A Gentleman in Moscow

1946

On Saturday, the twenty-first of June 1946, as the sun rose high over the Kremlin, a lone figure climbed slowly up the steps from the Moskva River embankment, continued past St. Basil’s Cathedral, and made his way onto Red Square.

Dressed in a ragged winter coat, he swung his right leg in a small semicircle as he walked. At another time, the combination of the ragged coat and hobbled leg might have made the man stand out on such a bright summer day. But in 1946, there were men limping about in borrowed clothes in every quarter of the capital. For that matter, they were limping about in every city of Europe.

That afternoon, the square was as crowded as if it were a market day. Women in floral dresses lingered under the arcades of the old State Department Store. Before the gates of the Kremlin, schoolboys climbed on two decommissioned tanks as soldiers in white fitted jackets standing at regular intervals watched with their hands clasped loosely behind their backs. And from the entrance of Lenin’s tomb snaked a line 150 citizens long.

The man in the ragged coat paused for a moment to admire the orderly behavior of his far-flung countrymen waiting in the queue. At the front stood eight Uzbeks with drooping moustaches dressed in their best silk coats; then came four girls from the east with long braids and brightly embroidered caps; then ten muzhiks from Georgia, and so on, and so on—one constituency waiting patiently behind the next to pay their respects to the remains of a man who died over twenty years before.

If we have learned nothing else, the lone figure reflected with a crooked smile, at least we have learned to stand in line.

To a foreigner, it must have seemed that Russia had become the land of ten thousand lines. For there were lines at the tram stops, lines before the grocer, lines at the agencies of labor, education, and housing. But in point of fact, there were not ten thousand lines, or even ten. There was one all-encompassing line, which wound across the country and back through time. This had been Lenin’s greatest innovation: a line that, like the Proletariat itself, was universal and infinite. He established it by decree in 1917 and personally took the first slot as his comrades jostled to line up behind him. One by one every Russian took his place, and the line grew longer and longer until it shared all of the attributes of life. In it friendships were formed and romances kindled; patience was fostered; civility practiced; even wisdom attained.

If one is willing to stand in line for eight hours to purchase a loaf of bread, the lone figure thought, what is an hour or two to see the corpse of a hero free of charge?

Passing the spot where Kazan Cathedral had once seen fit to stand, he turned right and walked on; but as he entered Theatre Square he came to a stop. For as his gaze moved from the Palace of Unions, to the Bolshoi, to the Maly Theatre, and finally to the Metropol Hotel, he had to marvel to find so many of the old facades unspoiled.

Five years before to the day, the Germans had launched Operation Barbarossa—the offensive in which more than three million soldiers deployed from Odessa to the Baltic crossed the Russian frontier.

When the operation commenced, Hitler estimated the Wehrmacht would secure Moscow within four months. In fact, having captured Minsk, Kiev, and Smolensk, by late October the German forces had already advanced nearly six hundred miles and were approaching Moscow from the north and south in a classic pincer formation. Within a matter of days, the city would be in range of their artillery.

By this time, a measure of lawlessness had broken out in the capital. The streets were crowded with refugees and deserters who were sleeping in makeshift encampments and cooking looted food over open fires. With the relocation of the seat of government to Kuybyshev underway, the sixteen bridges of the city were mined so that they could be demolished on a moment’s notice. Columns of smoke rose above the Kremlin walls from the bonfires of classified files, while in the streets municipal and factory workers, who had not been paid in months, watched with seasoned foreboding as the eternally lit windows of the old fortress began to go dark one by one.

But on the afternoon of the thirtieth of October, an observer—standing in the very spot where our ragged itinerant now stood—would have witnessed a bewildering sight. A small cadre of laborers under the direction of the secret police were carrying chairs out of the Bolshoi on their way to the Mayakovsky Metro Station.

Later that night, the full membership of the Politburo assembled on the platform, one hundred feet below the surface of the city. Safe from the reach of German artillery, they took their seats at nine o’clock at a long table lined with food and wine. Shortly thereafter, a single train pulled into the station, its doors opened, and out stepped Stalin in full military dress. Assuming his rightful position at the head of the table, Marshal Soso said that his purpose in convening the Party leadership was twofold. First, it was to declare that while those assembled were welcome to make their way to Kuybyshev, he, for one, had no intention of going anywhere. He would remain in Moscow until the last drop of Russian blood had been spilled. Second, he announced that on the seventh of November the annual commemoration of the Revolution would be celebrated on Red Square as usual.

Many Muscovites would come to remember that parade as something of a turning point. To hear the heart-swelling sound of “The Internationale” to the accompaniment of fifty thousand boots while their leader stood defiant on the rostrum bolstered their confidence and hardened their resolve. On that day, they would recall, the tide decidedly turned.

Others, however, would point to the seven hundred thousand soldiers whom Soso had held in reserve in the Far East and who, even as the celebration was taking place, were being spirited across the country to Moscow’s aid. Still others would note that it snowed on twenty-eight of the thirty-one days that December, effectively grounding the Luftwaffe. It certainly didn’t hurt that the average temperature fell to minus 20˚—a climate as alien to the Wehrmacht as it had been to the forces of Napoleon. Whatever the cause, although it took Hitler’s troops just five months to march from the Russian frontier to the outskirts of Moscow, they would never pass through the city’s gates. Having taken over one million prisoners and one million lives, they would begin their retreat in January 1942, leaving the city surprisingly intact.

Stepping from the curb, our lone figure gave way to a young officer driving a motorcycle with a girl in a bright orange dress in his sidecar; he passed between the two captured German fighter planes on display in the defoliated square; then skirting the Metropol’s main entrance, he wound around the corner and disappeared down the alley at the back of the hotel.