Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:02:24.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moscow after the Apocalypse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Mark Griffiths
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article focuses on the apocalyptic images of Moscow that not only proliferated in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union but that have also persisted during the 2000s. Mark Griffiths analyzes Tat'iana Tolstaia's Kys' (2000) and Dmitrii Glukhovskii's Metro 2033 (2005), comparing and contrasting the roles of Muscovite space in these narratives. Riddled with misinterpreted ideas and mutated remainders, turned upside down by ideological volte-face, and haunted by uncanny vestiges of preapocalyptic life, these postapocalyptic worlds are not tabulae rasae but pastiches that reflect post-Soviet transformations. In Kys', Moscow's concentric circles are connected to temporal cyclically, disrupting narratives of progress. In Metro 2033, the fragmentation of Moscow's metro system allows Glukhovskii to thematize the splintering of the post-Soviet city. Both novels evoke the long-standing opposition between Moscow's center and periphery but unveil the darkness of the hollow core, raising questions about the city's past, present, and future.

Type
Moscow: A Global City?
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , Fall 2013 , pp. 481 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

With sincere thanks to Seth Graham, Phil Cavendish, Julian Graffy, Polly Jones, and Susan Morrissey for all of their help and advice during the shaping of this work, and to Mark D. Steinberg, Oliwia Berdak, and the anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review for all of their ideas and comments that allowed me to improve this article. I would also like to thank Sarah Hudspith and the participants of the conference “Moscow: A Global City,” University of Leeds, for their insightful suggestions and for making this publication possible. My thanks also go to the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this research. Epigraph from Rudyard Kipling, “Cities and Thrones and Powers,” in David Cecil and Allen Tate, eds., Modern Verse in English (London, 1958), 111.

1. Quoted in Epstein, Mikhail N., After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (Amherst, 1995), 72 Google Scholar.

2. For a study of Russian dystopian fiction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, see Dalton-Brown, Sally, “Signposting the Way to the City of Night: Recent Russian Dystopian Fiction,” Modern Language Review 90, no. 1 (January 1995): 103–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a broader overview, see Lanin, Boris, Russkaia literaturnaia antiutopiia (Moscow, 1993)Google Scholar.

3. Kabakov, Aleksandr, “Nevozvrashchenets,” Iskusstvo kino, no. 6 (June 1989):150-75.Google Scholar Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own.

4. Makanin, Vladimir, Laz: Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1998)Google Scholar.

5. Svetlana Boym points out that there is a long-standing association of the firebird with Moscow, built into the city's mythology after its destruction in 1812. Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001), 100 Google Scholar.

6. For an overview of recent Russian dystopian fiction, including apocalyptic visions, see Aleksandr Chantsev, “Fabrika antiutopii: Distonicheskii diskurs v rossiiskoi literature serediny 2000-kh,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 86, no. 4 (August 2007): 269–301 Google Scholar.

7. Kys’ was first conceived in 1986 in the wake of the Chernobyl’ catastrophe, but Tolstaia returned to it in the late 1990s. Metro 2033 was initially published online in 2002 but was reworked and extended for its publication in paper in 2005. As well as spawning a highly successful sequel, Metro 2034, the original novel has been transformed into an internationally acclaimed computer game and a film. This has inspired devotees to discuss Glukhovskii's fictional world and even write their own novels or short stories on www. metro2033.ru (last accessed 31 May 2013).

8. The “Blast” at the center of Kys’ is never explicitly described as nuclear, but the widespread annihilation, the radiation poisoning that blights the local fauna and flora, and the unusual mutations that affect both survivors and their children all strongly imply a nuclear catastrophe.

