Back in the 1980s, after finally obtaining a passport, denied to me for many years by the state police, I made four trips to the countries of so-called "real socialism." The first was Albania, the second was Moscow and Leningrad, the third was Yugoslavia, and the last was Soviet Georgia. Already with that first trip, I was solidified in my conviction that "real socialism" had very little to do with socialism and that in reality those regimes embodied the apotheosis of the despotic power of a single party, with a new class of boyars holding the country in its grip. So-called "proletarian power" did not exist, and the working class was a subaltern class with no ability to influence political and economic decisions. Police and military control was evident and suffocating, individual and collective freedoms severely limited. In those years of harsh confrontation, including military, between the capitalist West and the "socialist" East, I considered the Soviet Union regime imperialist (to distinguish it from the American one, we called it social-imperialist). The austerity of customs, the scarcity of consumer goods, the evident poverty (especially in Albania and Yugoslavia), the severe restrictions on people's movement, even within the same country, meant that model of society was not the least bit appealing to us young anti-capitalists and libertarians.
After the events of 1989, I visited the Czech Republic, cities of the former GDR, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, and Slovenia. Countries where there is no longer any trace of the old socialist regimes, but where significant class inequalities are evident. At first glance, one can perceive, on the one hand, the presence of a class of super-rich boyars, on the other, a multitude of new poor, beggars and homeless, social outcasts.Taking advantage of an invitation from close friends who work in Moscow, I seized the opportunity and decided to visit the country that was once the Soviets as it is today.
Western sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine are creating the first difficulties. Western credit cards and our phone SIM cards don't work in Russia.
Direct flights to Russia are disrupted. Aeroflot no longer flies from Western airports. To get to Moscow, the options are via Belgrade, Minsk, Yerevan, or Istanbul.
After much research, we choose Turkish Airlines, which has a flight from Palermo to Moscow with a stopover in Istanbul.
To buy the plane ticket, we have to split the flight between Palermo and Istanbul and Istanbul and Moscow.
Due to sanctions, a direct flight to Russia from Italy is not possible.
However, we manage to book the return ticket from St. Petersburg to Palermo without any problems.
On May 7th, at 9:30 a.m., Mary and I take off from Palermo for Istanbul.
We preferred to leave plenty of time between our arrival in Istanbul and our departure for Moscow, as we didn't have a combined Palermo-Moscow ticket. We arrived in Istanbul at 12:00 (1:00 PM local time), with departure for Moscow scheduled for 6:30 PM (7:30 PM local time).
We waited several hours, perhaps in the largest airport in the world, with distances of several kilometers between gates. In addition to being the largest in the world, Istanbul airport is also the most expensive in terms of food.
We waited a long time for the departure gate to be announced, and when it appeared on the monitors, we learned that there was a two-hour delay. Turkish Airlines provided us with meal vouchers. We ate dinner, but suddenly the news came that boarding had begun, so we rushed to the gate (a few kilometers away). When we arrived at the gate, there were many people, many Russians and a few Turks. We and two others were the only Italians. We waited almost an hour, and then finally boarded. After about twenty minutes of sitting on the plane, the order comes to disembark and return to the airport. Is Moscow closed? No definite news.
We all go out and wait at the gate waiting for instructions. After about fifteen minutes, the counter-order comes to re-board the plane. There's total chaos, but maybe we're off.
We wait on the tarmac for almost an hour, but then we're actually off to Moscow. I follow the flight on the plane's monitor and see that we're approaching Moscow, but to my surprise, I notice the plane turning and returning to its departure trajectory. We're returning to Istanbul. Moscow's skies have been closed to air traffic. It's the eve of May 9th, the celebration of the victory over Nazi-fascism, and there may be a danger of Ukrainian drones.
At 5:00, we land back in Istanbul, tensions are sky-high. Everyone out. What will happen now? Will we return to Palermo? Will they put us up in a hotel in Istanbul? None of this happened. At the gate, we were called by name and given a new boarding pass for 8:30.
At 8:30, we set off again, and finally, at noon, we landed in Moscow, exhausted but happy, after nearly 30 hours of travel.
Border checks were standard. We lined up with many migrant workers from the former Soviet republics. But everything was very quiet; a few minutes later, we were in Russia.
At the airport, we met our friend. With her, we took the metro to the city center and, after a transfer, got off at the Smolenskaya station, near Arbat Street, right in the center of Moscow. It's a monumental, Stalinist-style Soviet metro system, with many red stars, hammers and sickles, and statues of partisans.
The afternoon was rainy, and the city was semi-deserted, but decorated with Russian flags, black and orange St. George ribbons, and red flags for Victory Day on May 9th.
To our surprise, our friends invited us to dinner at a small Ukrainian restaurant, where we ate well and where "Katyusha" (the tune from the partisan song "Fischia il Vento") was played and sung in our honor.
The next day, May 9th, we exchanged euros for rubles. For one euro, we got 91 rubles, so a ruble today is worth 91 euro cents. I remember that in 1984, a ruble at the official exchange rate was worth one US dollar, and at the black market, one dollar was worth four rubles.
Driving around Moscow, we passed convoys of cars with Russian flags and red ones with hammer and sickle symbols. Everything was very orderly. The city seemed peaceful, with lots of well-dressed people on the streets. Not a single homeless person in sight. There were many young people, and we passed many talented street musicians. Lots of large cars with Chinese brands. But also many BMWs, Mercedeses, Porsches, and Ferraris.
