ALEXANDER NATRUSKIN/REUTERS

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour rises in the background on the banks of the Moskva river.

THE structure of a megalopolis is clear, simple and immediately recognisable: airports, railway stations, public transport, supermarkets, cinemas, theatres and nightclubs. There are also the same dormitory towns and historic city centres dressed up for tourists or recreated by restoration.

Elsewhere, of course, there are churches and museums. Yes, and gas, electricity, television and refrigerators. Have we forgotten anything? Beauty salons, businesses, and advertising everywhere. All that makes it possible for newcomers to find their way around a megalopolis as effortlessly as at home. Today’s Moscow does not differ from any other megacity in these respects.

What a pity I cannot invite you to the mythical Soviet Moscowwherein you could have compared the specific structures of the city with the most recent social urban theories about the construction of micro worlds with their labyrinths of caves and unfathomable regions. Despite the monotonous grey exteriors, a very intensive life, often invisible to public view, pulsed in the hidden niches of residential areas. This life was so hidden and had so few possibilities of making contact with the outside world that two people occupied with one and the same problem might perhaps not meet each other all their lives.

But even on the surface there were signs and indications of other, mystical, parallel worlds. All over the city there was advertising for the Leipzig Book Fair though it was impossible to say who this was aimed at, since of course there was no way in which a Soviet citizen could travel there. Or there were the patriotic slogans posted on the street: Victory for Communism! In the midst of this dramatically three-dimensional space, with its two-dimensional futility and its infinite distance from real life, people resembled angels flying around in hell, but imagining paradise. Today, though, believe me, everything is completely normal. Billboards, advertising, posters, businesses, offers of every possible service, all the temptations of a typical demon.

Of course, here and there some special features immediately strike every passerby. The lowest windows have grills. Indeed, street-level apartments have often been vacated. Young people proudly slam the doors of their expensive automobiles in front of expensive restaurants.

The young money of young people rules: they adapt more easily to the new world than old people do. Countless casinos and gambling houses pervade Moscow, turning it into a gigantic Las Vegas. New giant buildings are adorned with crazy towers and bizarre superstructures; an architecture of entertainment has come into being, like the fantasy of an exuberant confectioner.

Only in remote suburbs do big snowdrifts remain unsullied by the filth from automobiles and industry, and when the frost is not so hard and the sun shines a weeping yellow, they give everything a pastoral Siberian touch.

In principle, three utopias exist side by side in the city. The first is of the “sacred” market and all the seductions and satisfactions that go with it, and the treacherous effort to erect a gigantic skyscraper landscape in the middle of the city, making it resemble an American downtown area.

DIMA KOROTAYEV/REUTERS

A May Day march in Moscow. A file picture.

The second is the nostalgic Soviet utopia. The idyllic motifs of this design can be found in otherwise very pleasant clubs and cafes and on the screen, where both Soviet films and Soviet songs are shown. The whole thing is reinforced by the never-discarded architectural environment with its famous Stalin skyscrapers and the continuing routine of demonstrators holding red banners, displaying pictures of Stalin and Lenin, which have not been forgotten.The third utopia, which describes an equally fictitious idyll that never existed, is that of Holy Russia. It reveals itself in the dissemination of a somehow traditional, religious and spiritual life, in the building of numerous churches (which, from an artistic standpoint, contribute to quite a chaotic image of the city). The most striking reconstruction is that of the unwieldy Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, once built to celebrate the victory over Napoleon and demolished by the Communists with some difficulty in the 1920s and 1930s.

A grandiose Palace of the Soviets was to have been erected in its place, but for some reason the project was never realised. Instead, a big swimming pool was built. And later, this place for physical fitness again became a place of spiritual edification. On television, we regularly see state leaders in the church, crossing themselves wildly and prostrating zealously. Their favourite place for doing this is the grandiose Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

On the periphery of this third utopia are the military-clad Cossacks, who regularly gather at the square of the Kitai-Gorod district, which on other occasions serves as a meeting point for members of the gay community.

All these contribute to gigantic state illusions and ambitions, as in those pompous celebrations and concerts at Red Square, where all these utopias come together at the same time and meet up with the international stars of culture. Only if you allow yourself to be distracted from the event for a moment, and look to the side, do you suddenly recognise that the old architecture of the Kremlin and Red Square – its greatness and its beauty – is still overwhelming.

That this tremendous city, with a radius of more than 40 miles (64 kilometres), could really be crossed in an hour is quite another story. However, since five million of its 13 million inhabitants commute every day, Moscow traffic is often on the verge of collapse. It is as if that is the way in which the city wants to confirm its status as a megalopolis. Every year 50,000 new automobiles are added to Moscow. Every day, you hear radio and television reports that the city is at a standstill.

MAXIM MARMUR/AFP

At the red square on September 14, soldiers of the Danish Royal Guard perform at the first "Kremlin Zoria", an international military festival in which military orchestras from Russia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Australia participated.

Meanwhile, Moscow boils, seethes and moves in a direction known to no one but the city itself. •

Dmitri Prigov, who died in July at the age of 67, was a poet, writer, performing artist, and a samizdat veteran. He was part of Moscow conceptualism, a trend in art that undermined the Soviet claim to power in an anarchic way. This article was translated from the German by John Bowden.

© Sueddeutsche Zeitung 2007. Distributed by the New York Times Syndicate