Tucker Carlson is too smart to sound like Tom Friedman, sweeping aside facts with the alacrity of the machines that sweep the floors of the Moscow Metro, because no substance—neither the most potent soap nor the most pungent solvent—can blot out the image of Lenin and the legacy of Stalin. For Carlson to say otherwise is no oversight, because it takes skill to overlook the truth about Moscow; it takes purpose to ignore the symbols of tyranny. And now, after his ode to the city’s underground, it takes faith to believe anything Carlson says, or rather it takes a true believer—a fanboy or fellow traveler—to say Carlson acts in good faith.
Carlson misreads the red stars over Moscow too. The result is cosmic censorship, or the disappearance of anything contrary to what Carlson says, because it’s impossible not to see these stars—the five-pointed symbols of the Soviet Union—throughout the city. It is, however, easy to see what is missing from this world of false prophets and fake miracles known as Socialist Realism: reality itself.
All art in the Metro is in the service of Socialist Realism, and as subtle as the hammer with which the revolutionary forges the New Soviet Man. In every scene, in every station, the image of the leader of the revolution predominates. In his image, according to his ideology, the commandment reads: “Thou shalt have no God before me.”
All art in the Metro is propaganda of this kind, with unkindness toward non-believers and individuals of conscience. The only truth is the mutual understanding that everything’s a lie. The Russian word for this exercise is vranyo, the art of lying or the game of pretending, for which survival is a matter of silence; from which silence breeds consent, because the state not only has a monopoly on violence, but the means to do violence to history and memory.
All deliberate and visible distortions spring from this monopoly, reducing a multiplicity of forms to a single function: the immortalization of a lie. The effect on art and architecture is the glorification of a dead regime below ground and the preservation of a dead leader above it. The effect on Carlson is to talk like a defector to Russia, with unqualified praise of Moscow. The net effect is to render him not only unreliable, but untrustworthy.
At issue is Carlson’s assertion that Moscow is free of buildings that imprison and oppress the soul, when in fact the city’s a monument to control. Monumentalism is itself the continuation of control through architecture, imprinting itself on Moscow with an abundance of excess. All Stalinist architecture in Moscow is monumental too, with an emphasis on seven buildings (the Seven Sisters) which bear the same symbol of oppression: the Soviet coat of arms.
Take, for example, the main building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The design evokes the Woolworth Building and the Palace of Westminster, but rejects the spirit of Anglo-American architecture. The rejection is obvious, for the building has no mystery. The rejection is willful, for the building has no integrity. The rejection is total, for the building has no soul.
To be curious in necessary matters is to search out a matter, regardless of politics. Tucker Carlson violates this rule, and with it the rules of honest and thorough reporting. He chooses the way of the half-truth, with no effort to broaden his understanding. He deceives himself.
