Going Back - VI

(continued)

In the morning, we all left the train with our luggage and were herded into another bus. Our mood was generally cheerful, though also somewhat apprehensive. To begin with, the group was housed at a university hostel (studencheskoye obshchezhitie) on Lomonosovsky Prospekt, with the promise that in a couple of weeks’ time we would be transferred to the main university building. The university district, in Moscow’s south-western suburbs, is a rather characterless and sprawling area of geometrically planned avenues, which also takes in Lenin Hills (Lenskie Gory, now Sparrow Hills, Vorobyevye Gory), and the university skyscraper. Our hostel was a five-storey building, indistinguishable from the other five-storey apartment blocks that stretched for kilometre after kilometre on either side. We were fortunate enough to each receive a room to ourselves, though we soon realized what a luxury this was – most of the Soviet students in the building had to share two, three or even four to a room. For the first day or two we restricted our outside forays to such activities as finding the nearest foodstore – something of a necessity, as the university stolovayas (dining-rooms) were situated some distance away. We got used to queuing for such items as bread, kolbasa (sausage), cheese, and so on, and then joining the second queue at the cashier’s desk, in order to pay. The whole process could take as long as an hour. Back at the hostel, we experimented with cans of pork and salted fish, which we prised open and devoured in the floor’s communal kitchen.

A few days later we were taken to the main university building (MGU) to begin the lengthy process of being issued with our propuski (passes) and were given a guided tour. The propusk was an essential item – without this identity document one couldn’t get into the building at all. It had one’s name and photograph displayed on a small, two-page folding card – and one had to walk through a special hut at the entrance gate of the “zone” (this was the name given to each respective wing of the immense building) to show it to the babushka who sat inside in her headscarf and coat, waiting to shout “gde u vas propusk?” (where is your pass?) if one was the least bit slow in presenting it. This ritual had to be gone through each and every time one entered the building.

The university building itself was – and, of course, still is – vast and labyrinthine. It was originally built between 1949 and 1953 by several thousand forced labourers drafted in and supervised by Stalin’s henchman, Lavrenty Beria. Sixty trains were used to ferry the steel used in the construction all the way from Dniepropetrovsk in Ukraine. The skyscraper has 36 storeys, which at the time of our visit, we were told by those who said they knew, were composed of teaching blocks and twelve floors of administrative offices, including two floors of KGB. These were flanked by four gigantic wings of student accommodation – the “zones” referred to earlier, marked A, B, V, and G (the first four letters of the Russian alphabet). The building is said to contain a total of 33 kilometres of corridor. A guidebook notes that its proportions “are deceptively vast and its spire, despite appearing small from the ground, is in fact 240 metres tall and the star on its top weighs an incredible 12 tons. The building's facades are ornamented with giant clocks, statues, carved wheat sheaves and Soviet crests and stand before a terrace featuring heroic statues of male and female students gazing optimistically and confidently into the future.”

(to be continued)


See also Going Back
Going Back-II
Going Back-III
Going Back-IV
Going Back-V