The first time I went, a chill penetrated deep into my spine. Two chills, in fact: the crisp, eye-piercing cold that only a Russian winter can achieve -- and the sensation that somewhere in the icy expanse three people had been shot dead, their faces destroyed.
But the Gorky Park that I was walking briskly through and the Gorky Park of the Martin Cruz Smith novel were not, whatever my furtive imagination was telling me, the same thing. As far as I was aware, no murders had been committed among the fir trees and, in any case, the set for the film had been Helsinki, not Moscow.
This was the early to mid-1980s, the tentative start of the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Soviet authorities were hardly going to give permission for a film about nasty KGB men and dodgy American stooges of the Kremlin to be made in their back yard.
PHOTO: AP
No matter the fake setting, the film struck me as not that unrealistic after all. This was the time -- my first stint as a correspondent in Moscow began in 1985 -- when there was only one choice of ice cream (better than any of the Western equivalents that would follow), there were no designer labels on display, and, yes, people did queue for just about everything and foreigners were considered exotic.
Over the years, the park changed, but not as rapidly as the rest of the city. It retains even now a certain old-fashioned charm. The Park of Culture, to give it its proper name, was opened in 1928, the first of its kind in the USSR.
It was the closest the country knew to a theme park -- or at least a park with a few themes in it. There was a boating pond, a fairground, a sports ground, an open-air theater with seating for 10,000 and a sculpture garden.
Rules were strictly enforced, and trouble was in store for anyone who disobeyed, particularly foreigners who did not understand that the brittle bumper cars were not there to be bumped into.
Most of all, Gorky Park was about hanging out. In the summer, that meant sauntering around, catching the sun or hopping on to one of the hydrofoils from the jetty for a trip along the Moscow river.
The major holidays were particularly boisterous. On May 9, Victory Day of the Great Patriotic War, veterans would come to the park after the Red Square parade, celebrating the rest of the day on benches, armed with bottles of vodka and picnics. For a foreigner this was a great place to people-watch: the families with their prams of Victorian vintage, the young couples dating and kissing.
The rustling of leaves was a frequent sound in the park.
During the period of peres-troika and glasnost, the gradual opening-up of Russian society, rock bands were allowed to play.
My friend Art Troitsky was then the country's most famous pop impresario and one of my more bizarre experiences was going along with him to watch one of Russia's first rappers play in the middle of the park, drinking German beer from the nearby stand-up beer hall.
It was in the winter that Gorky Park came into its own. As soon as the temperature dipped below freezing, water would be poured over the paths to make an enormous outdoor ice skating rink.
Policemen in their greatcoats would glide on the ice alongside elderly couples and girls holding hands. Marching music would blare from the loudspeakers placed all around the park. I remember wondering all those years ago whether I too would hear the sound of gunshots as the organs of Soviet security decided to bump someone off.
I had had my fair share of contretemps with them: once they slashed my car tyres, another time they tampered with my brakes - -- or at least I assumed they did.
But that was the attraction of Moscow and Gorky Park in particular - -- a mix of the popular, the crowded, and the suddenly quiet and furtive.
Has it changed? To a degree ... the ice cream is globalized, the beer is globalized, the buggies and the clothing are globalized. But the atmosphere remains distinctive.
This is still the best place in Moscow's city center to hang out in the summer -- if you can't get away to a country dacha -- and it is one of the most enchanting and safe city venues for ice skating the world has to offer. I suspect the KGB, or its successor organization, the mafia, knew of better places in which to dispose of awkward people.
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