Moscow to Krasnoyarsk

Day one: (August 12) Arrival in Moscow, accommodation in Moscow State University dorms.
Day two: (August 13) Breakfast in a charming dorm café, followed by a visit to the University’s Museum of Soil Science, where we were treated to a long and tedious lecture on the zonation of Siberian soils and biomes. After lunch in the University’s main cafeteria, we had a boat tour and walk through central Moscow (Red Square, Manezh Square, Aleksander’s Garden and Kremlin. Evening transfer to Domodenovo Airport, and departure on overnight flight to Krasnoyarsk.

Moscow, Domodenovo Airport, Tuesday, 13 August 10:15 p.m.

We are packed tightly into the cabin of an Ilushin 86 of ‘Kras Air’, one of the many ‘baby Aeroflots’ that fly the internal routes in this vast country. It is the end of another hot, muggy day, and here in the plane, it is even hotter, despite various nozzely apertures making hissing sounds. All they blow out is a pathetic stream of hot air. We are about to take off on a four hour-four time zone flight to Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei River. We will arrive there shortly after six, tomorrow morning. To me this is really the start of our expedition. I am, however, glad that we had the two days in Moscow, because there were a lot of wrinkles to be ironed out, which would have been much more irksome if they had to be addressed once in the bush. I do not expect to get a lot of sleep tonight; I will write a bit about today, and then make the most of the situation, and hopefully catch a couple of hours.

A few of us wanted to see the Tretyakov Art Gallery. One of the Russian Scientists of the Severtsov Institute, Dr. Kostya Rogovin offered to take us, and give us a tour of the gallery. So, we skipped the city tour, and set off for a look at Russian art. We had only a three-hour slot left, and despite the speed of the Metro trains, it took us an hour to get to the gallery. Considering that we had to come back the same way, we only had one hour to spend with what must be one of the largest art collections in the world. The gallery, however, was exceptional. Kostya took us through a selection of rooms, starting with the 18th Century beginning of secular Russian art, and ending with the 1920s. For some reason, the Tretyakov has separated the late 19th and 20th Century art into traditional representational work, which we saw, and the movement towards abstraction (Kandinsky, Malewitch, etc), which we did not see because it is in another building. This makes it very difficult for the visitor to get a balanced view of Russian art and esthetic philosophy of that all-important period. Kostya was very knowledgeable, and dragged us from hall to hall to see specific pictures that represented important movements, and provided an informative and interesting commentary. He has a romantic view of art, and brought us to a room full of giant, heroic canvasses of his favorite Russian artist, Alexander Ivanov. This kind of art does not fit my definition of great art, but he talked about Ivanov’s work with such passion, that I started to feel what he was talking about, and started to see these paintings as representing an important part of the Russian psyche.