![]() In place of cheesy funfairs, drunken soldiers, and an apocalyptic wasteland of post-Soviet broken concrete, the park is now full of free-Wi-Fi-using, bicycling, nonalcoholic-mojito-sipping young things catching the late-summer rays. And you had to pay to go in, despite it being one of the few large public spaces in the capital.īut this summer the "wind of change" has again come to Gorky Park. Moscow's Night Wolves biker gang, the local answer to the Hell's Angels, had their lair in the park's depths. ![]() ![]() Gorky Park was where poor Muscovites would take cheap dates-a wilderness of garish carnival rides, loud pop music, and overpriced kebabs. As a young reporter for The Moscow Times back in the mid-1990s, I'd nearly been beaten up there by drunken paratroopers. To me, it was mostly famous as a place to avoid. And then of course there was that Scorpions song-"follow the Moskva, down to Gorky Park, listening to the wind, of chaaaaange," etc. To foreigners, it was the venue (and title) of Martin Cruz Smith's 1981 novel of faceless corpses and cutthroat Soviet black marketeering. For Muscovites, their city's biggest green space used to be known as a place of regimented Soviet-era fun, full of strolling proletarian families eating cheap ice cream to the sound of military bands. Gorky Park is famous for many things, not many of them good.
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