IN MOSCOW NOW

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 85, 7 October 1929, Page 13

IN MOSCOW NOW

IMPRESSION OF YOUTH

"It must have been because of my Western demand for order, for reticence, and dignity, in cities, streets, and! buildings, that Moscow gave me such a shock," writes Charlotte Haldane in "Good Housekeeping." It has the profusion, the flamboyance, ana the sordidness of architecture one associates with the East, the pieturesqueness and the squalor. Architecturally there is no rhythm, no continuity anywhere in it. But, as my Eussian friends pointed out, this is supplied during about eight months of the year by the snow, which softens the garish colours of the old green, pink, and yellow churches to a warm brightness and tidily covers the sprawling old wooden house* that every now and then burn up m a blaze of flame.

"The people now no longer correspond to the streets and buildings, except, perhaps^ those relics of the old regime—the. beggars—professional beggars, of whom,there are still thousands everywhere. There are so many churches, but so few 'religions'; there is a 'West End,' with broad asphalted roads for motor traffic, but almost bare of motor-cars; there are ex-hotels, expalaces, ex-large and plutocratic homes, but the sort of people who formerly justified their existence, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, have gone, vanished. There are a good few more people in London than in Moscow, but seldom are London streets packed with a crawling crowd as Moscow streets seem always to be. Thousands, millions seem to surround one—and those who are no longer there seem by their very absence to themselves felt. "The details of the crowd are delightful once one has enough confidence to inspect them. The majority of the men wear Eussian 'costume' white linen embroidered blouses, or black; breeches, caps—many-the little round embroidered ones from Azerbaijan, like an English telegraph boy's in shape—and real Eussian boots, long, tight-fitting, very elegant, and smelling extremely leathery. In winter, no doubt, furs and sheepskin coats give the erowa more uniformity. On the heads of girls and women scarlet or white kerchiefs, are more conspicuous than hats; there are plenty of hats, but they resemble the headwear of Wandsworth rather than that of Begent street, and in consequence they are insignificant.

Apart from the drunkards and tho beggars and a few old dames left over from the vanished regime, there seemed extraordinarily few elderly people about. The- general impression of the streets is overwhelmingly one of youth. ■ .