voyager 1992

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

"Voyager" starts in mystery, and intrigues us. It continues with intelligence, and absorbs us. And then it ends in melodrama, and disappoints us - not least because characters as smart as these should be able to solve the movie's central question long before they do.

The film, set in the 1950s, stars Sam Shepard , very dry and analytical, as an engineer who stands aside from everything, as if detached from life itself. Once it was not so with him. Once he was in love. That was long ago. Now, on board an airplane, he is faced with a situation many of us have fantasized: The plane is going to crash, and he has plenty of time to think about it. He does. He does not panic, and indeed seems absorbed in all of the mechanics of the approaching disaster.

When he is spared, he seems detached from that, too. But through a coincidence he has met a man on the plane who can give him news about a friend from his past, and the news sets him off on an odyssey through strange places to find a woman he did not know was still alive, the woman he once loved. Along the way on this journey, aboard a ship, he meets a young woman ( Julie Delpy ), and feels an instinctive closeness to her. The feeling is returned, up to a point.

They decide to travel together through southern Europe, sharing a car, he playing the mentor role as they visit the ruins and remnants of earlier civilizations. Eventually he learns something we have been half-expecting all along, the name of the young woman's mother. She is the woman who was once his lover. Does that make the girl . . .

Don't be in a hurry to ask. The movie isn't. And in a way the possibility of incest is the least interesting thing about this movie, even though the screenplay treats it as the most important.

That wise critic Stanley Kauffmann, of the New Republic, observes about incest that it makes an unsatisfactory topic for fiction, because we do not know how to feel about it. Of course we are against forced incest - child abuse and so on. But what about accidental incest, in which the parties discover too late what their real relationship is? Does that fascinate us? Not much, because almost by definition it's of interest only to the involved parties. They can be expected to have strong feelings, but we don't share them because, when you get right down to it, we're not related to them.

"Voyager," based on the novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, has been directed by Volker Schlondorff (" The Tin Drum ") as if he, too, is more interested in what the characters say than in how they're related. He makes the Shepard character into a kind of man not often seen in the movies, a literate engineer, given to dispassionate analysis. The daughter is pretty and smart and, like many young women, too quick to believe romantic love is an answer to anything.

Her mother, played by the gifted Polish actress Barbara Sukowa , has great reason to be angry with Shepard because of what happened long ago, but (as we can see in flashback) she should also be angry at the conventions of the Idiot Plot syndrome, which prevented both her and Shepard from saying absolutely obvious things that would have greatly lessened their pain.

The end of "Voyager" does not leave us with very much. The film follows its melodramatic compulsion right into oblivion, like a lemming.

Thinking back, we realize we've met some interesting people and heard some good talk, and that it's shame all those contrived plot points about incest got in the way of what was otherwise a perfectly stimulating relationship. This is a movie that is good in spite of what it thinks it's about.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Riddle of Fire

Robert daniels.

Asphalt City

Glenn kenny.

Apples Never Fall

Cristina escobar.

The Old Oak

Matt zoller seitz.

The Fall Guy

Brian tallerico, film credits.

Voyager (1992)

110 minutes

Sam Shepard as Faber

Julie Delpy as Sabeth

Barbara Sukowa as Hannah

Directed by

• Volker Schlondorff

Latest blog posts

The Movies That Underwent Major Changes After Their Festival Premiere

Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives Is A Spinoff Stuck In Limbo

Preview of Tributes at the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Pioneering Actor-Producer Terry Carter Dies

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Challengers Link to Challengers
• Abigail Link to Abigail
• Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• The Jinx: Season 2
• The Big Door Prize: Season 2
• Knuckles: Season 1
• Them: Season 2
• Velma: Season 2
• Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
• Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
• We're Here: Season 4

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Baby Reindeer Link to Baby Reindeer
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

DC Animated Movies In Order: How to Watch 54 Original and Universe Films

The Best TV Seasons Certified Fresh at 100%

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

‘Seen on Screen’ Podcast: A Celebration of Universal Stories 

Watch An Exclusive Pixar Studio Tour, Plus Inside Out 2 Secrets From The Set

• Trending on RT
• Challengers
• Play Movie Trivia

Where to Watch

Rent Voyager on Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Volker Schlöndorff

Sam Shepard

Walter Faber

Julie Delpy

Barbara Sukowa

Dieter Kirchlechner

Herbert Hencke

More Like This

Critics reviews.

Original Title: Homo Faber

Streaming in:

We checked for updates on 246 streaming services on April 25, 2024 at 11:25:18 AM. Something wrong? Let us know!

