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We are
Muscovites, children of the metro, time and again we seek refuge in its
maternal womb. We find solace and reassurance that only we can
understand in this hubbub, in the perpetual, deafening peristalsis of these
windy stone intestines. For us urbanites, brazen and timorous at the same
time, suspicious of everything, there is only one thing we trust – the
Moscow Metro, the most reliable in the world

‘Moscow doesn’t believe in tears!’

But it’s interesting to wonder what will
come after us, how Moscow’s new masters will behave. We know from the
history of centuries past that when barbarians captured a city, they faced a
dilemma: whether to burn it and carry away the loot or stay and live in it.

We like to fantasise; we keep hoping that something
unusual can still happen to us, when in actual fact everything has been
decided long ago and all that’s left for us to do is live out our lives
reminiscing about the past and growing old to the music of our memories

It’s not true that old Moscow has all been torn
down by greedy, grasping capitalists: the Soviet regime demolished just as
eagerly, only it built slowly.

Only
sometimes it seems as if there is nowhere for us to go to, because these
places no longer exist anywhere except in our memory. There are no ruins
or ashes left behind; everything has been wiped off the face of the earth or,
even worse, built over and transformed into something quite different by
that indefatigable property developer, time.

Everybody has places that hold special memories for them. Places where
they spent their childhood or where they met their love or where they
simply used to live and were happy, without even realising it. It’s good to
visit these places sometimes: to go there, stand there for a while and think;
to sigh a bit,

Probably the first thing Russians do when they get to the
next world is seek out the loose planks in the fence enclosing the Pastures
of Heaven.

It’s worth pointing
out that epithets and social attitudes that are now considered unacceptable
in London or New York are indeed still common in Moscow, for all its
sophistication.