Trips and Tales (Part 25)
On the Beaten Track. Moscow Must-Sees. (Still Going Strong…)
First things first: It’s pronounced goom and is more akin to what we would call an arcade or traditional shopping centre/mall, containing mid- to upper-market brands and foreign “name” stores, as well as places to grab souvenirs or a bite to eat. Another surprise is that it is a Gum store rather than the Gum store: this establishment existed in other locations besides Moscow before, during (as the “State Department Store”) and after the Soviet Revolution.
Visually it’s a beautiful construction, both inside and out, having a quality strangely reminiscent of London’s St Pancras or Waterloo stations. Internal three-tier arcades and linking walkways span its length, complementing the elaborate, ornate exterior. All somehow flamboyant English Victorian… – and built, in fact, between 1890 and 1893 as the “Upper Trading Rows”. This construction essentially remains today, replacing structures that were destroyed by fire in 1825. The “Middle Trading Rows”, incidentally, are similar in design, close by and also facing Red Square.
Reaching a capacity of 1200-plus stores at the time of the revolution, the Gum store still operated in a similar vein to a nationalised facility, though in 1928 it became the headquarters for Stalin’s five-year plans. Its location also made it a convenient print and production shop for propaganda banners, fliers and other materials used during Red Square parades. It even displayed in-state the body of Stalin’s wife, following her suicide in 1932. The building returned to its original use in 1953, re-opening for trade and managing to sidestep the famous food and goods shortages of the cold war. Its relative cornucopia resulted in queues across Red Square.
The end of the Soviet era saw Gum privatised and changing hands, until settling into a split between the Perekryostok chain of supermarkets and boutique/luxury goods traders Bosco Di Ciliegi. Now, operating as a private “mall”, it accommodates approximately 200 stores, including some of the most up-market Western brands – displaying their similarly up-market price tags, to the bemusement of the locals.
Arbat Street (“The Old Arbat”)
I was scanning through video footage of this interesting, culture-rich sector of Moscow and getting a feel for its bohemian nature. Originally a trade route into the city and the core of the Arbat District since the 1400’s (or even earlier), it is now a pedestrianised tourist magnet, bustling late into the evening with an overspill of sound and light from bars and souvenir shops scattered along its 1.2 km length. There’s the feeling of a linear, elongated Covent Garden about it: a “nice place to be”, with the sound of people essentially enjoying themselves against a backdrop of respectfully-spaced street performers and music beckoning from lit doorways.
Originally, Arbat Street was the home of craftspeople, clergy and merchants, and more darkly to Ivan The Terrible’s Oprichnina from the mid- to late-1500’s. It became a veritable des res for 18th Century Russian nobility and 19th–early 20th Century denizens of the arts and academia (including Pushkin), and then to the upper echelons of Soviet officialdom during the Communist era. Paradoxically (or perhaps not, if every person really was a comrade), during this period it also housed incoming provincial Russians in converted kommunalka apartments of two or more families using shared facilities.
The street has survived fire and invasion, and maintains an architectural and cultural link to the past, with its surviving European “Empire” and Art Nouveau style architecture. In the last 25 years, the processes of gentrification and restoration have reinforced its des res status, along with its historical tourist-friendly association with artists, writers and the Bohemian elite. Perhaps, though, with this embracing of the private sector, the Old Arabat has lost it a little of its “cool” along the way.
Next time: Contrasting Images
A slight detour from the Trips and Tales series as I talk about two films that feature locations from the Trans-Siberian trip: Russian Ark and The Way Back.
[Photo by WomEOS]