Last week, Manezh Square looked like a drive-in Orthodox Church. A huge icon-like poster bearing the image of Sergii Radonezhsky, attached to the facade of State Historical Museum (a massive red brick building between the Manezh and Red Square), was visible from as far away as the mayor's office.


Saint Sergii died 600 years ago on Oct. 8, and the date was commemorated by the new Russian officialdom with maximum Soviet-style pomposity. Both Boris Yeltsin and Alexander Rutskoi (still nonbelievers, as they admitted not long ago) made speeches ensuring the church and the nation of their loyalty to Christian tradition.


Unlike politics and economy, this was an absolutely safe move: Neither right nor left would argue with religious institutions now. Not because they're so powerful (like, say, the Catholic Church in Poland) but rather because religion in Russia, for the time being, is both highly prestigious and nicely irrelevant. I mean, under the guidance of the peaceful and sensible Patriarch Alexei II, and under threat of further denunciations of links with the KGB and Communist Party, the Orthodox Church is very unlikely to claim any real share in decision-making in this country.


The last chord of St. Sergii's celebrations in Moscow took place over the weekend with the "Awakening" festival of spiritual music at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Arranged in a typical "money over matter" manner, it had popular rock bands (DDT, Brigada S and others) topping the bill after "support acts" -- church choirs.


I have always suspected that our parliament is not exceptionally clever in its decisions, but with their position on the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict they went way over the top. Why do they openly support the "mountain people" and let Georgia down? Because they hate Shevardnadze? Because they anticipate Abkhazia will join the Russian Federation after seceding from Georgia? Or because they've been promised villas in Sukhumi and Pitsunda? Well, what they will really get is a good piece of land on the southern Russian border, from the Black Sea to the Caspian, ruled by the mafia, while in Moscow, we will suffer a shortage of delicious Georgian food and wine. Bad call, Khasby.


Getting around in Moscow isn't as easy as before. There are suddenly too many cars in the city; so many central streets in the daytime and early evening hours are one big traffic jam. Every time I've dared to grab a cab recently I've been late for appointments. The same problem applies to buses, trolleybuses and trams, but here one can also add the fact that they now don't run nearly as frequently as before. I live on the Garden Ring, where trolleybuses used to arrive steadily, every 2-3 minutes; now the old women complain that a half-hour wait is a normal thing. I can understand the shortage of buses, because most of them are made in Hungary, so new items and spare parts for hard currency is a problem indeed. But trolley-buses are manufactured right here in Moscow and not too many of them were destroyed during the coup -- so why aren't they there?


As for the metro, the trains run okay but the overall subway scene is quite different now, too. Having, probably, the same number of passengers as before, the underground looks and feels twice as crammed. There are people selling newspapers, books, posters, even watches at most central stations; there are buskers and beggars -- the latter often half-lying on the marble floor so that people have to step over them.


Moreover, since taxis are unaffordable, citizens take all kinds of unlikely things and creatures on the metro: dogs, samovars, television sets, huge framed paintings, chickens (I mean live and yellow) etc. No matter how hectic it gets, it's always fun to watch these unusual objects in the subway ambience. I have also noticed that people aren't as nervous and aggressive as they probably should be in such conditions: When they see a frightened cat looking out of an empty shopping bag, they smile.


Generally speaking, the underground contingent is quite different from the overground crowd. They look almost like two different nations. I think I like the subway scene better; the only really loathsome thing is that there are those shopping trolleys -- usually very heavy, they always tend to run over my feet.