The City of Theater-Museums

The NYTimes ran an article today about how Moscow is experiencing an unprecedented boom in theater construction. There were two quotes in this article that struck me as quite illustrative of the contemporary Russian bureaucratic and artistic mentalities:

The theater's Web site, et-cetera.ru, cites Mayor Luzhkov 's praise for the results: "It's very unusual, but very beautiful. You don't even have to put on plays. It will be enough for viewers to simply come here and look at the theater."

"In no other city in the world do you see what's happening in Moscow," Mr. Kalyagin said in a recent interview. "In no other country is there so much theater construction."