Voyager streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "Voyager" streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel or for free with ads on Tubi TV, Popcornflix, Freevee. It is also possible to rent "Voyager" on Google Play Movies, YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Video online and to download it on Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Amazon Video.

Walter Faber has survived a crash with an airplane. His next trip is by ship. On board this ship he meets the enchanting Sabeth and they have a passionate love affair. Together they travel to her home in Greece, but the rational Faber doesn't know what fate has in mind for him for past doings.

Videos: Trailers, Teasers, Featurettes

Production country

People who liked voyager also liked.

Popular movies coming soon

Similar Movies you can watch for free

• Rent or buy
• Categories Categories
• Getting Started

Customers also watched

Cast and Crew

Other formats

40 global ratings

How are ratings calculated? Toggle Expand Toggle Expand

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Cast & Crew

Sam Shepard

Walter Faber

Julie Delpy

Barbara Sukowa

Dieter Kirchlechner

Herbert Hencke

• Average 5.8

Information

© 1990, ARTHAUS, Bioskop Film, Action Films, Stefi 2 Hellas Production

Accessibility

Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Internet Service Terms Apple TV & Privacy Cookie Policy Support

About this movie

Rate this movie.

• Everything Advanced Search

Find similar titles by category

Similar artists.

Film Details

Brief synopsis, cast & crew, volker schlöndorff, sam shepard, julie delpy, barbara sukowa, dieter kirchlechner, technical specs.

Set in 1957, the story of a middle-aged American engineer who falls in love with a young European woman, who happens to be his daughter from a woman he abandoned 20 years earlier while a student in Switzerland.

Deborra-lee Furness

August zirner, thomas heinze, peter berling, lorna farrar, kathleen matiezen, charles hayward, james mathews, perla walter, roland dechandenay, jacques martial, brigitte catillon, philippe morier-genoud, erica lawson, kay albrecht, voula alexopoulou, leta andreadi, douglas b arnold, pepeta arvaniti, giorgios arvanitis, giuseppe auriemma, cherie baker, barbara baum, andreas biegler, will bright, gerry butler, gary carpenter, christophe cheysson, hilary cousins, tim d'arcy, michalis daskalakis, friedrich dosch, gilbert duhalde, kate eisemann, edwin erfmann, alexander v eschwege, hannelore faber, bruna finocchi, tom fleischman, thierry francois, eckart goebel, klaus hellwig, benedikt herforth, dagmar hirtz, karl heinz hofman, michael jacobi, sandy jensen, eberhard junkersdorf, christos karakepelis, vassilis katsoufis, jeffrey kiehlbauch, hannah clair klein, robert l knott, maria kontodima, xenophon kotsaftis, cecil kramer, michael kranz, karl kresling, kurt w krusche, frederque lauzier, artemis leontidou, robert leveen, pierre lhomme, patrick lhuillier, panayotis mauraganis, stan mcclain, karen altman morgenstern, stanley myers, doxi nikolaidou, panayotis nikolaros, arno ortmair, michael otto, maria patheniadou, nicos perakis, carl perkins, sophie ravard, antonis remoundos, antonella russo, itala scandariato, robin schneider, rolfe schneider, sabine schroth, marianne schulz, bodo scriba, raphael serrail, roee sharon, alan snelling, daniela stibitz, michele therese tollemer, andrea tonti, rosalba dibartolo tonti, david topor, athina tseregof, anesa tzirou, katerina varhtaletou, rudy wurlitzer, michael zens, miscellaneous notes.

Nominated for the 1991 Felix Award for Actress of the Year, Supporting Actress of the Year and European Film of the Year by the European Cinema Society.

Released in United States 1991

Released in United States February 28, 1992

Released in United States November 1991

Released in United States on Video July 2, 1992

Released in United States September 1991

Released in United States Winter January 31, 1992

Shown at American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica February 28 - March 8, 1991.

Shown at London Film Festival November 6-21, 1991.

Shown at Tokyo International Film Festival September 27 - October 6, 1991.

Shown at Toronto Festival of Festivals (Contemporary World Cinema) September 5-14, 1991.

Produced in association with Stefi 2/Hellas Video Greece.

Began shooting March 12, 1990.

Completed shooting June 14, 1990.

Max Frisch was involved in the project until his death from cancer in April 1991.

Released in United States 1991 (Shown at American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica February 28 - March 8, 1991.)

Released in United States 1991 (Shown at Tokyo International Film Festival September 27 - October 6, 1991.)

Released in United States February 28, 1992 (Los Angeles)

Released in United States September 1991 (Shown at Toronto Festival of Festivals (Contemporary World Cinema) September 5-14, 1991.)

