Earflaps Are So 5 Years Ago

Struck by how surprised many foreigners are when they first set foot in this restless metropolis, interpreter Yekaterina Borisova slips easily into ridicule to describe the phenomenon.

Visitors “usually share the standard collection of stupid stereotypes about Moscow that date back to the Cold War era: bears in the streets, caviar, fur hats with earflaps and permanently drunk Russians,” she said. “Most foreigners who end up coming to Moscow are truly shocked to see that the Moscow of their imagination is so different from real-life Moscow. They are surprised to see a huge and bright modern city.”

After a chaotic transition from communism, followed in 1998 by a nationwide economic crisis, Moscow has quietly enjoyed a four-year boom. As soaring oil production and high oil prices boost Russia’s economy, the greatest benefits can be seen here at the center of power.

The city and its people have been transformed, with about half the population now considered at least middle-class. There is a flood of new restaurants, fancy boutiques and high-priced supermarkets carrying top-quality goods. The streets are jammed with traffic and people are working hard to get ahead.

“Moscow is changing every year,” said Elena Bashkirova, a sociologist who left academia and is president of Romir Monitoring, a leading Moscow polling agency. “They have renovated a lot of beautiful buildings. For many years I wouldn’t even look at them, because they looked very dull, gray. Now they are all pink, yellow, very beautiful, really.”

Post-Soviet buildings that match the quality of European construction increasingly mix in a jumble with imposing communist-era structures and Czarist buildings notable for their elegance.

Although 8.5 million people are registered to live in the capital, a government committee this year estimated the population at 10.4 million. That makes Moscow larger than Los Angeles County, which has 9.5 million residents.

“People are swarming to Moscow like cockroaches,” said Cheslovas Bagdonavichus, 53, who once designed Soviet fighter jets and now is deputy director and part owner of a cargo haulage firm. “It’s like a second Babylon. Everybody believes that all the money is only in Moscow. It’s possible to make money only in Moscow, it’s possible to steal money only in Moscow. This idea is out there, and everybody is here.”

The wild capitalism unfolding here -- a free-for-all flourishing under a weak legal system -- is reflected in the type of pride Bagdonavichus takes in his work, which often involves arranging shipments of Chinese goods to Russia on aging Soviet-era planes.

“My responsibility as a manager is to load an Ilyushin-76 chock-full in order to make more money,” he said. “And even if sometimes I violate safety regulations, it’s my responsibility as a manager to make sure I get away with it.”

The boom is even attracting Russians who fled the motherland.

“Many people who immigrated to the United States or Israel are coming back, because they’re clever,” Bashkirova said. “It’s easier to make money here than in the United States, where everything is stable.... I have a Mercedes. My daughter has a Mercedes. My business partner has a Jeep, because Jeeps are very fashionable here.”

The Moscow gold rush takes place in a city that still sports communist symbols of the sort that have largely disappeared in the former Soviet Bloc states of Eastern Europe.

The Moscow subway, or Metro, is decorated with “socialist art” of workers, peasants and soldiers, while Lenin statues remain in place and the Kremlin towers are still topped by red stars. Lenin himself lies, looking more plastic than preserved, in his Red Square tomb.

“Younger generations do not have the right to curse their forefathers, or destroy something that was built by their hands,” said Yuri Kruk, director-general of Investstroymetro, the agency that builds Russian subways. “That is why in Moscow things that were created under socialist rule have been preserved.”

With the end of Communist Party efforts to enforce rough equality of income among all but the party elite, a new upper-middle class has emerged. Its members are the greatest beneficiaries of the city’s transformation.

“When you look at Moscow and compare it to what it looked like five years ago, only a blind person will not notice the difference,” said Yana Skachkova, 29, an advertising agency manager. “Buying something you need is no problem, no matter what time of day it is, since lots of stores work around the clock. Living in Moscow has become much more pleasant and convenient -- provided you have money, of course.”

The same principle applies to foreigners: The good life is available now, but it’s not cheap. For Western expatriates, Moscow was the second-most-expensive city in the world in 2002, after Tokyo and ahead of Osaka, Japan, according to a survey of 144 places by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Tourists find hotels and restaurants expensive even by Western European standards.

A middle-class lifestyle is affordable to half of Moscow’s residents, according to surveys by Expert-MA, a Russian research firm that puts the median income at $250 a month per family member. About 5% make at least $2,000 a month per member.

Lunch at the best Moscow restaurants can easily cost $70 a person -- and more than $100 for dinner, without alcohol. Such establishments are crowded primarily with Russians. But the appearance is a bit deceptive, Bagdonavichus said.

