Moscow: The Back Drop for the Bad Guys

The main thing that kept coming around in my thoughts the first couple of days I was in Moscow was how never in 8 million years I would have expected to come Russia. When I was a kid I remember playing countless games with my friends where Russians were the bad guys. When I was born my dad’s job was to sit by his jet-fighter in West Germany (remember for 44 years there were 2 Germanys!) in case nuclear war broke out. His mission was to fly into Eastern Europe or Russian and drop nuclear booms. Now I am married to a Russian woman and plan to travel on a regular basis to Russia for the next couple years, and occasionally for the rest of my life. In fact for as long as I can remember the only time I every saw anything with Moscow as the setting it was because that is were the bad guys were. I’m sure this is the case for most Americans that grew up or lived through the cold war. This becomes a surreal and almost uneasy memory when walking around Moscow, at least at first. By the time I left I no longer had this weird feeling.

I guess I must have had this felling the most the first few days because of the sights we saw. Right away we toured the city center and spent some time with in block of Red Square, the Kremlin, and St. Basil’s church (the one in all the photos with the multi-colored onion domes at the end of red square). It also was probably helped along by the fact that all of the Soviet era art, plaques, statues, monuments, memorials, and other decorative pieces are still everywhere. None of it has been removed or changed. Most building of importance still sport communist stars or the hammer and sickle. Everything is really out of the movies. While Russia has changed quite a lot since the Soviet Union it still has a very characteristic look in some places.

Should you watch movies like The Hunt for Red October, The Saint, Crimson Tide, Rocky 4 or any action movies from the 80s you see clips of these very places I was walking around. The Russian people were all friendly, I had family around but still there was an uneasiness in my thoughts. It doesn’t help that the police in that country are aloud to random stop people and ask for there papers. Even Russian citizens have to register were they live and provide proof that they have a reason for being in the city they are in. So of course I was worried about getting stopped for no reason and hassled. I don’t like the idea, even if nothing happens to me, at all. To further both of my reasons to feel uneasy there were a ton of Cops and Soldiers everywhere. The military uniforms are pretty much the same as they were for Soviets but with Russian symbols replacing communist badges. So there was always a bit of relief once we got back to the apartment for the day because I didn’t expect cops to show up there.

This feeling didn’t last the whole trip though. By the time we got back from the Black Sea it was pretty much gone. Especially in Moscow Russia is very interested in more dealings with Westerners - both for Tourism and Business. So I think westerns really don’t get hassled any more in the large towns. In the further out places people may hassle you if you go through there check point, but really they are just looking for a bribe and don’t seem to go out of there way to find out-of-towners. So really unless you are doing something wrong you really don’t need to worry about being dragged away or being extorted by police.