No visit to Moscow can be complete without consideration of recent history, ideology and the bleak days of the Cold War when the world stood divided into two blocs separated by Churchill’s ‘iron wall’.

And no place in Moscow brings home those memories more starkly than the quiet grave of Kim Philby, tucked away amidst a row of other Soviet ‘heroes’ in the picturesque graveyard at Kuntsevo, just beyond central Moscow. The etched photograph of Philby, ranked as perhaps the most important figure in espionage in our time, looks out from the marbled stone that marks his last resting place -- in a very different Moscow from the one he knew.

Philby, who defected to that city in 1963 in a dramatic escape aboard a Russian ship from Beirut would not have recognised it. He died in 1988, at the age of 76, before things changed drastically in the world and the ideology to which he had devoted his life was seen as having come to an end.

Harold Adrian Russell ‘Kim’ Philby decided to devote his life to Communism while an undergraduate at Cambridge University in the 1930s. Recruited along with four others, who collectively became known as the ‘Cambridge Five’, he linked hands with the KGB early on, serving it well through his years in the British counter-intelligence service, MI6 and later on as a journalist when he was pushed to resign after the defection of two of the Cambridge ring, Donald Mclean and Guy Burgess in 1951.

Philby held on to his secret for another decade, although he was furious that his career in active intelligence had ended at a time when he was a hair breadth away from being appointed to head MI6. Refusing an offer made by a powerful friend for immunity in exchange for information in 1963, Philby chose to live out the rest of his life in Moscow, in an anonymous apartment on Gorky Street.

He was given work at the KGB and in other security capacities, although his most active days when he divulged information on Western spies within the Soviet service and operations planned by the West in the Baltics offered invaluable aid to the former USSR in that Cold War scenario were over. He had also played a key role in passing on intelligence, kept from the Russians by their Western allies during World War II, helping save thousands of Russian lives.

Till the end, Philby, according to his family, remained firmly loyal to the ideology to which he had committed himself and though disillusioned as an intelligent man with much of what he saw during his years in the USSR, remained determined to help make Communism a success and help find the original dream.

It sometimes seems that ideology lives on today only in the giant murals of Vladmir Lenin that still appear at Moscow’s busy metro stations, with their marbled walls and chandeliers reflecting the Communist philosophy that ordinary people should not be deprived of a dignified existence. Whether that philosophy really existed at any time in what was the USSR is a different debate. But certainly, the past lives on in the present. It is the talk everywhere, even at the plush shopping arcades and boulevards that mark the arrival of capitalism in Russia after the formal dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

At the coffee shops, discussion drifts to whether life has changed for the better or for worse since the former Soviet Union fell apart in pieces like a jigsaw puzzle, bringing down the rest of Eastern Europe with it.

The answers are not simple. Younger Russians bringing up families mourn for the days when everything was paid for by the State -- even if that State was an oppressive one which crushed its people under its weight. They are unaccustomed to the worries of days when college funds dominate thoughts and only a percentage of students going on to university level education gain full scholarships.

The idea that in some countries even quality primary education and healthcare is not available free of cost to children comes as a shock.

And the children of Russia can be seen everywhere.

In Russian culture, children have always held a very special place, forming a part of legends, of folk stories and of traditional songs. They appear in parks, wading through fountains, at the circus where acrobats with the most astonishing skills take breaths away with their metres high backflips, at the ballet and opera where they are brought, their hair carefully combed or tied back in bows to enjoy a heritage in art that has survived since Tsarist times and at the many science centres dotted around Moscow including the Planetarium, which boasts the biggest dome in Europe and puts on a magical show of stars, bringing science alive for people of all ages.

In so many ways the Russia of today seems to belong to the young. They move through the giant shopping malls, carrying shopping bags with brand names famous throughout the world in their elegant dresses and designer jeans. Indeed, young Russians tend to dress up even to go down to the corner shop. The richest say they are happy with the new life they lead, so different to that of their parents and grandparents. But the disparities of wealth obviously distress others, with some talking sadly of the buskers now seen occasionally at some subways, playing, oddly enough, songs by Bob Marley and gathering up the coins tossed into hats.

Middle-aged Russians point out there was a time when they would never have appeared and when disparity existed in a quite different way with the oligarchy created by members of the ruling party living its life of privilege.

Saddest of all in some ways are the old. And Russia, as a country with a falling population, has a large number of old people. They seem to struggle to cope with the new way of life, with old women under traditional scarves struggling along with their baskets, crossing themselves before the orthodox churches that have come back into lives for them and occasionally speaking out both against the new times and the old.

For them, life was hard before. It is harder still now.

But all this cannot take away from the essential beauty of Moscow as a European city. Today, as the iron wall has dropped, it seems to have moved closer in to Europe, despite the obvious animosity for the US visible in so many ways. The cobbled streets which lead up to the iconic cathedral of St. Basil’s with its multi-coloured domes -- perhaps Moscow’s most famous landmark -- are lined with one historic building after the other. At their centre stands the Kremlin Palace, the seat of Russian government, and Red Square where people gather to eat, to chat or simply to enjoy the parks and fountains that stand all around. The black stone mausoleum of Lenin, bearing his preserved body, is guarded by stern soldiers who lead in visitors, ensure no photographs are taken and that due respect is shown for the founder of the USSR.

In the parks scattered across Moscow, Lenin’s statues, felled during the chaotic end of the USSR have begun to reappear. What this means is something only the coming years will tell. For now, it is the geometrical displays of flower, the buildings, the art galleries, the museums and the carefully preserved culture which is there to enjoy.

Russian politics may have changed. Much of its culture has not. Had Philby lived beyond 1991, he would still have seen much that was familiar in these terms and it is this heritage reaching back centuries which makes Moscow a very special destination.

The city, in so many ways, brings together much of the best of Europe while reminding us that the Empire it once stood at the centre of the Cold War era is in decline, waiting perhaps for a new age when it can be rebuilt in a different form with its flaws eliminated to make true the dream so many had fought . The many T-shirts worn by the young with the familiar face of Che Guevara as well as Lenin suggest that somewhere this dream lives on, floating high amongst those magical onion domes of Moscow.