Notebook

Fairy-Tale Church Reopens

In St. Petersburg, the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists in 1881, has been reopened for the first time in 60 years. The church, whose brightly colored onion domes stand out among St. Petersburg’s typically classical architecture, was allowed to fall into disrepair after the Bolshevik Revolution (among other things, it was used as a morgue and as a storehouse for theater props). By 1970, the church was so run down that the city administration was planning to destroy it. The church’s opening, timed to coincide with its 90th anniversary, was attended by over 400 people. Although religious services will be held there, the church will be run as a museum, with an entry charge. The main opening celebration, along with the first Orthodox service, is planned for November 7.

Bad News for Public Transport

As a result of its rapidly aging public transportation system, Moscow could find itself practically without trolleybuses within three years, and without trams in four. At the end of the 1980s, 1,500 trams operated in Moscow, compared to today’s figure of 897 – and 580 of these will become obsolete in the near future. The average age of Moscow trolleybuses, which have a service life of about 10 years, is 7.2.

Jewish Autonomous Region to Disappear?

Statistics from the latest Russian census indicate that 8,600 of the 8,900 Jews who lived in the Jewish Autonomous Region (located in the Russian Far East, near the Chinese border) in 1989 have since emigrated under Israeli visas – many to the United States, Germany and Canada. These figures are slightly suspect, however, as not all Jews revealed their true “nationality” in the 1989 census. Only the next census will reveal how many Jews actually remain in the region, but officials doubt that this number will be enough for the region to claim the status of an autonomous republic.

Marriott Comes to Moscow

Moscow’s 8th five-star hotel, the Marriott Moscow Grand Hotel has opened on Tverskaya Street, near the city center. As you would expect from a five-star hotel, all rooms are equipped with air conditioning and a mini-bar, along with three phone lines (for phone, fax and computer). The hotel also boasts three restaurants, a sports club and underground parking. Price-wise, the Marriott is in the middle of the range for Moscow’s five-star hotels. A typical room costs $300/night, but you can drop up to $1,400 for a presidential suite.

Russia Honors Early Prince

As part of Moscow’s 850th anniversary celebration, the city’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov unveiled a 10-meter-high statue of Prince Daniel of Moscow, Alexander Nevsky’s youngest son who ruled Moscow during the second half of the thirteenth century. Daniel managed to extend his small principality to the mouth of the Moscow river, which he seized from a Ryazan prince. Patriarch Alexei II made an appearance at the ceremony to consecrate the monument.

Yeltsin in the Doghouse

Six years have passed since the coup attempt and the famous “White House” standoff between Yeltsin and the would-be putschists. Back then, Yeltsin won the day through his broad-based popular support. But what now? For the anniversary of this event, the Betaneli Sociological Institute decided to conduct a nationwide poll to see how many Russians would back Yeltsin if the coup attempt happened today. The results? Only 16% said they would support Yeltsin, versus 21% who said they would support the hard-liners. The overwhelming response, however, was apathy. 35% of those polled supported neither side, and 28% were simply undecided.

Literature for Commuters

15,000 posters presenting 30 poems by Russian and British poets (the latter to be accompanied by a Russian translation) will soon be hung in the Moscow metro. This project of the British Council, “Poems of Russian and British Poets on the Metro,” is analogous to a similar project which has been displayed for the past 10 years in the London Tube and is, apparently, very popular among Londoners.

Big Changes in Store for

Moscow Metro

With or without poetry, the fact is that Moscow’s metro has fallen into poor repair in recent years and lacks the money to remedy the situation. In spite of money problems, however, the head of the Moscow metro, Dmitry Gaev, has announced that the construction of new metro stations will continue.

Carrying somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million passengers a day, the metro is Moscow’s most popular form of public transport. Some old stations like Mayakovskaya (a busy stop within the Garden Ring) have escalators so old that passengers could be in danger. The real problem, however, is that the Mayakovskaya station has only one exit, meaning that, in order to fix the problem, either another exit must be built or the entire station must be closed down, causing commuters untold hassles.

Another problem is the metro’s ventilation system, designed for a projected load of 6.5 mn people a day and unable to cope with the actual number of 9 mn a day. And, in the next year, passengers will likely face longer waits between trains, as many cars are no longer fit for use.

But changes are afoot. During Moscow’s recent 850th anniversary celebration, the first prototype models of new metro cars appeared in Moscow. The new cars include  a special ventilation system in the ceiling, two rows of luminescent lamps and double-glazing to protect passengers from noise.

Changes are also taking place in the metro’s payment system, which is going fully automatic. Gone are the days of flashing your pass at the metro lady. Tokens, too, will gradually be fazed out. The wave of the future is a range of magnetic cards, checked by machine, which will allow the passenger either 20 or 60 trips over the course of a month.

US Named Moscow’s Worst Traffic Offender

In the wake of an accident in which a US political attache hit and seriously injured a pedestrian in Moscow, the US diplomatic corps has been accused of having the worst driving record in Russia. Russian authorities have pledged to press charges against the diplomat in question, yet the US has not requested a waiver of diplomatic immunity. According to Russian sources, in the first eight months of this year, US Embassy officials committed 141 traffic violations, a record among foreign embassies. But embassy spokesman Richard Hoagland cautioned that these statistics should be kept in proportion, reminding that the US embassy in Moscow is one of the largest in the world and that “we receive notices of traffic violations that include dirty license plates.”

Dostoyevsky Contemplates Lenin & Zhukov

A 3.7-meter-high statue of the great novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), author of Crime and Punishment, was unveiled outside the former Lenin Library for Moscow’s 850th anniversary celebration. Earlier this year, another Dostoyevsky statue was unveiled in St. Petersburg. Already, the new statue has generated its share of controversy. While most Russians seem to feel that it is about time that Dostoyevsky – largely spurned during Soviet times – got his due, the statue’s price tag (R8 bn – $1.4 mn) is raising eyebrows. There has also been talk that the sculptor, Mikhail Posokhin, won the commission because of his connections as deputy chairman of the Moscow Architecture Committee, the organization that issued invitations for the contest.