It’s been a busy summer of play for the citizens of Moscow.
In one of the city’s manicured parks, a wave pool churned, inviting people to surf. Along a lush boulevard, residents played paddle tennis, pétanque and croquet. Fourteen open-air theaters, one of them floating on water, offered opera, drama and even clowns riding unicycles. Merry-go-rounds were in constant motion. Everything (except for the surfing coach) was free, including sunscreen and water on sunny days and raincoats and blankets on wet ones.
It is all part of a monthslong festival called Summer in Moscow, a shining emblem of the government’s multibillion-dollar efforts to turn the Russian capital into a giant carnival and keep Muscovites in a state of perpetual distraction from the grinding war in Ukraine.
“It is simply impossible to escape, and you cannot not get involved,” Nina L. Khrushcheva, a Russian American scholar who divides her time between Moscow and New York, said of the festival. “You must participate in it all.”
The invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin appears determined to continue despite U.S. diplomatic exertions, has sent tens of thousands of Russians to their deaths, strained the country’s economy and further isolated Russia from the West.
But for a majority of Russians, life has never been better.
In Moscow, home to 13 million people, more than a decade of immense investment has turned the city into one of the world’s most modern metropolises. Events like Summer in Moscow keep the focus on these improvements and push the war as far as possible from the public mind, even as Russia bombards Kyiv with missiles and drones and continues pursuing its maximalist goals in Ukraine.
In July, 57 percent of those surveyed by the Levada Center, an independent Russian pollster, said they were satisfied with their lives, the highest number since such polls began in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Still, the pact between the government and Russians that has produced such sentiment cannot last forever, Ms. Khrushcheva said. There are already cracks. The government budget to prop up the appearance of plenty is running low. Pro-war radicals encouraged by the Kremlin, she said, have grown increasingly angry that most Russians don’t care about the war. “This summer might be the turning point,” Ms. Khrushcheva said.
For now, though, it’s still a brave new world of diversion in Moscow.
As the festival entered its final weeks, you could not walk through the city’s pristine, recently renovated pedestrian zones, shaded by new trees, without stumbling on a government-sponsored fair featuring goods like scented candles, furniture or toys, all made in Russia. You could not ride in an ultramodern Russian-made subway train or a new electric bus without seeing a screen advertising some enthusiasm-instilling activity.
00A surreal oasis — a forest of palm and olive trees, a grove of bamboo — erupted next to Red Square, all centered on a fake tropical waterfall. City Hall announced that 53 million flowers had been planted this year, blanketing every bridge in the city center in color.
“I fell in love with Moscow with a renewed force,” Oleg Torbosov, a resident who works in real estate, wrote on social media.
Mr. Torbosov described a walk through central Moscow. “I didn’t see a single homeless person, beggar, freak,” he wrote.
“The people were beautiful, stylishly dressed and sure of themselves,” he said. “They were smiling. You could feel a sense of safety.”
Across the city, there are relatively few reminders of the war, and most can be easily overlooked. Recruitment information centers dot subway stations, and ads offer up to $65,000 in exchange for signing a military contract, a symbol of what many Russians see as a war outsourced to soldiers of fortune.
The “out of sight, out of mind” ethos has enraged some pro-war hawks. “Is the war really going on somewhere?” Vladimir Solovyov, a state propaganda firebrand, fumed during one of his talk shows this month. “You can go out in a major city on Friday and have no idea.”
Mikhail Bocharov, an economist who once took part in anti-Kremlin rallies but now supports the Russian Army, said that he believed “there cannot be such a feast at a time of war.”
“People collect money” and “sew nets and socks” for soldiers, he said while taking his son to one of the activities along Tsvetnoy Boulevard in Moscow. “People in Donetsk have no running water,” he added, referring to a crisis in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine.
“And here you see this endless feast,” Mr. Bocharov said. “This is called schizophrenia. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Aleksandr Usoltsev, a tour guide, said that Moscow’s investment in mass activities helped people deal with the stress from reading “worrying news.”
“There is a need to calm them down, to show that everything is fine,” he said.
At a large exhibition opposite the Kremlin, the unmistakable message was not just that life is fine, but that it is improving and will only get better.
The exhibition chronicled the capital’s transformation under Mayor Sergei S. Sobyanin, with vivid examples one could touch and even talk to.
One pavilion visualized New York City’s subway on video screens: leaking and greasy, full of scary people and gloomy strangers. Through that installation people walked into a visualization of a Moscow subway station: shining, safe and spotless. You can pay at turnstiles just with your face.
The city’s turnaround highlights the power of an authoritarian government equipped with a city budget of nearly $70 billion. Today’s Moscow is nothing like the grim capital of the dying Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The subway network has expanded by almost 100 miles over the past decade, with four new stations set to open in September and two additional lines being built. Moscow’s streets and buildings are pristine and brightly lit, except for the Kremlin, apparently for fear of Ukrainian drones. European tourists have been partly replaced with visitors from the Middle East, China and South Asia. They pop into the city’s buzzing restaurants, where service is impeccable and food is often outstanding.
Despite sanctions and other restrictions related to the war, giant malls and stores are stuffed with Italian leather bags, exclusive French wines and other luxury items. Russian retailers have replaced Western companies that left, offering goods and experiences that are often indistinguishable from what was available before.
Government agencies, which used to provide a universally humiliating experience of standing in line for hours to face a grumpy, often corrupt bureaucrat, have been remade into comfortable lounges. Visitors get a free cappuccino if their waiting time is longer than 15 minutes. Officials on the whole are friendly, and if they are not, you can give them a low mark on a screen installed at each desk.
On your phone, you can open a bank account or get a digital SIM card in less than a minute. More than 1,500 government services are available online. Basic groceries are delivered in 15 minutes, often by migrant workers from Central Asia who scurry around the city on electric bikes.
Not everyone in Russia has access to the abundance of Moscow. Many Russians struggle.
Propelled by war expenditures, inflation has been spiraling upward, forcing the Central Bank to raise a key interest rate. The federal budget deficit is growing, and the country’s rainy day fund will be exhausted within two years, according to estimates.
But walking through the capital, these troubles seem far away.
“There has been such a terrible separation — many of my friends had to leave,” said Olga, a lifelong Muscovite who declined to give her last name out of fear of repercussions. “But I am happy to stay in such a beautiful and comfortable city as Moscow has become recently.”
Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
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