Reading on the Moscow Metro

Likbez-era poster

The Soviet Union prided itself on being “the most well-read nation” on earth. The Soviet obsession with books and reading might not have been particularly well-known during the Cold War, but it’s quite predictable when you think about it. The Bolsheviks, after all, were the radical red-headed stepchildren of the intelligentsia of the Russian Empire, so it’s not too surprising that when they came to power they sought to bring culture to the masses. That meant everything from ballet to good table manners, but especially literacy. All corners of the Soviet Union were drawn into the campaign to liquidate illiteracy (likbez) throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The old Russian classics (some of them, at least) were published in great quantities alongside the new classics of Socialist Realism. Joseph Stalin considered writers “engineers of human souls;” he considered himself literary-critic-in-chief. His critical opinions, of course, could be matters of life and death. As the political atmosphere became less poisonous over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, literature and literary criticism became one of the main venues for discussing the country’s past, present, and future. Literary works like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in the literary journal Novyi mir in 1962, became lightning rods for debates over de-Stalinization. Books were cheap, but works by the most popular authors were often hard to get your hands on. If you wanted something special, like a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult classic Master and Margarita, then there was always the black market. Reading was a very popular activity through the last decades of the Soviet Union. Starting in the mid-1980s, it became even more important when glasnost’  opened up a plethora of previously-banned topics and works of literature for public discussion. Circulation of literary journals went through the roof; the revelations between the covers of journals and books caused many to experience a perelom soznaniia, a profound break in their consciousness. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was considerable anxiety over Russia’s continued status as a well-read nation. A chorus of voices lamented “Deti ne chitaiut!” (“Children don’t read!”) According to one expert on Russian children’s literature with whom I have spoken, however, the concerns were overblown. In fact, deti chitaiut. (Children read.) Although I can’t claim that my methodology is at all scientific, I will say that the tradition of reading seems to be alive and well in Moscow—on the metro at least. Although I often see people reading on buses and the T in Boston, my impression is that reading while commuting is more popular here.

Suggested listening. I think the Alkaline Trio cover is better,

but this video takes the cake.

One of the nicest suprises I had after arriving here was the realization that I could read my Kindle on public transportation without looking the least bit strange. E-readers have caught on in Russia in a big way, and any metro car is likely to hold at least a couple of people with e-readers and tablets. While many use their phones to play games and use social networking sites, my observations from surreptitiously (shamelessly?) looking over people’s shoulders suggest that many people also read on their phones. I see many older people using e-readers, although they seem more popular among the younger generations.

It’s hard to know what people are reading on their e-readers, but luckily for us nosy bookworms, paper books are popular as well. I once saw a woman in high heels reading a biography of Churchill, a punky-looking guy reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, and another young woman reading Jane Austen all in the same night. Ray Bradbury seems to be quite popular, which is not surprising considering the popularity of science fiction in the former socialist bloc. Newspapers, sold in machines in the stations, are another popular choice.

My commute

A number of factors (besides the aforementioned national pride) probably contribute to the prevalence of reading on the metro. First of all, many people commute long distances in Moscow, which after all is quite a massive city. Metro rides in excess of 30 minutes are completely routine, and even a full hour seems to be common. Second, the metro is often loud—attempting to talk or listen to podcasts can be pointless on some routes. Reading is simply the most obvious choice of distraction. 

The eternal escalators

Some people take their reading game to a whole other level on the metro. I’ve seen certain pros manage to read more or less continuously throughout station transfers. As the Moscow metro is quite crowded, especially at rush hour, this is no mean feat. There are usually bottlenecks around the escalators, where people trudge zombie-like to get on the escalators. I’ve seen people read all the way through the escalator crush. As anyone who has visited the former Soviet Union likely knows, metro stations are located quite far underground. The top three deepest metro stations in the world are all located in the former Soviet Union. That means that the escalator rides are rather long, so people read on them too. On top of that, I’ve seen more walking-while-reading here than probably in my entire life up to this point—and I go to Harvard.

I’ve been taking advantage of my 45-minute (one-way) commute to catch up on my pleasure reading. After a year of sad deprivation (thanks, general exam!), it’s been fun to actually use my Kindle again. So far I’ve read Seveneves by sci-fi master Neal Stephenson, The Masque of the Black Tulip, a Regency-era romance/mystery by Lauren Willig, a former Harvard history grad student, and The White Ship by Soviet Kyrgyz author Chingiz Aitmatov. I have to make two transfers on my commute, which means I’ve been keeping it light and simple so that I don’t lose the thread of the plots even when reading the books in bits and pieces. My current book is Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic horror novel set in…wait for it…the Moscow Metro. I’ve still got 62% left to read, but expect a full review coming soon!