The View from the Vysotka
A Portrait of Russia Today Through One of Moscow's Most Famous Addresses
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Completed shortly before Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the vysotkii, or "sky houses," still dominate the Moscow skyline today. Seven in all, they were the Soviet answer to the American skyscraper, transforming the Soviet capital from a feudal backwater into the city of the future. With their soaring towers and gothic architectural details, the vysotkas were intended to be enduring monuments to the workers state and to the glories of Communism--though they were built on the backs of slave laborers and, initially, the prerogative only of the Soviet elite. Now these imposing giants lie on the fault line between a world that has vanished and one still emerging from its ruins.
When she moved to Moscow several years ago, journalist and Russia expert Anne Nivat settled into one of the vysotkas, the one that happens to overlook the Kremlin. She became fascinated by the building and learned everything she could about its history. As she got to know her neighbors and fellow tenants, Nivat discovered that they included some of the building's original inhabitants or their descendants, hand-chosen by Stalin and his henchman Lavrenti Beria (arrested and executed for high treason shortly after Stalin's death)--KGB operatives, Bolshoi ballerinas, and artists of Soviet agitprop. Living side by side with them were representatives of the "new Russia"--entrepreneurs, foreign investors, and oligarchs; as any Moscow real estate agent will tell you, Stalin-era buildings in today's market are some of the most coveted addresses in the city.
By means of this decaying but still elegant Soviet icon, Nivat gives us a way of grasping the complexities of a country struggling to come to terms with its past and define its future. She allows the tenants of her vysotka to speak for themselves, to offer their perspectives on where Russia has been and where it is going. Some are keenly nostalgic for the days when the State dictated life. Others have prospered in the confusion that has reigned since the Evil Empire's fall and look to a market-driven economy to guide Russia to the Promised Land. Still others fall some place between the two, anxious but hopeful, longing for yet also fearful of change.
Taken together, the portraits of the vysotka's inhabitants provide a panorama of Russia today. The View from the Vysotka shows us life from the inside, evoking both the forces that have swept through this vast and fascinating nation over the course of the last half-century, as well as a building that has managed to endure them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nivat, a prize-winning French journalist (Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya), offers a rare glimpse into a cross-section of Moscow citizens, all of whom reside in a vysotka (one of seven skyscrapers built under Stalin) on Ironmongers Quay. During the 1950s, the vysotkas were constructed in the center of the city to satisfy Stalin's vision of a new Soviet society. Built by zeks (political prisoners), the vysotkas were architectural giants designed with vast marble-walled lobbies, high ceilings and equipped with restaurants, movie theaters and shops. Apartments in the vysotka, where the author currently lives, were originally allocated by the state to creative artists and other elite Russians of whom Stalin approved, but the social upheaval since perestroika has changed the makeup of the residents. Privatization was permitted and many of the original tenants sold or rented out their apartments. Through Nivat's skillful interviews with selected occupants, textured images of Moscow life emerge. A German banker recounts his current achievements as a capitalist in Russia, and an elderly former ballerina with the Bolshoi looks back on her career. In a revealing conversation, descendants of the merciless Bolshevik who founded the KGB try to justify his actions. Galia, the former wife of poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (who wrote about the massacre of Ukrainian Jews in Babi Yar), recalls the discrimination she suffered because she is a Jew. In this historical gem, Nivat points out that state subsidies to the vysotkas have been severely reduced, leading to deterioration in repairs and services for older residents, while newer, wealthier tenants undertake their own apartment renovations. Photos not seen by PW.