Released in United States November 1991 (Shown at London Film Festival November 6-21, 1991.)

Sign Up now to stay up to date with all of the latest news from TCM.

Your Browser is Not Supported

To view this content, please use one of the following compatible browsers:

Safari v11+

Firefox Quantum

Microsoft Edge

• Coming Soon Theaters • Online
• Advanced Search
• Collections Top 500
• Recommendations Movies • TV Shows
• Search by Name
• Popular Top 500
• My TV Shows
• My Calendar
• Coming Soon Premieres

Movie's ratings

• Kinorium 6.9 100+
• IMDb 6.7 3558
• Critics 56% 9
• Cast & Crew
• Screenshots
• Technical Data
• Based on Book

Related Movies There are no related titles yet, but you can add them:

Volker Schlöndorff — Top Rated Movies

Critique: 1

Voyager starts in mystery, and intrigues us. It continues with intelligence, and absorbs us. And then it ends in melodrama, and disappoints us.

Add critique link

Add a short review

280 characters

Sign up and you will see here friends impressions of the movie.

Friends comments and ratings, movies by eurimages.

Trending movies

The best website for movie search and thoughts sharing with friends

• Browser extension

Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

Walter Faber has survived a crash with an airplane. His next trip is by ship. On board this ship he meets the enchanting Sabeth and they have a passionate love affair. Together they travel to her home in Greece, but the rational Faber doesn’t know what fate has in mind for him for past doings.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

FILM VIEW; 'Voyager': Good Crew, Slow Trip

By Caryn James

• Feb. 23, 1992

An optimist could describe "Voyager" as what might have turned out if Gary Cooper had wandered into a Bertolucci or Antonioni film. It would have been a happy if unlikely accident. Sam Shepard has never given a more complex or impressive performance than he does here, as a world traveler named Walter Faber, an iconic, Cooperesque American, tough on the outside but sensitive on the inside. Faber learns in the most painful manner that he cannot shut off his emotions or control his fate.

But let's face it: "Voyager" is also unfashionably elliptical and slow, filled with dialogue rather than blazing action. It's no mistake that the film brings to mind a dead actor and a European directorial style that was popular 20 years ago. And though "Voyager" is an English-language film, it is the kind of project that seems to have been spawned by a United Nations committee. A French-German co-production, the film was directed by the German Volker Schlondorff and adapted by the American Rudy Wurlitzer from the novel "Homo Faber," by the Swiss writer Max Frisch. These elements add up to a pessimist's description, sure to convince audiences that it's nap time, or at least time to rent "Terminator 2" again.

The dueling descriptions, each with its measure of truth, suggest that "Voyager" is not to everyone's taste. Yet they also point to a stylistic battle within the film itself, one that implies how perilous it is for a work to model its tone on the personality of a repressed hero.

Faber narrates the film in a series of flashbacks. He is speaking in April 1957, sitting in an airport, mourning the death of a woman whose relation to him becomes clear as he recalls the previous months. As he reconstructs his meeting with Sabeth (Julie Delpy) and their love affair, he also flashes back, in black and white, to his youth in the late 1930's.

"Voyager" is slow, stately and unruffled, even when Faber's plane crashes. That manner reflects the character, who has just described himself to his seatmate as a man who doesn't read fiction and doesn't dream, and who then calmly calculates where their plane will come down.

Though Faber insists he is a technocrat, the flashbacks to the 1930's -- when he had an affair with his best friend's fiancee, who became pregnant with Faber's child but married the friend anyway -- reveal that his lack of passion and imagination is a protective shield built up over the past 20 years.

For a long while, the film manages to be livelier than its hero, largely thanks to Mr. Shepard. Though Faber is Swiss in the novel, casting Mr. Shepard and turning the character into an American was an inspired move. With his 1950's fedora and impassive face, he looks and sounds like the old-fashioned, terse masculine ideal. Still, his intense eyes and his very presence (we know, after all, that he is one of the finest playwrights of his generation) suggest more depth than Gary Cooper ever did. Sam Shepard is an intelligent icon who depicts the complex currents beneath the still surface of "Voyager." It may be a role he can do in his sleep by now; it's no less trenchant for that.

This subterranean approach to Faber's emotions works only as long as his shield of logic is in place. When he begins an affair with the much younger Sabeth and loses his steely control over his feelings, the film fails to loosen up with him. Faber never does become a wild man, but he becomes considerably warmer than the film.

