Is Moscow Better Than Everywhere Else in Russia?

Moscow is a huge city but is very green. The streets are wide and just about every open area that doesn’t have cars or trains rolling directly over it has rows of trees, shrubbery, and parks. Even the poorest and most run down quarters of the city have adequate grocery stores, pharmacies, and other basic necessities within easy walking distance. What Americans would consider “strip malls” tend to be built directly into the first floor of apartment complexes, so for most Muscovites a complete shopping trip can be done in under 20 minutes.

There is a gap between Moscow and other cities, the gap is not nearly as massive western trolls claim. Smaller and less illustrious Russian cities have inferior and older public transportation, but it is still adequate from what I’ve seen. The cities themselves are also pedestrian and biker friendly. Even a Russian urban center of 300 thousand people will be mostly comprised of compact high rises, so it is generally possible to walk or bike from one end to the other in under 2 hours.

Several months ago, a Russian friend and longtime reader of my blog visited from a much smaller city in the South and she commented that Moscow prices are surprisingly close to what she’s used to back home, only about 1/3 higher. She’s probably used to the 1990s and early 2000s, when there was perhaps a much larger price gap.

Russians have a lot less money than Americans. Tucker Carlson was astonished that Russian groceries cost a lot less in the USA. He’s right, but is also kind of a moron who did no research whatsoever before his trip. I think I have enough first-hand experience to say that the USA is a very high income country and Russia is a high middle income country. That said, they have basically all the same things Americans have. They do own significantly less cars than us, but as I mentioned earlier, Russian cities are more pedestrian-friendly, so there is much less need for cars. I don’t have a car or even a license, but haven’t felt uncomfortable yet. There have been times when I’ve gotten lost, or just got too drunk, and ended up in a very strange place, but so far I’ve never seen a Russian place that felt truly unsafe. I’ve traveled from one end of the USA to the other multiple times, and I’ll be the first to admit there are large stretches of the journey that made me feel like a character in Mad Max.

So as far as cars are concerned, Americans: 1, Russians: 0. But when it comes to economy-priced housing, Russia wins hands down. Go to any Russian city and you’ll see new constructions of cheap and middle class housing that the vast majority of people can reasonably afford. There is no equivalent of Section 8 housing or trailer parks in Russia. It’s true that if you go outside the city you’ll see villages that cosmetically look quite terrible. But I wouldn’t call them bad places to live. You won’t get captured and put in a cage like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, you’ll just be in an old cabin that doesn’t look very nice. And really, I can understand the attitude of the people who live there. If I was living in the same rural house since Brezhnev, I probably would still be happy with it even after the rest of the world modernized. If your cabin has electricity and internet access, who really cares?

As for Russian people, well, they’re complicated. American expats in Moscow tend to depict Russia as some idealized version of America without our problems and it’s just not true. Russians have their own squabbles and get hysterical and upset about things that seem really stupid to an outsider. Russian media is just as capitalist and obsessed with celebrity gossip as American media. Westerners tend to not realize this because they focus on the English language websites for RT, TASS, and Sputnik, where news stories are selected for an external audience. Go to Russian language tabloid sites and you’ll see the same silly stories as anywhere else, except it’s pearl-clutching gossip about some Soviet era actress or singer you haven’t heard of.

Russia doesn’t have most of the problems the USA has, but they do have their own problems, which in many cases are worse. I deeply admire Russians, but I don’t envy them. The Vietnam War traumatized Americans for 50 years, and the Russians have had a war just as bad as in Vietnam or much worse basically every generation for the past 50 years. And unlike in the USA, most of these wars happened on Russian soil. A war on your own soil is a whole different beast than a colonial war fought on the other side of the world. Also unlike American wars, Russian wars tend to be almost exclusively against equal opponents who are capable of striking back. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” would have been a very different affair if Iraqis were blowing up American refineries, cafes, and concerts every week, and starting armed insurrections and border incursions.

TLDR: Moscow is fantastic, other Russian cities are good. You can visit and not get mugged, chopped up for organs, or the star of a cartel beheading video.