Moscow – The Cartier store blended in right along with Benetton, Yves Rocher and Max Mara. On a freezing, snowy March day, statuesque women window-shopped in the massive mall wearing more furs than you’d see at the San Diego Zoo. A brilliant sky roof illuminated a mountain of red and yellow tulips near cafes selling Italian cannoli, French croissants and Spanish coffee.
About 20 years ago, people stood in long lines inside this same mall waiting for not jewelry, furs or Nikes but boiled sausage, light bulbs and bread. Welcome to the new Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazine (State Department Store) or, as it was known in the old Soviet Union, GUM.
Welcome to the new Moscow.
The old GUM (pronounced Goom) represented the West’s view of everything bad about the USSR: People with money and nothing to buy. It later represented what was wrong with the new Moscow: Plenty of things to buy but people with nothing to buy them.
However, the new Moscow is changing once again. The runaway inflation that plagued Russia’s 1990s stumble toward democracy has slowed. Midrange hotels are planned. While crime remains high, violent crime is low.
Wave of tourists
Russian tourism has exploded. In 2004, Moscow had 5 million tourists, five times what it saw in the final years of communism in the ’80s and growing 15-35 percent per year. St. Petersburg, Moscow’s prettier little sister 400 miles to the north, had only 3 million.
I spent nearly two weeks in Moscow during its coldest March in 20 years, and when I wasn’t slipping and sliding along icy sidewalks only a seal could negotiate, I found a bright, bustling European capital that has come in from the cold.
It’s as if the communists left town and someone finally turned on the lights.
Within 10 minutes of my arrival at Sheremetevo, Moscow’s shiny modern airport built for the 1980 Olympics, I saw a massive furniture dealership with a façade lit up like the Flamingo Hilton. It was when I toured the city that night that I fully realized this isn’t the Moscow I read about in college political-science classes in the ’70s.
Moscow tourist sites no longer are limited to the Kremlin, the former heartbeat of the communist world still hauntingly lit next to the candy-cane striped onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Numerous bridges spanned the vast Moscow River and were adorned with lighting arrangements sparkling off the icy river.
From one spectacular vista near the Kremlin, I looked at the towering edifice of Moscow State University, lit up like a spaceship and arguably the most beautiful university building in the world.
I turned around and looked down a hill to Luzhniki Stadium, the main 1980 Olympic venue but now backlit after a late 1990s renovation. Off in the distance rose six spectacular skyscrapers, standing like fiery sentries at various points of the city. The red Soviet star still stands atop each one.
They are six of Stalin’s Seven Sisters, buildings former dictator Joseph Stalin built in the 1940s to compete with American skylines.
Moscow’s skyline still can’t compete with anything in America, but its restaurants sure can. Only 20 years ago, people stood in line for boiled sausage because there weren’t many options. Moscow, a city of 9 million people, had only about 50 restaurants. Today, according to Moscow’s restaurant governing body, it has more than 3,000.
The breadth of dishes from across the old Soviet Union was ample enough. I had selviki (crepes filled with cherries) in a Ukrainian restaurant, kharchuapuri (fried bread with cheese) in a Georgian restaurant, satsivi (chunks of chicken in a thick sauce of nuts and pomegranate) in a Caucasian (Caucasus Mountain region) restaurant.
However, that doesn’t include restaurants from Mexico, Thailand, Mongolia and France or the terrific pizza I had at an Italian restaurant near my hotel or the authentic pint of Guinness I found in an English pub.
I discussed the new Moscow with Andrei Sivitski, vice president of Intourist. We all remember Intourist, don’t we? That was the Soviet-run tourist board in which its best city tours were of Soviet paranoia. Rooms were bugged. Tourists moved in packs. Local Russians were as accessible as zoo animals.
That all has changed, said Sivitski, at 32 nearly too young to remember the bad old days of Russian tourism. Today Intourist is privately owned and competes with dozens of other travel agencies across Russia.
Image problem
Modern Russian tourism has a new set of problems in promoting Moscow, however. It’s fighting a reputation for being an expensive and dangerous city. A double room at my Hotel Ukraina, a four-star hotel and the seventh Stalin Sister, cost $185 in March.
