Moscow in February
02 March 10: Spent a week in Moscow researching for EverydayLives. Cold, busy, much more developed than my last visit 17 years ago, when wherever I went I saw threatening groups of men scowling, and a fellow traveller witnessed a knife-mugging on the subway. This time there were coffee shops, mobile phones, young people, still not a lot of smiles, but not a lot of scowls either.
One of the young subjects we were filming said that the USSR bureaucratic ways are still there in institutions (he works in IT in the customs department), but outside it is changing. The problem is that people have nothing to believe in. “The Communists kicked out the old religious idols and replaced them with their own idols – Lenin, Stalin, and so on. Then their idols were kicked out, but nothing has replaced them. Now Russia is living in a kind of cultural vacuum.
”What will be the next idols? That's the question. Religion is being re-introduced - the Church of ‘Saint Mary’ (they don’t use the term ‘Mother of God’) is back in Red Square. And an Icon sits above the entrance to GUM department store there. But Religion has competition. Never underestimate the power of MacDonalds, Starbucks, TGIF, yadda yadda yadda, visible all over the city....