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Рубрики Россия-СССР; Образы будущего; Либерализм; Модернизация; Манипуляция; ... Версия для печати

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42457-2001Jul10.html


By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 11, 2001; Page A01
MOSCOW -- The lobster tank with the cobalt-blue water happens to be empty, the best specimens already served at $118 a plate. But customers seated at Momoyama restaurant by blond Russian waitresses in kimonos will find plenty left on the menu. A few doors down, at the more proletarian Planet Sushi, a plate of raw fish goes for as little as $3.50, and the staff has to enlighten diners about the freshwater eel known as unagi.
In Moscow, where fine dining once meant black bread and pickles, sushi bars are suddenly all the rage. "New ones are opening every day," said Alexei Sinichkin, manager of Momoyama, which opened in March. The Asian invasion highlights a broader explosion of restaurants -- not only more top-dollar eateries like those that arrived with the capitalists a decade ago, but finally a middle tier for the middle class.
It's all part of the evolution that has followed revolution here. Left for dead three years ago following Russia's financial crisis, Moscow not only has bounced back from economic oblivion but has resumed its march forward as one of Europe's boomtowns. In both good ways and bad, from the traffic that grows more insufferable by the day to the malls and sidewalk cafes sprouting up all over town, Moscow increasingly is taking on the bright-lights, big-city feel of the great metropolitan centers of the West that it so strives to emulate.
When the International Olympic Committee arrives here to open its meeting on Thursday, the official agenda will be to decide whether Beijing or four other candidate cities will host the 2008 Summer Games. But Moscow hopes to use the opportunity to show off its progress to the world, opening its own campaign to win the 2012 Summer Olympics and to refashion its reputation abroad.
"We have things to show," Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev boasted the other day as he ran around town inspecting sites where the committee will stay and meet. "I think Moscow today is no worse than many European cities, and actually better than most of them."
Shantsev and his boss, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, have been fixated on putting on a good show ("You can see weeds growing out of the cracks!" Shantsev growled at workers as he toured the Bolshoi Theater). Any city can be gussied up enough for visitors, but the changes in Moscow are deeper than the fresh floor varnish at the ornate Hall of Columns, across from the Kremlin, where the IOC will hold its opening ceremony.
More cosmopolitan and modern than ever, Moscow is a city that continues to surprise. First-time visitors are often struck by the sense of normality in a place that has endured so much upheaval. Regular visitors comment on how much has improved even in the year or two since they were last in town. "I'm stunned at the changes," said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, who was here last week for his eighth visit since 1979. "I think they're going to make it."
For the 9 million people who live in Moscow, the sense of change is inescapable. It takes the form of new buildings, new amenities, new opportunities. More than a dozen creaky movie theaters have been renovated since 1999 and now offer everything from "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" to Russian films starring matinee idol Oleg Menshikov. A vibrant concert and
theater life offers additional cultural attractions. Fruit and vegetables are widely available, and shortages are largely a thing of the past. Gone are the scores of babushkas who, just a few years ago, lined up outside subway stations every day hawking anything they could.
"There aren't lines for food anymore, but for exhibitions," said Irina Ryaboshaiko, a scholar at the Museum of Moscow History. "If a person is willing, he can find a job. It's possible to find jobs for everybody now." After so many years of tumult, "the depression is over. . . . Slowly, gradually, the mood is beginning to change. People are crawling up. They have possibilities. We never had anything like this before."
"Moscow seems like an old place, but everything is new," said Valentina Pantyushina, 55, who lives outside the city and rides the train in each day to work in city parks. "Moscow is changing so rapidly."
The experience of Ikea is instructive. The Swedish furniture company opened a store in Moscow last year and found 40,000 customers on its doorstep the first day, hungry for better couches and beds and finally able to afford them. Since then, it has become the most visited Ikea store in the world and two more stores for Moscow are in the works.
