Happy Birthday, Moscow! Today the Russian capital fêted its 858th anniversary with scores of events held throughout the city. Although annual celebrations take place on the first Sunday of September, this is likely a tradition without much basis in history. It's difficult to pin down now but the first significant commemoration probably took place only in 1947, the year of the city's 800th anniversary.
Moscow, the biggest city in Europe with around 12 million registered residents accounting for one-tenth of Russia's total economic activity, was first mentioned in the Ipatyev Chronicle, one of the oldest Russian annals (another source mentions the Lavrenty Chronicle), in 1147 as an obscure town in a small province populated by mostly Finno-Ugric people, the Merya. Building on his father's success in uniting the northern and southern territories Yury Dolgoruky -Prince of Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev and sixth son of Vladimir Monomakh- declared Suzdal his northern capital in 1125 and made himself the prince of the region. Between the Volga and Oka rivers, on the banks of the Moskva River, Dolgoruky established a protective outpost for the Rostov-Suzdal principality. Making a number of attempts to control Kiev and put down the challenge of the prince of Chernigov in the south, Yury Dolgoruky (or Long Arms) was said to have frequently campaigned beyond his territorial reaches. A not particularly flattering rumour goes that the prince was returning from a successful battle and decided to celebrate at riverside, where the modern Kremlin and Red Square are currently located. Yury enjoyed many a merry feast so he decided to tarry a few days, during which he killed the local boyar or landlord (named either Stefan Ivanovich or Kuchko Stefanovich) for an insult he received, wed his wife, and then gave the landlord's daughter to his son in marriage. It's all likely untrue, however.
What is important is that on 4 April 1147, the chronicle mentions that he held a sumptuous banquet in honour of the Prince of Novgorod-Seversky Svyatoslav Olgovich somewhere on the same spot on the banks of the Moscow River, as a way of cementing an alliance in a time of great conflict. In 1156, the prince built a wooden wall and a moat around the city, forming the foundations of the first kreml (fortress, the antecedent of the Kremlin). The defenses were hardly successful, as in 1177 the city was razed to the ground and its population was killed. Still its favorable location as an intersection of important trade routes to the Baltic in the north, the Black Sea in the south, and later to Europe in the west encouraged growth, gradually leading to its designation as capital of the appanage principality of Muscovy in the 13th century. (A more detailed account of Moscow's founding can be found here.) Centuries later it has become Russia's premier political and economic city, the once and perhaps future capital of a world superpower.
Although I wasn't exactly clueless about the celebrations the day nonetheless started very slow for me indoors. In fact I kept to my pyjamas pretty much until the afternoon, when my muirnín passed by with some food from last night's birthday party. After a bit of inexplicable last-minute online window-shopping we set off for the city centre, with the "Hokku About Baikal" exhibition by Mizukoshi Takeshi, a Japanese nature photographer, at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art on Petrovka as the first stop.
Parking midway down to Tsvetnoi Bulvar along Strasnoi Bulvar we got to the museum gates to be told that it was closed. So we just decided to walk up and down Tverskaya, which is New York's Fifth Avenue, Madrid's Gran Vía and Tokyo's Chûo Dôri combined. It was nice to see the whole city turn out; most of the main streets were closed, from Belarussky Vokzal (Belarus Station) through the Boulevard Ring, including side streets Malaya and Bolshaya Dimitrovka, all the way down to Okhotny Ryad (Hunter Row) near the Red Square, blocked off by military and fire trucks.
My Inessa was saying that such a luxury happens only on three occasions in Moscow: 9 May, the anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War (known also as V-E Day elsewhere); City Day, the first Sunday of September; and New Year's Eve. There were smiles and laughter, a lot of eating, singing and dancing. Mobile phone companies offered free calls. Concerts were held in stages set up at Pushkin, Theatre and Tverskaya Squares. Alyona, Inessa's friend, remarked to her that celebrations were becoming more and more patriotic every year, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, though, it comes off as too contrived, Dearie said. True, true. But there are also some good features, such as more and more songs from the 1970s and 1980s recalling the "good old days" are being played.
Another positive thing we noticed was how policemen, mostly young recruits who wanted to avoid the army draft, were very friendly and helpful. This somewhat eased the fact that everyone had to go through metal detectors for every section of the street where stages were set up. "That's odd, how they seem to be getting friendlier every year," Inessa said.
