The constructed high-rises were audacious and stunning, but an eighth one, the Palace of Soviets, was to top them all, with a truly gigantic statue of Lenin as its principal feature. Stalin had intended to be buried beneath it, but following his death and denunciation, the Soviet government abandoned the project, and it was never built.
With Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization came a “humanization,” as it were, and the much-celebrated (and much-cursed) era of the khrushchevki. On Khrushchev’s order, Soviet builders raised some eight thousand five-story apartment complexes all over the Soviet Union. These simple buildings that provided families with private lodgings came to be known as khrushchevki or khrushcheby (from trushcheby, slums) because of their stark contrast to extravagant Stalinist architecture. Khrushchev hoped to foster, inexpensively and on a broad scale, personal privacy at a time when individualism was considered something of a secular sin.
Stalinist urban planners made people share old multiroom dwellings or built apartment blocks in which as many as thirty inhabitants per unit shared a bathroom, and a kitchen. The housing reforms of the 1950s gave families their own kitchens and bathrooms in modest, low-ceiling units located in blocs built according to little-varying plans across the country. For those taking up residence in the new khrushchevki, this meant no prying apartment-mates and thus a reduced likelihood that someone might listen in on your private conversation and report you to the KGB. The threat of being packed off to a Gulag labor camp for something said at home, at least, all but vanished. Labor camps, too, were formally halted in 1960, though some individual camps exist even today.
For half a century, these five-story buildings symbolized a freer Russia. Khrushchev believed that the Soviet Union would become communist by the 1980s and wanted his modest buildings to tide people over until the onset of true “proletarian” luxury in the coming “workers’ paradise.” Instead, however, the Soviet Union collapsed (along with the communist dream, of course), but the khrushchevki remained, having patiently withstood political disaster and the often harsh Russian climate.
Today, with notions of Moscow’s and Russia’s “Byzantinization,” the Kremlin is set to enact plans to demolish the modest constructions and replace them with upscale apartment complexes, giant hotels, and slick business centers—all with the aim, as in the Stalin era, of benefiting the state and its functionaries more than the people. Some khrushchevki are, indeed, more decrepit than others and should be replaced, but others require nothing more than a renovation (which would save the government time and money). In the summer of 2017 tens of thousands protested against plans to demolish the 1960s-era homes in Moscow, as did many more thousands of people across Russia.
Such “urban renewal” plans followed Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s revolutionary—and highly unpopular—gentrification of much of Moscow. The building of roads and the replacement of asphalt sidewalks with cobblestones keep the capital, and other cities, in conditions of eternal, disruptive remont—the endless “renovation” Russians learned to live with in Soviet times. Sobyanin’s endeavors also just happen to enrich those involved on the construction side. His apparent motive: to turn Moscow into a gorod progulki (a city for strolling). And of course to impress those arriving for the summer 2018 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament; visitors did enjoy impromptu fan parties on the broad sidewalks. Still, the fifteen-yard-wide pavements, outfitted with benches and the occasional tree, even though meant to encourage cycling and scootering, instead have further congested traffic in a city long beset by terrible jams. Their grand dimensions seem to mimic the reality of Stalinist-era construction that aimed to create a city that would inspire admiration but not actually provide comfort for those living there.
In 2015 many in Moscow also shivered in disbelief when Sadovoe Koltso (Garden Ring Road), a major avenue circling central Moscow, boasted a new addition to the old Stalin vysotki, an Oruzheiny (Weapon) high-rise. Made of glass and steel, it is a skeleton of what the state in the 1950s used to build with bricks, an eerie ghost of the Stalin past in the Putin present.
Whether it is headed by Stalin or Putin, the country’s leadership is always imitating what it sees abroad—in this case, Western-style living conditions. Russia, despite its civilizational claims, models its greatness on what others, namely the West, have already achieved. Now, the authorities seek to re-create, in a Russian nouveau imperial style, the luxury of Western cities. However, ambitions to build the Russian equivalent of Via Condotti in Rome or Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris derive from a desire to serve the needs of the Russian state, not the Russian people. No longer the ascetic revolutionaries of prerevolutionary Russia or the badly dressed Soviet apparatchiks of the 1960s, the men and women of Putin’s ruling elite emit an air of sophistication. Russia, after all, has been open to the world for more than a quarter of a century. Putin himself, who began his first presidential term in pitch-black badly tailored suits with sleeves too long for his short stature, is now dressed impeccably in navy blue. Sobyanin’s gray suits are, too, beyond reproach. Medvedev is known for his fancy ties and expensive watches—his presidential and prime-ministerial corruption became a subject of a YouTube documentary produced by the Kremlin chief nemesis, Alexey Navalny, the anticorruption lawyer and blogger. Released in March 2017, the video helped galvanize tens of thousands of protesters in cities across Russia. It was the first large grassroots rally in the country since a series of demonstrations preceding Putin’s third term.
Stoleshnikov Lane (Moscow’s version of Via Condotti), which winds its way just behind the Bolshoi Theater, has always been a street for shoppers. Today the luxury on display rivals that of, say, Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. On Stoleshnikov now stand branches of Gucci, Prada, Christian Louboutin, and even Santa Maria Novella, the oldest and the highest-class pharmacy in the world. The latter store hails from Florence and is located on the grounds of an eponymous cathedral where monks once concocted perfumes. “Everything is great in Russia,” an Italian friend once told us sarcastically. “The only thing missing is Santa Maria Novella.” No longer.
One rainy spring afternoon when Moscow was buzzing with preparations for the May 9 Victory Day Parade on Red Square, we walked into that brand-new Santa Maria Novella in Stoleshnikov. Glass tables brimming with perfumes; wall displays of soaps, candles, and home fragrances; antique mahogany chairs under the Roman-like columns; and Leonardo da Vinci’s prints on the walls—Italy indeed. Immediately smothering us in world-class customer care, a leggy blond attendant (“Anastasia, the curator,” according to her name tag) showered us with an array of the finest coffees, chocolates, and sample scents. We asked her what would make the best gift. She informed us that Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s minister of defense, just had bought an eau de cologne here.
“For the Victory Day Parade,” she added. “We are proud that he will be wearing our fragrance when receiving the troops.”
The immensity of Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, which cost 26 million citizens their lives, merited, and of course got, in Soviet times, magnificent pageantry. But already in the Khrushchev era such parades were losing their splendor—even their raison d’être.