Even though the main roads had up to eight lanes, traffic was heavy and slow. Gasoline was very cheap.
The city is beautiful and vibrant, marked by the architecture of seven tower blocks built in Stalinist Gothic style: a blend of Russian Baroque, neoclassical, and Gothic elements, with a clear influence from the New York skyscrapers of the 1930s.
At first glance, it seems that everything is running smoothly, that the acute crisis of the Yeltsin era has largely been overcome. The shops are overflowing with merchandise, mostly Western, despite the embargo, and the prices are very similar to those in the West. Stores that were once "Soviet" and popular, like GUM and SUM, are now high-end boutiques filled with boutiques selling Western brands, from Christian Dior to Luisa Spagnoli, Chanel, and other Western luxury brands (again despite the embargo). The presence of an affluent bourgeoisie, capable of spending large sums with ease, is clearly perceptible.
Mid-range restaurants have prices similar to ours, but there are still numerous Soviet-style dining rooms, open 24 hours a day, where you can enjoy a hearty lunch for six or seven euros (700 or 800 rubles).
In addition to numerous parks, the city is dotted with theaters, gyms, and dance halls. Pensioners here receive significant discounts on tickets and season tickets.
Efficient service is also supported by the use of robots that meet on the streets for home delivery. Robots are also being used to replace staff at coffee and ice cream kiosks.
Talking with our friends, we learn that Russia has a labor shortage, and that migrants from former Soviet countries are being hired to keep the country running, and the use of robots is constantly increasing. Added to this, the services, museums, and public transportation are full of staff who ensure the public machine runs with great efficiency.
Even though there is heavy traffic on the streets, we are witnessing the remarkably efficient public transportation of buses, taxis, and the metro. The Moscow metro is the third largest in the world, only recently surpassed by those in Beijing and Shanghai. Trains run only every 50 seconds, and are always full. This efficiency is quite astonishing.
The streets are constantly cleaned with soap and water several times a day.
The services function perfectly.
Aside from the numerous posters featuring the letter Z in the colors of the St. George's ribbon, the war with Ukraine is completely invisible. There is little military or police presence on the streets. But what is striking is the absence of Western tourists. The only tourists we encounter are Chinese, Indian, and, of course, Russian. The tourism sector is the one suffering the most from the sanctions.
This allows us to visit museums and monuments without the anguish of booking tickets or waiting in lines.
I won't deny the emotion of visiting the sites of the 1917 revolution, of visiting the prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress where Kropotkin, Bakunin, Dostoevsky, Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov, and other revolutionary figures were imprisoned, a testament to the great maturity of the Russian revolutionary movement by the mid-19th century. It was so moving to travel through the sites of the anti-Nazi resistance and the long siege of Leningrad. The Kremlin, the Winter Palace Square, Kronstadt, and the cruiser Aurora cannot fail to leave us indifferent. Even if it's heartbreaking to see how events unfolded: from the Bolsheviks' capture of the Winter Palace, to the actual disempowerment of the soviets, to the establishment of a single-party dictatorship, to the ferocious repression of any movement to the left of the Bolshevik party, to the war with Nazi Germany, dubbed a Patriotic War in defiance of proletarian internationalism.
Both Moscow and St. Petersburg are beautiful cities, the people are kind, and the atmosphere is cheerful and carefree. The museums are filled with works of art, testifying to the Russian sensitivity to beauty.
War is truly far away. The Putin government's strategy of sending professional soldiers, prisoners, well-paid mercenaries recruited from the countryside, and countless others from Africa, North Korea, and many poor countries to the front distances the tragedy of war from ordinary citizens.
Great Russian pride, nationalist redemption after the collapse following the dissolution of the USSR and the period of great devastation during the Yeltsin era, and the country's economic resurgence have cemented the power of the predatory oligarchy, whose greatest political expression is Putin.
What is clear is that we are in an advanced capitalist system where state control over individuals is an essential part of maintaining oligarchic power. Every street, every square, every museum, every subway, every public transportation system is constantly monitored by a dense system of cameras. You don't see many police officers on the streets, but people are constantly monitored remotely. Police control is counterbalanced by a functioning welfare state and the efficiency of the state machinery, which is congenial to providing security to the population. A populist policy that creates consensus around the autocrat, the strongman.
The efficiency of the administrative and social machinery, beyond what we perceived in the centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, was also evident in the suburbs, where we traveled, sometimes more than 30 kilometers from the center. Here too, orderly streets, well-dressed people, well-maintained residential buildings, and well-organized and reasonably priced markets.
The Russia we visited is openly an advanced capitalist country, showcasing its productive capacity and wealth. A Russia far removed from the former Soviet Union, where the nouveau riche race in roaring Ferraris along the Nevsky Prospect of what was once Leningrad, where wine in restaurants costs an arm and a leg but flows freely, and where to enter Peterhof Park in St. Petersburg (crowded with Russians) requires a hefty 2,000 rubles (about 22 euros) admission fee. Today's Russia is clearly moving toward reclaiming its position as a global power, both economically and militarily, dusting off the glories of the Tsarist era, while still retaining Stalin, considered the victor of the Great Patriotic War. "Socialism" in Russia has been relegated to an icon of a past that will never return, in a present capitalist economy where the strong and authoritarian state stands as the regulator of everything.
Renato Franzitta
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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