Every time I rode the Moscow Metro this spring something seemed wrong. It wasn't the stations: the Metro stops are gorgeous, though, like many train stations, they smelled of dirt, smoke, and urine. My American hostess reminded me that the Communist idea was that art was for everyone, not just those who could afford to go to a museum, so the Metro stops were beautified. Every day on their way to work, the masses could see statues of the revolution, frescoes of the government's agricultural prowess and mosaics of Soviet World War II achievements.
It wasn't the service: the digital clocks posted at each stop to prove that your government was providing efficient service never registered more than seven minutes before a train arrived to take us away.
No, as I stood holding a train pole like any other pole, it struck me. Or rather, it bumped me. Or rather, they bumped me. Huge brass buckles on babushkas' purse, canvas bags on students' backs, leather-jacketed shoulders of vodka-soaked men swaying against me. Unlike a public train ride in the U.S., in Moscow there is no personal space.
In the U.S., when someone stands close on the train, Yankees think, "you have a right to that spot; I'll keep my distance." In Moscow, Russkis think, "I have a right to that spot" and bump into you. Whatever objects people carry with them or on them or near them become extensions of their bodies, sent out to prod you, make sure that the foreigner wearing the good boots is real. Maybe when jostled, his Gore-Tex coat will fall away to reveal the army uniform of a Mongol invader, or a KGB informant.
You would think that this disparate view of personal space was another obvious difference between the opposing countries of the Cold War. But both the USA and USSR embraced a similar ideology about resources, including space: everyone should have equal access. The only difference was, in the USSR, the government was to control and distribute it, and, in the USA, the free market would allow those who could earn the means to purchase and control it. This leads to eerily similar actions from countries that insisted they were ideologically opposed. In the USSR, everyone had a right to a home, so the government built large apartment buildings for the masses. In the USA, no one has a right to a home (you have to earn it), so the government built large apartment buildings for the masses.
But when it came to public space, in the USA, it was public only until someone bought it; in the USSR, even "private" space remained public. Julia and her husband, native Muscovite friends of my American hostess, still have to share their apartment with an old babushka assigned to the same apartment under the Communist system. Each gets one room, and they share the kitchen and bathroom. This despite that the fact that Julia now earns the exorbitant Moscow salary of U.S. $1,000/month now that she chucked her metallurgic engineering job to pirate porn videos.
So, any space you carve out for yourself here is still in danger of being invaded. One day in Moscow, three consecutive trains stopped and opened their doors, but there was no room to get on. The babushka on the platform next to me could take no more. The next train was stuffed too, but she burrowed into a car full of people, like an American footballer trying to push back the defense. Twice, the doors banged her ribs and re-opened, but she wouldn’t get off. The third time the doors started to close, another old woman on the platform shoved her in the back so that she was plunged into the crowd just as the door closed, sealing her in.
They both smiled and waved to each other as the one rode away happy that she got what she had coming to her.