9. Wolfe, Gary K., The Remaking of Zero: Beginning at the End,” in Rabkin, Eric S. et al., eds., The End of the World (Carbondale, 1983), 1 Google Scholar. Some have shied away from the term postapocalyptic, as does the French scholar Samuel Minne, who prefers “postcataclysmique” due to the biblical associations with the “apocalypse.” Since “cataclysm” contains its own connotation of the deluge myth and writers continue to draw on the heritage of the biblical apocalypse, I use the terms that still pervade Anglophone scholarship. Minne, Samuel, “Yesterday Never Dies: Perdre et retrouver l'Histoire dans quatre societes post-cataclysmiques,” Cynos 22, no. 1 (October 2005): 2.Google Scholar

10. Bethea, David M., The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction (Princeton, 1989), 193 Google Scholar.

11. Buck-Morss, Susan, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” October 73 (Summer 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 9.1 am grateful to Mark D. Steinberg for encouraging me to consider the relevance of this work to my analysis.

12. Plato, , Laws, vol. 1, trans. Bury, R. G. (London, 1926), 380–81Google Scholar.

13. In his seminal study of the city, Lewis Mumford describes how primordial man once made a claim to the land on which the graves of his forefathers were situated, concluding that “the city of the dead antedates the city of the living.” Mumford, Lewis, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (London, 1961), 7 Google Scholar.

14. Pike, David L., Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, 1800–2001 (Ithaca, 2007), esp. 65–157 Google Scholar. For more on the city's polis/perversion dichotomy, see Schneck, Stephen, “City and Village,” in McLean, George F. and Kromkowski, John, eds., Urbanization and Values (Washington, D.C., 1991), 169–79Google Scholar.

15. Harvey, David, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh, 2000), 158 Google Scholar.

16. Lotman, Yuri, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, trans. Shukman, Ann (London, 1990), 191–202 Google Scholar. Joseph Brodsky expresses a similar idea in his description of Moscow's tendency to retreat “to its womblike, claustrophobic, and xenophobic condition.” Brodsky, Joseph, “A Guide to a Renamed City,” Less Than One: Selected Essays (London, 1986), 88 Google Scholar.

17. Although Vladimir Toporov rejects the existence of a “separate ‘Moscow’ text” (26) in his seminal elucidation of the “Petersburg Text,” Ian Lilly points out that Moscow's repeated appearance in opposition to St. Petersburg ensures that “Toporov tacitly acknowledges the existence of a Moscow counterpart.” Toporov, V. N., Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury: Izbrannye trudy (St. Petersburg, 2003), 7–118 Google Scholar. Lilly, Ian K., “Female Sexuality in the Pre-Revolutionary ‘Moscow Text’ of Russian Literature,” in Lilly, Ian K., ed., Moscow and Petersburg: The City in Russian Literature (Nottingham, 2002), 32 Google Scholar. Grigorii Knabe's collection also offers excellent insight into the prerevolutionary Moscow metatext, Knabe, G. S., ed., Moksva i “moskovskii tekst” russkoi kul'tury: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1998)Google Scholar.

18. Anon, ., General'nyi plan rekonstruktsiigoroda Moskvy: 1. Postanovleniia i materialy (Moscow, 1936)Google Scholar.

19. Bukharin, N., “Gorod solntsa,” Izvestiia, 14 July 1935, 4 Google Scholar. Tommaso Campanella's Utopian, concentric city possesses a sacred heart surrounded by seven walled rings, named after the seven planets known to people at that time. Campanella, Tommaso, La Citta del Sole: Dialogo Poetico/The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, trans. Donno, Daniel J. (Berkeley, 1981), 26–27 Google Scholar.

20. Clark, Katerina, “Socialist Realism and the Sacralizing of Space,” in Dobrenko, Evgeny and Naiman, Eric, eds., The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle, 2003), 8 Google Scholar.

21. I draw here on the binary model proposed by Iurii Lotman and Boris Uspenskii of the old replacing the new at important historic moments, initially intended to capture prenineteenth-century Russian culture but subsequently applied to other periods. Yuri M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspensky, “Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (to the End of the Eighteenth Century),” in Nakhimovsky, Alexander D. and Stone Nakhimovsky, Alice, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, 1985), 30–66 Google Scholar. For a more recent discussion of the nonlinear flow of time, see Tamara Kondrat'eva, “Sovremennoe gosudarstvo kak vlast’ po ‘Domostroiu'? (K sporam o sotsiokul'turnykh istokakh stalinizma),” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 81 (October 2006): 50–66 Google Scholar.

