Moscow’s mayor squashes competition but transforms his city

THROUGHOUT ITS 900-year history, Moscow has been called many things. “Stench, stones, luxury, poverty,” was Tolstoy’s assessment in 1881. Travellers and residents alike have long remarked on the city’s blend of glamour and gore, the sacred and the profane. In the Soviet era, it was seen as massive, grey and forbidding; amid the oil boom of the 2000s, as gaudy and unlivable. Yet in recent years, some unexpected descriptions have joined the list: pleasant and functional. Or as Vladimir Putin declared in September at the re-inauguration of his handpicked mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow has become “hospitable and comfortable”.

Mr Putin’s gratitude is genuine. Throughout a period that has seen mass protests, grinding recession and international tensions, Mr Sobyanin has provided steady stewardship to a city that accounts for nearly one-tenth of Russia’s population and roughly one-fifth of its GDP. Since his appointment in 2010, he has also overseen the most sweeping transformation of the capital since the Stalin era. Armed with a budget that brings in some 20% of all regional revenues, he has refurbished scores of parks, repaved hundreds of streets, built dozens of metro stations and erected a new light-rail line. Public services have leapt into the digital era. Europe’s largest city has become one of its fastest changing. Yuri Saprykin, a cultural commentator, argues that Mr Sobyanin will go down as a figure like Baron Haussman, who oversaw the renovation of Paris under Napoleon III.