The graffiti I wrote about in January 2019 are now gone. The walls have been painted greenish blue, forever concealing from public view the two cityscapes that once graced them. One was an image of old, pre-Petrine Moscow based on a watercolor by Apollinary Vasnetsov. The other (below, left) showed the business district known as Moscow City (Moskva Siti). The picture on the right is an actual view of that area from the Sparrow Hills (Vorobyovy Gory) on a cloudy day.
The buffing of the graffiti was completely unnecessary but very much in line with Sergey Sobyanin‘s policies. The mayor of Moscow has enormous public funds at his disposal and a spineless city council to rubber-stamp all his expenditures. Sobyanin seems to be consistent in his plan to make Moscow’s residential districts as humanly unlivable as possible. He hates trees and low-rise buildings but adores barren skyscraper blocks based on the ugliest Chinese models. What’s the use of crying over some graffiti when this could be the future?