How Moscow and Muscovites have changed over the last two decades

Courtesy was not a trademark of the Russian capital back in the early 2000s, but locals and visitors both sense the genuine change in people's attitudes and public behaviour over the last two decades.

I had to reach Kvartira 44 (which means apartment 44 in Russian) exactly at 7:30 pm on a cold and drizzly Moscow evening. Google Maps showed me that the iconic restaurant was just a 15-minute walk away, so I left my hotel room on Mayakovskaya at 7:10 to get to the restaurant early. It took me 10 minutes to understand that I was being taken in circles, so I switched to the more reliable (for Russia) Yandex Maps and I seemed to be on the right track. As the cold breeze blew in my direction and my vision was impaired by the water on my glasses, the thought of me getting late or lost struck (and worried) me.

A deep breath and a few steps later, I got on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, but a combination of my own stress, the weather and the relatively poor light meant I couldn’t spot the name of the street and the building number on the street. Yandex Maps told me I was on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, but I had my doubts. Then I saw a middle-aged woman walking in my direction and I asked her if I was on the right street.

She immediately smiled at me and asked the building number I was looking for. When I replied that it was 22, she gave me absolutely precise instructions to the point where I was told that at an upcoming roundabout I needed to cross the street and walk straight, else I’d end up on another street. When I expressed my gratitude, she smiled again and told me that it was so pleasant to hear a foreigner speak such good Russian.

When I did reach that roundabout, I tried to reconfirm with another couple of women who were struggling to hold their umbrellas. “Yes, young man, that’s the right away, but don’t follow the example of these two young girls crossing the street on a red light. No matter how beautiful your date is, she’s not worth risking an injury or your life over,” they said. Then I noticed that in my rush and seeing the girls cross, one foot was on the road.

I ran the last 200 metres of the way to the restaurant and made it on time, but a few weeks after there interactions, I began to think about how much Moscow has changed since I first visited the city. Here, I am not talking about the better infrastructure and cleanliness that is visible for all to see, but the general friendliness of the average Muscovite.

March 2003

The 24-year old version of me landed in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and had no idea what to expect from this strange new land. I was only in the city for nine hours, as I had a flight to catch to Sakhalin that evening, where I was to begin my new life. A Russian friend generously agreed to spend the day with me and show me around…The problem was that he was not from Moscow and was new to the city. And here are my first impressions of the Russian capital from my diary: “Almost no one makes eye contact in the city! When Andrei (my friend) asked for directions, people literally looked in another direction when explaining!”

The ‘no eye contact’ rule was equally valid in the metro. Even if you accidentally looked directly at someone, you turned your gaze elsewhere as it was like looking at the sun! The city was just crawling out of the Wild 1990s when crime was rampant and violence even in the city centre was not uncommon. The only people who seemed to make direct eye contact with you were the ones giving mean glares!

When I moved to friendly and small Sakhalin, I was told by the locals about how big, bad and nasty Moscow was. To be honest, when I visited the city again a few months later, I felt people were always in a hurry and looked extremely stressed, but I never faced any kind of meanness or hostility per say in Moscow. It just felt like a cold, Russian version of Bombay, sans the sea and slums.

Moscow remained an important transit city for me for as long as I lived in the Russian Far East. Judging by the stories I kept hearing about the city, I was always on guard there. The one thing I did notice in Moscow was that the service culture in the city was far better than anything I had seen in any other part of Russia, barring St. Petersburg. No, there was no artificial smile in cafes and restaurants, but the staff were genuinely nice and friendly.

Improved living standards

When my trips and stays in Moscow became more frequent towards the beginning of the last decade, I noticed a genuine lightness in the city. Eye contact started becoming normal, especially when you asked for directions. In 2013, I was pleasantly surprised when someone who looked like she was in a hurry in an almost empty street stopped and looked for the address I was asking for on her iPhone.

By the last decade, the nightmarish days of the 1990s had already become a distant memory, and Moscow’s overall upgrade was well in progress. It had began its transformation from being a depressing post-Soviet capital to one of the finest cities in Europe, and you could clearly see that people were more mentally relaxed. And then when I started renting flats in the city, in so-called ‘sleeping neighbourhoods’ I began to notice the common courtesy of co-inhabitants of the buildings greeting me at the main door or the elevator or in staircases or hallways, whether they knew me or not.

This, I was told, was a Moscow phenomenon that had not caught on in the regions. Feeling welcome, and at home, I started to understand that the Russian capital was now a friendly and welcoming city. A few years ago, when I still had an antique piece for a cellular telephone, I remember asking a woman for directions to a landmark from a metro station. Since the main exit of the metro station was being renovated, I got off at an almost unrecognisable spot. The lady smiled at me and said there was no way I’d find the place from where I was, and so she walked me there. It wasn’t that far but still, something like this would have been unimaginable in the early 2000s.

What Muscovites say

This phenomenon of people in Moscow becoming courteous and helpful is something that every single friend of mine in the city has noticed. During a livestream on YouTube for Russia Beyond, the brilliant presenter Anna Fedorova mentioned how Muscovites had calmed down so much (from being total neurotics at one point) that people actually joked about the situation at a crowded government office when computer systems were down!

Other friends also say that improved living standards have really been the key to a gentler Moscow. Of course, the city is no utopia, and those who don’t speak or understand Russian may not find it as easy to live in the city as I do. Also, there is a class problem in the city, and working class foreigners from Central Asia and the Caucasus don’t get treated as well as they should. What I did notice though is that an increasing number of ethnic Russians are publicly speaking out against those who behave discourteously with these former Soviet citizens. Let’s hope this also changes with time.

I love Moscow the way it is now, and it’s the only city in the world that is as dear to me as my hometown Bombay.