Capitalist Revolution Makes Moscow a Work in Progress

At dawn here, there’s a blue sky, a hot breeze--and the first shriek of power drills. Russia’s capital is in a construction frenzy. Giant pipes, mounds of red earth, scaffolding and rope rear up from sidewalks. Craters inexplicably appear in parks, or instant parks sprout from what were urban wastelands only days or weeks ago.

Wild fantasy buildings are emerging from the clouds of dust: revamped stucco palaces, all curlicues and columns; steely glass towers of big-money company headquarters; or the enormous fake cathedrals and wrought-iron lampposts of a reinvented czarist past.

Existing structures, meantime, have sprouted another floor, grown a turret or an attic or been repainted in surprising pastels. Sandblasters in orange overalls work day and night, hanging from ropes and cradles in the sky, scraping away the dirt of the past.

In theory, the more superficial bits of beautification are in honor of Moscow’s 850th birthday, an event to be marked by a Sept. 5-7 party. In reality, however, Muscovites agree that something more far-reaching than an anniversary is causing the paroxysm of self-improvement convulsing their town. That something, they say, is the rebirth of capitalism here in the Russian capital, especially in the hands of its free-spending, opportunistic mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov.

“Moscow’s new architecture reflects in concentrated form the specific culture of new Russian capitalism,” architect Mikhail Tumarkin commented.

Luzhkov, who is immensely popular despite widespread belief that his secretive city government is corrupt, won a second term as mayor in 1996 with 90% of the votes. He is expected to become a candidate for the Russian presidency in 2000. For now, however, his vision of Russia’s capitalist future can best be viewed through the thicket of cranes on the skyline that he and his friends--the millionaire winners of Moscow’s race away from communism--are creating.

“I hardly recognize Moscow after six months away,” said Maxim Artamonov, a Russian journalist visiting his birthplace from his new home in Switzerland. “So much painting and decorating and building and changing has been done since January, and all at the breakneck speed . . . that the city will look completely different for jubilee.

“Of course, the noise makes your head ache, and I’m sure only the outside of any of the projects will be finished by September,” he added wryly.

City Embodies Ideals

But transforming itself to reflect a political vision has been Moscow’s specialty in the 20th century, and now is no exception.

After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, V. I. Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, moved the capital back to Moscow from imperial St. Petersburg. Moscow became the embodiment in bricks and mortar of the Communist ideal. Its physical appearance changed to show every subsequent shift in ideology.

The everything-is-possible revolutionary era after 1917 was mirrored by everything-is-possible futurist building designs, spiky bouquets of glass and concrete and steel for a people celebrating freedom from the past.

When dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s squashed the excesses of revolutionary enthusiasm, substituting a bureaucratic hierarchy whose rigid policies were brutally enforced by the KGB secret police, his vision took visible form in seven threatening skyscrapers: Each tower pierced the clouds in a massive wedding-cake structure of columns and spires. They still dominate Moscow’s skyline, dwarfing the humans living in their shadow.

The greatest architectural symbol of the Stalin era, however, never was built. Soviet wreckers tore down the riverside Cathedral of Christ the Savior, hoping to replace it with a Palace of Soviets taller than the Empire State Building and topped by a 70-foot-tall statue of Lenin. But construction dragged on unsuccessfully for years. A swimming pool was later built on the site.

The last Soviet construction boom came in the 1950s under Nikita S. Khrushchev. Hated communal apartments--crowded slums in the city center--were mostly replaced by great gray wastes of identical five-story apartment blocks. Families who moved to the new suburbs rejoiced for the first time in the unimagined joys of hot water, bathrooms and a measure of privacy.

Then, in 1997, Alexander Kuzmin, Moscow’s chief architect, unveiled the third General Plan for the capital since 1917.

This Moscow, blossoming under Mayor Luzhkov, has no particular style. Anything goes, although many of the new buildings make a nod to the most recognizable theme from Moscow’s architectural vernacular--the pointy Kremlin bell tower. “Even though there are a lot of these new towers, often planted on top of buildings where they serve no real function, I wouldn’t say there’s a coherent new Moscow style yet,” said architecture expert Yuri Alexandrov.

The one feature that both government and commercial construction projects in the new Moscow share is that they are all very big.

The city government is too secretive to reveal many statistics on what is being spent on building. Officials will say only that almost all the money comes from deep private pockets. The main beneficiary too is big business, not ordinary people.

In modern Moscow, money is power. So the new plan focuses on the needs of the new rich--a tiny percentage of the population--at the expense of the rest.

Moscow’s road system, for example, was based on Communist estimates that only 10% of the city’s inhabitants would ever be rich enough to drive; it has been stretched to the limit now that at least 20% of residents here have a car and an additional 10% are forecast to buy one soon, Kuzmin said.

But there will soon be more underground parking, another ring road around the edge of Moscow and a railway running parallel to it. New bypasses and tunnels are planned to relieve congestion on the road now circling central Moscow.

For the 80% of Muscovites who do not have cars, however, there will be few, if any, quick improvements in public transport.

Other plans designed to enhance the lifestyles of Moscow’s elite include those for expensive Western-style shopping malls. While these sites will offer a novelty for Russians, they will be unaffordable for all but the wealthy.

A super-modern business district, Moskva-Siti, is also envisioned. The three-skyscraper Moskva-Siti will cost a projected $8.5 billion and spawn two new subway stations, another road traffic artery and a monorail link to Sheremetyevo Airport.

Its tallest building, the Tower of Russia, would reach 1,950 feet, making it 467 feet higher than the Petronas Towers, the Malaysian skyscrapers that are the world’s tallest.

