Introduction: Contextual Fragments: Cultural excursions in Moscow: Moscow streets.

An introduction to the book, Contextualizing Transition: Interviews with Contemporary Russian Writers & Critics, is presented. It describes the diversity of life in Moscow, Russia from 1995 to 1996. The emergence of competing interests has dramatically diversified life that the streets of the city looked like a peculiar melange of dilapidated antiquity and thriving novelty. The juxtaposition of novelty and antiquity produced a transitional culture in which the drives to create anew social space. A cultural clash of historical interiority and contemporary surface no doubt adds vitality to the transition process.