22. Voinovich, Vladimir, Moskva 2042 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1987), 124–25Google Scholar.

23. Moskva-Petushki was first published in 1973 by the Israeli émigré journal AMI. Karen Ryan-Hayes concludes that, although some sources place the text in the late 1960s, Moskva-Petushki was written between 18 January and 7 March 1970, by “Erofeev's own account.” Karen Ryan-Hayes, “Introduction,” in Karen Ryan-Hayes, , ed., Venedikt Erofeev's “Moscow-Petushki“: Critical Perspectives (New York, 1997), 6 Google Scholar.

24. Erofeev, Venedikt, Moskva-Petushki (Moscow, 2005), 138 Google Scholar.

25. Tolstaia, Tat'iana, “Fakir,” Reka Okkervii: Sbornik rasskazov (Moscow, 2005), 206 Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., 205.

27. I use here Mircea Eliade's term, hierophany, for, in his view, people have always sought to found their universe on stable, sacred space. Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Trask, Willard R. (New York, 1959), 22 Google Scholar.

28. Goscilo, Helena, The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya's Fiction (Armonk, N.Y., 1996), 100–104 Google Scholar.

29. Tolstaia, “Fakir,” 206.

30. Ibid., 207.

31. For Zamiatin's protagonist, D-503, prior to his epiphany, “Man ceased to be savage [dikim chelovekom] only when we constructed the Green Wall.” Zamiatin, Evgenii, My (New York, 1973), 81 Google Scholar.

32. Tolstaia, , “Fakir,” 216–18Google Scholar.

33. Colton, Timothy J., Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 249 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Plato, , “Timaeus,” Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles, vol. 7, trans. Bury, R. G. (London, 1926), 40–43 Google Scholar. Tolstaia, Tat'iana, Kys’ (Moscow, 2001), 7–9 Google Scholar.

35. Tolstaia, , Kys', 92 Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., 204.

37. The seven gates are a clear reference to Campanella's seven-walled City of the Sun.

38. Tolstaia, , Kys', 284–85Google Scholar.

39. Ibid., 169.

40. As Mumford informs us, the original cities were constructed to be a symbolic “world,” a “walled urban container,” at the center of which would be the citadel. Mumford, , The City in History, 1, 34Google Scholar.

41. Tolstaia, , Kys', 201 Google Scholar. “Postmemory” is used here in the sense in which Marianne Hirsch employs the term, as memories transmitted to the next generation. Hirsch, Marianne, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), esp. 22–23 Google Scholar.

42. As in Bendikt's vision, Petia imagines a bright civilization, including “white palaces with emerald, scaly roofs, stepped temples with tall doorways, […] enormous golden statues and marble staircases.” iana Tolstaia, Tat’, “Svidanie s ptitsei,” Liubish ‘—ne liubish’ (Moscow, 1997), 66–67 Google Scholar.

43. Tolstaia, , Kys', 201–2Google Scholar; Erofeev, , Moskva-Petushki, 34 Google Scholar.

44. Tolstaia's evocation of the lost island of Atlantis is reminiscent of the moment when Zamiatin's D-503 finally breaks through the Green Wall. Surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, D-503 conjures the analogy of stumbling upon “a sixth, a seventh continent in the ocean, some Atlantis.” Zamiatin, My, 137.

45. Tolstaia, , Kys', 336 Google Scholar.

46. Marshall Sahlins, “Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History,” American Anthropologist, n.s. 85, no. 3 (September 1983): 525. Eliade posits that the elevating and ordering of profane space into transcendental space also results in the transformation of “concrete time into mythical time.” Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History, trans. Trask, Willard R. (Princeton, 1991), 21 Google Scholar.

47. Moskva 2042 concludes with a similar moment of revolution and regression. Effigies of the former ruler are burned, his supporters are mercilessly crucified, the Solzhenitsyn figure returns on a white steed, and a new set of medieval rules are put in place. Voinovich, , Moskva 2042, 314–16, 325-26Google Scholar.

