oscow Celebrates 850th Birthday

When a modern-day Rip van Winkle awoke in Russia's capital this year after a 20-year absence, it didn't take him long to confirm some of the century's most startling changes. It wasn't the malls or the molls, the casinos, the mirrored-glass office towers or the rebuilt churches that riveted Natan Sharansky's attention.

The former Soviet dissident, exiled by the KGB only to return triumphantly as Israel's trade minister, could see it in the way Muscovites carry themselves, in the way they talk.

The eyes-downcast "Soviet man" who scurried along spartan streets of a city whose soul was hidden from view is long gone. In his place are multicultural masses and a teeming bazaar of a metropolis whose chaotic changes, warts and all, are on full polychrome display. A city of extremes, the Moscow that is marking its 850th anniversary can be maddening, inspiring, outrageous, exhilarating, bleak, crass, cultured, corrupt, filthy-rich, dirt-poor and dirty - but hardly boring.

"When you talk to people you see that it's a very different place," Sharansky observed.
"People enjoy life much more deeply and feel more security and confidence."

If this city of 9 million, (unofficial 12), people has become a feast for the haves, it is famine for the have-nots. Strewn in the wake of Russia's upheaval are legions of beggars, orphans, homeless, jobless and impoverished elderly, confronting daily deprivation with scant hope for improvement.

But swept up in the frenzy of a building boom that coincides with grandiose anniversary celebrations climaxing the weekend of Sept. 5-7, Muscovites seem to be walking a bit taller these days. Most will tell you they agree with the red banners stretched across city streets that gush,
"I Love You, Moscow!"
TV promotions audaciously proclaim this "the best city on earth."

Shortcomings or not, this place derided by foreigners as "The Big Potato" not long ago is a dynamic, thriving city that is transforming itself in a dramatic comeback from its nadir around the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991.

"At the start of reforms, this city was dying," says commentator Denis Dragunsky. "Only about three years ago did we begin to live OK."
"Rarely will you find a city that changed so - in a snap.

Moscow's new brashness surfaces early every morning when guarded convoys of Mercedes emerge from blocky brick "cottages" that crowd choice suburbs. Hurtling along with blue lights flashing, these bankers, businessmen and government luminaries enter a Moscow whose old outer shell remains intact. Numbing rows of concrete apartment towers loom behind a not-so-welcoming "MOCKBA" sign from another era, complete with communist star, and monstrous Stalin Gothic skyscrapers still lurk on the skyline.

But changes are evident everywhere.

Signs herald new restaurant or store openings daily. Haphazard kiosks that sprouted like weeds a decade ago are being ripped out and replaced by more permanent convenience shops and bistros. Hard-hat workers who face regular grillings by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov are rushing to finish Europe's largest shopping mall just outside the Kremlin. Key roads are choked. With 2.1 million cars, Moscow's traffic flow has nearly tripled since 1991.

On busy sidewalks, orange-robed Hare Krishnas, uniformed Cossacks, tattooed gangsters and leather-clad models share space with ordinary working people, who seem spiffier every year. Swank boutiques and clubs are making historic Tverskaya Street even glitzier. They're mere window-shopping sites for average Muscovites, who earn only about $225 a month in one of the world's most expensive cities. But Moscow is a giant street bazaar, and savvy shoppers get their quota of imported goods elsewhere.

Sitting by an elegant new fountain in front of the Bolshoi Theater, a woman from Turkmenistan who visits every summer marvels at the changes.
"Everything was so dirty (in 1991); there was trash in the streets," says the woman, who gives her name only as Lyudmila. "But now it looks amazing. Everywhere I look there's order and cleanliness."

Moscow has always been the City of Oz for Russians. Stuck in the dreary boondocks, Chekhov's characters spent entire plays pining for their beloved capital as a dream city of sun, flowers and refinement - even if the reality fell short. Today, more than ever, Moscow isn't Russia. Much of the country remains locked in centuries-old poverty, and even villages a short drive away seem scarcely ready for the 20th century, let alone the 21st. For every retractable-roof stadium or glittering business complex built in Moscow with lavish public financing, hundreds of factories, schools and hospitals stand decaying across 11 time zones.

