THERE WAS A storm over Moscow last night. An incandescent electrical storm revealed the clouds of the night sky in a penumbra of light, solemn, sepulchral; it became a spectral sky. I have never seen such a storm, or such lightning, on the small island of Britain. It was a token of great expanse, of vast lands somewhere in the distance, of emptiness and of space, all of it brooding over Moscow.

I had always dreamed of visiting Russia. For me it was a land of images — images taken from Dostoevsky, from Gogol, from Pushkin. There were also the images from the great early Russian films, in particular from Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, in which the voices ring out like cathedral bells; such intense gestures, such ritual, such suffering and majestic faces were quite new to me; the sound of chanting seemed to me to be the hymn of the universe.

And then there were the images in the Sixties of Yuri Gagarin, of the parades in Red Square, of the solemn and elderly leaders standing in array upon the Lenin mausoleum. All of these images suggested intensity of purpose, earnestness of meaning, and a kind of heroic individualism not at all compromised by the various forms of communalism. The Soviet worker, on the posters, was the image of humankind moving forward. Or so it seemed at the time. So I had always dreamed of visiting this place.

I WAS TOLD that Moscow is built in a series of three or perhaps four rings. In a sense it resembles a tree. It is reaching outwards to nourish its life. All great cities have this characteristic. Or it might be viewed as a series of wheels, thus confirming the English expression for mystery and complexity — “wheels within wheels”. I was also told that the richer or more powerful you became, your instinct was to move closer and closer to the Kremlin. In similar fashion the higher the floor in a restaurant, the more expensive the food.

IN A SENSE all cities are indivisible. There is a phenomenon, the city, that Moscow embodies. It is the sum total of all human fears and expectations — and, in this place, there is much to be feared and much to be hoped for. I had been informed that the Russians, and the Muscovites in particular, bear a countenance of gloom or of severity. So I made an especial study of faces. They were tired, contemplative, content, stolid, happy, distracted, eager or alert. But they were rarely despondent — not even on the Moscow underground, where you would expect the sum total of human misery to be at its highest. You could make a film out of the faces of Moscow, but it would not be a sad one.

It might, however, have its elements of pathos. The faces of the young businessmen of Moscow, for example, are filled with a positive lust. They are sweating for gain. They walk forward eagerly. They talk loudly on their mobile telephones, in even the most inappropriate circumstance. They are always on the move. They are often burly and thickset. They wear cream-coloured suits, bright ties, and shoes the colour of vanilla ice cream. They are pugnacious and preoccupied.

It might be absurd to seek out, in the modern city of Moscow, traces of its ancient past. It would be absurd, equally, to look for Dickensian echoes in 21st-century London. But wait a moment. There are in fact traces of the Dickensian world in the contemporary city — certain old courts, certain narrow alleys, certain dark streets that effortlessly recall what is considered to be a lost inheritance. There are certain people who call up Dickensian originals. There are certain situations — there are certain atmospheres — that partake of a past time. So why should this not be so of Moscow? Where is the Dostoevsky moment? Where is the Gogol moment? Or even the Pushkin moment?

Well, I am told, there is a difference. The social and cultural life of England has been undisturbed for many centuries. It has remained relatively stable. Here in Moscow everything has been changed by Revolution. Two revolutions in the short span of a century, when everything was swept aside. Everything died. Everything was reborn. What could survive such giant transitions?

This is, in one sense, correct. You can tell that Moscow is a serious city by the extent to which it destroys or sweeps aside that which it no longer wishes to accommodate. It has the ruthlessness of power, endemic to all organic life. If a street needs to be widened, then it is widened. If trees have to be chopped down, so that people may see the glittering shop fronts more clearly, then the trees will go. This is appropriate. This is healthy.

I VISITED a sculpture park in a rather nondescript district of Moscow. Here were kept the sweepings of the last revolution. Here was a statue of Lenin, broken in the middle where it had been toppled from its superior position. Here were statues of Brezhnev, Kosygin, and other failed heroes, left to adorn a patch of grass where once they had adorned a plinth. Here is a statue of Maxim Gorky, stone hat in stone hand, lying upon the ground. What is Gorky doing here?

The city is doing its work of necessary destruction. What is not necessary for its life is removed to a harmless space where, it seems, only the sparrows come — and perhaps a few lovers, seeking out solitude among the defunct heroes. They caress each other in the shadow of elaborate metal sculptures bearing such legends as “USSR Guarantees Peace in the Cold War” and “We Will Come to the Victory of Communist Labour”.

So what can survive such wholesale transition? It is reassuring to note, however, that some things spring up again as if they had never been lost. The resilience of religious faith is one such phenomenon. The innate beliefs of a people are not necessarily lost for ever. Take, for example, the small monastery affiliated to the community of Mount Athos that is now open for worshippers. It is a sacred space in the middle of the city, nestling beneath a towering Stalinki. The bells ring, and the people bow down before the icons. So there is a continuity.

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