WHO BUT THE GRAY LADY WOULD BE NOSTALGIC FOR SOVIET LANDSCAPES?:

A new Moscow erases the old (and history) (Seth Mydans, SEPTEMBER 24, 2005, The New York Times)

With stunning speed in the past few years, the developers have torn down scores of buildings in the city center, ripping the soul out of much of this stolid, quirky city.

They have left those who love Moscow in stunned despair, raising small voices against the forces of money and politics, mostly ignored by a public that has become increasingly cowed and passive at the feet of those with power.

"I'm sad about this, but after five years I'm going to stop being sad because there's going to be nothing left to lose," said Aleksei Komech, director of the Ministry of Culture's State Institute of Arts Research, as wreckers hacked away at a classic building just outside his window.

Last year the city's central district announced plans to knock down or renovate as many as 1,200 buildings in the city center. Preservationists say "renovation" is often a cover for destruction.

In August, Moscow's first deputy mayor, Vladimir Resin, said the city planned to build 60 skyscrapers in the next 10 years, some of them 50 stories high.

"This tiger always needs meat," Komech said. "So we know that from now on we can expect new projects, new ring roads, new tunnels. There's more money than you can imagine in Moscow now." [...]

"Russia is in the midst of a collapse of culture and there is nothing we can do about it," said David Sarkisyan, director of the State Museum of Architecture. "It is a horrible crime. The old generation of cultivated people is dying off. No one is coming to replace them."

The voice of the future, and apparently the voice of the majority, comes from people like Katrina Semikhatova, 27, a public relations representative for a major Moscow developer.

"I don't think Moscow is a beautiful city," she said as she surveyed a vast construction site where a new commercial and residential center was being built on the banks of the Moscow River.

"I think Moscow must be better," she said. "For me, Moscow has very few beautiful landscapes on the average. There is always something ugly. Today we have a chance to build a whole new city."

Skyscrapers are always a mistake, but the notion that losing the city the Bolsheviks built is a bad thing is disturbing.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 24, 2005 12:00 AM