Alla dancing

And then on my final, final night in Moscow had the honour of being invited to the most lovely dinner with my neighbours. Well in fact, at this very last moment, they were trying to match-make me with A who was widowed some years ago, whom I have often met in the lift with his dog, and who speaks no English. Turns out he is an artist, trained in the Soviet fashion on repetitive (and suitably heroic) drawings of Lenin, and then copying from Great Works - one of his Fragonards has pride of place on the wall. Also neo-classical frescos on his ceiling, and a mural in the kitchen, topped off with some wonderful pre-revolutionary furniture and an artfully arranged branch and curtain combination which was probably the height of interior fashion for the cultural elite in the 1970s (or 50s).

The meal was the usual leisurely and pleasurable consumption of caviar, salami, cheese, black bread, fruit, compote and (of course, lots of) alcohol. Much toasting, mainly to the future of A and me together, and to good times had in Moscow. And to me coming back and staying with A. Etc. Which was followed by him getting out his guitar and serenading me with gypsy and hooligan* songs. And some dancing. Fabulous.

For a sample, on balalaikas, with a quartet in full evening dress go here.

unspoken connections

I don't know whether it is because I am of a certain age, or whether it happens to all foreigners, but there have been several moments of kind exchange with strangers (also mainly older people). In the Metro, there have been those who, hearing me speak English to a Russian friend, come over and greet me - in whatever language they prefer.  Today, in the supermarket, the cashier on reaching the end of my stumbling Russian and therefore realising I was a foreigner, reached under the till counter and gave me a discount card for a massive designer retail outlet; adding quite formally and in beautiful English 'a present for you.'

I find these encounters very touching - because if I understand correctly - it connects to something I also feel; that we were Cold War children, separated and isolated by politics.... and now (somehow unexpectedly) we can just be in the same city together, in an ordinary way. And I still find that a little amazing.

In a similar fashion, one of my colleagues has just come back from his family home deep in the Russian countryside - no running water or electricity, and he has been there all summer making repairs to his mother's house so it will be warm enough this winter - with a huge handful of home-made socks and slippers. On hearing that he was working with an English woman, his mother's friends also insisted on giving me presents.

why the dacha is a thing of beauty

Finally got to go for the weekend to my landlady and landlord's dacha, about an hour and a half's train ride away from the city.

And what a blissful honour. The building and its fruit trees, cucumbers, marrows, berries and herbs were very much what I had expected, together with the freshness of the air, the purity and cold of the well-water and the strength of smells (dill, coriander, apples). And I expected the constant round of fire-building, cooking, mending, digging, pruning, salting and compote-making. But I found myself also witnessing a personal and social life with direct continuities back to Soviet times as A and N, together with several old friends from their student days at Moscow State University, reminisced and joked and drunk and ate together; around a large table, under a open, outdoor roof, in the midst of apple and plum trees.

I knew that dachas had originally been given as rewards for loyalty by Peter the Great, a tradition repeated by Stalin. But I didn't realise that in the 60s and 70s workers organisations were given plots of land to share out (together with some restrictions on plot size and building height, so as to not echo the previously elitist context) which means that a surprisingly large minority of Muscovites still have access to a dacha. A and N have developed theirs since the 1970s, but the type of life dachas enable remains central; that is, social, convivial and sharing as much as connecting back to the country, to land and to growing your own produce.  I can't say if these spaces 'made up for' the constraints of communal housing and in public life, but but they certainly open up my images of, and assumptions about, everyday life and pleasures in the old Soviet Union.

domestic interiors of the Soviet 70s

There is also lots of very contemporary design work at ARCHMoscow, enough to make the small stand showing photographs and furniture from Moscow 70s domestic interiors (real flats - still unchanged) feel quite eccentric. So, of course, I loved it. Partly because it reflects the Soviet standard furniture sets that I have in my own flat here (and which remain ubiquitous in older apartments) and partly because it shows a kind of careful celebration of, and obsessive interest in, both the previous and continuing lives of Moscow residents.

buckets

I have just been showered with plastic. After another visitation this evening now have more buckets than I know what to do with as well as some of those useful tupperware-type containers, a washing up bowl and couple of plastic jugs. I repeat the question from an earlier post. Is that weird or not?

mishap

Another trace – the toilet has been leaking into the flat downstairs because the ball-cock jammed, and I have had two days of much going backwards and forward with repairs, wrong parts, things not fitting, repairman’s nephew wanting to practice his English on me and flat often full of people. Realise that I hanker after being a recluse. But, anyway, now have my own brand-new-from-the-cupboard plastic bucket for pouring water down the toilet as required, and – finally – a whole new toilet.

traces

So many traces in this flat of the lives lived here. Obvious things like books - old Soviet encyclopedias, health and fitness magazines from the 50s - photographs and ornaments, but also things that reflect a specific Russian trajectory. There is a different kind of light switch in every room – all poorly fixed and just another example of years of inadequate and relatively random supply and distribution of consumer goods. But then there are three variations on telephones from different periods up to the 1960s - one parent worked for the national phone company - still proudly displayed and working (in fact I have disconnected two – this is only a two-room flat – but am already regularly rung on the remaining item by them upstairs....) And then I may not have mentioned that every available cupboard space is stacked with coloured plastic goods. Plastic buckets, bins, lids, baskets, boxes, flowerpots, jugs and other unrecognizable whatnots. Another story there then to be explored, about a sideline in selling plastic consumer items. (From the difficult 90s? As an addition to chemical engineering? A job for the son?).

