The best constructivist building in Moscow

Got to see the inside of what is probably the most famous Soviet constructivist building in the world - Narkomfin.  Designed by Moisei Ginsburg in the 1920s, this housing block was meant to aid the transition  towards communism, by combining a mixture of privatised flats (with kitchens) and ones only containing space for sleeping and studying, with all other facilities organised collectively.  It was also an early example of architectural modernism - with double height spaces, long horizontal windows and white walls - some of which the more reknowned French architect Le Corbusier nicked for his own modernist housing masterpiece Unite D'Habitation. 

Narkomfin has been badly neglected and is in very poor condition. However, some flats are occupied - left over from the privatisation of housing that took place through the early part of the 1990s. The property developer MIAN has also bought many flats, intending to develop a converted scheme for housing, but is being affected by the financial crisis and the usual legal stalemates. This has left the building - unloved for most of the Soviet period - in a kind of (typically Russian) limbo. 

These days it is very hard to get inside Narkomfin. The few remaining tenants are both angry and anxious; they called the police when we visited, uncertain about our reason for being there (even though we were with representatives from Alexey Ginsburg - architect grandson of Moisei - who MIAN have employed to design the improvements; and of Moskonstruct who are a Russian-Italian campaigning organisation.) It is also crumbling and in a state - rubbish from squatters (now cleared out by MIAN); plaster peeling off the walls, and windows broken and stained. But the overall glory of the vision can still be seen - a very clever weaving together of double height living spaces with single height bedrooms, bathrooms and (yes) kitchens; interlocked into a clean whole, with lots of light and - considering the restrictions of both economy and politics in the 1920s Soviet Union - spacious.

The truth is, though, nobody is holding their breath about the building surviving. Along with MAPS, another group which is trying to save some of the best bits of Moscow's architectural heritage,  Moskonstruct seem pretty fatalistic about their chances, when up against current development pressures, corruption, and the known preference of Moscow's mayor Yuri Luzkhov for the new.

Sign Moskonstruct's petition to save Narkomfin here.

Flat-hunting

Flat-hunting is a great excuse to be nosy about how other people live. In Moscow, of course, almost everyone lives in a flat, although some also have a summer house/dacha to escape to at weekends. Rents are high – currently around 45, 000 - 55, 000 roubles (about 1000 GBP) a month for a two room flat (that is, living room and one bedroom), so many Russians share; but on a British-level salary I can just about afford this on my own.

Entrance doors and common spaces seem uniformly pretty bleak, not grubby exactly but very shabby and unkempt, with hallways smelling of old cabbage. Lifts feel very rickety, some rather ineptly ‘glued’ to the outside of buildings. Lots of clanging heavy metal doors to be navigated with several big keys which I assume are left over from the economic collapse here at the beginning of 1990s when things were pretty hairy for a bit. (I haven’t asked anyone to check – it is just that Moscow feels reasonably safe right now)

Inside the few I visited was the usual private rented mix of miscellaneous furniture, from overstuffed, heavy and overdone to a few bits of cheap tat. Kitchens and bathrooms, though, have all been done up to high standards, and of course electricity is subsidised so heating is not a problem. I went for a compact IKEAed place on the seventh floor with a slightly bleak and ‘in-lived-in’ feel, because it has a fantastic view of two of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers – called the Seven Sisters here – and is a great location, about 15 minutes walk from Red Square. Now plan to add more IKEA in an attempt to make it homely as there doesn’t seem to be other ways of getting at secondhand furniture.

Some of my colleagues meanwhile have found themselves a two room flat in one of those Stalinist skyscrapers I see from my window, which is extraordinary. The rooms are huge with very high ceilings, chandeliers, oak parqueted floors and big glass doors. The flat has been decorated in the Moscow signature red/black combination with wallpapers of different abstract patterns, for example squiggles of black on a rich red background. Luckily the rooms are big enough to take it (just). The owner has it because her grandfather was in the KGB. There is also a mysterious door at the back which leads into a black hole. Until we get a torch we are making up lots of stories about KGB escape routes and hiding places.

Making a move

So here I am - on something more than a whim but less than a fully thought-out career progression - leaving credit-crunch, fatcat banker, sleazy MP-ridden London for a job in mafia-run, bandit capitalist, blat-driven Moscow.

Thinking it is a good time to take some notice about what happens when you swop one place for an alternative, one set of stereotypes for another. So this is an exploration not just of somewhere else, but also of my own place in the world, wherever and whatever that is. Too much writing by the English on Russia is of the 'how to upwrap the riddle-inside-mystery-inside-enigma-inside-russian-soul-blah'. But moving to Moscow right now should be as much about what is going wrong with capitalism and post-communism in the early 21st century; and can surely offer a (personal) view into the complexities of cultural difference that we are all part of.