Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

The year the Russian empire really collapsed

Photo by ANATOLY SAPRONENKOV / AFP

In a quiet suburb of Moscow, a twenty-minute metro ride from the Kremlin, is the Soviet Union’s answer to Disneyland. Between a budget supermarket and a teacher training college is the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, known to locals by its Russian-language acronym, VDNKh. The ‘Kh’ is said like you are clearing your throat.

Every year, tens of thousands of visitors pass under the triumphal arch that stands at the entrance to the VDNKh. It looks like London’s Marble Arch and is topped with two gold-plated proletarians holding up a bundle of wheat. Past it, there’s stalls selling hot dogs, an imposing statue of Lenin, and a water fountain that plays out old Communist songs. The main attraction, though, is the horseshoe of pavilions around the park. There’s one for each of the former Soviet Republics. They show off the scale and diversity of the old empire. A wood-carved longhouse honours Karelian SSR. Armenia’s pavilion has a restaurant serving traditional grilled pork.

This is the ‘Russian world’ that Vladimir Putin wanted to unite when in the darkness of a February night he announced that he was invading Ukraine. At a pro-war rally soon after, a former Soviet pop star cheered on the conflict with a song saying Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania and Estonia were part of their country. Former President Dmitry Medvedev, once seen as a liberal reformer, said that Kazakhstan never really existed without Russia. ‘Under Moscow’s indivisible hand, with the Slavic people at the head, we will proceed to the next campaign to restore our motherland’s borders, which, as you know, do not end anywhere.’ He later claimed that he had been hacked.

Many Russians haven’t got over the USSR. Putin, with Medvedev, Russia’s top military officers, the inner circle of the Kremlin and almost every visitor to VDNKh over the age of 30, was not only born in the Soviet Union, but unwillingly cast out of it when Communism collapsed in the 1990s.

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