Another monumental structure contemplated by Luzhkov would be on the grounds of Moscow State University near one of the seven Stalin-era skyscrapers. Managed by the municipal real estate agency and designed by the French firm Enitek, this 39-story pink building was first commissioned in 1993. It will sit astride an underground car park, be topped by turrets and--in an ironic echo of Stalin’s seven skyscrapers--has been christened “the eighth skyscraper.”

‘A Symbol of Rebirth’

But even within the inner sanctum of the city planning offices there are now differences of emphasis as to how Moscow should be developed; one chief architect was fired last year for losing control over the many public and private construction projects in the city.

Still, the designer of the grandiose Moskva-Siti project believes firmly in its importance. “The Tower of Russia is a symbol of Russia’s rebirth,” said Boris Tkhor, sitting in the offices of the thriving urban planning conglomerate Mosproyekt-2 behind guards, metal detectors and security checks.

But Mikhail Posokhin, Moscow’s deputy chief architect, shakes his head at the Moskva-Siti plans. “As I understand it, this is a very long-term project. . . . It can’t be built in a year or two. It is something for the future, for the decades to come.”

Moskva-Siti has not attracted the private funding it needs. That may be because many of the huge companies spawned by capitalism prefer the idea of private headquarters they can control rather than sharing in a municipal super-construction run by Luzhkov.

Thus, huge private temples of commerce are going up on all sides.

Like Luzhkov’s administration, Russia’s privatized and private firms and banks want imposing new homes for themselves. Among those that have gone the glass-and-marble route is Gazprom, Russia’s leading gas company. Gazprom’s dramatic, $60-million headquarters is an enormous confection of pointy towers and pyramids in bluish glass, rising out of sculpted paved courtyards. It stretches over what was, until 1992, a municipal garbage dump in southwestern Moscow.

The complex rises incongruously from its blighted urban surroundings--graying 1960s housing blocks, potholed roads and forlorn kiosks. Its neighbors, shabby watchmen from nearby buildings, laugh as they point out the alien newcomer. “We call it the minaret,” said one.

There have been more robust complaints about some of the more absurd manifestations of giant-sized civic pride here: a 300-foot statue of Czar Peter the Great sprouting out of the middle of the Moscow River and an “underground” shopping mall next to the Kremlin that has grown so big it has raised the surface of the ground.

Both were overseen by architect Zurab Tsereteli, a friend of Luzhkov who attracts much of Moscow’s prestigious design work although he is detested by most of the architectural establishment.

An anonymous group tried to blow up his statue of Peter the Great in early summer, after months of complaints by the middle-class intelligentsia that Luzhkov’s flights of fancy were vulgar and that his notion of capitalism was closer to cronyism.

But for the most part, Moscow planners are looking more for reconciliation with the pre-Soviet past than a bold step into the future. Old central districts are being reconstructed. New buildings hide behind classical facades. Gold leaf is everywhere.

Cathedral Is Going Up

But the most remarkable project underway is the rebuilding of the giant Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Its burnished gold domes dominate the riverside again, a powerful political statement of making peace with history, even if many Muscovites do not admire the pseudo-Byzantine bombast of the original church and say that the cupolas remind them of a “giant samovar.”

The sheer scope of Moscow’s building spree has drawn criticism of “gigantomania,” as have new echoes in the skyscape of the seven Stalinist wedding-cake towers.

Some architects have taken this to mean that Luzhkov and the new Russian elite are flirting with the imagery of Stalinism as their country settles down after the latest revolution--and perhaps giving visible shape to a new phase of Russian authoritarianism.

“I wouldn’t flirt with that past,” warned architect Yevgeny Ass. “It exists; we have to accept it as given. But I’m not sure it’s a productive past.”

But Vladimir Paperny--architect, academic and author of “Kultura-2,” an analysis of how Russia’s oscillations between revolution and repression affected architecture in Soviet times--says there is no cause for alarm.

Paperny, who works in Los Angeles, says he finds much of the latest Moscow design aesthetically unsatisfactory. Nostalgia for the lost past--whether Stalinist, czarist or Christian--is so intense that most designers have rejected modernism in the hope of finding their roots. The results look unprofessional, he says, but they show a healthy degree of political choice.

“Judging from the new architecture of Moscow, it seems that Russia now is ruled by different, coexisting power structures. It doesn’t seem that the central government is very strong, and the groups below are apparently existing almost independently of each other and competing for influence. In terms of what I call Russia’s ‘manic-oppressive’ political oscillations, that’s relatively safe,” he said.

Paperny’s view is shared, by and large, on the streets of Moscow, even if the new capitalism can be as brutal as the old communism in disregarding the wishes of people low in the pecking order.

Pensioner Galina V. Ivanova hates noise and dust, but for a while last year she was surprisingly enthusiastic about the huge building site next to her home. “At least the building they’re putting up here will be an academy for singers,” the 60-year-old opera lover said proudly.

Ivanova’s enthusiasm diminished sharply when she discovered that the tony musical academy she believed was being built would occupy no more than a corner of a huge, nine-story complex. Most of what she now calls the “mafia building” would be a casino, banks, offices and a shopping mall.

Irate phone calls and letters of protest to City Hall had no effect. The building, now nearing completion, sticks out like a sore thumb. “We were cheated. They told us one thing and did another,” Ivanova says now, but with unsurprised resignation. “After all, what can you expect of bureaucrats?”

Ivanova and most other Muscovites are basically pleased to live in Luzhkov’s lurid dream city. Here, unlike other Russian metropolises, their wages and pensions get paid, work is plentiful, and there is always something new and exotic on offer: floodlights turning city fountains blood red at dusk, or chamber music in parks on weekends.

“Luzhkov’s a good administrator, and a good builder,” Ivanova muses regretfully. “It’s just a pity that he’s not an aesthete.”