ST. PETERSBURG

Pushkin called it a "strict, shapely" city, this northern capital of Russia for more than two centuries and the royal seat of the Romanov dynasty. Peter I founded it in 1703
as a "window on the west" and a massive military riposte to arch-enemy King
Charles of Sweden. Its very setting, chosen for geo-political reasons and
not human health, is phantasmogoric: an elegant metropolis made from stone and planted in a vast swamp near the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. The stage
setting is ultra European with stylish facades, 18th and 19th century design,
that mainly have stood up well to the lashes of history and climate that have
been its context. It's had its share of human tragedy, notably the seige
during World War II that caused thousands to die from starvation. Normally
described as Russia's most European venue, the city can seem like an alternate
reality from Moscow.
In my time in Russia, now going far back, Moscow was my favorite for various
reasons of personal taste and affinities. I didn't come to Russia at any time
to see Europe. I always wanted to see the "true" Russia and for a long, long
time on many different stays in the country, both long and short, I developed
my own roots in Moscow. With its concentric ring roads, organic, rather
messy growth patterns, its cozy, can-do attitudes, unpretentious, down-to-earth
ethos, Moscow struck me as indeed being that gigantic village that it has
long be labeled. Confortable and folksy. A city without even trying to be one. My friends were in Moscow. Why should I go to St. Petersburg, call it Leningrad or whatever? I was not as much interested in the Romanovs and their splendid failures as in the contemporary life of the country, personified, I liked to think, and perfected by Moscow. Besides, its was so much more confortable, worldly--not fantastic--, a here-and-now city with a rich past but not caught up in a cult of its own identity. St. Petersburg always seemed ever so faintly narsicistic and yet grasping for a European face that didn't seem to hold in Russia. Besides, the
current life of the city in whatever year--hard-bitten and hard-pressed for essentials not to mention luxury--seemed incongurous set against its oppulent historical decorations, even if they were often touched up and at least minimally maintained throughout the Soviet period. On many trips I didn't come to St. Petersburg at all.
Now I find Moscow threatened by its own fearful appetite and by the
Kremlin rulers' egocentric economic and cultural policies, by the hierarchical
centralism that would declare that the sun rises and sets in Moscow.
All who want to participate in the high stakes, even at entry level, of
consumerism and extravagant materialism must go to Moscow. St. Petersburg,
even though the President and previous President (now Premier) are natives of
St. Petersburg, the city has become Second City, despite some occasional
large bones tossed its way (e.g., the restoration of the Konstantinovsky
Palace, the home palace of Nikolai and Aleksandra and family, into a
government reception center for important international political gatherings and
only slightly open to the public). The crowds of Moscow, whether in the Metro,
on the street, on sitting with idling motors in traffic jams that cover the
city with smog, have robbed Moscow of the coziness that I always felt was its primary feature.
I come to St. Petersburg now almost as a refugee from that impersonal
and pushing stream of people trying to get somewhere else fast. More
importantly, I've made close new friends in St. Petersburg and I come
primarily to see them. Maybe all travelers need to have friends where
they go, not that it can be devised in any way except natural chance and an
inherent common language that makes the bond. When the setting is perceived
through the eyes of friends and joined to one's own intake of the outer world,
everything takes on new colors, even through the grey mists indeminic to this
swamp based metropolis.
I live with my friends in a small small apartment on the outer fringes of the city. Transportation is slow, there are traffic jams here, too, and people
rushing. Much is in disrepair here, as in Moscow, in what seems like a traditional
Russian way. (This doesn't work, so let's improvise something else, let it go for
a while or forever, we'll get by.)But through my friends' eyes I see the
importance of the splendor the past, its many layers, resconstructions, secret improvised passages, high cultural achievements, the great classical music, the palaces, and museums, full of opportunities, cultural and professional. It's a stately and expressive place that, if you let it,grabs the imagination and holds on. Of course, it's Dostoevsky's home town (even if he was born in Moscow). Yes, it's Europe but its also a special, undeniably Russian place that contrasts with the provinces and raises hopes through the pastel, neo-classical columns and gold spires designed more likely than not by Italian architects for rulers that were immanating Europe because many of them were indeed from there, married into Russian life. It's an escape from small towns and cities and their dead-ends that don't have the multiplicity and high quotient of educated citizenry that St. Petersburg does. Through their eyes the setting becomes an enhancement to living, however harried, physically uncomfortable and tightly restricted by economic conditions that life
at first may be.
Also, I notice a kind of lighted hearted humor that Moscow no longer has.
Languages and Literatures Division ofthe University has a playful sculpture garden in its courtyard with some doors into the main building its classrooms labeled the Labyrinth, Mt. Olympus (steep stairs going up), Ordnance Field (polygon). A bust of poet Josef Brodsky rests on a piece of rough concrete near a metal-like suitcase--a scupture called "Brodsky Has Returned. In another part of town a bronze nose is attached to the house where Gogol's notorious barber (in "The Nose") would have lived, and the Vasilievsky bridge overthe Moika, has a little bird fixed to his lower support as a reference to the old popular song "Chizhek" about the cadets who studied nearby.
The sparkle has returned to fabled (also especially by Gogol) Nevsky Prospekt.
Expensive stores line its central blocks, New York style. There are bright lights and well dressed people, in more variety of styles than one finds in Moscow, and
especially there is enough space between people for them actually to see
each other, to exchange a few words, nothing seems frantic, instead it's
returned to that civilized norm that we know from the Russian classics
it once epitomized. It's a place that gives you an appetite for living in
all kinds of interesting mileux. My friends are always wanting to take me to
new places, new atmospheres of this splendid, dowager city that has come back to life with renewed vigor and rosy cheeks that are real and not mere rouge.
I find myself falling in love with St. Petersburg and will hate to leave,
despite the incessant rain and penetrating mist, the low, leaden skies,
always on the point of dumping new drops on your head. But when
did climate ever interfere with love?