the Diggers
In 1997, not long after I had first arrived in Moscow, my friend Sergei told me about the Diggers. They were a group of sensitive, educated people who had turned their backs on modern life and retreated to the network of tunnels and secret bunkers beneath the city. There they had formed a new society that was fairer and more just than the surface one. It was dark, beautiful, surreal - precisely the kind of world I wanted to live in.
With Moscow being the size it was, why, there had to be someone living down there. But what I really liked about Sergei’s story was this: these “Diggers” had chosen to go underground. They had not been driven there by homelessness or indigence or madness. They were intellectuals and artists, carving out something new, by choice.
A year later I left Moscow. But all the time I was away I thought about getting back. And I had a plan. Once I returned, I’d make contact with the Diggers. I wouldn’t join, that would be going too far; but I’d befriend them, and thus gain access to their secret world. I might spend about six months down there, studying their rites and rituals, then write about my experiences.
[Daniel Kalder, here]
6 months ago