Moscow is a fascinating place for an outsider who remembers the Cold War era of spies, Communism and the arms race. The Gorbachev policies of glasnost and the people’s support of perestroika led to the historic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which in turn has seen the return of free markets with a vengeance. The new Russia is now emerging with prosperity and conspicuous consumption and an appetite for luxury goods. Nowhere more so than in its capital, Moscow, where a new class of wealthy Russians means the latest Italian fashions and the finest German cars. For the ordinary Russians, this means the freedom to buy and sell remnants and relics of the past, and for visitors the opportunity to buy memorabilia of earlier harder times including Soviet era propaganda.
history over the centuries, the Russians have endured the invasions of the Tartars and countless others, and have suffered the tyrannies of their own Tsars, not to mention the dark era of Communism. Today, with the emergence of freedom has come suspicion of outsiders, creating a somewhat xenophobic nation that is in love with its own suffering and sentimental of it own sacrifice. But within this vast nation is Moscow, Russia’s jewel in the crown, with architecture, performing arts, literature and music that is world-renowned and a worthy rival to many of its Western counterparts.