48. Tolstaia, , “Nepal ‘tsy,” 419 Google Scholar. In the novel's English translation, Jamey Gambrell emphasizes the association with rys (lynx), entitling the work The Slynx.

49. Ibid., 422.

50. Tolstaia, , Kys, 10, 95–96,139–40, 376Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., 16,19,26,35,47, 69.

52. Andrei Nemzer, “Azbuka kak azbuka: Tat'iana Tolstaia nadeetsia obuchit’ gramote vsekh buratin,” at http://www.ruthenia.ru/nemzer/kys.html (last accessed 31 May 2013). view with Dmitrii Glukhovskii (interview given at the London Book Fair, London, 12 April 2011).

53. Nikita Eliseev, review of Kys’ by Tat'iana Tolstaia, Novaia russkaia kniga, no. 6 (Winter 2000), at http://www.guelman.ru/slava/nrk/nrk6/ll.html (last accessed 31 May 2013). Boris Kuz'minskii similarly highlights the time between the novel's inception and publication, labeling Kys’ a “retro-dystopia” (retroantiutopiia). Boris Kuz'minskii, review of Kys’ by Tat'iana Tolstaia, Shvedskaia lavka 5 (18 October 2000), at http://old.russ.ru/krug/vybor/20001018.html#knl (last accessed 31 May 2013).

54. Tat'iana Tolstaia, “Miumziki i Nostradamus: Interv'iu gazeteMoskovskie novosti,” in Tolstaia, Nataliia and Tolstaia, Tat'iana, Dvoe: Raznoe (Moscow, 2001), 426 Google Scholar. Tolstaia confesses that the work lay dormant for long stretches of time, once going untouched for four years, but she stresses how her ideas evolved while working as a university lecturer and commentator for American magazines. Tat’ iana Tolstaia, “Nepal ‘tsy i miumziki: Interv’ iu zhurnaly Afisha,” in Tolstaia, and Tolstaia, , Dvoe, 419 Google Scholar.

55. Ivanova, Natal'ia, “I ptitsu paulin izrubit’ na kaklety,” Znamia, no. 3 (January 2001): 219–21Google Scholar. Mark Lipovetskii similarly posits that Kys’ captures the crisis of post-Soviet language and should not be read as a prognosis for a “future” that had already occurred by the time of its publication. Lipovetskii, Mark, “Sled Kysi,” Iskusstvo kino, no. 2 (February 2001): 78 Google Scholar. During the first decade of the new millennium, since the publication of Ivanova's article, the genre of dystopia has seen a strong resurgence.

56. Aleksandr Ageev highlights the overlap of the novel's ideas with Tolstaia's 1992 article in The Guardian on Russian nationalism and her review of Elena Molokhovets's nineteenth-century cookbook, Podarok molodym khoziaikam (Kursk, 1861), which he believes inspired the multiple culinary references found in Kys'. Aleksandr Ageev, “Golod 45,” Russkii zhurnal, 2 August 2001, at old.russ.ru/krug/20010802.html(last accessed 31 May 2013). See Tatyana Tolstaya, “A Short Tour of the Russian Asylum,” The Guardian, 19 March 1992,25, and Tolstaia, Tat'iana, “Zolotoi vek,” Den': Lichnoe (Moscow, 2001), 450–68Google Scholar.

57. Paramonov, Boris, “Vremia kul'tury: Russkaia istoriia nakonets opravdala sebia v literature,” Vremia MN, 14 October 2000, 7 Google Scholar.

58. The forgetting of Pushkin and the ascribing of his works to the autocratic ruler echo a Soviet joke at the time of the centennial of Pushkin's death. It suggested that a monument of Pushkin reading Byron was rejected for being “politically false,” another of Pushkin reading Stalin was “historically false,” hence the final, “historically and politically accurate” monument simply showed Stalin reading Stalin. Geldern, James von and Stites, Richard, eds., Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953 (Bloomington, 1995), 329 Google Scholar.

