"How can we know what our future is today, when we do not know what our history will be tomorrow." That Russian saying encapsulated the continuing revision of history during the Soviet period in which events and, more frequently personalities, were airbrushed into non-existence, writes Seamus Martin.The new Russia resounds with echoes of the old. The National Historical Museum has reopened after 11 years of renovation. All exhibitions and artifacts referring to the 75 years of the Soviet Union have disappeared.
The museum's deputy director, Ms Nadezhda Maltseva, told The Irish Times that she would be glad to exhibit items from that part of Russia's history but money has not been forthcoming from the state.
"We used to have 48 rooms of exhibits and now we only have 13. We simply don't have the resources to display everything," she said before a militia (police) officer ordered an end to the conversation.
The grimmest reminder of that Soviet past is a huge grey building on the banks of the Moscow river. Officially called No 1 Serafimovicha Street, it is known as Dom na Naberezhnoi (the House on the Embankment).
Once it housed the communist elite. Six politburo members lived there alongside 63 People's Commissars and Ministers, 94 deputies, 19 marshals and admirals.
The luxury apartment block turned into a house of horrors in 1934 when Stalin's terror began. One of the first to be taken away and never seen again was the Red Army hero of the Civil War, Marshal Tukhachevsky. From then on the midnight knock became commonplace at No 1 Serafimovicha.
Relatives of those taken away received notes to say that the persons in custody had been denied correspondence for 10 years - they had been killed.
The terror which reigned there was depicted in Yuri Trifonov's celebrated novel, The House on the Embankment. A small museum dedicated to those who died is open for brief periods two days a week.
Nowadays with the atmosphere of evil beginning to wear off, the House on the Embankment has become a fashionable address for Moscow's new capitalist community. Flats there range from $200,000 to $400,000 for those with views of the river.