Economist.com Cities Guide: Moscow Briefing - March 2006

News this month

To market, to market

In the early morning of February 23rd a Moscow market roof, heavy with snow, collapsed on the vendors below. Emergency workers spent the next three days searching for victims trapped beneath concrete slabs and metal beams. At least 66 people were killed and 32 injured. Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s mayor, offered the families of those killed 100,000 roubles ($3,500) each, and between 5,000 and 50,000 roubles to those who were injured. But this is scant consolation: the money is available only to Moscow residents, and almost all of the vendors were from republics of the former Soviet Union, who come to Moscow to fill menial jobs.

Authorities have arrested the market’s director, Mark Meshiyev, on charges of causing death by negligence. If convicted, he would face up to five years in jail. But it remains unclear whether the roof’s collapse was due to poor maintenance or faulty design. The market’s architect, Nodar Kancheli, does not have a good track record: last year the roof he designed for a water park south of Moscow also collapsed, killing 28 people.

Fiery news

A fire roared through the upper floors of the Pressa building in central Moscow on February 13th, killing one person and destroying 80 years' worth of newspapers and banned literature. The blaze, thought to have been started by an electrical fault, began mid-morning and was not brought under control until the early evening. Dozens of employees fled the building; ten people were hospitalised, most of them workers in the top-floor cafeteria.

The Pressa building is best known as the home of Pravda, the Soviet propaganda mouthpiece (a first edition of the newspaper, from 1925, was destroyed by the fire). During the Soviet era the building housed all the publications of the Communist Party's Central Committee, and by 1974 was producing seven national newspapers and 32 magazines. The most well-known publication working in the building today is Komsomolskaya Pravda, which was defiant in the face of the disaster: “Komsomolskaya Pravda thumbs its nose at fires!” read the paper's headline the next day.

Blue-light special

The migalka, a flashing blue siren that sits on top of sleek black cars, inspires road rage in even the calmest Moscow driver (of which there are few). Left over from Soviet times, migalkas are seemingly ubiquitous, a symbol of official privilege available to anyone with political connections or very deep pockets. Like the sirens of police cars, migalkas enable drivers to run red lights, rush down the wrong side of the road and even lurch onto sidewalks. Anger about these sirens boiled over in Moscow on February 12th, when 1,000 cars took to the streets in protest, many of them brandishing signs slamming the “hot rods with sirens”.

This ire is justified. In 2005 the governor of the Siberian Altai region was killed in an accident: armed with a migalka, he drove down the wrong side of the road at 200kmph and ran into a car making a left turn. In early February, a court found the other driver guilty of the governor's death, and sentenced him to four years in a labour colony. The verdict caused outrage across the country and inspired the Moscow demonstration. Participants said their action was part of a demand for fairness and equality before the law. Alas, the protest cars quickly got caught in Saturday traffic. Their route was further obstructed by traffic police, stationed every kilometre to break up the convoy.

Haute hotels

Hotel prices for business travellers in Moscow are the highest in the world, concluded a recent study by a travel management company. Business Travel International—using data from more than 2m hotel stays booked in 2005—concluded that the average price of a Moscow hotel room had increased by one-third in the last year, to $305.04. Moscow jumped five places from last year's ranking, above the likes of New York and London, where the average hotel room goes for $280.99 and $239.48, respectively.

Analysts attributed the rise in cost to a combination of factors, including a steady flow of foreign visitors and a local demand for luxury fuelled by commodity-price growth. Some argue that business travellers resort to paying elevated prices because there is no alternative; others point out that plenty of lower-priced facilities exist away from the city centre, but that the corporate client is a fussy one. Until more mid-range hotels open in the capital, visitors can expect to pay a hefty sum to put their feet up.

Cold comfort

The bitter cold of February in Moscow had its advantages—at least for one person. When Samuit Ibragimov demanded cash from a hapless taxi driver in outer Moscow, he was not prepared for the driver's violent response. Unsnapping a folding knife, the driver stabbed his passenger in the head and threw him out of the car. With the knife still protruding from his skull, Mr Ibragimov was chased and finally caught by a local police patrol and taken to hospital. There, a surprised surgeon extracted the knife from the seemingly unharmed Mr Ibragimov. Despite penetrating his head by ten centimetres, the knife caused no harm to brain or blood vessels. The severe frost that day had prevented his blood vessels from widening and rupturing.

Catch if you can

March 2006

The Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe’s “Swan Lake”

March 17th-19th 2006

Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” has always been a staple of Moscow ballet-company repertoires, but this March the Kremlin Palace Theatre will host a Chinese production with a twist. Billed as a “dangerous ballet”, the performance by the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China combines classical ballet with Chinese acrobatic styles. The lead dancer-acrobats are a husband-and-wife team, and their stylings are impressive. They involve, among other things, the wife dancing a pirouette on her husband’s shoulder, and rising en pointe on the top of his head (they say marriage is based on trust). The show was a tremendous hit in Shanghai, so much so that a special performance was arranged for China’s president, Hu Jintao, and his guest, President George Bush.

State Kremlin Palace, Red Square. Tickets are available by calling + 7 (095) 933-3200 or visiting www.acrobatics.ru.

More from the Moscow cultural calendar