Sportivnaya, the stop nearest the cemetery, is also home to the Metro Museum. At the top of a dark staircase behind the station's empty jail cell -- every subway stop has one -- the dingy museum traces the Metro's history from a hole in the ground to one of the largest mass-transit operations in the world. It doesn't take long to detect some glaring Soviet-type omissions. Josef Stalin, driving force behind the original dig, is never mentioned; neither are the prison inmates ordered to do most of the early construction. Even so, the latest statistics are impressive. Opened to the public in 1935, the system's 11 lines now cover 165 miles and carry more than 5 million passengers every day. That's half the population of the city.
But I'm curious about one of Moscow's weirder urban legends -- the mystery Metro -- a sort of "underground" underground that supposedly transported Stalin's henchmen around town and kept the party elite in a constant state of panic. An apartment building near the Kremlin that once housed members of the dictator's inner circle is rumored to have had a special stop in the basement. There would be a knock on the door and some unlucky commissar whose time was up got a free ride to KGB headquarters. If there ever was a secret subway, the museum completely avoids the subject, which many Russians would interpret as confirmation that it's still in use.
Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square.
(Silvia Otte)
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HIDDEN BEHIND HIGH CRENELATED BRICK WALLS and sheltered by a small birch forest, the cemetery at Novodevichy looks like a medieval fortress. It's nice to see that management hasn't adopted the two-tier admission policy popular at most Moscow attractions, where foreigners -- "because they can afford it" -- have to pay more to get in than Russians. Tickets cost 30 rubles; maps go for five.
"In Russian or English?" asks the cashier.
"English," I say, and immediately I'm joined by a smartly dressed woman, introducing herself as Ludmilla Ivanovna, who offers to be my guide. She and a group of other women, Soviet-trained as translators in various languages, show up regularly at Novodevichy looking for work. Business, Ludmilla says, has been slow.
The Communist Party, officially atheist in its approach to the hereafter, must have assumed its dearly departed would be running the country forever. Several tombs show sculpted Soviet officials, a couple of them sitting dutifully at their desks; one depicts an especially fearsome-looking apparatchik talking on the phone. A short distance away, mutually assured destruction is the motif in the military section, where memorials dedicated to deceased generals and admirals are accessorized with mini-long-range bombers, atomic submarines and other components of the nuclear arms race. I get the distinct feeling that any of these guys would have been happy to drop the Big One.
"Bad people," sneers Ludmilla.
Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister nicknamed "Comrade Nyet" for his obstinate negotiating style, was important enough to be in Novodevichy. Nikita Khrushchev was, too. Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, then lost his job following the Cuban missile crisis. The former leader's tomb, topped by an oversize rendition of his bald head in what appears to be a vise, was designed by artist Ernst Neizvestny, whose work Khrushchev publicly denounced for its anti-Soviet tendencies.
It's odd that communists would choose the grounds of a church convent for their version of Forest Lawn. Were they simply stealing it, as Ludmilla suspects, or hedging their bets? In either case, nowhere in Russia is there a larger gathering of late hard-liners, or more convincing proof of Karl Marx's theory that history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce.
Raisa Gorbachev's grave, with its statue of a wistful young maiden gazing into a slate pond, is like a scene from a fairy tale. I didn't know commies were so romantic. Ludmilla says Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the demise of the Soviet Union, loved his wife very much. Then she mutters that he must have stolen the money to pay for such a lavish monument. Ludmilla, like many Russians of a certain age, complains about being caught between two worlds, one in which the government used to provide everything and one in which the government provides next to nothing. She places responsibility for the resulting hardship on Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, who, as Ludmilla sees it, gave away the country to criminals and foreign investors, terms Russians often use interchangeably.
On our way back to the entrance, we come to a part of the cemetery where birch bark covers the ground like sheets of parchment. This area is reserved for writers and composers, among them Anton Chekhov, Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Gogol, author of the comic masterpiece Dead Souls. Gogol's slyly smiling bust atop a 10-foot marble pedestal suggests that at least one of Novodevichy's residents has kept his sense of humor about the place.
It's nearly noon, time to head for the Metro. I say goodbye to Ludmilla, who looks disappointed with the $10 I give her. Is something wrong? She just shrugs and sighs. She was hoping for euros.