59. Baudrillard, Jean, Selected Writings, ed. Poster, Mark (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), 170 Google Scholar.

60. For his online site and forum, see http://www.metro2033.ru/forum/ (last accessed 31 May 2013). Rejected by ten different publishers, Glukhovskii's novel garnered such popularity on his Web site that its publication in paper became possible in 2005. The 2005 version of Metro 2033 reflects the influences of the online community: in the face of popular demand, Glukhovskii altered the trajectory of a stray bullet that killed his protagonist and extended the work by eight additional chapters. Angus Kennedy interview with Dmitrii Glukhovskii (interview given at the London Book Fair, London, 12 April 2011).

61. Grant McMaster is the first international writer to join the project with Metro 2033: Britannia. His work tracks the adventures of Ewan, who survived the nuclear apocalypse in Glasgow's underground system.

62. The metro's first line opened on 14 May 1935, connecting Sokol'niki to Gor'kii Park.

63. Pike, , Metropolis on the Styx, 1–16 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Mark D. Steinberg for suggesting that I consider the similarities between Glukhovskii's vision of the metro and the imagery analyzed by Pike.

64. Kaganovich, L. M., “Pobeda metropolitena—pobeda sotsializma,” in Kosarev, A., ed., Kak my stroili metro (Moscow, 1935) 34.Google Scholar, Anon, ., “L. M. Kaganovich sredi passazhirov metro,” Pravda, 16 May 1935, 3 Google Scholar.

65. Anon., “Moskovskii metro—novaia stupen’ v stroitel'stve sotsializma: Moskovskomu komitetu VKP (b)—tov. Khrushchevu,” Pravda, 16 May 1935, 3. For more on the metro as a challenge to the west, see Ryklin, Mikhail, “Luchshii v mire: Diskurs moskovskogo metro 30-kh godov,” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 38 (1996): 153–69Google Scholar.

66. Epshtein, Mikhail, Velikaia Sov': Filosofsko-mifologicheskii ocherk (New York, 1994)Google Scholar. In her study of Gor'kii Street in late Stalinism, Monica Rüthers considers the impact of darkness on aboveground space, positing that, “the rules of space and time were invalidated by nightlife.” Monica Riithers, “The Moscow Gorky Street in Late Stalinism: Space, History and Lebenswelten,” in Fiirst, Juliane, ed., Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London, 2006), 257 Google Scholar.

67. Gard, E., “Istoriia moskovskogo peshekhoda,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 14 May 1935, 4 Google Scholar.

68. Buck-Morss, “City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” 22.

69. Owing to a series of tunnel collapses, an internal passport system, and hostile stations, the Polis is physically difficult to reach.

70. Beyond the Strugatskii brothers, Glukhovskii consciously draws upon the postapocalyptic and dystopian canons, stressing the importance of “global literature.” Emphasizing his particular admiration for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Glukhovskii evokes in his own work the catastrophic “blast” (the cholera epidemic) at the heart of Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Dmitrii Glukhovskii, “Bestselling Genre Fiction in Russia” (seminar at the London Book Fair, London, 12 April 2011). For a reading of Love in the Time of Cholera as postapocalyptic, see Buehrer, David, “A Second Chance on Earth': The Postmodern and the Post-Apocalyptic in Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 32, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 15–26 Google Scholar.

71. In the revelation of the wall's porosity and the center's emptiness, there are echoes of Franz Kafka's short story “The Great Wall of China,” in which the narrative of confinement is of greater significance than its actualization. Kafka, Franz, “The Great Wall of China,” Description of a Struggle and The Great Wall of China, trans. Muir, Willa et al. (London, 1960), 76–82 Google Scholar.

72. Glukhovskii, Dmitrii, Metro 2033 (Moscow, 2011), 312 Google Scholar. Glukhovskii thus deconstructs not only the subterranean Soviet imagery but also the symbols aimed at projecting the ideology into the sky. For more on the construction and symbolism of the Kremlin stars, see Julia Bekman Chadaga, “Light in Captivity: Glass, Spectacular and Power, Soviet in the 1920s and 1930s,” Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 82–105 Google Scholar.