"Everybody's been telling us how different Russia is, and that may be in many respects. But after being brainwashed about how Russia is so different, it was a great surprise to see what it's really like," said Johannes Stenberg, Ikea's marketing director in Moscow. "There's an inordinate amount of cars jamming the street. There's an inordinate amount of food in the stores. This is not a city in crisis."
Even the gangland killings that marked the early days of capitalism have subsided. The number of murders, which nearly quadrupled in Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has dropped steadily in recent years, from a record 1,820 in 1994 to 1,129 last year -- still far higher than in New York but just a third of the proportionate rate in Washington.
Still, Moscow stands apart in a country where most Russian cities and villages remain mired in the past. And as Stenberg noted, some of the changes in the capital are for the worse. The growing prosperity has made it possible for more people to buy automobiles, but that has filled a woeful road system beyond capacity. A five-minute drive from the New Arbat area to the Kremlin can take an hour during the week. Sidewalks are sometimes used as an extra lane, and traffic is only made more maddening by the fact that left-hand turns are generally forbidden.
According to the traffic administration, 2.7 million cars now chug down Moscow roads, with as many as 300,000 added each year. While Luzhkov has tried to build new highways and bridges, the situation has grown so bad that the World Bank is stepping in with grants.
All those cars have not helped the city's smoggy air. In a place with no recycling, much less automobile exhaust standards, the environment has driven many longtime city dwellers to the country.
Katya Belavsova, 24, moved to the Tver area about 120 miles north of Moscow because she believed pollution was making her hair fall out. She commutes back each week to sell clothes at a market, but has noticed that the weekends in the fresh air have improved her health. "We call it a trash bin," she said of Moscow. "But on the other hand, it has gotten better."
Other aspects of Moscow life have not changed much at all. The bureaucracy remains exasperating in its endless capacity for paperwork and fees. The airports are nightmares for Russians and foreigners, with hours-long lines waiting for officious stampers at passport control. The lack of a real system of taxi licensing forces people to rely on gypsy cabs, essentially any driver who chooses to stop and negotiate a price.
And the traffic police, still known informally by their old Soviet initials GAI (pronounced "gai-yee"), remain an omnipresent and menacing force, ready to pull over drivers at random in hopes of extracting bribes by finding technical violations of Byzantine paperwork requirements. Still, the economic turnaround since the August 1998 financial crisis has been striking. "What's come back in the last six months . . . is that middle market that went away after the crisis," said John Eaton, manager of the Marriott Grand Hotel, which along with two other Marriotts has seen its corporate occupancy rates increase by 35 percent over last year.
Aiming to join that middle market have been Muscovites like Olga Zadornova and Julia Filipova. In 1998, during the crisis, they worked as lawyers, earning just 1,500 rubles a month (anywhere from $90 to $160, depending on the wildly fluctuating exchange rate at the time). Last year, they managed to get enough credit to start their own five-member firm and now each takes home $800 a month.
"Three years ago, we couldn't have done this because there was so much instability in everything," said Zadornova, 27. "It would have been dangerous three years ago."
Poverty remains a huge problem in Moscow, but even at the lower end, some people have seen improvement. "Take my family," said Pantyushina, the park worker who was collecting five rubles (17 cents) for use of the portable toilets at Pushkin Square not long ago. During the crisis, "I owed money to everyone. I could hardly make both ends meet. I could hardly make the rent. I could hardly pay the electricity. Now I've paid everyone back and I can save money and even buy something every once in a while."
Luzhkov, the mayor, has earned a reputation as a Robert Moses-like builder -- new buildings, statues, churches, highways, fast-food restaurants. Now with his eye on the Olympics, he has more plans. Shantsev, his deputy, said they plan to build 40 supermarkets, renovate dilapidated hotels and construct more three-star hotels to cater to the middle class. About $85 million has been earmarked for new sports facilities.
"We're really going to improve Moscow," Shantsev said. "There will be a lot to see in Moscow in five years."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company