On Sunday afternoon I went to ВДНХ, an old Communist exhibition center filled with worker-statues and ornate buildings dedicated to the former Soviet republics. The acronym (pronounced vvv-dddnnn-khkhkh (that last part like you're trying to cough something up)) stands for something about the amazingness of the national economy.

The layout is large buildings semi-haphazardly arranged around a huge expanse of asphalt with a fountain in the center. That kind of sprawl is common here--it's as if Russia says hey, we've got more space than we know what to do with, let's build things as big as we possibly can. A lot of people were on rollerblades, weaving in and out of families pushing strollers and meandering groups of (Russian) tourists. After trekking the entire paved length of the place I was jealous of the rollerbladers--ВДНХ covers an area bigger than the Principality of Monaco, or so Wikipedia says.


Some of the buildings were really affecting. From a distance, I saw the golden spires reaching up towards the sky and the statues glorifying the common people, and they conveyed a powerful sense of hope and a vision of a better, alternative future. It was really moving--the effect was diluted when I got closer and heard Justin Timberlake blaring through loudspeakers and saw that the buildings were filled with little stores hawking every type of souvenir crud you could possibly imagine. But for a moment I was honestly caught off guard by the architecture's ability to (I suppose I want to use the word "manipulate," even though it saddles the Communist builders with cynical motives that I don't think they entirely deserve) manipulate my visceral response.

The only other time I've felt like that (in a man-made setting, at least) was during Mass at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. I had just finished a two-week hike from Salas (kind of near Oviedo, in the north of Spain) along the old Christian pilgrimage route (El Camino de Santiago). The tradition is to go to Mass at the end of the pilgrimage, and hug the statue of the saint and rest your hand on a stone carving of his head (there's a hand-shaped hole worn on the stone from hundreds of years of hand-resting). The music and the architecture and the crowd and the light somehow produced in me that same emotional response, and I freaked out a bit and (to the befuddlement of my German companion) refused to go near the statue or the carving.

It's a feeling I've also gotten while watching a really fantastic thunderstorm envelop a canyon out West, though there I was free from the sense of being manipulated. It's as though I'm part of something bigger than myself that I'll never entirely understand but can give me muddy access to some sort of hidden truth. I wonder why, in evolutionary terms, that's in the repertoire of human emotions (I also wonder why so many scientists sneeze at evolutionary psychology). It was fascinating and a little frightening to experience Communism and Catholicism's efficiency in producing and distilling that feeling.