What to Visit in Moscow Right Now?

What is worth visiting in Moscow right now? The Museum of Moscow has opened a remarkable, very large and capacious exhibition, rich in allusions: “Moskvichka. Women of the Soviet Capital in the 1920s and 1930s”.

The museum's team spent a year and a half preparing the project, and it shows: two thousand exhibits from numerous collections across the country are arranged into an intricate dramaturgy describing a woman's life path in the Soviet country a hundred years ago. But it is not only about woman; it is about the world in all its colours, though that world is quite logically built around the female figure.

Beyond doubt, this is one of the main exhibition projects of the year among the museums of Russia.

The narrative seems to embrace every hypostasis of a woman's fate, from woman as mother to woman as professional. The curators touch upon spiritual quests and labour achievements, creative work, hobbies, domestic life, discoveries, accomplishments, legislation, relations with the state and, of course, love.

The exhibition resembles a monumental literary work, and the arrangement of the halls and displays makes you travel between worlds: here is the dressing room of Lyubov Orlova, here the intimate drawing room of Lyudmila Vladimirovna Mayakovskaya, and here the study of Vera Mukhina. You find yourself not simply on a museum route but on a genuine excursion through the Moscow of those years: you are invited to walk through real apartments, famous Moscow addresses where the outstanding women of their time lived. Some names you will hear for the first time, you will discover piercing stories, and you will plunge into the everyday abyss of talented, thinking, feeling, genuine Soviet women, who had behind them the education and spirituality of Tsarist Russia, the Russian family tradition and a powerful Soviet idea, and ahead of them a long, impenetrable road into a bright, and at times misty, future.

An excellent project, which I recommend warmly to everyone; it is exactly what should be seen, even if you are in Moscow for only a couple of days. Great respect to the museum's team! I shall certainly come again.

The exhibition runs until 25 August.