Today I was browsing CNN, and it occurred to me that western news, aside from regurgitating literal Nazi war propaganda, just does not have much to say about Russia. Furthermore, Americans are exposed to very few pictures from Russia. So, I decided to share some snaps from my daily commute to school in Moscow.
A 30 minute trip in the suburban commuter train gets me from the suburb of Mytishchi Northeast of Moscow to the bustling train station in Komsomolskaya Square.
Before heading to the Metro, I stop for a large coffee (no ration coupons required).
As you can see, Russians starve and have no food 🙁
Coffee in hand, I move on to the human zoo that is Moscow Metro.
My Metro commute is about 30 minutes, involving one transfer from the red line to orange.
After leaving the metro there is one last 15 minutes of walking to campus.
I took a picture of these scooters because I hate them. They are like the assault weapons of Russia.
No normal person needs a full automatic assault scooter. They should be outlawed.
Anyway, I passed through a residential block and saw some typical Russian apartment buildings. Notice they have those precious air conditioning units that EU people are too poor to afford, and apparently now also can’t afford electricity for AC anyway.
A natural question would be “why, in the largest country on earth, cram people into these apartments? Well, just explore and the question answers itself. Every community has a spacious yard with trees, playgrounds, and sports fields. Of course, there is always a pharmacy, grocery store, and other basic necessities within short walking distance. Note that all these pictures are from the middle of Moscow, a massive city with an unofficial population of 16 million people. Detached housing exists in Moscow, but it is as expensive as one would imagine. In the end, it’s just not possible to put millions upon millions of people in a suburban sprawl of single-unit homes without creating all the associated problems, like affordability and so-called food deserts (where it is impractical for a person to get transportation to healthy grocery stores without owning a car). Maybe, God forbid, apartment complexes are adequate and it is okay for people to have to share communal yards.
Eventually, I make arrive at the school campus.
The student population here is interesting too. I have met foreign students from the USA like myself, Australia, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Syria, and Turkey. For what anecdotal evidence is worth, I am not seeing this Russian “brain drain” western propaganda tells us about. If anything, the opposite is happening. Young, educated workers flee the high crime, poverty, and inflation of the EU and come to Russia. The classmates I have talked to all hope to learn adequate Russian and find jobs here permanently. Really, it makes sense. Moscow has comparatively reasonable wages and an equally reasonable cost of living (compare Moscow prices with London or New York!). Moscow is no paradise, but it doesn’t have the rotting, impoverished ghettos and dystopian tent cities like Paris or Portland either.
Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you find my reports from “GULAG” informative. Here are a few unrelated thoughts and updates.
Censorship. I checked my email on the metro ride back home and it seems I have been banned from Quora again. Which is interesting because I haven’t commented or posted there for weeks.
What was my crime? Existing while pro-Russia? It’s astonishing how I and like-minded people have been consistently cleansed off of every major American and American-bloc tech platform. Yes, any social media platform needs some degree of moderation. But in comparison to their western equivalents, Russian platforms have no moderation at all.
The Reading Junkie site crashed today for a brief period, but it should now be working fine for everyone. I want to clarify that this was an innocent technical problem, not an attack.
Before signing off, I would like to give special thanks to the generous people who donated to the site. I just opened a Buy Me a Coffee service two days ago, and there are already four supporters who made serious contributions, which is quite humbling and I’m appreciative of all of you. Thank you to Dan Summerhill, Longtrail, Pkreter, and Someone!
Ian Kummer
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Ian, thanks for posting. I would add that detached housing is available in the suburb (remember the area where we walk behind the stores? where the wood is? it’s called Druzhba settlement). Also, farther from Moscow many people have dachas (summer houses without heating, older don’t have plumbing, newer do have it) and actual detached houses with plumbing and heating (like my friend Maya has in Pereslavl). Of course, you would need a car if you work in Moscow, or a remote work option to feel comfortable in a place like that. Those places don’t have that good infrastructure, yet I would call them food deserts either. Maya built her house from scratch for about 1m Rubles, but it was years ago, so it would be more expensive now. I have no idea of prices, but that far from Moscow it would be cheaper than my apartment.
thanks. I hope you post more like this.
Another point to make, we are used to apartment, and urban Russians say sometimes ‘best house is an apartment’, cuz u don’t care about roofing, basement, plumbing, etc, there’s the management company.
And the metro: it’s clean and safe, kids use it unaccompanied any time of the day).
“And the metro: it’s clean and safe”
One thing of note is that the people are almost exclusively Caucasian. No wonder the metro is clean and safe.
Longtrail, your comment appears to be empty
It was LoL emoticons.
“One thing of note is that the people are almost exclusively Caucasian”
While that’s true in parts of provincial Russia I don’t think that’s true for Moscow. The metro is very heavily policed – like the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) USED to be policed, but not anymore. I noticed BART went to absolute shit in the 2012-2016 time frame, and it has at least something to do with major cities deciding that police are bad.
different, migrants from Central Asia use it just as well)
What a contrast with “civilized” cities’ Metros such as Madrid or Barcelona, where you never know if you are going to leave the Metro with your wallet in your pocket…
How are the Russian lessons going, Ian? I’ve wanted to learn Russian by myself for years, but never could get past the alphabet…Guess I need to put more work on it.
I just finished the second week of lessons, and I would say they are going well. My attempts at self education were all unsuccessful. Traveling to Russia and taking a crash course from native speakers is the best way to do it. And actually not nearly as cost prohibitive as you might think.
Thanks for the photo tour. I’ve enjoyed your previous photos too.
The subway is beautiful. Montmerency cracked me up!
What would also crack me up is you’re going to school on the GI Bill! It must be a great experience with all the foreign students.
metro ;)https://t.me/wondermoscow/4323?single
Oh wow, that’s beautiful! You are too, through and through.
No GI bill (I am 100% confident that would violate sanctions), I am just paying out of pocket. It is only about $400 (₽25,000) a month.
No, you cannot learn Russian in Russia, it’s not a democratic choice.
Yup emoticons don’t work, though text (like 🙂 ) seem to be accepted. Comments section is WordPress default after the US cyber attacked Tolstoy comments, the 3rd party provider I was using.
10 years from now EU donut shops will be the same picture except the donuts will be 40% bugs