The Revolutionary City

It’s mid winter and minus 18 degrees in St Petersburg. It strikes you when you leave the buildings – the cold, frozen air penetrates your eyes and fills your lungs. After 45 minutes spent walking through the night time streets my toes, fingers, and nose ache, and I can begin to feel the cold attacking my knee joints.  It becomes too much. A welcoming Irish bar just opposite the Mariinsky Theatre provides respite, and after two pints of Kilkenny I can just close my hands into fists.

Cold politics

St Petersburg is nestled between the shores of the Gulf of Finland to the west and Lake Ladoga to the east. It is the northern most city with a population over 1 million in the world. Dissecting it is a network of canals and rivers that eventually link to the vast River Neva that crosses the city, half a kilometre between banks at its widest. During the winter months it is frozen and covered in a blanket of snow. St Petersburg has been labelled the Venice of the North for obvious reasons, but also because of the amount of palaces. They line the rivers, canals and city streets throughout the centre and stand as noble monuments to the opulence – and greed – of the city elite from the time of its foundation under Peter the Great to the reign of Tsar Nicholas II in the early 20^th century.

But the beauty and wealth is just one part of St Petersburg, for further afield into the suburbs and beneath it on the metro, the city reflects the bloody twists and struggles of Russia’s recent history. In St Petersburg many of the defining incidents of the nation’s past took place. Here the blank shell was fired from the Aurora by Lenin and the Bolsheviks that signalled the start of the revolution in 1917; here locals fought and starved for 900 days during the Nazi siege of World War II; here are examples of brutal Soviet monuments and town planning under Stalin, and here, since Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (rebuilding) and the fall of the USSR in 1991, you can see the market powers of capitalism at work transforming the city once again.

A pale opulence

Every morning municipal workers fill the city streets and take part in the Petersburg ballet. Supported by rusty Soviet trucks, bulldozers and a myriad of picks and shovels, they play out a ritual to keep the pavements and roads free from snow and ice. The scale of the operation across the whole city is as breathtaking as the cold.

Winter is a good time to see St Petersburg. The pay off for having long, dark nights are the few hours of serene pale light in the middle of the day, where the blue grey of the sky reflects the snow and ice of the Neva, and the golden spires and gilt onion domes shimmer.  The short walk from Sennaya Square to the admiralty district reveals the essence of this former glory. On all sides grand facades stand five, maybe six, stories high. Classically adorned palaces rise shoulder to shoulder with the ornate town houses of the old aristocracy. Under the patches of frozen snow the pavement reveals itself to be dark marble, the colour of mahogany.

At the end of the city’s main boulevard, Nevsky Prospect, is Palace Square. This vast space is the place of gathering for residents, once the scene of political rallies and atrocities, now full of tourists and hawkers. Curving round the southern edge is the General Staff Headquarters. The repetition of the pilasters is broken by a vast triumphal arch in the centre, fifty metres wide and several stories high. Facing the building, across the square, is the Winter Palace. Previously the seat of the tsars, it now houses the Hermitage art collection, one of the biggest collections in the world.

The square and surrounding buildings symbolise the bygone power of the elite. St Petersburg: the centre of the old empire for 200 years, oozing wealth and strength, at the expense of the vast majority of the population. And standing here in Palace Square, taking in the extreme proportions afforded to the ruling classes, the 1917 revolution makes sense. But how did the Bolsheviks overcome the rulers’ might? How did they topple the elite in the face of such power and wealth? The American historian Richard Pipes explains that it was not through force, but the clever tactics deployed by Lenin:

"They relied instead on small, disciplined units of soldiers and workers under the command of their Military Organization, disguised as the Military Revolutionary Committee, to occupy Petrograd’s principal communication and transport centres, utilities and printing plants – the nerve centres of the modern metropolis. Merely by severing the lines connecting the government with its military staff they made it impossible to organize a counterattack. The entire operation was carried out so smoothly and efficiently that even as it was in progress the cafes and restaurants along with the opera and theatres were open for business and thronged with crowds." (The Russian Revolution, 1990)

Brutal reform

The metro takes me to Moskovskaya Square, deep into the southern suburbs of the city. It was here that Stalin planned to move the centre of St Petersburg, repulsed by the opulence of the old aristocratic heart. I ascend to stony grey skies and piercing cold. Solitary figures lean into the wind and trudge through last night’s snowfall. Looming out of the gloom like a concrete monolith is the House of Soviets. It is a brutal example of Stalinist architecture. Classical figures pose in a sculpted frieze beneath a giant hammer and sickle, adorning its roof like a Soviet crown.

In front of the building, Moskovskaya Square is empty apart from a giant sculpture of Lenin. His chiseled features are stern; his arm is raised and points to the distance. I feel uneasy under his gaze. I’m instantly aware of my own isolation in this windswept place, and I can only imagine the terror enforced by the Soviet regime.

As I hurry back underground I’m haunted by the words of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. As the USSR was crumbling at the end of the 1980s, he travelled the length and breadth of the country, talking to local people, visiting the labour camps in Siberia, the desolation of the central Stans, the political upheavals in the Caucasus, and recorded it all in his book Imperium. At the end he writes:

"There is a large and tragic legacy of communism – the awareness of the terror and repression, of the persecutions that began in 1917 and that lasted for decades, assuming in certain years the character of mass extermination. The historians and demographers who occupy themselves with this matter differ significantly in their estimates of the scale of the perpetrated murder. The minimum estimate was calculated by Siergei Maksundov. According to him, between 1918 and 1953, 54 million perished of unnatural causes. The maximum estimate is given by Professor I. Kurganov, who computed that between 1918 and 1958, in the camps, prisons, and on the fronts of both world wars, 110.7 million citizens of the USSR lost their lives." (Imperium, 1993)

***

St Petersburg’s metro is a site to behold. After the revolution, the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya line was extended into the heart of the workers’ districts that fuelled the upheaval. These stations are monuments in themselves, with sculpted pillars bearing gold emblems of the Soviets, large glass chandeliers that hang in lines; all wide, clean, uniform and symmetrical. But as I get on one of the original trains that still works the line, Lenin’s statue monopolises my thoughts. I can only wonder if he had any idea what he was pointing towards.

Commune to capital

In Sennaya Square is St Petersburg’s newest mall. It stands eight stories tall and is made of glass, towering above the apartments and townhouses surrounding it. At night a hundred lights shine green, blue and white. The first five storeys are international shops and coffee houses, the next two a bowling alley, pool hall and cinema, topping it off is a luxury restaurant with views over the city. It is a capitalist monument to rival the colonnades and domes of pre-revolutionary Russia.

Twenty years after the USSR collapsed, St Petersburg has been transformed into a global city. Alongside the inevitable influx of fast food and convenience shopping, historical artefacts and cultural centres have seen investment and refurbishment. The modern day Petersburg is fast becoming a Mecca for the global tourist. The art festivals that take place twenty-four hours a day during the white nights of the summer months are balanced by the classical musical concerts and Christmas extravaganza of winter. Bars and restaurants cater for all incomes, palates, and interests; the streets are bursting with intricate boutiques selling crafts and delicacies, and there are many contemporary galleries and book shops to rival the global chains.

What is clear when strolling along any of the city’s boulevards or side-streets is that, despite the repression and neglect of the 20^thcentury, Petersburg has kept the essence of its former glory and emerged in the 21^stcentury as a place to rival the world’s foremost cosmopolitan centres.  Unshackling free thinking has brought back the literati and helped to develop a thriving middle class. Na Zdorovye! Right now, St Petersburg is enjoying a quieter revolution of sorts.

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