From the Depths of Moscow

[rm]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-metro8jan08,1,3830210.story

Since moving to Moscow seven months ago, I've been schooled in the stark realities of Russian society by daily rides to language classes and the office on the Metro. The vast sprawl of tracks and tunnels seems to offer a direct line into Moscow's soul -- a place of faded elegance and hopeless cynicism, debauchery and destitution, barely contained brutality and touches of kindness.

... there is something in these halls that tells a story about Russia itself, a monument to communist days, when underground palaces, glittering in chandeliers, decked in mosaics and frescoes and Stalin-era sculpture, were built for the common commuters.

Now they are shabby and cramped, the bulbs burning out in the chandeliers, the halls a miserable jam of too many frazzled bodies. Up above, wild Moscow rages along, lawless and mad, cold and rich.

Comments

[bluejinn.livejournal.com]

Heya. What did impress you most of all in this article?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I used to teach English as a second language to a Russian girl who was here working as a prostitute and she would tell me craaaaaaaaaazy stories about Moscow, and this is the first thing I've ever read that clicked with the tonal quality of what she would tell me.