Shop assistants prepared T-shirts, printed with images of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, for sale at GUM department store in central Moscow last year. Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters
Linda Feldmann, CSM: Return to Moscow: my Wizard of Oz moment
The Monitor's correspondent visits Russia for the first time since just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and takes in the kaleidoscopic changes.
The last time I was there, in November of 1991, the Soviet Union was a month away from dissolving, and a grand experiment in Russian-style capitalism was about to launch.
The Moscow of 1991 was much like the Moscow of 1980, when I first lived there as a college student: a monument to faded glory, rather dreary and a little sleepy. Basic products could disappear from store shelves without notice. Most people didn’t have cars, and traffic jams were practically nonexistent.
WNU Editor: Linda Feldman is correct .... the Russia of today is nowhere near what the Soviet Union was before its collapse in 1991. Case in point .... my condo is just a few blocks from Red Square and I bought it in the early 1990s .... and I hate to admit but when I bought it the building that it was in was a dump .... correction .... a garbage dump. But I did not care .... my father and I bought it for personal reasons, and I reasoned that being a few blocks from the Kremlin would guarantee its appreciation over time. I was correct .... the building where my condo is in is now regarded to be one the posh places in Moscow ... and the neighborhood .... it is completely unrecognizable ... and for the good. Big changes have also occurred outside of Moscow and Saint Petersburg .... 25 years ago people lived in simple homes driving old Ladas .... today .... OMG!!!! .... those days are completely gone.
Update: She is right about the Bolshoi .... I have good contacts in Moscow's "scalper community" and on my last trip to Moscow I wanted to see what they did to the old place .... but even I could not get any tickets!!!!
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