Gulag Museum

                I began today with a visit to the Gulag Museum in Moscow. The experience begins the minute one enters the area- it is decorated with a watch tower and barbed wire. The front of the building is adorned with the photos of twelve prominent figures who were killed by the camps, including two figures well known to me: Felix Mandelstam, and St. Pavel Florensky. Subsequently, entering the museum and seeing reproductions of the state the prisoners lived in was a good introduction. It gave a setting for the atrocities we were soon to hear about. Going upstairs was similarly jarring – I was formerly unaware of the extent of the camps, and the numbers of people in them (though I knew it was large). The sheer number of categories of people that Stalin specifically persecuted was also frightening. On the map our guide showed us, I saw numbers for Greeks, political dissidents, kulaks, POWs, and many more. The extent of that man’s paranoia is astounding. Our tour guide was also extremely respectful of the subject matter, and our feelings surrounding it. She allowed a lot of time for reflection, and was very knowledgeable about the details involved in the camps. Though this museum was very small and obviously can still be expanded as soon as more information about the details about the gulag is released (and the museum is given more funding), it is very effective and was a very trying experience for me (as well as the rest of the group, I think).

                Going to the Che Guevara café after this was another one of those Russian ironies, though this one was a little more macabre than normal. The plus side of this ironic twist is that Mr. Jefferson’s university bought me a daiquiri. Wahoowa.

                Despite the fact that we were all tired, Danny, Kathleen, Ethan and I all then decided to do a rapid tour of some of the parts of Moscow we missed. We started at the Scriabin house museum (which was much better without a guided tour), proceeded down the Old Arbat, walked down side streets until we found Christ the Savior Cathedral, and then took the metro to the New Tretyakov Gallery, where the woman selling tickets gave us all the price reserved for specifically Russian students, not foreigners. It made me feel happy about my somewhat sketchy Russian skills.

                Side note: both Danny and I went inside Christ the Savior, just to see the inside for a few minutes. The church was gorgeous and gigantic. It was very beautiful, though it was also done in a modern style. As I was leaving, I also went up to a priest for a blessing. He thought I was begging, and tried to give me rubles. Good to know I can be mistaken for a Russian beggar woman in Christ the Savior.

                Going around the New Tretyakov was also fun, though we had to do so rapidly in order to get back to the hotel in time to pack. When we did finally return to the hotel, the Russian med students from upstairs came down to give us a proper Russian farewell: they brought a very classy bottle of cognac, made some paper cups out of my note pad, and gave us cognac shots. They then insisted that we take the bottle of cognac with us for the trip, and would in no way allow us to carry our own luggage downstairs. It was so classy.

                And so I said farewell to Moscow, the beautiful city of the exotic East, with its gingerbread walls, gilded domes, ancient sorrowful icons, and curious red stars in the sky. This is a beautiful city, and it has a beautiful aura – if I can, I will come back one day.