Moscow Days: Life and Hard Times in the New Russia

by Galina Dutkina, Catherine Fitzpatrick (Translator)

Moscow Days is the wry, frank, and poignant personal account of life in the new Russia by writer and journalist Galina Dutkina.
In the first book by a Russian to detail everyday life in the post-Soviet era, Dutkina describes Moscow's newly rich, newly poor, and those caught in between. She tells of struggling Russian youths, increasingly violent gang members, conniving beggars, the new Russian intelligentsia, mafiosos-turned-politicians, and ailing pensioners who cannot afford doctors. She shows us the food stores bare of Russian staples such as beef or fish but crammed with French bonbons. She speaks about the difficulties of raising children, and the plight of the modern Russian woman. Along the way she offers new insights into why her country finds itself in such a predicament.

Genres: Memoir

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Crysta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dutkina surveys different aspects of life in Russia in the early-mid-90s, in the immediate wake of the USSR's demise. She looks at the rise of the black market (and those who profit from it), the role of women, vacationing, the meaning of work, and so on. But most intriguingly, she examines how lives change when everything you grew up with is suddenly gone.

I lived in Hungary in 1995-96, so about a year after this book was written, and many of the same changes were occurring, on a different scale. When the state suddenly dissolves and people are on their own for motivation, work, and living, raw human nature is revealed.

I'd love to read another account from now. We hear rumblings of the entrenched mafia and underground economy, but Dutkina had a fascinating perspective, living within it.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 4 out of 5]

As research for my second novel, this book was one of the most useful resources in compiling an idea of the social structure of modern Russia. I originally read it assuming that I was going to learn about just the modern equity of their social system, but between this text and my friends in Moscow and St. Petersburg, I was able to create a picture of not only how modern views and behaviors between businesses, men & women, and all other social attitudes, but how these attitudes were able to manifest themselves in how society behaves now. As an infant in the grand scheme of capitalism, there is a wonderful and interesting dynamic that blends the old with the new, the young with the old, and the rich and the poor, and how very deeply each citizen holds these things in their hearts.

A wonderful book – fascinating to me while it might be borderline boring for some. I really enjoyed learning about a land that is just beginning to bloom with fortunes, life, and democracy. While at times any of these elements are stifled with a miscommunication of old soviet-era ideals, there is no stopping it as a powerhouse of modern and future prosperity.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read, fascinating at times, memoir of Russian female journalist re living in Moscow around 1992. Social commentary, wry humor. Made me wonder how different things might be now, would like to read a circa 2002 Moscow memoir from this author or another.

[Zack · Rating 2 out of 5]

It sort of falls apart over the second half. Lots of hearsay and shenanigans claimed. Still an interesting read. I wonder how different life is now.