“Four times a year we could probably afford going to a nice restaurant, for $300, let’s say,” he explained. “That’s the moment you see us there. And then you say, ‘Oh, Russians go to restaurants, and the restaurants are full.’ I’m that kind of person. I’m ready to pay really good money at a restaurant if I can be sure that the management got a trout that was alive yesterday and baked it today.”

After contracting 5% in 1998, Russia’s economy has expanded more than 25% in the last four years. Moscow’s growth has been even more dramatic, helped by foreign investment that stood at $8 billion last year and is projected to hit $12 billion this year, according to Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov.

“It’s important to note that Moscow is very different from the rest of the country,” said Bashkirova, the pollster. “Of course here in Moscow we have a much higher and better standard of living. Everything is better, bigger, more here in Moscow. We have more universities, more museums, more theaters, more restaurants.... Everything is here -- the money, the companies, the power.”

Moscow is a magnet for the ambitious from all across Russia, attracting “the more energetic, younger people, those with a more entrepreneurial character, those who feel that their cities are too small for them and those who are thinking about the future of their children,” Bashkirova said.

“The rest of the country doesn’t like us Muscovites,” she added. “They think that we are snobbish, like New Yorkers. I think we are very like New Yorkers. They think we always run, we do not pay attention to other people, we are probably not polite. But at the same time, everybody wants to live in Moscow.”

In the winter, the city can seem more beautiful, even rich. Fresh snow adds to its charm, and on the coldest days, when the mercury plunges to 15 below, most women wear fur coats.

Compared with Soviet times, Moscow pulsates with energy, and in many cases the dour sales clerks and waitresses of Cold War legend have been replaced by cheerful service personnel trained to maximize sales.

“The first time I visited Russia was in 1986, and I can see that major changes have occurred in your country since then,” Deng Rong, the daughter of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, told Channel One television during a recent trip here. “Moscow has changed a lot. The city has a different image and Muscovites too look different -- much friendlier and much more cheerful.”

That’s not to say that life isn’t still hard for many.

Roughly 2 million people, or 20% of the city’s population, survive on less than $120 a month per family member, which Expert-MA defines as the poverty line.

Yet people find ways to get by.

Food and other goods can be found in the poorer outlying districts of Moscow for as little as half their cost at supermarkets in the city center, said Bashkirova, who lives downtown on Tverskaya, Moscow’s most elegant shopping street. “Sometimes I ask my driver to buy something in his own supermarket,” she said. “When he gives me the change, I ask, ‘How could you do it?’ He just laughs.”

Maria Sidorova, 62, a pensioner who works part time at a cinema, said she and her husband have a combined monthly income of $330 and spend about 70% of it on food. They live in an apartment they own and spend only $10 a month for housing- related costs. “I can’t afford the restaurants, but I can easily afford a supermarket,” she said.

Asked what they typically eat, she replied: “Good sausages and good cheese and coffee for breakfast. Or ham and eggs, for instance. Dinner has a first course of salads, yogurt, all sorts of dairy products, or it can be dumplings in broth or borscht. The second course would be baked fish or baked chicken with mayonnaise, cheese and onions, and various vegetable salads.”

On the lowest end of the economic spectrum, Moscow also has a significant homeless population.

Every winter several hundred homeless people trying to get through the night -- and ordinary citizens who pass out drunk while outdoors -- die in the bitter cold. Moscow’s emergency medical aid service registered 389 deaths from hypothermia between last Sept. 12 and April 27 of this year.

Reacting to a post-Soviet spurt in crime, Muscovites also consider the city not very safe. Contract killings of high-profile businessmen and politicians occur with depressing frequency.

But Los Angeles’ murder rate is higher: about 1 per 5,623 people in the city last year, compared with 1 per 8,157 people in Moscow.

Still, popular parks are filled with young people long after sunset, and women get home late at night by flagging down unlicensed taxis -- virtually the equivalent of hitchhiking except that the driver is paid.

“Too many ugly things happen in Moscow for it to be considered safe,” said Borisova, the interpreter.

“I am always nervous when my 5-year-old daughter is not with me.” Borisova would like to see better roads, fewer cars, more parks and more pedestrian zones.

“Probably the last thing that Moscow lacks is relatively cheap, yet good-quality three-star hotels,” she said.

“Today there are only two extremes -- either five-star posh hotels that make a visitor dizzy with their prices, or cockroach-infested slums that are located on the outskirts of the city and are impossible to even set foot in.”

Whatever its shortcomings, Moscow triggers deep local pride.

“I most often think of Moscow, and not Russia in general, as my homeland,” Borisova said. “Moscow is a perfect city to live in, at least for me and my family.”