84 ritzcarlton.com
explore
moscow in
FdRCSU07_84-95_EXP_Mosc.indd 84
5/18/07 10:23:51 AM
ritzcarlton.com 85
once again,
russia’s
storied capital
is undergoing
a dramatic
transformation.
moscow has
become sexy and
sophisticated—an
international
destination that
combines a unique
imperial history
with chic new
experiences
BY STEVEN BESCHLOSS
motion
Nearing midnight, the city blanketed in snow, I barrel through
the dark streets of Moscow in a brand-new black Mercedes, the
passenger of a wealthy Russian businessman determined to show me
the high-fl ying shape of post-Soviet life. It’s December 1992. “I used
to be followed by the KGB,” he says. “Now 12 of them work for me.”
He laughs proudly, and hands me his new cell phone. “Go ahead,
call your fi ancée in Finland.” As I punch in the number, a blizzard of
white swirling around us, I make out the glow of a red star above
the Kremlin.
In those fi rst months after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow
was an intensely romantic place to visit. Street musicians were al-
ways performing the Beatles and Sting. Practically everyone you met
wanted to hear about life in America and the West. (“Is it true,” I was
asked, “that when you wake up in America you are already late?”)
Fellow passengers on the Metro studied your clothes, fascinated and
pleased to see a foreigner in their midst. There was a rich curiosity
and a delicious sense of possibility in the early ‘90s after being cut
off for so long.
Yet those days were also rife with instability and uncertainty,
which, from an outside perspective, made much of what went on
seem like sheer madness, or at least more akin to fi ction. Consider:
I met a brain surgeon who was dealing cards in a casino and a kin-
dergarten teacher working as an escort in a hard-currency nightclub.
I negotiated with a naval captain whose contacts could sell me a
working submarine for $30,000 (I needed one for a movie I wanted
to make). I was nearly run over in Red Square by three thick slabs in
a black Mercedes,