"Voyager" maintains its cool surface long after the audience is itching for it to reflect the hero's resurfacing passion. Not long after Faber and Sabeth's affair had begun on screen, a man in the audience at one recent show said, "His daughter, huh?" He was picking up precisely the question the film dangles in the air at that point and doesn't answer until much later. But while "Voyager" raises the possiblility of unwitting incest (Sabeth does look awfully like the woman in those flashbacks), it proceeds as if the audience weren't meant to notice. The film seems to assume that viewers are as blind to the possibility as Faber, a tactic that only makes "Voyager" seem confused.

While Faber and Sabeth are flirting on an ocean liner, driving through Italy or swimming in the Aegean, the film maintains its detached manner. "You do love me; I see it in your eyes," says Sabeth. "Why are you trying to hide it?" Unfortunately, Faber's back is turned to the camera. It would have helped if we had been able to see that struggle in his eyes, too, instead of having Sabeth talk about it.

When emotions explode at the end, the scene is meant to carry the weight of a long-delayed eruption. By then, however, too much tension has been sacrificed in the interest of maintaining Faber's cool manner.

Certainly, the film makers must have thought that the dialogue would be more compelling than it is, creating a lively surface. Sabeth tells Faber that in Latin his name means "forger of his own fate." Faber wonders pointedly whether life is just chance, a series of coincidences. Such dialogue hovers over "Voyager" without ever connecting to it. Faber himself, the man who regains his passion with deadly results, provides the only true interest, quite apart from the film's philosophical musings or its allusions to Greek tragedy.

Faber is a mysterious, wounded figure, whose sorrow does not seem to reflect fate, the gods or anything except itself. Despite the film's flaws, this hero manages to save "Voyager," even if he cannot save himself.

• The Contents
• The Making of
• Where Are They Now
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Q & A with Ed Stone

golden record

Where are they now.

• frequently asked questions
• Q&A with Ed Stone

Mission Status

Instrument status.

Where are the Voyagers now?

To learn more about Voyager, zoom in and give the spacecraft a spin. View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

View Voyager

Space Flight Operations Schedule (SFOS)

SFOS files showing Voyager activity on Deep Space Network (DSN)

2024 Tracking Schedule

2023 tracking schedule, 2022 tracking schedule, 2021 tracking schedule, 2020 tracking schedule, 2019 tracking schedule, 2018 tracking schedule, 2017 tracking schedule, 2016 tracking schedule, 2015 tracking schedule, 2014 tracking schedule, 2013 tracking schedule, 2012 tracking schedule, 2011 tracking schedule, 2010 tracking schedule, 2009 tracking schedule, 2008 tracking schedule, 2007 tracking schedule, 2006 tracking schedule, 2005 tracking schedule, 2004 tracking schedule, 2003 tracking schedule, 2002 tracking schedule, 2001 tracking schedule, 2000 tracking schedule, 1999 tracking schedule, 1998 tracking schedule, 1997 tracking schedule, 1996 tracking schedule, 1995 tracking schedule, 1994 tracking schedule.

Voyager (1991)

Full cast & crew.

Directed by 

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)  , cast (in credits order) verified as complete  , produced by , music by , cinematography by , editing by , casting by , production design by , costume design by , makeup department , production management , second unit director or assistant director , art department , sound department , special effects by , camera and electrical department , casting department , costume and wardrobe department , editorial department , music department , script and continuity department , transportation department , additional crew , thanks .

Release Dates | Official Sites | Company Credits | Filming & Production | Technical Specs

Contribute to This Page

• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos
• User Reviews
• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

What Life Was Like on Moscow’s Streets After the USSR Collapsed

As we all know, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no more. It has ceased to be. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is a late Union. Bereft of life, it is pushing up the daisies. It is an ex-Union. (It’s not just “resting,” either.) The landmass it formerly occupied is now taken up by new countries with old names, such as Russia, Ukraine (out, damned the!), Kazakhstan, and Byelorussia, which I half expect, once capitalism takes hold, to rename itself Sellhighrussia. Yet even though the corporeal and temporal actuality of the Soviet Union has ended, the Soviet Union is not nowhere. It has simply moved to a different plane of existence. It has fled to the realm of myth and mystery, of fright and fable, where it abides with other empires that must be imagined to he believed (whether or not they were ever real)—empires good and empires evil, empires like Atlantis, Ancient Rome, the Middle Kingdom, Oz, and the Third Reich.

