Hasan dedicates this travelogue to the memory of her parents Mohammed Khaliq Siddiqui and Saeeda Khaliq; her uncles, Mohammed Atiq Siddiqui and Abdur Rashid; and her aunts, Hamida Rashid and Aqila Hakeem, whose progressive commitments and associations shaped the radical political milieu of their extended family in early 1950s Lucknow.Russia surprised me with an arresting contrast: an understated, virtually unassuming everyday life set against the exceptional opulence of its architecture. On a short visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, with a friend, I encountered a past that had once been an important part of our lives and our families. The Soviet Union was not an abstraction; it was part of our political and intellectual world. Seeing it for the first time meant encountering memory and change together.The first surprise was language. English is hardly spoken, even by many of the younger generation. Russia has recently tightened its language law, requiring Russian on public signs, labels and other consumer information. Yet, the contradictions are everywhere. On some high streets and in malls, the billboards of international luxury brands remain conspicuously in English. The tension between an assertion of Russian linguistic identity and the ubiquitous language of the global economy and commerce is difficult to miss.A portrait of Vladimir Lenin surrounded by Soviet citizens and banners at the Novokuznetskaya Metro Station in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Zoya Hasan.What was most striking, however, was the social landscape. Russia seemed remarkably egalitarian. Everyone appeared middle class, with little visible ostentation and far less disparity than one encounters in many Western European societies and capitals today, let alone in New York and other highly unequal American cities. There was no visible sign of poverty either. Education and healthcare in Russia are not entirely state-supported, but the state continues to provide a substantial public foundation for both. This is surely one of the enduring legacies of the Soviet era.People were generally low-key and going about their business, though there was also something restrained about them, a sense of being controlled and disciplined in public. It was difficult to know how much of this belonged to the culture of Russian life and how much to the atmosphere of contemporary Russia.Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Photo: Zoya Hasan.Both cities are extraordinarily beautiful, though in very different ways. Moscow impresses with its scale and monuments; St Petersburg has an elegance quite unlike Moscow. Modelled in large part on European, particularly French and Parisian, architectural traditions, the city’s grand avenues, palaces and churches create a monumental landscape of breathtaking beauty. The Neva flowing through the city adds another dimension, its bridges and embankments giving the landscape a theatrical quality.What was also striking was the remarkable homogeneity of the two cities. There were few visible immigrants or people of colour compared with most major Western European capitals. Coming from India, where diversity and pluralism are an everyday experience, this absence is immediately noticeable. So too is the relative absence of tourists. We encountered surprisingly few foreigners in either city, and hardly any Indians (who are otherwise great travellers), perhaps reflecting the effects of the war in Ukraine and the recent drone attacks. Yet the flights to and from Moscow were choc-a-bloc with young Indians travelling to Russia for study and work.We happened to be in Moscow when the recently concluded parliamentary elections were taking place. Yet, there was no visible sign of an election: no crowds milling around, no campaigning, flags or political excitement. For someone accustomed to the festivity of Indian elections, the absence of any visible sign of elections was astonishing. Russian elections take place within a tightly managed political system, a controlled democracy under a long-time leader with little space for dissent, but one did not have to be told this. The near invisibility of an election in a city going about its daily life was itself an observation about the system and how it operates. In India, elections are impossible to escape; in Moscow, we could easily have missed one altogether. We learned about it after coming across an online news report about the elections.We also saw a ballet at the Bolshoi – an opera-ballet – and were completely captivated. Though it was in Russian, the language hardly mattered. We were absorbed by the movement, the music and the ballet, but above all by the theatre itself: its magnificence, atmosphere and sense of occasion. What stood out most was the audience’s remarkable concentration, a collective stillness and attentiveness that seemed nearly total. For those three hours, the theatre and its audience seemed to inhabit a world and a history of their own.The Winter Palace in St Petersbug. Photo: Zoya Hasan.And then there is the Hermitage, housed in the Winter Palace. Its extraordinary grandeur and splendour are overwhelming. Although we saw only a small part of its vast collection, spread across several buildings and floors around an expansive square in the heart of the city, standing inside the Winter Palace, surrounded by such extravagant evidence of imperial wealth and a gilded age, made the social gulf between rulers and ruled palpable. One could understand, visually and historically, why the old order became such a powerful object of revolutionary opposition and popular resistance, and how the conditions for the Russian Revolution took shape. The sheer opulence of the Winter Palace makes the origins of the Leninist revolution easier to imagine.Strong reminders of the Soviet past, however, remained in some of the city’s most prominent spaces. The Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square remains a riveting sight. Lenin lies there, surrounded by the Kremlin and the monumental architecture of Soviet power. The revolutionary pantheon has not disappeared – it stands beside him – nor have Marx and Engels. Their statues still stand prominently in the city, as if the Soviet past refuses to entirely recede. The statue of Marx is particularly imposing, overlooking the Bolshoi Theatre in the heart of Moscow’s cultural district. Engels stands opposite one of the great Russian Orthodox churches. The juxtaposition is telling: Marx and Engels, the Revolution and the Church, Soviet power and Russian Orthodoxy occupying the same urban landscape. And a reminder that history can be rewritten, but not obliterated.Perhaps this is what makes travelling through Russia so intriguing. The past has not disappeared; nor has the present fully replaced it. Imperial grandeur, revolutionary history, the Soviet inheritance and contemporary Russia coexist in the same streets and buildings, if not in the minds of people. For a visitor to a country that once occupied such a significant place in our collective imagination, the journey becomes an encounter with what remains of the past and with how profoundly it has changed.Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.