The View from the Vysotka: A Portrait of Russia Today Through One of Moscow's Most Famous Addresses

French journalist Anne Nivat lives in Moscow, in a skyscraper called a vysotka (sky house). It overlooks the Kremlin and is one of the most desirable residences in the city. Designed to house 3,500 residents, it also has restaurants and shops on the ground floor. The original residents, handpicked by Stalin and his aides, were artists, high-level bureaucrats, and senior military people. Some of them still live there today, some of the apartments are occupied by their descendents, still others were purchased after the apartments were privatized. Nivat sees the building as a microcosm of the New Russia. This is a hard case to make. Moscow is not typical of Russia, any more than New York is typical of America. And the vysotka is not typical of Moscow any more than Trump Tower is typical of New York. Still, there really is an interesting cross-section of residents there, and Nivat lets them do most of the talking in her book. One resident, whose father sculpted many of the giant Lenin statues that used to decorate Moscow, summarized their attitudes. It all breaks down by age, he said. Those over seventy are nostalgic for the past, those in their fifties are disappointed and are having a hard time adjusting to the New Russia, those under forty have adapted one way or another, and the under-twenty-fives have never known anything else. That certainly holds true for those interviewed here. Older residents reminisce about when they or their parents were the toast of the town. They yearn for the good old days of Stalin. One of the lobby attendants is wistful about the changes since the fall of communism. "If only we had taken the best parts of the West, instead of choosing the worst!" A common thread in these interviews is the affection everyone here has for Moscow. Even the most cynical, even the foreign residents, and especially Anne Nivat herself, love Moscow and Russia. Even as they are telling you what is wrong with the government, with the building, with Russia and Russians, they assure you that they wouldn't live anywhere else. And you believe them.