300POLITYKA is publishing an excerpt from Paweł Reszka's book, published by Wielka Litera publishing house. The book can be purchased on the publisher's website.

"This book is not a reportage, although everything I described in it really happened. It takes place at a cafe table in Moscow and on the wars that Russia has been waging in recent years. I covered them as a journalist. I saw them up close. People die in wars, and friendship often dies too. A Table with a View of the Kremlin is also the story of a group of friends who stopped being friends. Someone asked me why I was writing a book about Russia. I didn't know what to say. Maybe I just wanted to say goodbye," writes Paweł Reszka about his book.

***

Our street is Kutuzovsky Prospekt. I'll tell you about it. But first, about how Moscow in the nineties and early 2000s didn't seem grim. It didn't resemble a gulag. It was laughing, it was very crazy.

***

The distinguishing feature of the new reality were the kiosks, stalls, and stands, similar to humble shacks. They filled the urban space. They disrupted the sterile order characteristic of totalitarian capitals. Plywood. Plastic. Corrugated iron. Foil. Roofing felt. Pastel colors. Twinkling Christmas lights. Signs: "Tights from Czechia," "Beer," "Currency Exchange," "Night Club." Deafening music. A frenzy of ingenuity that broke free from its shackles.

***

My favorite kiosk was near the Arbatskaya metro station. Flora showed it to me. It mainly sold warm beer and half-liter bottles of vodka.

He remembered this place from the early nineties. As a teenage punk, he used to come here for gigs from his hometown of Ryazan. He considered the kiosk a good vantage point. In the morning, cars crawled in rhythm with the traffic lights. People hurried to work. Before noon, it got looser. Waves of people were replaced by streams of wanderers circulating among the stalls. An old man with a striped bag. A thief with darting eyes. A schoolgirl – backpack, ribbons. Vera the prostitute. Flora, hunched over in a military jacket, watched the spectacle of daily life with admiration, as if in a theater. Vera caught a client. The thief plucked a wallet. The old man stopped for a beer. When the police appeared on the horizon, Flora would shrink. Even with a veteran's ID in his pocket, he preferred to avoid them from a distance.

– It was different in the early nineties – he said, carrying a new batch of plastic vodka bottles. – We sat here with guitars. We sang about what our parents were afraid to even think about.

***

Bottle after bottle, Flora sank into memories:

– Constant high. Concerts, fights with fascists, sleeping at the train station, wandering the city. All around, a funfair, opened by a crazy crew after hours. Carousels, rollercoasters, Ferris wheels. My head spun from the cheapest vodka. That Russia was freedom.

That Russia played, cried, and danced on the precipice of centuries. It didn't yet know what it was or what it wanted to be. In the underpass, legless veterans of the Afghan war in striped VDV undershirts begged. Next to them slept children – orphans forgotten by the state.

***

Flora laughed that today the world around the kiosk was just a memory, a pale reflection of that time:

– Bobby Watson died.

– A shame.

– The most handsome dead man in Great Britain. He didn't look his age at all. Poor Bobby. He had been dead for four years, and he was still warm. A true living dead. And so cheerful.

***

From Arbat Street to Kutuzovsky Prospekt, you could take a rickety trolleybus. But on a summer night, it was best to walk along Novy Arbat. The wide Novy Arbat didn't fit its surroundings. It broke up the delicate side streets. It divided the world of apartment buildings, small churches, and dark courtyards into two parallel entities. For some, it was like a saber cut. For others, it was home. High-rise buildings – five on the right, four on the left. These housed the most fashionable apartments in the city at the time. Novy Arbat was a reflection of the visit of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the United States. The architecture of American city centers made a great impression on the secretary. So, American capitalism was recreated in Moscow, but in a "better" version, with a human face and at the state's expense. Old socialist guidebooks describe Novy Arbat as a modern land of happy workers, dedicated party activists, and saleswomen pleasant to Moscow residents and visitors alike.

The nineties confronted this vision with reality. They stripped away the propagandistic gloss. They converted it into money. Novy Arbat blazed with cheap illumination. Between the office buildings, fast-food joints, expensive restaurants, casinos, and strip clubs popped up. Black limousines surrounded by G-class Mercedes parked in the middle of the sidewalk. Officials, entrepreneurs, or gangsters arrived in the limousines. Their bodyguards drove the Mercedes. They carried long weapons, not hiding them. They were above the law. Confident.

***

Denis, a former cadre officer of the State Security Committee (KGB), worked in one of the clubs on Novy Arbat. For several years, he had been confronting the new reality here. The work was uncomplicated. He stood at the entrance to a billiard room. In the evenings, an official from the Moscow municipal administration responsible for real estate played there. If someone wanted to play a game with him, they had to pay Denis from a thousand to a few thousand dollars. During the game, one could discuss an interesting matter. Ask for advice. Arrange a more formal meeting. I wondered what could be arranged during such a game. A permit to set up a few kiosks in a good location, or bigger matters? The construction of a skyscraper? Turning a blind eye to the demolition of a historic tenement to make way for glass offices?

– I don't get involved – Denis would cut short.

Although he gave most of the money from the entrance fee away, he lived quite well on what was left. He got this not-so-demanding, well-paying job through departmental connections. Handsome. Short. He was an inspired KGB man and was fully aware of the absurdity of his current situation.

– We used to stand for something, we wanted to change the world – he said. – And now? We're, fuck, petty crooks.