Of course, even when it was alive the Soviet Union was a fabulous kingdom, a place of the blackest black magic. How could it have been otherwise? After all, here was a country founded upon a vast and elaborate fantasy, the fantasy of the Workers’ Suite, a fantasy sustained not only by the cruel and bloodsoaked apparatus of fear but also, and above all during its wickedest decades, by the blind goodwill of millions of believers within and without its borders. The literature of and about the Soviet Union was steeped in weird phantasmagoria. Almost every word of Soviet journalism was fiction disguised as fact; by the same token, any Soviet writer wishing to publish a bit of honest social analysis had to disguise his facts as fiction. Many of the books written in praise of the Soviet Union described an imaginary place. Some of the most eloquent attacks on it did likewise, albeit in a more conscious way—Zamyatin’s We , Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 . The most spookily on-target visual portrait of the pre-collapse USSR is Terry Gilliam’s great cult film Brazil . The movie has nothing directly to do with the Soviet Union (or with Brazil either), and I doubt that Gilliam had the Soviet Union in mind when he made it. He captured its essence all the same. It you want to know what the texture of this very odd country was like before the fall, see Brazil .

I’ve been here three times now. The first time, Moscow seemed to me less like a foreign city than an alien planet—a planet that had developed along amazingly similar lines to earth. This faraway planet, like our own, is populated by bilaterally symmetrical bipeds who, like us, garb themselves in clothing differentiated by gender, use four-wheel motorized vehicles for transport, live in boxlike structures, and consume grain-based products for both nourishment and recreation. They have equivalents of almost everything we have—shoes, newspapers, traffic lights—yet there is always something about these everyday items that makes them seem utterly strange. It’s hard to say which is more eerie, the resemblances or the differences. They have shops, for example, but the signs on the outside say harsh generic things—PRODUCTS, REPAIRS, MILK, PHOTO—and inside there are only drab, empty display cases and coiled lines of shuffling people. That was three years ago. It’s still basically the same, only now this exotically gray planet has begun to be colonized by earthlings.

Three years ago, there were still a few big signs of the COMRADES! WE ARE BUILDING COMMUNISM variety to be seen. On my second visit, a year and a half ago, I saw only one sign of this type—red background, block letters—but when I asked someone to translate it for me it turned out to say YOUNG PEOPLE! INVEST IN HIGH-YIELD SECURITIES! This time, the signs are advertising Mars candy bars, Hyundai cars, Panasonic electronics. The consistent thread is that all the signs, whether communist, perestroika-ist, or post-communist, advertise things that are either nonexistent or unavailable.

Some other changes. The lines at the state stores are longer than they were eighteen months ago, but elsewhere there is much more evidence of non-state commerce. The Metro corridors and the passageways under the broad Moscow avenues are lined with card tables where people sell books, magazines, scarves, flowers, chewing gum. cans of German beer. There are musicians on the subway, too—another absolutely new development. Homeless people, too—ditto. Three years ago the hot newspaper was Moscow News , which had emerged from decades as a weekly for tourists published by the Novosti Press Agency to become the voice of glasnost. A year and a half ago it was Commersant, a business weekly. Now it’s Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta ( The Independent ), a sober thrice-weekly broadsheet, and St. Petersburg’s Chas Pik ( Rush Hour ), a spunky afternoon daily. Three years ago, an American in Moscow felt utterly invulnerable. Now every foreigner knows someone who’s been mugged or burgled. But Moscow still feels a lot safer than New York.

If you have dollars and a few Russian-speaking friends to guide you, the Commonwealth of Independent States is, for the moment, a vacationer’s and shopper’s paradise. I traveled here on frequent flyer miles courtesy of Pan Am (another institution that has gone the way of the USSR) and stayed in the apartment of a friend of a friend. A couchette on the night train to St. Petersburg set me back about 26 cents’ worth of rubles; on the return trip I bought a whole four-passenger compartment. Lunch for three at a “cooperative” restaurant (pickled veggies, not-bad pizza, cognac), about 38 cents. Reverse-chic Soviet neckties at TSUM (Central Universal Stores), the Gimbel’s to Moscow’s Macy’s, the more famous GUM (Government Universal Stores), a nickel each. Subway rides, about two-tenths of a cent each. The whole nine-day trip has cost me about $200, mostly for gifts and meals for Russian friends and souvenirs to take home.

I’ve been asking people if Communism left anything worthwhile behind. Everyone gives the same answer: the Metro, the legendary Moscow subway that served as an argument-clincher for a generation of American communists. True enough: the Moscow subway is the only Soviet institution that is indisputably the best of its kind in the world. Like the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of the Incas, and the Roman colosseum, it has a brutal splendor that transcends the moral squalor of its origins. A Russian friend adds something else to the list: the “Seven Stalinist Sisters.” the mock-gothic, wedding-cake skyscrapers that dot the cityscape. “I hate them, myself,” the friend says, “but my eight-year-old daughter loves them. She says they’re magic castles. She says gremlins and goblins must live there.” A wise little girl.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a former editor of The New Republic.