Moscow XXL

What's authentic? I was in Moscow a few months ago. The British Council ran their wonderful The Network Effect programme. Take the Seven Sisters in Moscow. Seven huge Stalinist highrises put up by uncle Joe himself. Everyone says they're so authentic of Moscow. But they date back only to the fifties and Stalin had 7.000 buildings and 368 churches demolished to make room for his skyscrapers and towering housing blocks. Moscow was built to impress. Everything is larger than life. So is downtown Manhattan, but that has a streetlevel life of its own. Moscow is muscles. It is supposed to say: hey, we're the greatest. If the city needed a new slogan, I proposed to name it Moscow XXL. 'Cause that's what it is.