Editor's note: This is the first of a series of articles examining the crisis facing Moscow's historical buildings, the effects it is having on local communities, the activists fighting the changes and ideas from experts on how the design and planning of the city could be improved.
Old Moscow could soon be no more. The historical heart of the city is facing a grim future under Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
The profits available to construction and real estate companies have fueled the corruption of Moscow city bureaucrats, protesters say, causing the city to lose more historical buildings than at anytime since the 1930s when Josef Stalin decided to tear down much of pre-Revolution Moscow to build the city anew.
What the communists failed to complete, critics say, the crony capitalism under Luzhkov is now finishing off. Despite the protests of historians, architects and Moscow residents, much of the city's architectural past has already been destroyed in the last decade, or is now slated to be demolished.
Activists complain the city is now witnessing the construction of high-rise monstrosities and concrete doppelgangers, the mass eviction of residents and the complete disregard for the opinions and rights of city residents.
"Just as Stalin and Brezhnev destroyed Moscow in their day, Luzhkov is doing the same now," architect Gennady Kholmansky said. "If he could, he'd put underground parking under St. Basil's Cathedral."
The decision last year to knock down Hotel Moskva and the Voyentorg building were the most well-publicized of hundreds of demolitions of historical treasures. Since Luzhkov became mayor in 1992, preservation experts estimate that more than 400 historical buildings from the 17th century onwards have been destroyed, including 60 pamyatniki, or listed buildings, which by law should be untouchable.
Local residents, independent architectural experts, city planning experts and local politicians have accused the city government, developers and Luzhkov's policies of destroying the city's historic center.
Throughout Moscow there is anger, with protests from Krylatskoye to Kuznetsky Most, as residents fight against the new developments that they say marks the destruction of the city's history by its own government.
"From being a historical city, Moscow has very quickly turned into a megalopolis with some historical buildings," said Alexei Komech, the head of the State Institute of Art History and a member of the city's architectural council.
Alexei Klimenko, a preservation campaigner since the 1970s and a member of the city's architectural advisory council -- the organization that advises the city on construction in Moscow -- said Luzhkov is destroying the history of Moscow. "If Luzhkov stays as mayor there won't be anything of historical value left in the city."
"[The city] does not belong to Luzhkov or the city government, to Ivan or Natasha, it belongs to Russia," said Natasha Terekhova, a resident of Stary Arbat who contacted The Moscow Times last year to complain about the changes taking place in the capital.
While the destruction of the past decade has been bad, activists fear that the future could be much worse. With much of Moscow's center already knocked down and redeveloped there is a desperate search for new land to build on.
The city is so interested in profiting from construction that "it is pushed into allowing anything," Komech said in an interview after the city central district announced early last month that it has plans to knock down or renovate up to 1,200 buildings in the center. Four hundred would be demolished and another 800 old buildings that were built with wooden support structures would be "repaired," which activists feared would ultimately lead to their demolition.
"If you say that wooden floors shouldn't remain, this building has to be knocked down, along with all historical houses," Komech said in an interview in the institute's 19th century premises off Tverskaya Ulitsa. "Their attitude to historical heritage is monstrous."
Even though the city later backtracked on this announcement it has comforted no one.
Komech says that he has witnessed Luzhkov spontaneously ordering a building to be razed. Luzhkov was speaking on Stoleshnikov Pereulok when he spotted an early 19th-century building and said, "Let's knock it down." The head of GUOP, the city's department for the preservation of monuments, whispered to the mayor that the building was protected under law.
"What law?" the mayor asked.
"The law for the protection of monuments," the official answered.
Luzhkov quickly said, "You break the law, we don't break the law. We will rebuild it."
The building was later knocked down and replaced with a replica.
Driving the demolition is the vast amount of profits to be made in Moscow real estate. Prices have risen by 60 percent over the last two years, fueled in the center by the boom in elitniye kvartiry, or elite apartments, that go for upward of $6,000 per square meter.
"It's the golden egg. Because of this everything is destroyed. Everything is demolished," Komech said.
The profits available to construction and real estate companies that are backed by the city have fueled the corruption of Moscow city bureaucrats, protesters say.
"The city's millions of square meters [being built] is a giant mechanical washing machine," Klimenko said. With corruption endemic among the city's bureaucracy, "The more buildings there are, the more you can steal."
Preservationists complain that there is a conflict of interests in Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, being the sole owner of Inteko, a company that controls 11 percent of construction in Moscow.