The capital's new prosperity is coming increasingly at the provinces' expense. More than 60 percent of foreign investment is in Moscow. And Muscovites, comprising 6 percent of the population, accounted for 23 percent of the country's income last year. That gap may widen even more based on the frantic building activity in Moscow, where the drone of jackhammers this summer became the city's unofficial anthem. At ground zero of the building boom, the monumental Christ the Savior Cathedral on the banks of the Moscow River is a magnet of human energy. Passing motorists crane their necks to glimpse the nearly finished cathedral, where two-plus years of round-the-clock construction has duplicated what took four decades to build in the 1800s.

Misty-eyed old women chant fervently inside a small wooden church erected on a back corner of the site, and knots of onlookers peer through an iron fence at the swarming army of men and machines.

Luzhkov, the bald, 60-year-old fireball who has led the city's resurgence, marches through the site periodically to survey his pet development with dozens of city officials in tow.
"Why hasn't this section been finished?" he might bark at a foreman. Or "Good job on that," praising another.

The new zoo, the $340 million Manezh mall, the redone Ring Road superhighway, the overhaul of 100,000-seat Luzhniki Stadium - no other mega-project touches the mayor's heart like the cathedral. But it's not just Luzhkov who draws inspiration from the new church. Pensioner Arkady Andrushenko, who stops by almost every day to watch, is among many who see it as graphic proof of Moscow's renaissance.
"Life is not all right here yet - there's too much poverty," says Andrushenko, who was born in 1937, the year Stalin razed the original church. "But at least we're starting to rebuild what we lost in the past."

Shootouts, hookers and gangsters waving wads of hundred-dollar bills - it's a colorful stereotype of modern-day Moscow, and sometimes it's true.

Prostitutes prowl outside the parliament building and inside posh clubs at night, and crooks strut their gangland ties, displaying diamond pinkie rings and shaven heads as if they wore high-school letter sweaters. Yet, the chances of running into a "razborka" (criminal showdown) are small. Moscow nights are safer than those in many Western cities, and crime isn't a daily reality for the millions of Muscovites who don't run a business being dunned for protection money. Venture inside the city's pricier nightclubs or casinos after midnight, though, and you'll find a heavy hint of the criminal element. Here, where thick-necked men check their guns at the door, masculinity seems to be measured by the size of a thug's purse. At the garish Titanik club, housed in the Young Pioneers Stadium, men in black dance to pulsing techno music all night with gum-chomping girlfriends in spandex pants. At Utopia on once-staid Pushkin Square, the well-heeled pay $33 to get in and an extra fee for access to a plush room upstairs, where dancers do performances that could curl the hair on the statue of venerated poet Alexander Pushkin outside. Next door, silver-haired men play roulette alongside young thugs in the carpeted elegance of one of Moscow's 40-odd casinos till dawn. By sunrise, thousands of vendors and shoppers are on their way to the vast daily flea market outside Luzhniki Stadium, so profitable it provides $1 million a day in fees to city coffers.

The market is a graphic illustration of what's succeeding in Moscow, and what ails it.

In a city of non-producers, a city where doctors moonlight as office cleaners, at the market, physicists and professors have joined the hordes of traders, hawking jackets and handbags they procure in Turkey or Dubai. Getting the hang of the new world, many are flourishing - with mixed feelings about their success.

Solya Tursagulova, 29, got a degree in linguistics from Moscow State University but abandoned any notion of teaching because of the paltry salaries. Now she makes up to $2,000 running her own trading business. But like many others, she'd like to return to her chosen profession someday when Russia's economic crisis eases.
"It's not good; it's not normal," she says, sitting in a tent selling lingerie and skirts. "But if we live in this country we have no choice. We've learned to get by."