Subscribe
The city I first saw in 1997 as a depressing, lost world, is now filled with light and life. A decade later, people here appear to have cast off the domination of communism and embraced the prosperity of a free market economy.
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been fortunate to have traveled the world with a succession of U.S. defense secretaries. My job as a writer for American Forces Press Service has taken me to more than 60 countries during a period that has seen the end of the Cold War and the decline of the Soviet Empire.
Nothing has been more fascinating than visiting parts of the world long closed to outsiders – places like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, to name a few.
When I first traveled to Moscow in 1997, the Russian capital was abysmally grey and dismal. Buildings and people alike appeared sullen and grim. Historic, ornate buildings stood neglected and seemed forlorn. Rows of modern, but dilapidated, high-rise apartment buildings filled the skyline.
A rank odor composed of cigarette smoke, cleaning fluid and diesel fuel permeated the air indoors and out. I later came to realize this smell was common in many of the former Soviet Bloc nations. As was, what I perceived as, a general sense of apathy. Nobody seemed to care about much of anything -- except survival.
In the streets of Moscow, stores without ads or promotional banners were barely distinguishable as retail outlets. Food stores were noted for empty shelves and lines of people hoping for a bit of meat or bread. Arts and crafts vendors stood in sub-zero parking lots, catering to the occasional tourist.
Returning to Moscow in the late 1990s, and in 2002, I stayed at the Radisson Hotel, an oasis of Western food and bright lights. Outside, I saw that the city of gloom had begun to change.
The formerly dark night sky reflected more lights. Floodlights illuminated monumental historic buildings. Garish neon signs sprouted on restaurants and bars. At first, there were only a few, but each visit there were more and more lights.
Driving through the city today, 10 years since my first visit and five years since my last, I saw historic buildings freshly painted in light pastel colors. Boldly colored signs and huge posters advertised goods and theatrical performances. Golden, onion-shaped domes have been restored to their former glistening beauty while others are wrapped in scaffolding undergoing the same process.
I also saw people sweeping away the city’s dust and dirt. I saw people repainting signs and even drainpipes. I saw men on ladders repairing plaster and roofing. There were signs of restoration and rebirth everywhere.
What I saw was people’s sense of pride put into action. Whatever the reason, they now appear to care about their property once again. As I noted the differences between the Moscow of old and today's bustling city, I realized I have been a witness to what I’ll call Moscow’s “physical reawakening.”
Considering that my visits are generally only for one or two days, I realize my perceptions are limited. But, two other reporters who have lived in Russia say they have also witnessed the city’s rapid transformation from dark to light.
New York Times reporter Thom Shanker lived in Moscow from 1985 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1992, while he was a bureau chief with the Chicago Tribune. He has returned nearly every year since to report on the Russian capital. This week he arrived in Moscow aboard the U.S. defense secretary’s Air Force 747 command plane.
Shanker said that when he first lived in Moscow in the mid-1980s, the city was drab and gray.
“The only color was the Red Party banners,” he said. “And it was the bad old days. Mikhail Gorbachev had just come in, but no one knew for sure if he’d really have this big broom of reform. The KGB (secret police) presence was quite heavy.
“There was a total lack of consumer goods,” he noted. “You had to order any sort of fresh fruits from a market in Helsinki that would make weekly deliveries by train. The markets in Moscow certainly had the basics – potatoes, tomatoes, pickles, and beef -- but you had to import any kind of western goods you wanted for quality of life.
“The quality of health care then was just terrible,” he recalled.
Over the years, Shanker has watched the city and the life of its people recover from the past. Now, he said, there are a number of very modern Russian health clinics, as well as American and French health clinics, and dentists.
“In the almost 15 years since I left as a full-time resident of Moscow,” he said, “every time I go back, the city just looks brighter and cleaner and more modern.”
Shanker said he’s particularly noticed that when you drive in from the airport, the outskirts of Moscow haven’t changed very much.
“You see a lot of broken down factories that don’t ever seem to produce anything,” he said. “You see some of the communist era apartments. But every ten kilometers you get closer toward the center, it’s like going forward in time by ten years.”
“There’s an IKEA furniture store there. There are big auto dealerships. There are gas stations with bright, shiny pumps and service personnel,” he said. “The center of Moscow now is very bright with lots of light and neon and Western consumer stores and all of that.”
“On the surface,” Shanker concluded, “in just a decade and a half, Moscow has caught up substantially with the appearance of Western capitals.”
FOX television reporter Jennifer Griffin has also marked the change in the city.
Griffin was assigned to Moscow from 1996 to 1999, when the Fox network was just getting started, and Boris Yeltsin was the first president of the Russian Federation. Yeltsin, 76, died of heart failure this week on April 23.
“It was the end of the Yeltsin era,” Griffin recalled of her early days in Moscow. “It’s strange and ironic that the day I landed in Moscow, was the day that Boris Yeltsin died. We spent three years here when his health was very bad and there were constant rumors that he might be very ill and perhaps even dying. It’s been a strange return.”
Traveling with the defense secretary this week, Griffin returned for the first time in eight years. She too noticed the lack of color and how the city looked “much more gray and grim" in the mid-to-late 1990s.
“This time,” she said, “it looks like it’s had a fresh coat of paint. There’s new life and vibrancy. There are young people in the streets that don’t have the same dour expression on their faces that I remember in the 1990s.”
Griffin said that in 1991, Yeltsin implemented his “shock therapy” economic program and people lost everything.
“Today, things (in the city) are so vibrant economically,” she noted, “Moscow itself looks like it’s had a face lift.”
Story by Linda D. Kozaryn, American Forces Press Service
| Date Taken: | 04.23.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 07.04.2025 00:52 |
| Story ID: | 530837 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, RU |
| Web Views: | 1 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, COMMENTARY: The Lights Are On in Moscow, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
