Moscow 1947

The year is 1947 and the whole country is celebrating  Moscow’s 800th anniversary. The air is thick with promises and grandiose plans for a bright new future. An anniversary coin featuring Moscow’s legendary founder, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, has been minted for the occasion, and a pompous monument in his honor is also in the works. Multiple exhibits have been opened, where the curious visitor can witness the ambitious plans for Moscow’s reconstruction. Everything from blueprints of future Moscow skyscrapers  to new models of the Soviet Moskvich car is on display.

Meanwhile, kolkhozniks (collective farm workers) from the surrounding regions are still delivering their produce to the capital on carts: the famous “red caravans”  heaped with vegetables. City streets are filled with cars bearing the logos of Moscow enterprises, while shop windows are bare and dejected. At times, shelves are completely empty,  as the Communist party stockpiles food in warehouses in preparation for a currency reform of the undervalued ruble, to be announced in December.

Times are hard in the Soviet Union. Only two years have passed since the end of the Second World War, but the Cold War is just heating up. Two years after Moscow’s 800th anniversary, the first Soviet nuclear bomb would be tested at the Semipalatinsk firing grounds.

But that is still in the future. For now, Pushkin’s bronze statue looks sadly over at the gigantic portrait of Stalin on the opposite building. The capital is decorated with dozens of such portraits, but for some reason, Stalin himself never shows up at the festivities. Nor do the famous Soviet Marshalls Rokossovsky and Konev, who successfully defended Moscow in 1941 and swept triumphantly into Berlin in 1945. Only figureheads like Voroshilov and Budyonny adorn the ceremony at the Bolshoy Theater with their marshall’s shoulder-straps. Zhdanov, Leningrad’s party boss, is still alive, and Malenkov and Voznesensky are studiously ignoring each other. Soon, another ferocious power struggle — the notorious “Leningrad  case” — will have the country’s leaders at each other’s throats.

Yet, none of this really bothers the Muscovites.  Moscow is jubilant, savoring the grand sports events at the Dinamo stadium, enjoying the performances of artists and the fireworks. As famous dissident writer Boris Pasternak wrote in Doctor Zhivago: “Even though the enlightenment and liberation which people expected to come after the war didn’t arrive with the victory, all the same, the presentiment of freedom was in the air all the postwar years.”