Moscow Diary
Francesca de Bardin
By An American Living In Moscow
She has lived in San Francisco, New York, Paris, and a small town in the south of France. With both US and French passports she could live almost anywhere, and she chose Moscow. Moscow Diary is the book she wrote when the Russia described in the headlines and the Russia where she lived were as different as night and day.
A writer with a door to open
Francesca did not set out to explain Russia to the world. She set out to live in it. The book began when she could no longer pretend that the Russia she was reading about, from afar, was the Russia she was walking through.
She becomes a companion to the reader, not a lecturer: a woman of traditional temper, widely traveled, plain-spoken, who arrived in the capital in the winter of 2022 with only two Russian friends, speaking almost no Russian. She brought with her a lifetime of new beginnings.
If you have ever suspected that a headline is a poor substitute for a life, she wrote this for you. She will tell you what her days became. She would like you to judge them yourself.
“The first question Russians ask me is: Why are you living here?”
Francesca is clear about the form, and a reader deserves the same clarity. This is her experience: the challenges, the surprises, the humor, and the people who changed her experience of the country. History and practical life appear when she needs them, the way they appear for any resident, in the middle of a day.
The days themselves, the meals, the manners of a Russian house, and the rooms and parks she would share with a friend belong to the diary. On this site you can meet the woman who wrote them down, and decide whether you want to go in with her.
Plenty of books will tell you what to think about Russia. Very few are written by an American of long experience — seasoned, unsentimental, still game — who pays her own bills in Moscow and likes the neighbors. She has a conservative temperament and a traveler’s eye. She is not trying to recruit you. She is trying to show you the street.
Readers who loved a great city once, and then left it, will feel a kinship with her before they agree with her. So will readers who are tired of being rushed. She takes the long way around a question, because the question — what is a life in Russia actually like? — cannot be answered in a headline.
The skeptical reader
You have noticed that the news and a country are not the same thing. You would like a witness who lives there, and who is willing to be precise.
The reader of lives
You like memoir when it has kitchens, errands, friendships, and a person you can imagine sitting beside. You do not need a thesis first.
The reader who may go
You are curious about Moscow itself: how a foreigner manages, what the culture asks of a guest, how residents indulge their passions. She has walked that path and kept the notes.
Doors she leaves closed, until the book
How a newcomer moves, shops, and finds her feet in a capital of 970 square miles and thirteen million residents. She kept the record. It is the heart of the diary, and its particulars are saved for you.
The people
Friends who urged her to come, and how the extraordinary kindness of strangers touched her deeply. Their stories are hers to tell, in full, in their place.
Culture, up close
She found a society that says “we” where she had been taught to say “I.” How that “we” sounds at a table, and on the street. How “we” permeates all of life was the mystery she decided to explore.
The table
She has always cared about food: markets, home cooking, a dinner that turns into a friendship. Moscow gave her a new cuisine to love. The particulars are saved for you.
The city
Museums, music, gardens, and metro stations built as palaces. She details a quality of life that is unsurpassed. A Russian historian compiled a list of books about Russia that is listed in the book.
She tells it herself
Francesca speaks about what living in Moscow has been like for her.
Three reasons to open it
1
Two words
She reached Moscow able to say yes and no. Everything that followed — the help, the mistakes, the affection — is the story.
2
The question
Why would an American live here? She is asked it in shops, in taxis, and at dinner. She stopped answering in passing. She answered in a book.
3
The distance
Between the country described in the West and the country she inhabits. She invites you to walk it with her, at the length of a book.