Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow

Russians surpassed themselves at the airport yesterday, already queueing an hour before boarding because there was a single member of staff behind the desk. They all stood there for an hour and then, in any case, had to wait for everyone to go through the gate before the bus to the plane took off.

It's quite a strange death of the area. It was once the cool place to be, became oversaturated, lost its sheen and lost the cool rich kids who used to go to bars and restaurants there. Now all that remains are empty overpriced restaurants which all look the same.

The decline of Moscow's Patriki -- something @jonnytickle.bsky.social has noted -- is complete with the closure of Gutai, one of my favourite lunch spots since 2017. The area, which used to be go to, is now just overrun with people filming vox pops and trying to be content creators.

Not personally, and certainly not with taxis or deliveries. But I did hear from a friend who lives in the Oblast that a couple of petrol stations nearby were closed for a few hours. It didn't stop him or anyone getting fuel, they just had to drive a few km to a different petrol station.

A bit of rain in the last few days has knocked the leaves off the trees and the temperature was in the minuses over night. Winter on its way to Moscow, and reports are that it's going to be one of the coldest of the last twenty years.

It's very much boeuf bourguignon weather in Moscow today

The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist The long read: Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bi...

Great article on the theft of rare Russian books from libraries across Europe www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

Catching Us Looking | Rachel Cohen For a central figure of Impressionism, it is surprising how often Gustave Caillebotte seems to be disappearing offstage. Even in self-portraits he can be

A piece in the New York Review of Books about my favourite artist, Gustave Caillebotte www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Completely anecdotal and not based on anything other than a feeling over the last few weeks but I've finally noticed that Moscow has become more expensive, especially for daily items. Speaking to family in the UK, it doesn't seem massively out of line with economic general trends post Covid.

195 НЛО (5/2025)

The most recent issue of NLO (Новое литературное обозрение/ New Literary Review) features some brilliant reflections on the late Katerina Clark's work. For those who don't read Russian, some have been translated into English. www.nlobooks.ru/magazines/no...

Sheila Fitzpatrick · Diary: Two Cultures of Denunciation From the MAGA perspective, snitching is the pejorative liberal word for the exercise of grassroots democracy needed to...

Sheila Fitzpatrick on denunciations, or why Americans are grasses www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Booker Prize 2025: the shortlisted novels reviewed The FT critics’ verdicts on the six contenders for this year’s fiction prize, the winner of which will be announced on November 10

No surprise that Flesh by David Szalay has been nominated for the Booker Prize. Easily the best novel I read this year. www.ft.com/content/ee39...

It's autumn in Moscow, which, if you live in a Soviet era building like I do, means the heating is back on and you're back to regulating the temperature by opening your windows.

Drinking in Moscow in 2025. You can now get far more beer imported from the West than you could before February 2022. kotelnaya.substack.com/p/a-pint-of-...

Reading Zubok's The World of the Cold War. It's a little bit disappointing. I've read all of his books and Zhivago's Children is one of my favourite books about that period. But this feels like a Wikipedia-level survey. It lacks depth and detail.

Six weeks month off social media. The world keeps turning. Would recommend it.

The airport that we arrived at didn't want to let us get off the plane and told the pilot we would have to fly 15 minutes to the other Moscow airport our plane was supposed to arrive at. Eventually, they let us off. I got out of the airport 8 hours after I was supposed to arrive.

Lots of fun arriving back in Moscow this weekend with airspace closures. We started circling over central Russia, then we landed at a random airport for 3 hours, set off again, started circling, eventually got to a different Moscow airport to the one we were supposed to, and sat there for 3 hours.

The Russian Premier League season —which, like Christmas adverts, seems to get earlier every year — starts tonight

Ay Yola: больше чем хит Накануне выхода новой песни «Ural Vasyaty» — все, что нужно знать о ее исполнителях

a great piece from Kommersant Weekend about the band behind the Bashkir song which took over the world a few months ago www.myweekend.ru/doc/7872806?...

Fyodor Smolov is in trouble after hitting two people in a Kofemaniya in Moscow, the same one that Pavel Mamaev and Aleksandr Kokorin previously battered someone, for which they were imprisoned. More than anything, why are millionaire footballers hanging out in chain coffee shops?

A Pint of Sanctions, Please: Drinking in Moscow in 2025 There are far more imported beers available in Moscow in 2025 than before February 2022

It's Saturday, you might be having a pint. Here's what it's like drinking in Moscow in 2025 and what's changed since February 2022 kotelnaya.substack.com/p/a-pint-of-...

i think somebody probably invented what is effectively a variation of tonnato on lettuce before that

Well, in London yes.

so for example someone from spain, i.e a latin country, would be "any other white" etc as would mexicans, as would americans

it's a form via ethnicity, not nationality. americans with latino heritage to us are white!

In the European way of thinking about things, Musk and Mamdani are African Americans, black people in the US are just Americans, or, if you insist, black Americans

We also generally identify via "colour" rather than via continent. So, to us, a white Boer with a US passport is as much an "African American" as a black person born in the US. To us it is very odd you would call someone who has never been to Africa an "African American"

No, the point he is making is that to most Europeans, Latinos are white. Because Europe and the US identify race differently. Latinos (the clue is in the name, Latin) to us are white.

Drinking in Moscow in 2025. You can now get far more beer imported from the West than you could before February 2022. kotelnaya.substack.com/p/a-pint-of-...