Roxburgh's Diary: Back in the USSR?

Angus Roxburgh forsakes his usual Brussels beat for this month's diary - returning to his old patch in Russia to see how life has changed since he left.

---

The Diary has been in Moscow this month. It was one of those ordinary Russian months, with a bomb in the metro, a catastrophe at a leisure park, the alleged kidnap of a presidential candidate, and the sacking of the entire government by President Putin.

What struck me most, though, on my first winter visit to Moscow for some years, was the state of the pavements.

I saw many elderly women, wrapped up in their brown shawls, busily scraping snow away from the entrances to their apartment blocks, as they have since time began.

But as for the young men who are apparently supposed to look after public pavements, they seemed to be operating under a new regulation which requires them to gape vacantly into space while chipping haplessly with a spade at two-inch coverings of ice, then give up altogether when only a tiny patch has been removed.

Ten million people walk around the slippery pavements with muscles tensed like tennis racquet strings, taking tiny steps to avoid falling.

Despite copying these sensible precautions I twice landed flat on my back, on one occasion finding myself gazing up into the vacant mug of an ice-chipper, leaning contentedly on his spade.

He didn't offer to help me up, as he was clearly having a break. I think he was laughing.

---

Attic attack

Another hazard comes from the enormous icicles that hang from gutters and balconies, some of them very high above the pavements.

In some places the side of the pavement closest to a building is cordoned off, in case an icy missile should plunge to earth and skewer someone's head.

This is evidently easier than actually getting rid of the icicles themselves - though this is also occasionally done by intrepid workmen who abseil down the sides of buildings, snapping them off.

But the city's squad of icicle-fighters wants the authorities to cough up some money - and apply some basic science.

The reason icicles form, they say, is because it's too warm and damp in the attics. The heat melts the snow on the roofs, which drips off the edges and freezes.

To prevent this, says Viktor Voevodin, in charge of icicles in western Moscow, "we need to restore the temperature-humidity regime in the attics".

This means insulating them properly. But that requires money, lots of it, from the state.

Viktor is still waiting. In the meantime, walk well away from walls.

---

They paved paradise...

As a veteran of Soviet days in Moscow, I am still amazed by the changes wrought on the city landscape by its mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.

He restored the huge Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which had been replaced by an open-air swimming pool.

He built an enormous (swanky, but tacky) underground shopping mall just outside the Kremlin walls, under what I still think of as "Fiftieth Anniversary of the October Revolution Square".

He restored a church on the edge of Red Square, where once there was a public toilet, and he demolished the ugly Intourist Hotel, at the foot of Gorky (now Tverskaya) Street.

The hulk of the Moskva Hotel is also being taken down, though it will be rebuilt, much plusher inside, but retaining its quirky facade.

This features two quite different designs, both apparently approved by Stalin and therefore acted upon, as the architect was too terrified to point out the dictator's mistake.

Mr Luzhkov's latest plan is to demolish the 26-storey, 3,000-room Rossiya Hotel, one of central Moscow's biggest eyesores.

Sadly, however, his plan is not to restore the street of little churches which were demolished to make way for it, but to build a car park.

---

Back to the future

The disappearance of presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin had Muscovites revelling in their favourite pastime - conspiracy theories.

In a country where within living memory thousands of people used to disappear on a daily basis, and which is now ruled by a former secret policeman, Mr Rybkin's vanishing act was more a curiosity than a surprise.

I did notice that several old habits had returned which spoke volumes about the state of Russia today.

The intelligentsia has started listening to the BBC Russian Service and Radio Liberty again.

For years they got all the news they needed from the free Russian stations that sprang up in the Yeltsin era.

Now, they say, television is controlled, and most radio stations are either trivial, or also mouth the Kremlin's line.

And incredibly, as I discussed the Rybkin affair with one group of old friends, they unplugged the telephone. Another old Soviet habit resurrected, lest "they" be listening in!

---

Home sweet home?

Back in Brussels now, and apologies for all I wrote above. We've a little snow fall, and the entire heart of the EU has ground to a halt. Lorries have overturned all over the place, tunnels are closed: it's chaos.

As I struggled to work this morning, I slipped on the ice, landed flat on my back, and found myself staring up into the soulless eyes of a eurocrat, clutching a briefcase to his chest.

He probably works for the transport directorate.