From Russia with love

Red Square was closed to the public. The stark granite mausoleum holding Lenin’s remains was covered by scaffolding and surrounded by rows of blue chairs.

A gang of workmen were putting the final touches on a stage that ran the length of the old GUM department store.
I asked a bored military officer manning one of the barricades when the square would be open again and he shrugged. “Maybe after the Victory Day Parade,” he said. “Maybe not.”
The soldier’s surly response made me smile. With news that both Ritz Carlton, where basic rooms start at $1,000 a night, and Mamaison were about to bring their particular brand of five-star sophistication to the city, I had come to Moscow to see how much of the Soviet spirit remained.
In a city now obsessed with sushi, designer handbags and partying with Ukrainian models, the soldier’s brusque reply was redolent with the images I had in my head of babushkas in head scarves, grey apartment blocks and old men clutching vodka bottles.
The mood was lost when a camp choreographer breezed on to the stage and led a group of children through a practice run of a very bad rap routine.
The Victory Day parade used to be an annual display of Soviet muscle, the chance to show off the latest bit of nuclear weaponry to the nervous West. Now, it seemed, it was a surreal version of Russia’s Got Talent.
At least getting a Russian visa had been a Kafkaesque ordeal. A quick call to the embassy in London revealed that I needed a letter of invitation, hotel vouchers and a ticket stub from a Chelsea home game.
I made a half-hearted attempt to organise it myself before getting a company called Russia Direct to do it all for me. For BD70 I got a visa, a mysterious letter in Cyrillic and a list of contact numbers in Moscow should I need to speak to anyone.
I was joking about the Chelsea ticket, but if it ever becomes a requirement I’m sure these guys would happily sit through a goalless draw at Stamford Bridge to get it for you.
With the visa sorted, my next task was to find an old Soviet- style hotel on the web.
I wanted something boxy and dour, set over at least 12 floors with a babushka looking after each one. In a perfect world, my babushka would chain-smoke, neglect her cleaning duties and sell the toilet paper to Georgian gangsters.
Unfortunately, most of these establishments have now been turned into business hotels and charge upwards of BD155 a night.
Not so the Hostel Asia.
It was set in a 15-storey tower block opposite the metro station on Ryazansky Prospekt and boasted a hunting-style pub and a Ukrainian folk restaurant within easy walking distance. Its website offered the choice between renovated and unrenovated rooms. I chose the unrenovated option and got a time capsule of Soviet hospitality circa 1973.
Getting around Moscow the Soviet way was easy. I just took the Metro. It has 165 stations and carries nine million passengers a day.
Moscow is supposed to be the most expensive city in the world, but a single ride to anywhere on the network only costs 17 roubles. A card of 20 rides will set you back 250 roubles.
When Stalin ordered the construction of the Metro, he envisaged it as a showcase of his particular brand of socialism. H G Wells told him to save the cash and buy 1,000 London buses instead. Stalin ignored him and peasants and workers were shipped in from all over the country to build it. The Communist Youth League pitched in as well. And the Soviet Union’s finest artists were recruited to decorate the stations. It is not an exaggeration to say that each platform is a work of art.
The Metro caters to every taste.
Want a bit of pompous classicism mixed in with Empire style and Moscow baroque? Then head for Komsomolskaya on the circle line. Bronze statues of revolutionary heroes? Try Ploshchad Revolyutsii. Art deco stained glass? Novoslobodskaya. Vulgar gilt? Kievskaja. A mosaic of workers admiring the red tractor they have just built? The central hall at Novokuznetskaya.
You can’t escape New Russia entirely. The speakers installed along the escalators to play hymns to Soviet productivity now pump out ads for mobile phones.
Stalin would be pleased to see that even today the turnstiles are manned by babushkas as uncompromising as he was.
My quest for a typically Soviet dining experience was slightly more difficult.
A friend gave me the number of Nathan Toohey, the restaurant reviewer for the Moscow Times. He took me to Glavpivtorg, a faithful recreation of the restaurants popular with Apparatchiks during the Soviet era.
There is certainly no shortage of Soviet paraphernalia on the streets of Moscow. The souvenir stalls in front of Red Square and on Arbat overflow with reproduction badges, hats and posters from the Soviet era.
But you’ll find the real thing in unexpected places, too. I spotted a relief of Lenin on Tverskaya ul, a popular shopping street. The cinema on Novy Arbat is decorated with wonderful mosaic celebrating worker solidarity. Unfortunately, the mosaic’s socialist message was overwhelmed by a garish poster advertising Shrek the Third directly underneath it.
A few statues and sculptures from the Soviet era have found a home in Park Iskusstv, an unassuming garden that sits beside the Moscow river. The statue of Stalin is backed by rows of faceless stone heads behind barbed wire. It’s a reminder of the millions who lost their lives in Gulags and a sobering reminder that my Soviet nostalgia is an indulgence afforded to someone who has not lived through those times.
In the end, I never got to see the waxy body of Lenin. I had found the Moscow I had come to see.
■ Peter Moore’s The Wrong Way Home is published by Bantam.