The large vertical sign in the background has PARKING in Cyrillic letters. Progress: were there enough cars on the street in Soviet times to require parking garages?
I don’t know; I borrowed the photo from a FReeper, forgotten their screen name, who posted the photo with this headline, and link:
‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of Muslims Flood Moscow Metro, Streets To Take Part In Holiday Marking End Of Ramadan
Friday, 10 September 2010 01:33
[snip]
The online version of Gazeta this morning offered an example of how the mainline media portrayed this holiday with various people talking about “tens of thousands of Muslims,” “an enormous flood of people,” and long lines at metro ticket counters and on the roads leading to the mosques ( http://www.gzt.ru/megapolis/transportation/-prazdnuyuschie-musuljmane-zablokirovali-severo-/324175.html?from=1columnupfromindex ).
And the Interfax news agency reported much the same but making the potentially explosive point that at the metro ticket counters were “enormous lines of young people of Caucasus and Central Asian physiognomy” with “some of them in national dress traditional for Muslim peoples” ( http://www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=37283 ).