Between commoners and hipsters

Writer and culturologist Alexander Arkhangelsky sums up the year

As a lifelong Muscovite, I am equally pleased and saddened by what has been happening in Moscow lately - and especially the last year -.

On the one hand, it has never been so clean, transport has never run so clearly, the city has never been so brightly and competently illuminated. Unlike the defenders of antiquity, who care not so much for ancient buildings as for the old architectural appearance, I believe that Moscow City was a success as a project. Two competing points arose in the city: the Kremlin - as the center of ancient Moscow and the City - as the center of new Moscow. I think it's a good rhyme. Such a falsely chaotic pile of skyscrapers gives the capital a new nervous rhythm. Moscow has never approached to such an extent (in economics this is called the “stage of non-discrimination”) the image of a metropolis as such.

I'll tell you a really terrible thing. I like tiles more than asphalt. Unless it's glazed, of course. All the talk about the fact that the tiles are changed every year and stolen on that basis breaks down into a simple question: why didn’t they change the asphalt in winter and at night, when the laying prices were higher, didn’t they block the roads? And not just every year, but every day. They shifted badly, with patches, drivers went around the patches, pedestrians bypassed, because giant puddles flowed into the emerging funnels. As for me, the tile is more environmentally friendly and it is more pleasant to walk on it.

But now about the other side. The streets were widened, but then winter came, and all these pedestrian spaces turned into a slippery muddy area, following the newly introduced bike paths. In a country where more than seven months of winter mingled with autumn, projects designed for the latitude of New York are shattered by climate reality.

However, for me personally, something else is sadder. In a normal city, in a city where ordinary people live, not officials,

luminous skyscrapers are not as important as corners, minks where you can hide from the pressure of the urban environment.

Moscow libraries served as such minks for me. And I liked it much more when they invested money not in dimensionless avenues, but in the arrangement of this inner city space. Here in those very modern, properly lit, properly equipped minks where a city dweller can hide - closer to those like himself. What Boris Kupriyanov, deputy director of the Moscow City Library Center, did was from transforming the library named after. Dostoevsky to libraries in the depths of sleeping areas - wonderful. This does not mean that with the departure of Kupriyanov from the post, all the libraries of the khan. There are losses - Alexander Vakhrusheva left Turgenevka. There are acquisitions - Maria Privalova headed the library. Nekrasova is an experienced young manager with a clear understanding of the role of culture in transforming the urban environment. But Boris's plan - to make the library space a meeting place for citizens with a book and about the book - in general, unfortunately, has been curtailed.

And he had an impact on the whole country. According to the model created in the capital, children's libraries were arranged in Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk in such a way that people came there to spend part of their lives, and not just read ...

It is a pity that Moscow is losing ground. We are well aware that it was not the city that took away from the library. Dante had her premises, and the Investigative Committee, but Moscow resisted poorly ... Before the elections, the authorities did not become zealous, indignant readers even managed to defend the library, but the State Duma was elected, and pressure resumed.

On December 26 last year, I asked a question at the Council for Culture about the fate of the Ukrainian library in Moscow. The President answered me that although he does not know about the library, it must be preserved by all means. And what? The funds were transferred to Inostranka, dissolved in her collection, and the library as such no longer exists. The only, by the way, ethno-cultural library in the capital. But if you are building a metropolis, then it must certainly have national and cultural centers of all large communities.

There are many conflicts in the museum field as well. Let us recall that, without explanation, without an attempt to build a dialogue, perhaps the best director of Tsaritsyn at that time, Natalia Yuryevna Samoylenko, was expelled. Again, before the elections, they didn’t quarrel to the end, when the storm rose, they took half a step back, Samoylenko returned, albeit not for long (now she, of her own free will, decided to focus on Leninka). Thank God, a wonderful young director, Elizaveta Fokina, was found, but not always, far from always, new ones adequately replace the old ones.

I am not even talking about the fate of Tsaritsyn, but about how Moscow treats people who create its cultural environment. The appeal, to put it mildly, is shameless, according to the principle “women give birth to new ones.” And Lisa Fokina is a good director of the museum, and Privalova is a wonderful director of the library, but why do you need to spend so much effort on ensuring that the norm, not the rise, but simply the norm prevails? Why is it necessary to spend a year going through the authorities in order to return the second-hand bookstores on the Arbat, which were closed overnight last summer?

Therefore, I have mixed feelings about what is happening in the city.

On the one hand, cleaner, better, bigger, lighter, and on the other, rougher, more provincial, shameless and unpromising.

By the way, I have fewer complaints about architecture, I have complaints about building reality, about the arrangement of the urban environment in which we live.

The most nightmarish thing that has happened in Moscow this year is its embellishment. Green narcotic women on Pushkinskaya Square, monstrous Egyptian arches, artificial flowers, like columbariums that hung over Moscow... This was done by the Department of Trade, not the Department of Culture, not the architectural departments. And this, of course, is a complete disgrace.

And here a difficult question arises: should the city educate? Or should he follow the taste preferences of the masses? For me, he should, of course, take into account the taste characteristics of his contemporaries, but slowly pull them up, carefully, imperceptibly impose a different way of life and a different idea of ​​​​beauty. Architecture, as the creator of the urban environment, must work for different layers, ages, groups, classes, otherwise it suffers a colossal defeat.

The previous Moscow authorities relied on a revolutionary avant-garde breakthrough. Sergey Kapkov's team proposed a different image of Moscow - young, purposeful, modern, energetic, willing to succeed, free, not participating in political revolutions precisely because a cultural revolution is enough. To put it bluntly, it was some kind of informal deal -

you are not going into a political revolution, we are giving you a cultural revolution.

But since today it is obvious that no one will go into any kind of revolution, the deal is closed, the assets are diluted, and the hipsters are slaughtered. The layer that goes and votes in the elections triumphs, votes correctly, votes well. So we will say “thank you” to him, hang those flowers that this layer likes.

I do not have the slightest arrogance, I grew up among those who rejoice at such flowers. I understand that they are looking for and find beauty in it. But, I repeat, the task of the city as an institution of culture is to involve the layman in slightly more complex projects than the layman is ready to order.

Moreover, in these flowers there is some disrespect for the person and the voter. They throw him like a bone what pleases him here and now: vote for us, and we will give you what will give you momentary pleasure. This slogan “Don’t develop, but we will develop everything that is needed”, it, if I understand Moscow’s dual plan in 2016 correctly, has been implemented. Architecturally, we send a signal: “Citizen, go ahead,” and decorating the city, we send a signal: “Nothing, nothing, this is for others, but you live as you want.”

It cannot go on like this for a long time, it is necessary to choose - either modern avenues created by advanced Western architects, or pendants. Either the architecture will be stronger, and then the pendants will disappear, or the department of trade will overpower, and then, excuse me, the city that we love will disappear.