Strict regulations do exist in Moscow on the preservation of listed buildings and the historical center, but are regularly ignored or circumvented.
Buildings categorized as historical monuments cannot legally be knocked down. However, one approach is to allow historical buildings to fall into complete disrepair so that they are placed on the avariiny list by the local government -- a list of buildings that are beyond saving and must be torn down.
The buildings may not even have to be structurally unsound. In an interview last year, Alexander Krasnov, the former head of the Presnensky district, said that he was asked by Boris Khait, the head of the Spasskiye Vorota insurance company, to put a building on Patriarch's Ponds on the avariiny list so that it could be knocked down. (Khait denied this in an interview with The Moscow Times last year.) Krasnov said he refused and was later sacked by the City. He said he believes the practice of putting sound buildings on the avariiny list on request is common.
Residents of 6 Varsonofyevsky Pereulok, near Kuznetsky Most, fought a long-running battle to get their building taken off the avariiny list.
City inspectors examined only 20 percent of the building while at least 80 percent should be checked, said resident Alla. An independent appraisal showed that the building is in good condition, she and other residents interviewed said.
Residents first grew suspicious when they saw an ad for a future apartment complex on the spot of their building. Residents would be relocated, but they objected to the lack of say they had in the matter. (The construction company responsible for the new building, Realtex, at first said the ad was a mistake, but later said that the flats would be on the market in the future.)
Another practice, activists say, is the deliberate sabotage of buildings.
Yury Bocharov, a former town-planning expert who designed the city of Tolyatti, says he inspected a building in Zamoskvorechye that had its roof deliberately sabotaged. He said the practice is widespread.
A local architecture expert, who asked not to be named, said that she knows of a building firm that specializes in deliberately damaging buildings under the guise of repair.
Arson is also commonly used in disputes over real estate, Nikolai Bulochnikov, the head of the Fire Service's forensic laboratory, told the British newspaper The Guardian last year.
Paul Spangler, an American activist, believes that a fire in Dom Bulgakova, where the writer once lived, was deliberately started.
A fire gutted a 19th-century house, killing one person, at 7 Pyatnitskaya, two years ago. There are now plans to knock it down and build it anew with an underground garage.
If that doesn't work, then numerous residents, such as those at 9 Znamenka, say that they have been threatened by developers who want them to leave.
There are other ways to ruin a historic treasure and clear out residents. The green netted sheets that have hung over numerous historic buildings over the last few years, with signs promising renovation, are for many architectural experts death sentences, in reality.
Under the guise of reconstruction or restoration, numerous buildings, such as 25/9 Sivtsev Vrazhek, once home to 19th-century revolutionary Alexander Herzen, have been knocked down. Often, they are then rebuilt as an exact replica or in an enlarged version of the original. If a building is not entirely replaced, then so many changes are made that little remains of the original building.
"Historical monuments can be taken apart, built anew, and still considered a historical monument," said Vadim Opinin, deputy head of the Moscow Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments. "This is a dubious invention of modern Moscow."
Residents, meanwhile, complain that they are not consulted about the construction or demolition involving their own buildings or courtyards. Many say that they only discover the truth after getting past bureaucratic obstruction, lies and fraud.
"They don't let people know what is happening," Klimenko said of City Hall's treatment of residents living near new construction sites. "Residents only find out when they look out of their windows on the day construction starts."
Protesting against a building is hard to impossible. None of the regulatory organs, such as the department of the preservation of monuments, or those that govern construction, are independent of City Hall. Meanwhile, Moscow courts have a reputation for backing the City, and the City has limited the independence of local councils.
"The City decides everything," said Boris Malofeyev, an artist who has given up most of his work in order to fight against the City's plans for his region, Zamoskvorechye, and is attempting to take the City to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. "We don't have any democracy."
For now, the City, confident after Luzhkov's victory in the mayoral elections, does not seem to be listening to protests.
"When they destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, [President Vladimir] Putin was the first to raise an outcry," said activist Terekhova. "But now? Moscow is a European treasure. It is not just mine or Muscovites' but a European treasure. You can't destroy it."
Rektorsky Dom, 11 Mokhovaya Ulitsa
A listed building, this 18th-century house -- a rare example of Baroque in the city -- was demolished in the summer of 2000.
17 Kuznetsky Most
The 17th-century residence of the patriarch. The residence was damaged severely in work begun in 1994. Six buildings that also formed part of the residence have been demolished and replaced with a business center despite protests by the Culture Ministry and the State Duma.
