New Russia, same as the old Russia?

I'd been to Russia once before, for a few days in 1998, to attend a conference in St. Petersburg, and was struck then by the faded glory of the place; it had clearly been very beautiful, but was on the skids. The buildings were dilapidated, there were holes in the pavements, and everything was generally in need of renewal. At the same time, there were clearly pockets of prosperity; some buildings had been restored to a very high standard, and the main shopping street, Nevsky Prospekt, was stuffed full of Western stores and brands. But I clearly remembered the grim housing estates on the outskirts, all grey concrete tower blocks, which clearly formed the reality of the majority of people living there. And then there was the culture, at that time still barely post-Soviet; the library staff acted as if it was their aim to stop you from seeing things rather than enable access, and I still remember being told off in one of the art galleries for just stretching as I sat on a bench, which would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so disconcerting.

This time I was headed for Moscow and to Novokuznetsk in Siberia, for personal reasons rather than for work, but I was curious to see what if anything had changed. Moscow was certainly different to Petersburg, which is on much more of a human scale. Moscow is vast, and getting around is generally a pain. the Moscow metro was the most insanely crowded tube system I've ever been on. It makes London look quiet, and to make matters worse, Russians have *no* concept of queuing; the train doors open and everyone tries to get on and off at once. It's just a scrum, basically, and it's every man (or woman) for himself (or herself).

Moscow transport in general is screwed up; it's not just the metro, the buses are old and packed, and the roads are gridlocked, though everyone tried to tell me it was just because I was there for holiday season. And it's exactly the same story in the airports, which have even sillier levels of security than Heathrow currently does; you have to go through a choke point where your bags are x-rayed before you can even check in, and once again there's no concept of queuing.

Plus the general level of bureaucracy is also lunatic; I had some visa issues, because I'd gone on a tourist one but as I was staying with private individuals I should have been on a different type, so got fined 2000 roubles (only about £40 but enough to be annoying) for that. Plus I got stopped in Red Square by a couple of militia guys who heard me speaking English and narrowly avoided getting arrested because my passport wasn't registered; you have to register if you are in Russia more than 3 days in any one place, whatever visa type you have.

I didn't manage to see that much of Moscow as I was staying too far out of town to be bothered to go in every day, but it's clear that there's a lot more money around than in 1998. There's a whole generation that's reaching adulthood now that never knew communism and is completely happy with the Western style of business and consumer culture; there are mobile phone stores everywhere, and if you go into pretty much any shop you'll be greeted by some friendly young assistant (on commission) just itching to fall over themselves to help you. A far cry from the old days when I'm told that if you went into a shop they acted like it was a big imposition if you wanted to look at the goods, and heaven forbid you should try and buy anything. But all those massive grey tower blocks are still there, even more of them than in St. Petersburg, so it's not clear how much difference this new consumerism has made to the masses. Even when I visited the flat of a couple living in central Moscow who by Russian standards are clearly very well off, with a couple of cars, broadband access, etc., their building was shabby, though the interior of the flat itself was nice enough.

Talking of the net, it is nowhere near as ubiquitous as in the UK. Wi-fi hotspots have started appearing round Moscow (I hopped onto a McDonald's connection without actually buying anything while I was there; sorry Ronald, hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me) but they are very rare in Novokuznetsk, and you can't rely on people having any kind of net connection at home. Was hardly online for two weeks; though it's no bad thing to have a break from digital life every now and again, it was starting to get a bit inconvenient purely from a work point of view. Still, if you can afford it, broadband is there. But internet shopping is way behind the UK, because the Russian postal service is so poor. People don't trust it because in the Soviet era everything got opened, and its woefully slow. So an ebay-type business, or indeed any online retailing, can't really take off in a big way until that gets sorted out.

Being an Orthodox Christian country that stuck to the old calendar, Russians don't celebrate Christmas til 7 January (except they kind of do, like they do even in Asian countries these days, just because all the Western hoo-hah over 25 December has permeated around the globe and they figure why should they miss out on the chance of a holiday and the opportunity to shift more units when everyone else is doing it). But it's New Year, not 25 December, that they all go crazy for; 'c novom godom' (happy new year) was one piece of Russian I picked up while I was there. Being in Novokuznetsk for the new year itself was definitely a high point; there are fireworks galore from about 9pm, reaching a crescendo as the clock strikes 12.

I ended up in the main town square at 1 am, fully of happy partying Russians enjoying the ice castles and massive (and potentially pretty hazardous) ice slides that had been erected for the occasion. I'm sure that in the UK they'd invoke some health and safety regulation to stop anything of the sort, but that isn't the sort of bureaucracy Russia excels at, so the fun continued unhindered. It was hilarious watching bunches of Russian kiddies on the miniature ice slides all bumping into one another on the way down and ending up in a heap at the bottom; they were too little and the slide was too short for them to do each other any damage, but the expressions of sheer delight and exhilaration on their ruddy little faces were a joy to behold. No sooner had they slid to a halt than they were gamely marching up the side of the slide again for another slippery squealing descent.

So, Russia is a great place, if you don't have to (i) go anywhere or (ii) deal with officialdom. But there are some cool things to see and do once you get past all that. A personal highlight, apart from the obvious like standing in front of Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square (it was closed unfortunately so I didn't get to see the man himself), was a visit to a house Dostoevsky stayed in Novokuznetsk after he got out of prison in Siberia. He was only there for less than a month - it was just a place where his wife to be was renting a room - but they've preserved it, and there's a little museum devoted to him across the road as well. Having read so much of his stuff it was great to see something like that; I think I went to some of the places associated with him in St. Petersburg, and he spent time in Moscow as well, but that place in Novokuznetsk is a collector's item - not many Western readers of his works will ever make it there. I'm glad I saw it, just like I saw all the rest of it; but frankly I'm glad I don't live there.