Oh, and this evening, I was brought an old but beautifully soft and repaired mohair blanket and a pair of thick socks from the Caucuses (so I don't get cold).

upstairs

This is my new living room. I think I may be seeing a lot of my landlady, she keeps inviting me to eat in their flat upstairs, or dropping by with something. This evening had a very relaxed but long-winded filling in of the lease agreement with her, her husband and grown-up son. Very nice people. Food. More food. Much admiring of her flat, which is full of lovely and historic bric-a-brac. Much moving of the large black and white cat that spent most of its time lounging across the paperwork. Many attempts to persuade my (Russian translating) friend that she should get to know the landlady’s son better. And something I really enjoy – that like me these people tend to lounge around indoors in housecoats, track suits and other items very close to pyjamas. I have now been visited several times by the husband in his tracksuit and dressing gown. That, at least, makes me feel very at home.

new flat

Slept last night in the flat in borrowed bedding, so have been to collect my stuff from work and begun to make the place my own. The building is from the late 1920s, initially built as a hotel, and then converted into collective housing. Which I guess explains the huge stair landings. The landlady’s story, if I understand it correctly, is that her family owned the flat originally but were cultural intellectuals who were cleared out in the 30s to be replaced by poorer families, many living in each room. Then at some stage she and her parents were able to move back and so how she has both her own place and this one (she also seems to own some other apartments elsewhere for letting out.) Clearly an entrepreneur and a survivor; she and her husband – a chemical engineer – seem to have done all right for themselves. Like ex-council estates in London, the wider block appears to be inhabited by many different kinds of people, including a regular gathering of drunks on the stairs, who it must be said are perfectly friendly if a bit messy.

new

Familiar strangenesses are multiplying. Went immediately to view a flat that my Russian colleagues have found me (via many, many email exchanges of interiors/locations/prices). Prices seem to have shot up, although it may be of course that I demand to live relatively central. Anyway, this place is old and furnished traditionally, but in a fantastic location just minutes walk from work. The landlady and her husband live immediately upstairs, so initial discussions also involve soup. The plumbing is ancient and basic but the floors are wooden, the windows big, the rooms of a good size and the view green, so I like it. It is also very cold – being as we are in that transitional period with chillier, more autumnal weather but before the powers-that-be decide to turn on the heating. (Also they have left the windows open, which I later realize is to blow away the slight but all- pervading elderly smell.)

So the landlady show me the traditional trick of lighting the cooker, and putting bricks on the flames. And I can’t work out if this is weird or not.

wishing I could hear more everyday stories

Today we went to visit the flat next to my old flat, which I have watched builders going in and out of for several months. So, on the off-chance and as I was leaving, I enquired as to whether it might be for rent.

Well, we met the owner, an elderly engineer. The one-roomed flat, which had been his mother's, still has Soviet period fixtures and fittings. Visiting it was like being in a time-warp compared to the IKEA corporate flat I have just left (or the shiny 'capitalist realist' style interior I now occupy). I loved it of course - it would make a great 'matching set' with my 50s modernist flat in London - but there was a complicated story about how he and his wife would like to rent it to me, so I could help the grandchildren with their English (and because they have had good times in London on a cultural exchange), but that his daughter was keen to use it as extra space for these children and their artistic activities, so no decision could yet be made. Photographs of his grandchildren and my daughter were duly studied and cooed over, and other stories were swopped particularly about a shared interest in architecture - of which more below.

This led , after we had left, to talk about both the housing market in Moscow and the stories it offers about people's lives here. In many ways Moscow is like London; housing is now very expensive, such that those who 'came into' property before the boom have the potential to live off the additional income from renting it, whilst those who missed out can no longer 'get in' and must pay around 50% of their income for somewhere to live.

Only in Moscow what people now own - mainly following the privatisation of the 90s - depends on how their parents were employed during the Soviet period. So, if your dad or grandfather was in the KGB or some other high-ranking official, then you may now well have the keys to a huge flat in a Stalinist skyscraper. I don't know about the engineer's family, but his wife is the daughter of Vladimir Shukhov, who designed some of the earliest hyperboloid structures, including the famous Tower named after him (just this fact alone is very exciting to me, for which I apologise), so they have another, inherited flat.

And then this led on to stories about other people I work with, including one whose father was Stalin's helicopter pilot. Because, in Soviet times, you only got permission to move to Moscow legally if you were a key worker or part of the power structure. Which means, I guess, that there is a greater 'density' of such personal histories here.