Dom Trubetskikh, Ulitsa Usachyova
The oldest wooden house in the city, dating from the second half of the 18th century, was demolished and replaced by a concrete replica in 2002.
Dom Rimskogo-Korsakova, 5 Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky Pereulok (part faces 26 Tverskoi Bulvar)
Built between the 18th and19th centuries, this was partly knocked down in 2001 to expand the pseudo-19th-century Russian restaurant Cafe Pushkin, although the reason for the demolition at the time was for the creation of a "cultural center of the Russian olden days." Demolition has continued and now only the facade facing Tverskoi Bulvar remains.
Voyentorg, 10 Ulitsa Vozdvizhenka
An Art Modern classic, once the military's No. 1 store, was demolished following a city decree in 2003.
Hotel Moskva
Listed building, best known from the Stolichnaya vodka bottle label, currently being demolished despite protests by the Culture Ministry.
Dom Samginykh, 46 Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa
A two-story, 18th-century building demolished under the guise of "reconstruction" in 1997.
Dom Gertsena, 25/9 Pereulok Sivtsev Vrazhek
Built in the late 18th century, this town house was later bought by the father of 19th-century revolutionary Alexander Herzen. It was here that Herzen was arrested in 1834. It was demolished under the guise of "reconstruction" in 1998 and replaced with a concrete replica.
Kadashevskaya Naberezhnaya
No. 32 was demolished in 1990, followed by the 18th-century palaty at 12/2 and No. 16 and No. 18 four years later, despite a warning sent to the Moscow mayor from the Moscow prosecutor about the demolition of listed buildings. Nearby Lavrushinsky Pereulok has also suffered the demolition of a number of buildings.
Sofiiskaya Naberezhnaya
One of the most famous strips of the Moscow embankment and immortalized in numerous paintings and engravings throughout the 19th century. No. 22, built in the wake of great fire of 1812, has already gone, and the city plans to replace it with a tourist zone called Golden Island where elite town houses will stand next to hotels, and an attraction park.
Manezh, Manezhnaya Ploshchad
Rumored reconstruction plans surrounding the manege-turned-exhibition hall, designed in the early 19th century by Osip Bove, include an underground garage and have sparked fears that it could be altered.
Sources: The Ministry of Culture's "Black Book," which lists the thousands of lost monuments in Russia, and MT interviews.
Old Moscow could soon be no more. The historical heart of the city is facing a grim future under Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
The profits available to construction and real estate companies have fueled the corruption of Moscow city bureaucrats, protesters say, causing the city to lose more historical buildings than at anytime since the 1930s when Josef Stalin decided to tear down much of pre-Revolution Moscow to build the city anew.
What the communists failed to complete, critics say, the crony capitalism under Luzhkov is now finishing off. Despite the protests of historians, architects and Moscow residents, much of the city's architectural past has already been destroyed in the last decade, or is now slated to be demolished.
Activists complain the city is now witnessing the construction of high-rise monstrosities and concrete doppelgangers, the mass eviction of residents and the complete disregard for the opinions and rights of city residents.
"Just as Stalin and Brezhnev destroyed Moscow in their day, Luzhkov is doing the same now," architect Gennady Kholmansky said. "If he could, he'd put underground parking under St. Basil's Cathedral."
Igor Tabakov / MT The demolition of Hotel Moskva, opposite the State Duma, went on despite protests from the Ministry of Culture and activists. |  |
| |
Local residents, independent architectural experts, city planning experts and local politicians have accused the city government, developers and Luzhkov's policies of destroying the city's historic center.
Throughout Moscow there is anger, with protests from Krylatskoye to Kuznetsky Most, as residents fight against the new developments that they say marks the destruction of the city's history by its own government.
"From being a historical city, Moscow has very quickly turned into a megalopolis with some historical buildings," said Alexei Komech, the head of the State Institute of Art History and a member of the city's architectural council.
Alexei Klimenko, a preservation campaigner since the 1970s and a member of the city's architectural advisory council -- the organization that advises the city on construction in Moscow -- said Luzhkov is destroying the history of Moscow. "If Luzhkov stays as mayor there won't be anything of historical value left in the city."
"[The city] does not belong to Luzhkov or the city government, to Ivan or Natasha, it belongs to Russia," said Natasha Terekhova, a resident of Stary Arbat who contacted The Moscow Times last year to complain about the changes taking place in the capital.
