Economist.com Cities Guide: Moscow Briefing - June 2006

News this month

A chilly war

Before Vladimir Putin delivered his state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow on May 10th, it was billed as a rousing statement on foreign policy and a riposte to criticisms made by Dick Cheney, America’s vice-president, in Lithuania the previous week. Mr Cheney had accused the Kremlin of undemocratic behaviour and of using national energy resources for political blackmail. In the event, Mr Putin's speech centred on domestic issues, such as the economy and the decline in population. As for Mr Cheney, Mr Putin did offer a cryptic rebuff: “The wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows who to eat and is not about to listen to anyone.” He also said that the arms race was still on, describing America as a “fortress” and arguing that Russia needed to invest in defence.

Some in the Moscow commentariat compared Mr Cheney’s remarks to Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, which helped define the battleground of the Cold War. Several pundits even argued that relations between Russia and America had reached their lowest point in over a decade. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the G8 summit in July, when Mr Putin will host George Bush and other world leaders in St Petersburg, looks set to be a decidedly frosty affair.

Pride parade

Attempts to hold the city’s first gay-pride march on May 27th ended in violence. The parade had been banned by Yury Luzhkov, Moscow’s outspoken mayor, and condemned by the head of the Orthodox church, who warned of a “public parade of propaganda for sin”. A Muslim cleric even seemed to advocate attacking marchers should they venture onto the streets. Indeed, this is what happened, with Russian nationalists beating gay activists and their supporters. Riot police arrested more than 100 people, both activists and opponents of the march.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia only 13 years ago, and hostility towards homosexuals is rampant. In recent weeks skinheads, elderly women and the occasional Orthodox priest have staged violent protests outside gay nightclubs in Moscow, haranguing and sometimes attacking homosexuals. At the end of April a building that housed a lesbian art exhibit was burned down in a suspected arson attack. Intolerance in Moscow has become cause for concern abroad. The Council of Europe had asked Mr Luzhkov to lift the ban against the march, to no avail, and Volker Beck, a gay member of the German parliament, came to Moscow to join the march, only to be hit in the face by skinheads.

Going camping

A piece of Kiev came to Moscow on May 19th, when several hundred protesters set up tents outside the White House, the seat of the Russian government (a building famously shelled by Boris Yeltsin’s tanks in 1993). The protesters wanted the government to intervene in a big real-estate scam, in which thousands of people invested in affordable-housing projects between 2003 and 2005, only to lose their life-savings. The head of the guilty company, Social Initiative and Co, is already in police custody, but the protesters want compensation and are asking the government to punish any bureaucrats complicit in the fraud.

Since the Orange revolution in Kiev in 2004—when a protest encampment downtown helped overturn Ukraine’s election—post-Soviet authoritarians have viewed such demonstrations with worry. In Belarus, a small tent camp in Minsk to protest against election results in March lasted only a few days before riot police broke it up. May's protest near the White House was the first sighting of tents in Moscow, but the authorities took no chances, arresting their inhabitants on their first night. The protesters were quickly released, but senior officials have yet to respond to their demands.

Nyet Vinci

Moscow’s religious leaders are in a holy fury about “The Da Vinci Code”, which opened around the world on May 18th. The Russian Orthodox church has denounced the film, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown, as it suggests that Jesus fathered a child by Mary Magdalene. The church has threatened that there may be extreme protests at the 75 Moscow cinemas where it is playing. On the film's opening day, some 100 Orthodox demonstrators burned a film poster and protested with banners and signs, one of which read, “The Da Vinci Code: you buy a ticket — you sell Jesus”. A leading cleric has threatened to sue the film’s distributors, though the head of Russia’s culture agency has ruled out banning the film.

The controversy over “The Da Vinci Code” has so gripped Moscow that even the city’s least scrupulous residents are taking note of the furore. Some vendors of pirated DVDs at stalls across Moscow are displaying signs declaring that they will not stock the film. Consumers may be pleased to note that such righteous humility does not extend to the entire film selection of these vendors.

Moscow No. 5 (forget Chanel)

Red Square, once known as a showcase for missiles and goose-stepping soldiers, has had quite a makeover. A fancy restaurant and a luxury-car showroom have already moved in; soon a select group of wealthy Muscovites will join them. If all goes to plan, number 5, Red Square will by the end of 2008 house a new hotel and auction house, plus some apartments. The 19th-century building is certainly in a choice location. It faces the fantastical St Basil’s Cathedral and is next to the GUM department store, known in Soviet times for its empty shelves, now for designer boutiques that are unaffordable to most Muscovites—though well within the budget of the elite few who will soon be living next door.

Catch if you can

June 2006

New British Drama Festival

June 3rd-11th 2006

For one week in June Moscow’s Meyerhold Centre will host the first-ever new British Drama Festival. Sponsored by the British Council, Britain’s international cultural organisation, the programme is meant to promote contemporary British talent, with plays such as “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, by Martin McDonagh, and “Product”, a monologue by the up-and-coming Mark Ravenhill.

The festival is a remarkable collaboration of talent from Russia and Britain—productions hail from theatres in Omsk, Vorenezh and Novosibirsk, as well as London’s Bush Theatre and Paines Plough. The Russian translations are the product of another initiative by the British Council, which has held a series of translation seminars in Russia.

Meyerhold Centre, 23 Novoslobodskaya Ulitsa, metro Mendeleevskaya. Tickets: +7 (495) 363-10-48, 554-55-45, or purchase online at partner.ru. For more details visit the festival's website.

More from the Moscow cultural calendar