The wrecking ball, fortunately, has spared some old buildings. Across the street Russia's parliament, known as the Duma, is standing tall. Soviet architects specialized in imposing featureless structures with hard-to-find entry points. People-friendly public access is new to Russia, where for centuries a closed society looked like a closed society, right down to the tiny windows and doors. Still emblazoned with a huge Soviet coat of arms above the entrance, the Duma occupies the onetime headquarters of Gosplan, the Communist Party's economic nerve center and a big reason the previous government went bankrupt. "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us," went an old Soviet joke. The Russians I know are all zealous proponents of the profit motive.
How zealous I learned several years ago when I ran into one of the country's most notorious politicians, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, in the lobby of the Duma. A member of Zhirinovsky's party had just been murdered -- such assassinations are common in Russia -- and I wanted to get his views on the killing for a book I was writing. He'd be happy to talk, the lawmaker said, but an interview was going to cost me $1,000 a minute. When it become obvious I wouldn't be paying, Zhirinovsky abruptly summoned his goon squad and left the building.
Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square.
(Silvia Otte)
|
|
RUSSIANS SWEAR BY THE RESTORATIVE POWERS OF THE BANYA, a ritual that combines a sauna, an ice-cold bath and a thrashing with leafy tree branches. And as my friend Kolya accurately predicted, by the end of my day of Metro travels, I am a prime candidate. We had agreed to meet at Sanduny, a bathhouse that's outlasted wars, revolutions and economic upheavals for almost 200 years.
By the time I reach the Kuznetsky Most Metro station, just around the corner, I'm ready for the full treatment. Sanduny is a relic from the age of the czars. Sky-blue ceilings supported by gold columns embossed with angels give the lobby the look of a Faberge egg. Kolya has already gotten some fresh oak branches, called venik. While he makes arrangements for our togas and a pot of hot tea, I pick up a copy of the house rules, one of which advises: "Don't conflict with bath clients and provoke quarrels."
A banya, the brochure goes on, "gives you ten advantages: clear mind, freshness, energy, health, strength, beauty, cleanliness, a nice color for your complexion, the feeling of a young man and the attention of beautiful women."
In the carved wooden lounge outside "the sweat room," a group of men wrapped in white sheets is relaxing over beers and smoked fish. Sanduny, like all Russian banyas, is as much about pampering -- most banyas have women's sections, too -- as it is a good scrub-down. That's why Kolya wants me to keep his last name a secret. His clients might think he's living too well.
Suitably pre-washed, the two of us don our cone-shaped sauna hats (to keep the blood from rushing to our brains, I'm told) and enter the sweat room. The camphor-scented heat, the sounds of wet oak branches smacking against human flesh, the moaning, the groaning make me think that if there really is a place where Russian souls are trained to endure the daily grind, this has to be it. Several round trips between the sauna and the ice-water bath, followed by a head-to-toe beating with venik, convince me of it.
Afterward, in the lounge over tea, Kolya examines the blotches on my back caused by the beating he's just administered, and gives me the thumbs-up sign. My health, he proclaims, has been fully restored.
The surprising thing is that I feel fantastic. Three Americans, banya rookies like me, feel the same way. Kolya says he's been noticing more foreigners at Sanduny. It's a sign, he suspects, that some old Russian traditions, like the health-giving, sanity-sustaining benefits of a classic banya, have market value in new Russia.
"What an experience!" declares one the Americans, a businessman from New York on his first visit to Moscow. "I'm going home, packing my bags and getting back over here. This place is amazing!"
And what would I recommend as something "really Russian" to do after their banya, ask the new arrivals.
For a real adventure, I tell them, they should take a ride on the Metro. There's a station right up the street.
Bill Thomas is a co-author of Red Tape: Adventure Capitalism in the New Russia and edits This Is Rumor Control, an intelligence Web site. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article at 1 p.m. Monday on washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