While the destruction of the past decade has been bad, activists fear that the future could be much worse. With much of Moscow's center already knocked down and redeveloped there is a desperate search for new land to build on.
The city is so interested in profiting from construction that "it is pushed into allowing anything," Komech said in an interview after the city central district announced early last month that it has plans to knock down or renovate up to 1,200 buildings in the center. Four hundred would be demolished and another 800 old buildings that were built with wooden support structures would be "repaired," which activists feared would ultimately lead to their demolition.
"If you say that wooden floors shouldn't remain, this building has to be knocked down, along with all historical houses," Komech said in an interview in the institute's 19th century premises off Tverskaya Ulitsa. "Their attitude to historical heritage is monstrous."
Even though the city later backtracked on this announcement it has comforted no one.
Komech says that he has witnessed Luzhkov spontaneously ordering a building to be razed. Luzhkov was speaking on Stoleshnikov Pereulok when he spotted an early 19th-century building and said, "Let's knock it down." The head of GUOP, the city's department for the preservation of monuments, whispered to the mayor that the building was protected under law.
"What law?" the mayor asked.
"The law for the protection of monuments," the official answered.
Luzhkov quickly said, "You break the law, we don't break the law. We will rebuild it."
The building was later knocked down and replaced with a replica.
Driving the demolition is the vast amount of profits to be made in Moscow real estate. Prices have risen by 60 percent over the last two years, fueled in the center by the boom in elitniye kvartiry, or elite apartments, that go for upward of $6,000 per square meter.
"It's the golden egg. Because of this everything is destroyed. Everything is demolished," Komech said.
The profits available to construction and real estate companies that are backed by the city have fueled the corruption of Moscow city bureaucrats, protesters say.
"The city's millions of square meters [being built] is a giant mechanical washing machine," Klimenko said. With corruption endemic among the city's bureaucracy, "The more buildings there are, the more you can steal."
Preservationists complain that there is a conflict of interests in Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, being the sole owner of Inteko, a company that controls 11 percent of construction in Moscow.
Strict regulations do exist in Moscow on the preservation of listed buildings and the historical center, but are regularly ignored or circumvented.
Buildings categorized as historical monuments cannot legally be knocked down. However, one approach is to allow historical buildings to fall into complete disrepair so that they are placed on the avariiny list by the local government -- a list of buildings that are beyond saving and must be torn down.
The buildings may not even have to be structurally unsound. In an interview last year, Alexander Krasnov, the former head of the Presnensky district, said that he was asked by Boris Khait, the head of the Spasskiye Vorota insurance company, to put a building on Patriarch's Ponds on the avariiny list so that it could be knocked down. (Khait denied this in an interview with The Moscow Times last year.) Krasnov said he refused and was later sacked by the City. He said he believes the practice of putting sound buildings on the avariiny list on request is common.
Residents of 6 Varsonofyevsky Pereulok, near Kuznetsky Most, fought a long-running battle to get their building taken off the avariiny list.
City inspectors examined only 20 percent of the building while at least 80 percent should be checked, said resident Alla. An independent appraisal showed that the building is in good condition, she and other residents interviewed said.
Residents first grew suspicious when they saw an ad for a future apartment complex on the spot of their building. Residents would be relocated, but they objected to the lack of say they had in the matter. (The construction company responsible for the new building, Realtex, at first said the ad was a mistake, but later said that the flats would be on the market in the future.)
Another practice, activists say, is the deliberate sabotage of buildings.
Yury Bocharov, a former town-planning expert who designed the city of Tolyatti, says he inspected a building in Zamoskvorechye that had its roof deliberately sabotaged. He said the practice is widespread.
A local architecture expert, who asked not to be named, said that she knows of a building firm that specializes in deliberately damaging buildings under the guise of repair.
Arson is also commonly used in disputes over real estate, Nikolai Bulochnikov, the head of the Fire Service's forensic laboratory, told the British newspaper The Guardian last year.
Paul Spangler, an American activist, believes that a fire in Dom Bulgakova, where the writer once lived, was deliberately started.
A fire gutted a 19th-century house, killing one person, at 7 Pyatnitskaya, two years ago. There are now plans to knock it down and build it anew with an underground garage.
If that doesn't work, then numerous residents, such as those at 9 Znamenka, say that they have been threatened by developers who want them to leave.
There are other ways to ruin a historic treasure and clear out residents. The green netted sheets that have hung over numerous historic buildings over the last few years, with signs promising renovation, are for many architectural experts death sentences, in reality.
