Mission to Moscow: Stairway to Heaven

It was a beautiful day in Moscow! It was not quite as hot as it has been and the rain held off until around 6:00 this evening. It was perfect weather for a stroll down to the State Library, after a stop at Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee - an "oridzhinal" as it is called here. I was very excited to see a container with "cream" on the counter and thought that I would finally have the equivalent of the coffee I drink at home. However, in my excitement I forgot that Russian dairy products are much richer than their American counterparts and basically what I ended up putting in the coffee was whipping cream. So, not quite what I expected but close enough that I will not complain.

The music section of the library, which is actually located at Dom Pashkov around the corner from the Leninka (the state library) no matter where Google thinks it is, is very beautiful and sits on a bank that overlooks the Kremlin. The inside is amazing too - once you get past the guards. It is kind of odd, but you have to show your library card to the guard at the gate to even enter the complex. Then you have to show it to at least 2 more guards before you can get into the reading room. But once you are in the reading room, it is possibly the best place to work. I have never had a bad experience in a music library and the one here is Moscow is just as fantastic as the one at Columbia. There are numerous journals, and ones that are very useful to my project, and you can simply take them off of the shelf at will. It is really a different experience compared to what I have been through so far. And no one yelled "devushka" at me!

For those of you that are not interested in my dissertation or Russian or Soviet culture, skip this next paragraph because I am going to talk about what I read in some of the journals from the late 1940s:) I came across a few articles from as early as 1946 and 1947 that complained about Western and bourgeois influences in Soviet music and I was pretty surprised. Usually the anti-Western campaign is dated in the latter part of 1947 and into 1948, but apparently some people were unhappy with the influence that Western music had on the army bands in 1946. The fact that they were influenced by "outside" sources isn't surprising given the cooperation during the war and the use of jazz to entertain soldiers at the Front. But it is quite an ironic experience to sit in present-day Moscow, where one hears mostly English-language pop music, not to mention the guitar players on the Old Arbat who seem completely taken with Credence Clearwater Revival, and read about concerns from the late 1940s that Russian music would be overtaken by American and other bourgeois influences if the State didn't take action. Andrei Zhdanov would be rolling in his grave if he only knew!

So, in addition to a very productive day in the library I took some time and photographed some other well known sites. I also had a nice lunch on the Old Arbat at a cafe and I got a free iced cappuccino. I somehow ended up in a conversation with the lady who owns the cafe (she spoke English) and she asked me about the cappuccino that I had ordered and if it was to my liking. I told her it was very good - probably one of the best that I had had. She then asked if it was as good as one from New York, to which I replied "possibly better." She then proceeded to tell everyone inside what I had said and she brought me another, "on the house." I will most definitely be returning! And while we were discussing the cappuccino one of the guitar players began playing Stairway to Heaven. It was bound to happen sooner or later.......

Cheers!