By way of explanation, the first post

I moved to Moscow in the middle of the last decade and left, for obvious reasons, in February 2022. For the past two years, I’ve been moving here and there. But, due to family circumstances, I’m spending large parts of this year and beyond back in Moscow.

My aim, here, is to publish observations on life in Moscow; those things that have changed, or are changing, and those things that have stayed the same. I will focus on things I see, interactions I have and aspects of daily life in Moscow that deserve attention. Naturally, there will be some reflections on how Muscovites are navigating the impacts of the “special operation” in their daily lives, but I do not anticipate offering political commentary.

I will try to let the city and its people speak for themselves. I have little connection with the Moscow intelligentsia or with other foreigners in Moscow, meaning that my own little cast of characters which will be referenced as the months go by are, largely, lower middle and working class Muscovites. Many of them moved to Moscow from smaller regional cities, some of them from villages.

At the moment, journalists, academics and cultural critics face various challenges writing from Moscow. Most of what we see reported in the Western press is mediated via telegram, often cribbed second or third hand from other telegram channels. Their veracity is, at all times, quite dubious. They often tell us more about the author than the reality of the city. I want, if possible, to show Moscow as it is, not as those with axes to grind wish it to be. I hope this will be useful for those reading.

The name “Kotelnaya”, by the way, comes from a practice developed by the Soviet Intelligentsia in the 1980s. It is variously translated as “steam plant” or “boiler room” and was where many young members of the Soviet creative intelligentsia chose to work. The job offered a reasonable hourly rate and a propiska, or official registration, in the city but, crucially, it did not require any intellectual labour, leaving writers, artists and musicians with the time and energy to develop their craft, most notably Viktor Tsoi, the driving force behind the rock group Kino, who is pictured below at the Kamchatka Kotelnaya in Leningrad.