Under the guise of reconstruction or restoration, numerous buildings, such as 25/9 Sivtsev Vrazhek, once home to 19th-century revolutionary Alexander Herzen, have been knocked down. Often, they are then rebuilt as an exact replica or in an enlarged version of the original. If a building is not entirely replaced, then so many changes are made that little remains of the original building.
"Historical monuments can be taken apart, built anew, and still considered a historical monument," said Vadim Opinin, deputy head of the Moscow Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments. "This is a dubious invention of modern Moscow."
Residents, meanwhile, complain that they are not consulted about the construction or demolition involving their own buildings or courtyards. Many say that they only discover the truth after getting past bureaucratic obstruction, lies and fraud.
"They don't let people know what is happening," Klimenko said of City Hall's treatment of residents living near new construction sites. "Residents only find out when they look out of their windows on the day construction starts."
Protesting against a building is hard to impossible. None of the regulatory organs, such as the department of the preservation of monuments, or those that govern construction, are independent of City Hall. Meanwhile, Moscow courts have a reputation for backing the City, and the City has limited the independence of local councils.
"The City decides everything," said Boris Malofeyev, an artist who has given up most of his work in order to fight against the City's plans for his region, Zamoskvorechye, and is attempting to take the City to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. "We don't have any democracy."
For now, the City, confident after Luzhkov's victory in the mayoral elections, does not seem to be listening to protests.
"When they destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, [President Vladimir] Putin was the first to raise an outcry," said activist Terekhova. "But now? Moscow is a European treasure. It is not just mine or Muscovites' but a European treasure. You can't destroy it."
Buildings Gone Forever
Rektorsky Dom, 11 Mokhovaya Ulitsa
A listed building, this 18th-century house -- a rare example of Baroque in the city -- was demolished in the summer of 2000.
17 Kuznetsky Most
The 17th-century residence of the patriarch. The residence was damaged severely in work begun in 1994. Six buildings that also formed part of the residence have been demolished and replaced with a business center despite protests by the Culture Ministry and the State Duma.
Dom Trubetskikh, Ulitsa Usachyova
The oldest wooden house in the city, dating from the second half of the 18th century, was demolished and replaced by a concrete replica in 2002.
Dom Rimskogo-Korsakova, 5 Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky Pereulok (part faces 26 Tverskoi Bulvar)
Built between the 18th and19th centuries, this was partly knocked down in 2001 to expand the pseudo-19th-century Russian restaurant Cafe Pushkin, although the reason for the demolition at the time was for the creation of a "cultural center of the Russian olden days." Demolition has continued and now only the facade facing Tverskoi Bulvar remains.
Voyentorg, 10 Ulitsa Vozdvizhenka
An Art Modern classic, once the military's No. 1 store, was demolished following a city decree in 2003.
Hotel Moskva
Listed building, best known from the Stolichnaya vodka bottle label, currently being demolished despite protests by the Culture Ministry.
Dom Samginykh, 46 Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa
A two-story, 18th-century building demolished under the guise of "reconstruction" in 1997.
Dom Gertsena, 25/9 Pereulok Sivtsev Vrazhek
Built in the late 18th century, this town house was later bought by the father of 19th-century revolutionary Alexander Herzen. It was here that Herzen was arrested in 1834. It was demolished under the guise of "reconstruction" in 1998 and replaced with a concrete replica.
Kadashevskaya Naberezhnaya
No. 32 was demolished in 1990, followed by the 18th-century palaty at 12/2 and No. 16 and No. 18 four years later, despite a warning sent to the Moscow mayor from the Moscow prosecutor about the demolition of listed buildings. Nearby Lavrushinsky Pereulok has also suffered the demolition of a number of buildings.
Doomed buildings?
Sofiiskaya Naberezhnaya
One of the most famous strips of the Moscow embankment and immortalized in numerous paintings and engravings throughout the 19th century. No. 22, built in the wake of great fire of 1812, has already gone, and the city plans to replace it with a tourist zone called Golden Island where elite town houses will stand next to hotels, and an attraction park.
Manezh, Manezhnaya Ploshchad
Rumored reconstruction plans surrounding the manege-turned-exhibition hall, designed in the early 19th century by Osip Bove, include an underground garage and have sparked fears that it could be altered.
Sources: The Ministry of Culture's "Black Book," which lists the thousands of lost monuments in Russia, and MT interviews.
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