73. Here, Glukhovskii evokes Stalin's language (zhit’ stalo veselee) to emphasize the continued resonance of broken dreams. Glukhovskii, , Metro 2033, 94 Google Scholar.

74. Ibid., 502-6.

75. Glukhovskii explicitly expressed the belief that one “apocalypse” has already occurred in Russia with the loss of the Soviet system of values. Angus Kennedy interview with Dmitrii Glukhovskii.

76. Omon Ra was written in Moscow in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and first published in 1992. Pelevin, Viktor, Omon Ra: Povest’ (Moscow, 1992)Google Scholar.

77. Moskoviada was first published in Ukrainian in 1993, a year after Omon Ra. Andrukhovych, Iurii, Moskoviada, trans. Brazhkina, A. (Moscow, 2001)Google Scholar.

78. Angus Kennedy interview with Dmitrii Glukhovskii.

79. Glukhovskii, , Metro 2033, 14 Google Scholar.

80. Auster, Paul, In the Country of Last Things (London, 2005), esp. 11–35 Google Scholar.

81. Pike, , Metropolis on the Styx, esp. 312–15Google Scholar.

82. I use here Walter Benjamin's description of the Parisian Métro, whose “labyrinthine halls” give rise to “troglodytic kingdoms.” Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 519 Google Scholar.

83. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Massumi, Brian (London, 1988), esp. 3–28 Google Scholar.

84. I use here the concept of the “heterotopia” as defined in spatial terms by Michel Foucault. Foucault, Michel, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Miskowiec, Jay, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. In modern-day Moscow, the Filevskaia liniia has recently been extended, with new stations at Delovoi tsentr and Mezhdunarodnaia, facilitating access to the growing “Moscow-City” business district. Glukhovskii, however, envisages the opposite fate for this line, which is irradiated by its close proximity to the surface. He thus harks back to fears during World War II, when a Nazi bomb damaged Arbatskaia, and during the Cold War, when the line's effectiveness as a bomb shelter was queried. Glukhovskii, , Metro 2033, 11 Google Scholar. Baudrillard, , Selected Writings, 166 Google Scholar.

86. Baudrillard, , Selected Writings, 166 Google Scholar.

87. The metro map resembles Michel de Certeau's image of the modernist city from the viewpoint of the voyeur-god who treats the space as a totalized, mappable whole. From this elevated vantage point, momentum is arrested, time ceases, and historical complexities are transformed into a transparent, legible text. Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, Steven (Berkeley, 1984), 91–110 Google Scholar.

88. Glukhovskii, , Metro 2033, 271–74, 431Google Scholar.

89. Ibid., 186.

90. Ibid., 14.

91. Ibid., 186.

92. Boym, , Future of Nostalgia, 49 Google Scholar.

93. Graham, Stephen and Marvin, Simon, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94. Brade, Isolde and Rudolph, Robert, “Moscow, the Global City? The Position of the Russian Capital within the European System of Metropolitan Areas,” Area 36, no. 1 (March 2004): 70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. Elena Egorova, “Moskva razygraet novuiu dorozhnuiu kartu,” Moskovskii komsomolets 29 (11 February 2011): 15; Liubov’ Protsenko, “Kol'tsevaia zavisimost',” Rossiiskaia gazeta 258 (16 November 2010): 3; Nikita Mironov, “Pervyi dubler MKAD postoriat riadom s ‘Krokus Siti,'” Komsomolskaiapravda, 7 April 2011, at http://www.kp.ru/daily/25665.4/827004/ (last accessed 31 May 2013).

96. I use here J. G. Ballard's description of a postapocalyptic Pacific island. Ballard, J. G., “The Terminal Beach,” in Miller, Walter M. Jr. and Greenberg, Martin H., eds., Beyond Armageddon: Survivors of the Megawar (London, 1987), 129 Google Scholar.