MOSCOW –To me, Moscow had always been the elusive gem.
Since I began studying in the former Soviet Union several years ago, the capital of the great empire had been at the top of my list of “places to see.” Yet Russia’s complicated and restrictive travel regime always held me back, even as I spent the last few summers in Ukraine, only a few hundred miles away.
So when opportunity knocked a couple months ago, I had to take it. But I had no idea exactly how much it would live up to my expectations.
Anyone remotely interested in the Russian and Soviet legacy is aware of Moscow’s stereotype. Drab, unwelcoming and thus somehow quintessentially Slavic, the city is marked in the minds of millions as the gloomy and all-intimidating seat of Russian and Soviet imperial power.
But as I arrived from sunny and charming St. Petersburg on Aug. 5, these stereotypes took on an entirely new life, creating a memory –and a moment in history –that invoked a Moscow under siege, as it had been at perilous times in its history.
That night, Moscow under dark looked foreboding. The smoke –a result of hundreds of miles of burning peat bogs outside of the city set ablaze by the country’s record heat wave – began to slowly seep in, creating an uneasy mist reminiscent of a worn battlefield.
As I twirled along the city’s winding streets in a gypsy cab with a fellow journalist, the city’s major landmarks –the White House, the Duma, and the behemoth Ministry of Foreign Affairs –slid behind shadowy curtains of grey. The Moscow River seemed more like a swampy bayou than a wide river that slices through the city.
“Can you believe it?” he shouted, hanging of the window and pointing at the sky. “It’s getting worse! It’s actually getting worse!”
The scene on Red Square on Aug. 5.
The next day, massive clouds of poisonous smoke overtook the city in full force, creating a nightmarish and foul-smelling haze more suitable for a George Orwell novel than for a European metropolis. The city streets, normally abuzz with activity, were eerily vacant as the smoke clouds seemed to displace the city’s 10 million inhabitants.
With my girlfriend and a travel companion, we rushed frantically from one drugstore to another, searching for facemasks to shield us from the smoky onslaught. Everywhere we went, however, the answers were the same: “No more masks, only medical gauze.”
Desperate for relief, we grabbed the gauze and several bottles of water. Every few minutes, we’d pour the water over our gauze pads and hold it snugly to our faces, so as to at least create the illusion we were breathing fresh, moist air.
But since this was my first visit to Moscow – and one for which I’ve waited a very long time –we were determined to explore the city, smog or not. What we found was a remarkable sight: the Russian capital, thoroughly swallowed by smoke, seemed ever more like concrete fortress under assault –this time, not from the enemy, but from the elements.
On infamous Red Square, we stood smack in the middle and glanced around. The historic St. Basil’s Cathedral, at the north end of the square, was nowhere in sight. Neither were the Kremlin towers, the ominous yet impressive markers of Moscow’s nerve center. Lenin’s mausoleum appeared faintly in front of us, though only about 20 meters away, as a clunky and frightening monolith.
Amidst the macabre of a city engulfed by smoke, its citizens rushing about in gas masks across its vast concrete landscapes, and into and out of metro stations, I couldn’t help but wonder how perfectly dystopian it all seemed. If it were still the Cold War, it surely would’ve meant mass pandemonium.
“This,” I thought to myself, “is exactly what the Soviets were afraid of.”
As a journalist, my initial reaction was one of excitement and danger –the stuff that gets any action-seeking and foolhardy reporter’s blood pumping. But others didn’t feel the same.
Few people, whether residents or visitors, seemed to have a means of escape. In many cafes, restaurants and stores, air conditioning was either weak or nonexistent. And still, the smoke seemed to find its way inside through the shuffle of people constantly entering and exiting.
Inside the massive Main Department Store on Red Square, smoke flowed in through its revolving doors and open passages. Old women hawking the store’s famous ice cream found themselves keeping shop even at the risk of their own health.
One woman, sitting complacently behind a freezer, expressed her hopelessness at the situation. She sat through the first half of the day in her mask, she said, but then she gave up when she couldn’t breathe with it.
“This is terrible,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. Do I wear the mask or do I just sit here?”
As we exited back onto Red Square, the feeling was almost too much to bear. An emotional maelstrom took hold as I pondered the irony of my first visit to the menacingly iconic Moscow made typical by its Soviet legacy.
After taking a short breath of toxic air, I shrugged my shoulders and turned to my friend in a gesture of resignation.
“Should’ve stayed in St. Petersburg.”
Dan Peleschuk is a freelance writer in Kyiv.
