Moscow, a City of Dogs

Don’t take offense, Muscovites. The subway riding dogs have made Moscow famous. We have seen this canine phenomenon on TV. Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. Much like the city’s underclass inhabitants, those affected by the need to move out of the modernizing city can still be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to sur­vive, begging,. But now they ride the metro.

They sleep in the suburbs and shop in the center. Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen dog skills. They know how to scare people into dropping their hotdog.     They don’t miss their stop while going on the subway. Biologists say dogs have very keen sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car–those are less crowded usually.

There is of course the upper class of dogs, the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. (In my book, see the essays Dogs and My Name is Dog in the Essay Collection.)

But then there is the big picture. Moscow is a masculine city. It has muscle. It is an explod­ing powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of per­sonal energy and ambition. It is a beehive of lives stacked twenty stories high, living the happiness and sins of people anywhere—only at the extremes Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a burly aggressiveness unique in Europe. In time, Moscow is destined to be one of the great cit­ies of Europe. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

With an energy unmatched anywhere else in Russia, Mos­cow is a sprawling, brawling, dynamic throng of eleven million people embracing dozens of races, speaking scores of different tongues and struggling to make enough rubles to survive. Not only are there two Russias, there are two Moscows, one whose people thrive and one whose people strive to survive. Not far outside the latest Outer Ring, you might think in some ways it is still the 1930s. And then there are the dogs. Maybe there are three Moscows.

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St. Petersburg and Moscow ~ Cats and Dogs

These two cities define what most see of Russia, and they are so different, yet in some ways the same. They have forever been in contest with each other, and are today.

 Moscow is a masculine city. It is an exploding powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of personal energy and ambition. It is a cocoon of lives stacked seven stories high, living all the happiness and sins of people anywhere – only at the extremes Russians are so capable of.  Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a muscular aggressiveness unique in Europe and traffic jams that make Los Angeles look easy. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

 St. Petersburg is a feminine city. Her historic personality is as an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, architecture, statuary, art museums, performing art, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten.  St. Petersburg is not Russia; it is the historical myth of Imperial Russia.

 Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. One can be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to survive, begging, much like the city’s underclass inhabitants. The other is the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. The disenfranchised class lurks around the apartment blocks sniffing the garbage for anything to swallow.

 St. Petersburg is a city of cats. From the streets at night, you can see their shining eyes, peering through the arches from the inner decay of “Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg,” the faceless blocks of communal flats. The cats hang comfortably in the dead trees, dine elegantly in the overflowing garbage, sit regally on the broken steps. For some reason, the cats always look healthy and fat.

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Moscow Dogs

There has been a lot reported recently about the dogs riding the Moscow Metro in search of food. But some can’t afford that. I have one of those stories.

In the shadow of the Ministry of Foreign affairs, one of those seven giant Stalin buildings that punctuate the Moscow skyline, is a shell of a building that was once an Orthodox church. Under the sagging wooden gate with a sign from that Russian church that someday hopes to return, came the dogs, all mutts. First, a dog sired by a German Shepherd, then a cross between a sheep dog and a cocker spaniel, next a black and white short hair with a limp, and others, all nondescript, eight in all. They hung around the hole under the gate, like gang members waiting for the boss. And then he appeared, slipping under the gate and shaking himself with his authoritative nose in the air. He was the smallest of them all.

He had a square face and a cocky air that reminded me of James Cagney as a Chicago gangster. They all fell in behind Jimmy and wrestled for the favored spot downwind just behind his tail. Within a block they were in the right order, and spreading out on their scavenger hunt. It was not a game, it was survival.

They lived in my neighborhood and were not unfriendly. Like any group of unruly Russians, they made lots of noise, but give them something to eat and drink and they will love you forever. I had nothing to give them, but they didn’t shy from asking. Neither did they take offense, but headed on for more likely targets.

Resourcefulness is a valued Russian trait. Nearby was a building under confused reconstruction, the mess of timbers looking like a pile of pick-up sticks, Mud was everywhere. The workmen, sloshing around in the mud and spilled cement from the hand-cranked mixer, wore knee-length rubber boots. One day, on my way to work, I noticed one of the dogs from Jimmy’s gang, furtively running away from the building site with a leather boot in his mouth, looking side to side over his shoulder like a boy with a stolen candy bar. The thief squiggled under the chain-link fence with his catch and into a neighboring yard of guarded BMWs and Lincolns where his buddies were applauding and laughing the way dogs do. I could only imagine the boot owner, at the end of the day, wearily doffing his rubber boots, but finding only one of his leather ones, and exclaiming to his exhausted buddies, “Which one of you bastards hid my boot?” Surely he had only one pair of boots. Meanwhile the dogs were smiling sickly across the street at having devoured the delicious morsel.

These dogs are the underworld, the bumsh, the homeless, those on their own, having been turned out of warm homes for lack of enough food even for their masters. They are victims of the wrenching change affecting Russian society, like many in this country of promise. But, also like amongst the people, there are others who live in another world of limitless luxury, the Novo Russki dogs.

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