Issue #13/68, June 27 - July 1, 1999  

By Edward Limonov

I hate Moscow. Frozen for eight months per year, dirty, dusty, caserne-like city, located on latitude of Labrador Sea, Moscow should be place of exile, where murderers should be sent for punishment. Instead, it is capital of all Russia. Labrador Sea, in case if someone is badly educated in geography, is sea what waves are polishing the coasts of Greenland and also tenderizing some green icebergs.

Specially disgusting is Moscow in summer. Clad in dirty, old wrinkled asphalt clothes, or worst, in old dry bald grassless soil, it stinks as bum's dirty body. Old roofs are overheated, all walls are sweating away. Closest neighbors of Russians--Germans--have implanted in Russians its architectural gouts: Moscow's buildings are all flat and caserne-like, except seven Stalin's fortresses: Hotel Ukraina and Ministry of Foreign Affairs building are most known among them.

Classical style of caserne: flat long barracks, painted in yellow with a greenish roofs one can observe on Kutusovsky Prospekt. Poor flat barracks scattered by tens of thousands all over Moscow's territory--shabby whitish dirty structures, stuffed with human flesh.

Surprisingly enough, interior decoration of those Russian-German barracks made in Turkish style. When, after 15 years of absence from Russia, I have entered Russian apartments in 1989, I found them totally Turkish. Carpets on the floors hanging from the walls, shadowy oriental lampshades, puffy divans--little of light--all that air of Ottoman Empire made me think of harems of medieval Turks. However, resemblance is not stops there: Russian females (except of those of intelligentsia) are silent, shadowy creatures, bringing food and taking dirty dishes, always serving, silent as a Muslim women. Of course I am not talking about Lame Duck's customers, but in average Russian family woman is Turk. AS to sharp contradiction between German exterior and Turkish interior of Russian life it is no doubt our Russian main problem. Russians are German in appearance and Turks inside.

I said that Moscow is specially disgusting in summertime. Yes, it is. Once, in 1982, I have briefly passed through Mexico City. Mexico City to me looks like hell, stinking and poor and dusty, populated by some 30 million dull creatures. My dear Moscow is closely resembling the hell of Mexico City, as dirty, dusty and unnecessary as it, populated by 15 millions, ten of them poor and stinking, five of them rich scoundrels. In summer Moscow stinks more. When I watch some rotten creatures walking Moscow's streets I am stricken by panic: I breathe the very same air with those!? Terrible!

Then it is a cops problem. For some unknown reason it is over two million of policemen in Russia, probably one million of them in Moscow. Wearing grayish, crumpled uniforms, those sons of poor armed with clubs, machine-guns and pistols are terrorizing general Russian population. They are as dangerous as no enemy's army can possibly be. Everyday they are busy with checking papers of citizens, as well as their pockets and purses. Cops stink--vodka and beer, they are natural disaster. If your friend is late for meeting, be sure he is in the hands of cops. Poor creature, he is sitting in monkey-cage, "obezyannik" in Russian.

Then it is also absence of grass. Specially stricken in this summer. May's frozen temperatures well below zero at night have killed Moscow's weak grass completely. So, like in the move "Mad Max", bald spots of dirty soil, real small deserts inside of Moscow, grow larger and larger. Hot wind blows dirty sand over city deserted courtyards. And the leaves are falling from the trees foliage as last hairs from the heads of Chernobyl victims.

Then it was Pushkin's 200 years anniversary. Awful event, what Moscow suffered and suffering. Curly, Negro-like poet of Old Russia have sucked tons of money out of country and Moscow budget. I am sure that amount of money will be sufficient to implant brand new fresh grass all over Moscow's gardens and courtyards. Of course Pushkin is not guilty of manner in which Russian bureaucrats celebrating his anniversary, but I hate that Pushkin, banalized and dirtied by the sweaty hands of bureaucrats. Even leading cop of all Russia, Sergei Stepashin, have pronounced some lines of Pushkin in staggering voice. Pushkin is club which bureaucrats are beating us, poor Moscow inhabitants.

Then it was also my little girlfriend's Nastya's exams. Six of them. Six exams in a space of one month deprived me of her little cunt. Partly. Most exams are useless. How many times, for example, one needs physics formulas in one's life? For 39 years after finishing school in 1960 I never was in need of even one formula of physics. Never! So, why to stuff those stupid formulas into fresh mind of my little girlfriend? But it's done. Nastya got her school-leaving certificate. Now, Nastya should undergo second set of exams that time for entering university. High education is needed to satisfy her mother's and father's ambitions. As they are simple people, they want their blond, cute, green-eyed prodigal daughter to climb one step higher on the social ladder then them. They don't know, of course, that daughter of theirs in one sole leap have already reached many steps higher place. Because she is fucking me.

Soon Russia will be a frozen land again. Thirty degrees heat will be replaced by thirty degrees cold. I will wear a six or seven T-shirts and shorts and sweaters, and for eight months will dream about next dusty sticky summer.

Why I live in Moscow anyway? The land what I liked most were Tadjik mountains. I have traversed all Central Asia in 1997, I figured out that I adore Tadjik's mountains. I want to live in Tadjik's mountains near River Piankj and to serve in 201st Russian Motorized Division. So, why I live in Moscow? Because my job is here. Russia is overcentralized country and everything political is happening here, in capital. So, I am doing politics here. I hope to succeed. Otherwise it makes no sense to live in such disgusting city.