LETTER FROM MOSCOW: Strolling beneath the lime trees which line the walkway around Patriarch's Ponds, residents of this tranquil corner of Moscow are quietly celebrating a rare Russian victory for public opinion over political power, writes Dan McLaughlin
The city's pugnacious mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, made an uncharacteristic retreat last week when he admitted that city hall's plans to remodel the ponds were doomed because locals would not acquiesce to the prospect of a statue of Jesus Christ floating on the water and a six storey-high kerosene stove rising from its depths.
A chastened Mr Luzhkov also acknowledged that a huge fountain would not be appropriate for a Moscow neighbourhood immortalised in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, a Soviet satire which features a primus stove of a more conventional size and a character representing Jesus Christ.
"They wanted to turn it into a circus, a theme-park based on Bulgakov," said Mrs Alla Simanovskaya yesterday, walking with her grandson in the early spring sunshine and glancing at the machines currently relaying the foundations of the ponds.
"They even talked about putting a car park under there to make money, and they would have had to tear up the trees to build that mad primus stove."
On freezing days through the winter, Russians came out in their hundreds to oppose Mr Luzhkov's plans for the ponds, where the devil appears to two writers at the start of Bulgakov's surreal masterpiece, which was banned for decades in the Soviet era and is arguably Russia's favourite 20th century novel.
Their victory means that the small park, which was created in 1813, will now gain only about 50 more lime trees, period street lamps and a sculpture of Bulgakov reclining on one of the benches.
The area draw locals all year around to one of the few quiet enclaves of a cacophonous, massive city.
It is not the first time that Mr Luzhkov's architectural plans have enraged Muscovites.
His hulking, five-storey statue of Peter the Great by the Moscow river is widely loathed, as are the grotesque figures of fairytale characters which he commissioned to adorn a square alongside the Kremlin.
Mr Andrei Brezhnev, nephew of former Soviet leader Leonid and a campaigner against plans to change the ponds, said a unique corner of the city had been saved.
"I've been going there for years, as people do, to meet girls, to take their kids, to relax," he told The Irish Times.
"It's not somewhere that needs changing - it's a quiet, calm place where every generation can enjoy themselves and escape their worries.
"Moscow hasn't got many such places left."