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, is still chilling (or, jokers say, spinning) inside his Kremlin mausoleum. But his name is vanishing.
Two decades ago, if you wanted to attend a soccer match at Lenin Stadium, you boarded the Lenin subway system at the Lenin Library station and headed toward the Lenin Hills. Today, it's the Luzhniki BSA Olympic Stadium and Sparrow Hills.
They haven't expunged all the residuals of the 1917 revolution, of course. There's still a Leninsky Prospekt and a Revolution Square. The national anthem is the same as it was in 1944, with new lyrics. But the renaissance here is undeniable and much of it harkens back to czarist days.
Nobody says ''tovarishch" (comrade) anymore. ''Gospodin" (mister), banished from the communist lexicon, is back in use. Religion is back, too, with the onion-domed churches restored and gleaming.
With communism's dead weight lifted, Russia has returned to its cultural roots, luxuriating in its food, museums, architecture, and performing arts. Yet the demise of the Soviet era has erased one benefit of the police state: The time when a visitor could walk down any Moscow street at midnight without fear is past.
Crime -- from pickpocketing to murder -- is on the rise here and even the city's police have become blatant shakedown artists. One of my dinner companions, stopped for making a U-turn, had to pay a 9,000-ruble ($333) bribe to escape being hauled downtown, charged with drunken driving, and having her car impounded.
Moscow, with its 11 million residents, was always a big city. Now, it's unquestionably a Big City, just like Shanghai and Mumbai (Bombay) and New York, with hideous traffic and throat-clogging pollution, two reasons it was the first city eliminated in the recent race to host the 2012 Olympics.
Yet, Moscow has an imposing charm and much of it can be explored on foot. Start in Red Square, where the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral go back five centuries.
Take the Metro to Ploshchad Revolutsii (Revolution Square); the bronze statues of socialist worker-heroes lining the station platform are tourist highlights by themselves. The Kremlin, with its towers, palaces, cathedrals, garden, and Lenin's mausoleum, is an all-day undertaking. But St. Basil's, with brightly colored domes recognized around the world, can be savored in less than an hour. So can GUM, which has evolved from a Soviet version of Building 19 to a Russian version of Copley Place.
From nearby Arbatskaya Ploshchad (Arbat Square), whose underpass has become an informal market and concert venue, walk down either the old (Stari) or new (Novy) Arbat streets for a contrasting taste of then and now.
The old Arbat (called simply Arbat by locals) has a pedestrian mall lined with shops, cafes, and museums, including Alexander Pushkin's house. The new Arbat is a broad and bustling avenue with department stores, casinos, and restaurants.
Take the Metro, which some consider the world's best, with its chandeliers, mosaics, and sculptures. It's extensive, it's cheap (13 rubles, about 45 cents) and trains arrive every couple of minutes.
Visit sprawling Gorky Park (Park Kulturi), the best place to see Muscovites and their families at play. Despite the ''uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions," what hasn't changed are the Russians themselves, who are eternally friendly, earthy, and adaptable.
Contact John Powers at jpowers@globe.com. 