Moscow’s hotels are either very expensive – the five-star Baltschug Kempinski Hotel has rooms from $330 to $2,000 – or gray, charmless dives left over from Soviet times. The simple, inexpensive hotels found elsewhere in Europe just don’t exist in Moscow.
Moscow’s first Holiday Inn opened during my visit. Cost per night: $210.
“There’s nothing midrange because there are a lot of business clients,” said Sivitski, sitting in a sharp blue pinstriped suit in the Ukraina bar. “They are not tourists. They can pay a lot of money. So these hotels are 100 percent full midweek. On the weekends they have openings.”
However, Moscow is addressing the problem. In a long-shot attempt to win the 2012 Summer Olympics, the city has promised to build 60,000 hotel rooms. Most are two and three stars with about 300 rooms each and planned to be finished by 2010.
If prices didn’t once scare away tourists, stories about mounting Moscow crime did. When communism’s 74-year experiment finally ended in 1991, chaos erupted. Organized-crime syndicates divided up the territory, charging protection fees all over the city.
Suddenly, factories closed, employment skyrocketed, and desperation climbed.
“It was accurate about five years ago,” Sivitski said of the crime. “There was a lot of crime here and in St. Petersburg. But nowadays I can tell you that Moscow is less than New York.”
Nonviolent crime
Not really. According to a February survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting of London, out of 215 cities Moscow ranked 198th in safety. New York ranked 39th. Luxembourg was first.
I can vouch for it. I almost was victim of a common Russian ploy. While violent crime is rare, Russians don’t need guns to rob you. One time I went down under a bridge to go along the river and reach the other side of a busy eight-lane boulevard. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall man in his late 20s lean over to pick up a big wad of bills in the snow.
He opened up the wad to show about $3,000 in U.S. dollars and rubles. He asked if it was mine and curiously insisted on giving me half.
“No. You found it,” I said.
“But if I didn’t, you would.”
Suddenly, running down the steps was a burly man in his 30s. He said, surprisingly in English, “I left money. Did you see my money?”
“He has it,” I said.
The younger guy opened up his wallet and fanned the bills. The older man said something in Russian.
“He says his money was marked. He wants to know if you have it.”
I laughed. I walked around him without incident but as I left I realized I was under a bridge and no one could see me. The mad traffic would have drowned out any cry for help.
I didn’t get angry. Many people in Moscow are angry. Despite six straight years of economic growth under popular president Vladimir Putin, government estimates are that about 20 percent of the Russian people live below the poverty line. Some locals told me it’s closer to 50 percent.
Sumptuous ballet
Yet there is enough money in Moscow to fill the Bolshoi Theater every night. A Russian institution since 1776, the Bolshoi’s trademark chariot atop the building and spectacular maroon and gold décor inside bring back memories of when Nureyev and Baryshnikov danced the party line.
But they never danced to the sexy interpretation I saw of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” where ballerinas in skin-tight clothes wrapped themselves around their male counterparts. Picture William Shakespeare meets “Cirque du Soleil.”
Now picture the new Moscow. The new line forms to the right.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
The details
Getting there: Delta has flights from Denver to Moscow through Atlanta for just over $1,300 in peak season of July and August. The return is through New York. In June the price drops to $1,120 on American through Chicago and Toronto and in September the lowest posted fare is $1,013 on U.S. Airways and Aeroflot through Washington.
Where to stay: (All prices are for doubles and summer rates.) The huge three-star Hotel Izmaylovo (71, Izmaylovskoye Shosse, 7-095-778-6583) goes for about $90. Three-star Hotel Leningradskaya (Kalanchevskaya ul 2 1/40), one of Stalin’s Seven Sisters, is $125. Four-star Hotel Ukraina (Kutuzovsky pr 2/1, 7-095-933-5656), another Sister, is $185. Five-star Baltschug Kempinski (1, Balschug, 7-095-230-6500) is $418. Five-star Metropol (1/4 Teatralny proezd, 7-95-927-6000), Moscow’s star hotel in communist days, is $430.
Information: Russian National Tourist Office, 800 Third Ave., Suite 3101, New York, New York 10022, 212-758-1162. Russian Embassy, 2650 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20007, 202-298-5700.
– John Henderson