Walking around did stoke our appetites, but we held on until we could get to the Teremok at the mouth of Kamergersky Pereulok (Kamerger Lane) for some bliny (pancakes). (In fact the mere mention of the word bliny had me salivating like Pavlov's dogs, enough to make me forget all about the frankfurters I had been hankering for since last week.) Queuing up and eating while standing reminded me of my first year here, where a ham-and-cheese blin at the Teremok near Language Link in Novoslobodskaya occasionally served as dinner. It was only 35 rubles then; it's 65 rubles now. "Oh but it's bigger and there are more fillings," Dearie said. I ordered the Greek blin, with some brynza -a Romanian sheep milk cheese cured in brine-, bacon and dill stuffed in. For dessert, I had an apple-caramel flavored one speckled with almonds. Inessa drank sbiten, a hot beverage made from honey, spices and herbs, while I had kvass, a fermented malt and rye drink commonly available in summer. It was, all in all, satisfyingly Russian.
Hearing drumbeats playing down the street, we sullied off to watch some buskers, including a trio of bongo drummers and a classically trained band which combined violin, trumpet with synth and drums to play an eclectic repertoire that included Vivaldi, Metallica and a popular Russian ditty to wide applause. Going against the tide of people we sat for a while at the grandstand set up in front of City Hall, where the statue of founder Prince Yury (erected in 1954 by sculptors S. Orlov, A. Antropov, N. Shtamm and architect V. Andreev) is located to watch a couple of groups sing, including former members of Fabrika Zvyozd (Star Factory, a program on Channel One equating roughly to Britain's Fame Academy and Spain's Operación Triunfo). We got our cue to leave when Unesyonnye Vetrom (Gone with the Wind), this oldish girl-group, sang their insipid signature hit, Kakao (refrain: Какао - какао, ко-ко-ко-ко, eight times), and Moei dushe pokoya net, the main theme song of the popular 1977 Soviet film Sluzhebnyj Roman (Office Romance). As in every celebration, we wanted to leave after seeing the fireworks, which we were told would take originate somewhere from Vasilievsky Spusk (St Basil's Slope). (Last year, I went to Park Kultury with Vika to see the laser show and fireworks.) Unable to go beyond Okhotny Ryad because of police fences, we tried to go around Theatre Square directed here and there by the militsiya (police) who seemed to be tested to the limit of their endurance - to no avail. We finally settled to wait for the valedictory salyut, supposedly at 10 pm, at the crossroad of Mokhovaya and Tverskaya. In the end, though, there was neither a pop nor a sparkle and we had to go home a bit tired, a tad disappointed, but all in all happy to have been out.
A final word: on the way up the street, police parted the crowds to allow a whole fleet of water trucks in formation to hose down the whole length of Tverskaya. The whole procession almost looked like a very graceful corps de ballet, led by a siren-wailing police car and followed, with lights and pressure hoses blaring, by five trucks. Too bad we didn't have a camera to capture the sight.
Moscow, the biggest city in Europe with around 12 million registered residents accounting for one-tenth of Russia's total economic activity, was first mentioned in the Ipatyev Chronicle, one of the oldest Russian annals (another source mentions the Lavrenty Chronicle), in 1147 as an obscure town in a small province populated by mostly Finno-Ugric people, the Merya. Building on his father's success in uniting the northern and southern territories Yury Dolgoruky -Prince of Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev and sixth son of Vladimir Monomakh- declared Suzdal his northern capital in 1125 and made himself the prince of the region. Between the Volga and Oka rivers, on the banks of the Moskva River, Dolgoruky established a protective outpost for the Rostov-Suzdal principality. Making a number of attempts to control Kiev and put down the challenge of the prince of Chernigov in the south, Yury Dolgoruky (or Long Arms) was said to have frequently campaigned beyond his territorial reaches. A not particularly flattering rumour goes that the prince was returning from a successful battle and decided to celebrate at riverside, where the modern Kremlin and Red Square are currently located. Yury enjoyed many a merry feast so he decided to tarry a few days, during which he killed the local boyar or landlord (named either Stefan Ivanovich or Kuchko Stefanovich) for an insult he received, wed his wife, and then gave the landlord's daughter to his son in marriage. It's all likely untrue, however.
What is important is that on 4 April 1147, the chronicle mentions that he held a sumptuous banquet in honour of the Prince of Novgorod-Seversky Svyatoslav Olgovich somewhere on the same spot on the banks of the Moscow River, as a way of cementing an alliance in a time of great conflict. In 1156, the prince built a wooden wall and a moat around the city, forming the foundations of the first kreml (fortress, the antecedent of the Kremlin). The defenses were hardly successful, as in 1177 the city was razed to the ground and its population was killed. Still its favorable location as an intersection of important trade routes to the Baltic in the north, the Black Sea in the south, and later to Europe in the west encouraged growth, gradually leading to its designation as capital of the appanage principality of Muscovy in the 13th century. (A more detailed account of Moscow's founding can be found here.) Centuries later it has become Russia's premier political and economic city, the once and perhaps future capital of a world superpower.