His humor returned late in the evening, after work. Then Denis would bid farewell to Novy Arbat, cutting through Tverskoy Boulevard near Massolit towards Patriarch's Ponds. He knew all the damp-smelling gates, the courtyards. He probably took his departmental exams here for surveillance and being surveilled. He knew where to drink and had a good memory for literary quotes. On Tverskaya Street, for example, passing Bolszoj Gnezdnikovskiy Lane, he would always stop for a moment to recite:

– Love sprang up before us as if from the earth, like a street killer, striking both him and her at the same time. It strikes like lightning or a Finnish knife…

***

Denis was a good companion, but the words "Finnish knife" sounded ominous in his mouth. He bored everyone with ideas for a big business he would eventually start. For now, his only concrete achievement was standing at the door of the billiard room. Sometimes I had the impression that he was simply waiting for the good old days to return in a new, capitalist guise.

After crossing the Garden Ring, Novy Arbat quiets down. It runs towards the river. On the right, there are still two large buildings. One is a skyscraper that looks like a large open book. It used to be the headquarters of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which brought together nine countries of the socialist bloc.

The other is the White House. In front of the White House, formerly the seat of the Duma, then the government, I found myself for the first time in 1998. I wanted to see the miners who – hungry and angry – had set up camp there.

***

Beyond the Novy Arbat Bridge begins Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The river curves and embraces our street. This, and the distance from Kiyevskaya metro station (about seven hundred meters), creates a sense of distance from the rest of the city, a certain aloofness. Kutuzovsky Prospekt is one of Moscow's main arteries – a six-lane road in each direction. Its residents are descendants of the elite of a country that no longer exists.

A distinguished gentleman slowly strolling with an umbrella under his arm on a Sunday afternoon explained the following to me:

– Indeed, the poet Aleksander Tvardovsky, editor-in-chief of the literary magazine "Novy Mir," lived in the building at number one. Opposite him lived the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Further on, Maya Plisetskaya, the world-famous prima ballerina. Next to her, Lili Brik – the muse of poets, the love of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Composers Dmitry Shostakovich and Isaac Dunayevsky. Engineers, painters, writers, brilliant architects.

The most important building was at number 26. General Secretary of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev and his later successors lived here: Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko. Also, the Minister of Defense, Marshal Andrei Grechko, and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Army General Nikolai Shchelokov. The latter was demoted and committed suicide; the investigation against him was conducted by KGB officers, subordinates of his neighbor.

From Kutuzovsky Prospekt 26, the dignitaries had a short commute to work. A stone's throw to the Kremlin. Just five kilometers. Black Chaika and Volga cars sped along a special lane, demarcated in the middle of the road.

– Everything was efficient, under the watchful eye of the police – the gentleman recited. Then his expression turned serious as he added: – But now it's just a memory.

Kutuzovsky Prospekt maintained a distance from the new reality. It put quotation marks around it. It indifferently watched the tanks storming the White House in 1991 (when they "allegedly" wanted to crush democracy) and in 1993 (when they shot at parliament because it was "allegedly" a way to defend democracy). With a wise look – "as expected" – it observed the pervasive chaos. The mafia that took over the Ukraina Hotel. Gangsters and the wealthy who increasingly boldly drove expensive cars onto that central, elite lane. The "spoiled" miners camped on the Garbaty Bridge irritated it. As did the old men who couldn't live on their pensions, so they sold off their orders of socialist labor heroes. It also angered it that in underpasses, one could buy a Soviet officer's uniform, a red banner from a provincial factory, or a bust of Lenin taken from a forgotten House of Culture. The pride of the USSR was sold at affordable prices: from a few cents to a dozen dollars.

– In short, a terrible mess has taken over – the gentleman with the umbrella grimly assessed.

***

The gentleman with the umbrella considered M. "a charming young person" and paid her compliments. M., in turn, was fascinated by Kutuzovsky Prospekt. On summer afternoons, M. would stand on the balcony of her office, whose windows overlooked Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Silently, with her hands on the railing, she watched the cars speeding by. The roar of engines, the honking of horns.

Towards evening, traffic was halted for a moment – because He had finished work at the Kremlin and was leaving for his residence. The city was stopped for one man! But, strangely enough, it didn't cause any protest. M. shrugged her shoulders. She said it was always like that. Only the people in the black limousine change.

Kutuzovsky Prospekt didn't fall asleep until late at night. Soon, over the roofs of Stary Arbat and even further, over the Kremlin towers, the first grayness would appear.

– I should be going back.

– Really?

– They're waiting for me.

On an empty street towards the river. At this hour, it was easiest to catch a taxi on Naberezhnaya. Footsteps faded into the mist. Morning loomed in the water.

– That's it?

– Yes. See you!

Paweł Reszka – a journalist, war correspondent (including in Georgia and Ukraine), and author of bestselling books. He collaborated with "Rzeczpospolita" as a correspondent in Moscow, and was the head of the investigative department at "Dziennik." He wrote for "Tygodnik Powszechny" and "Newsweek Polska." Since 2019, he has been a journalist for the weekly "Polityka." His most acclaimed books include "Mali bogowie. O znieczulicy polskich lekarzy" (Little Gods. About the Apathy of Polish Doctors), "Chciwość. Jak nas oszukują wielkie firmy" (Greed. How Big Companies Deceive Us), and "Czarni" (The Blacks). He is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Andrzej Woyciechowski Radio ZET Award (2010 and 2022). He also received the Radio ZET Special Award "Journalist of the Decade" (2019).