Evaporation


My first few visits back to Moscow felt like heaven. Then something happened, with me and with Moscow. First I began noticing fresh cracks on the walls of buildings in the very centre of the capital, in previous epochs impeccably restored. Then I noticed the disappearance of many historical buildings. Then – evaporation of the whole quarters. In fact, the whole capital was evaporating together with the Moscovites. The people now looked like guests in their own house. The tasteless, unbelievably ugly concrete fakes were gradually replacing the old architecture, and not somewhere on the outskirts but in the very heart of Moscow. I felt more and more suffocated, spiritually and physically, sneezing and coughing in the Moscow streets. There were still oasises: museums, art galleries, churches, book shops, and I ran from one into another trying not to breathe in deeply in between.

This could not continue endlessly of course. During my last visit I spent most of the ten days shamefully inside our apartment drinking wine to calm myself down. Outside was the nightmare of ugliness and suffocation. All I saw was the exhibition of the icons of nun Iuliania in the Andronikov monastery and also the old towns, Zaraysk with Colomna. My friends took me to Zaraysk because I wanted to see the birthplace of my favourite sculptor, Anna Golubkina. The town was deteriorating, a few elderly enthusiasts still kept the house-museum of Golubkina’s family. Kolomna, about the beauty of which I often heard from my grandfather, met me with very fine, slender churches above the river and some huge ugly glassy shape next to them – a gigantic jelly fish squashed on the green grass. “This is the Ice Palace”, said my friend “Yeh they spoiled the view but it is OK, everything is OK in Russia”. I was a foreigner you see.
I did not know yet that in the Andronicov monastery where I admired the icons of nun Iuliania the cemetery was already half-destroyed. The fake grave of our greatest iconographer, St Andrey Rublev, was then built, together with a restaurant for tourists. It was that very monastery which the teachers of my Art College were enthusiastically helping to restore years back.

Indeed I knew almost nothing when I came to Moscow three years ago last time. All I knew was the sense of the thickening doom and inability to breath. I left my birthplace being shocked with myself – during those ten days I did not even attend a single Liturgy.


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