Although I wasn't exactly clueless about the celebrations the day nonetheless started very slow for me indoors. In fact I kept to my pyjamas pretty much until the afternoon, when my muirnín passed by with some food from last night's birthday party. After a bit of inexplicable last-minute online window-shopping we set off for the city centre, with the "Hokku About Baikal" exhibition by Mizukoshi Takeshi, a Japanese nature photographer, at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art on Petrovka as the first stop.
Parking midway down to Tsvetnoi Bulvar along Strasnoi Bulvar we got to the museum gates to be told that it was closed. So we just decided to walk up and down Tverskaya, which is New York's Fifth Avenue, Madrid's Gran Vía and Tokyo's Chûo Dôri combined. It was nice to see the whole city turn out; most of the main streets were closed, from Belarussky Vokzal (Belarus Station) through the Boulevard Ring, including side streets Malaya and Bolshaya Dimitrovka, all the way down to Okhotny Ryad (Hunter Row) near the Red Square, blocked off by military and fire trucks.
My Inessa was saying that such a luxury happens only on three occasions in Moscow: 9 May, the anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War (known also as V-E Day elsewhere); City Day, the first Sunday of September; and New Year's Eve. There were smiles and laughter, a lot of eating, singing and dancing. Mobile phone companies offered free calls. Concerts were held in stages set up at Pushkin, Theatre and Tverskaya Squares. Alyona, Inessa's friend, remarked to her that celebrations were becoming more and more patriotic every year, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, though, it comes off as too contrived, Dearie said. True, true. But there are also some good features, such as more and more songs from the 1970s and 1980s recalling the "good old days" are being played.
Another positive thing we noticed was how policemen, mostly young recruits who wanted to avoid the army draft, were very friendly and helpful. This somewhat eased the fact that everyone had to go through metal detectors for every section of the street where stages were set up. "That's odd, how they seem to be getting friendlier every year," Inessa said.
Walking around did stoke our appetites, but we held on until we could get to the Teremok at the mouth of Kamergersky Pereulok (Kamerger Lane) for some bliny (pancakes). (In fact the mere mention of the word bliny had me salivating like Pavlov's dogs, enough to make me forget all about the frankfurters I had been hankering for since last week.) Queuing up and eating while standing reminded me of my first year here, where a ham-and-cheese blin at the Teremok near Language Link in Novoslobodskaya occasionally served as dinner. It was only 35 rubles then; it's 65 rubles now. "Oh but it's bigger and there are more fillings," Dearie said. I ordered the Greek blin, with some brynza -a Romanian sheep milk cheese cured in brine-, bacon and dill stuffed in. For dessert, I had an apple-caramel flavored one speckled with almonds. Inessa drank sbiten, a hot beverage made from honey, spices and herbs, while I had kvass, a fermented malt and rye drink commonly available in summer. It was, all in all, satisfyingly Russian.
Hearing drumbeats playing down the street, we sullied off to watch some buskers, including a trio of bongo drummers and a classically trained band which combined violin, trumpet with synth and drums to play an eclectic repertoire that included Vivaldi, Metallica and a popular Russian ditty to wide applause. Going against the tide of people we sat for a while at the grandstand set up in front of City Hall, where the statue of founder Prince Yury (erected in 1954 by sculptors S. Orlov, A. Antropov, N. Shtamm and architect V. Andreev) is located to watch a couple of groups sing, including former members of Fabrika Zvyozd (Star Factory, a program on Channel One equating roughly to Britain's Fame Academy and Spain's Operación Triunfo). We got our cue to leave when Unesyonnye Vetrom (Gone with the Wind), this oldish girl-group, sang their insipid signature hit, Kakao (refrain: Какао - какао, ко-ко-ко-ко, eight times), and Moei dushe pokoya net, the main theme song of the popular 1977 Soviet film Sluzhebnyj Roman (Office Romance). As in every celebration, we wanted to leave after seeing the fireworks, which we were told would take originate somewhere from Vasilievsky Spusk (St Basil's Slope). (Last year, I went to Park Kultury with Vika to see the laser show and fireworks.) Unable to go beyond Okhotny Ryad because of police fences, we tried to go around Theatre Square directed here and there by the militsiya (police) who seemed to be tested to the limit of their endurance - to no avail. We finally settled to wait for the valedictory salyut, supposedly at 10 pm, at the crossroad of Mokhovaya and Tverskaya. In the end, though, there was neither a pop nor a sparkle and we had to go home a bit tired, a tad disappointed, but all in all happy to have been out.A final word: on the way up the street, police parted the crowds to allow a whole fleet of water trucks in formation to hose down the whole length of Tverskaya. The whole procession almost looked like a very graceful corps de ballet, led by a siren-wailing police car and followed, with lights and pressure hoses blaring, by five trucks. Too bad we didn't have a camera to capture the sight.
