Print

---

Johnson's Russia List
#6462
29 September 2002
[log in to unmask]
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

#16
Russia: St. Petersburg Prepares To Recapture The Limelight -- But Will The Glow Last?
By Jeremy Bransten

For the past several months, St. Petersburg's palaces have been shrouded in
scaffolding. The elegant footbridges spanning its canals are getting a
fresh coat of paint and the city's signature Peter and Paul Fortress is
awaiting a new golden spire. Russia's former imperial capital is preparing
to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding in style, marking what
local leaders hope will be a turning point in the city's history. RFE/RL
reports on preparations for next year's jubilee and what happens once the
party ends.

St. Petersburg, 27 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- By European standards, 300
years is young for a city. But St. Petersburg wears its patina of old age
well -- so well, in fact, that many of its richly ornamented 18th- and
19th-century buildings are at the point of decay after decades of neglect.

The 20th century put Peter the Great's city through trials few other
European cities have endured. The Bolsheviks' decision to move the
country's capital back to Moscow in 1918 began a long process of decline,
but far worse was to come: first, Josef Stalin's purges, which liquidated
much of the city's remaining intelligentsia in the 1930s; then, the Nazis'
900-day siege during World War II in which more than a third of the city's
inhabitants perished. Little thought was given to preserving architecture
in those years, and even less during the subsequent decades of
industrialization, when priority was given to establishing a ring of
military-industrial plants around the region.

Through it all, the soul of St. Petersburg, say its proud inhabitants, has
survived. And indeed, the city's imposing facades still impress visitors,
and its world-class museums still draw crowds. But first appearances can be
deceiving. University professor Elvira Osipovna said: "Restoring the
interior of the buildings behind the facades would require an enormous sum
of money from the federal budget. The state of the city's housing is
depressing. I am not referring to new construction -- that is going ahead
and it's a good thing. But I am referring to the center and the part of the
city located between the center and the outlying, so-called dormitory
districts. I've spent a lot of time walking around the areas where
Dostoevskii's novels unfold, for example, and it's a scary sight. The
courtyards are horrible, the staircases are grim, and you can imagine what
the apartments themselves look like."

Osipovna cited another example: the Stroganoff Palace -- one of the
numerous noblemen's residences scattered throughout the center, which lend
the city its aristocratic air. Restoration work on the building began well
before the current anniversary preparations and will have to continue long
after the party is over. "This palace took three years to build, and was
richly decorated -- the interior decor was especially fine -- but the state
in which it was left by the military enterprise that was located there is
impossible to describe. The building's chief restorer said it would take 33
years to bring it back to its original glory. So slowly, restoration work
continues, but it has only taken place over the past five to seven years,"
Osipovna said.

The Russian federal government has allocated the equivalent of more than
$50 million for the restoration of monuments and infrastructure projects in
St. Petersburg ahead of next year's 300th-anniversary celebrations. A
special committee has been formed that takes its orders directly from
President Vladimir Putin, himself a city native, who takes pride in
personally showcasing St. Petersburg's treasures to visiting dignitaries.
Scores of exhibitions, concerts, and other special events are due to
culminate, at the end of May 2003, in a global summit to which 40 heads of
state have been invited. If all come, the government says, it will be the
largest gathering of world leaders on Russian territory ever.

St. Petersburg founder Peter the Great would surely have approved of such
plans. The Russian tsar was noted for his relentless dedication to making
his city a resplendent European capital and a tireless promoter of its
beauty. He even went as far as to commission promotional engravings of
planned -- but at the time unbuilt -- palaces, for distribution to foreign
courts.

But what happens when next year's party ends? Where will St. Petersburg,
with its freshly repainted palaces, find itself? Will the city finally have
succeeded in re-emerging into the limelight after so many decades in
Moscow's shadow?

Economist Lev Sovulkin of the St. Petersburg Leontiev Center, an
independent think tank, said the city's government and its inhabitants have
yet to face some hard truths, which will not be changed by the anniversary
festivities. With some 85 percent of foreign investment flowing directly to
Moscow, and the country's countless ministries and state-owned corporations
all headquartered there, the Russian capital has an overwhelming economic
advantage. And the difference is increasingly apparent. "Comparing the gap
between St. Petersburg and Moscow and St. Petersburg and Russia's other
cities of over a million inhabitants -- in Soviet times and today -- we can
see that the gap between Moscow and St. Petersburg has widened and the gap
between St. Petersburg and other cities has narrowed," Sovulkin said.

A decade ago, developments seemed to be moving in the opposite direction.
Initially, after the collapse of communism in 1991, when Russia emerged as
an independent state, St. Petersburg's administrators, under then-Mayor
Anatolii Sobchak, adopted many progressive economic measures designed to
give the city Russia's most attractive investment environment.

St. Petersburg began privatizing state companies ahead of Moscow; Western
banks opened their first Russian branches in St. Petersburg. The city was
the first in Russia to create a system of targeted housing subsidies in a
bid to liberalize the real-estate market. St. Petersburg appeared finally
set to realize its historical ambition of regaining its status as Russia's
"Window on Europe."

But reforms stalled. Dissatisfied with the pain of economic restructuring,
voters chose new, less economically liberal city leadership. The foreign
corporations moved to Moscow, followed by scores of domestic companies.
Over the past five years, a brain drain has set in that has seen many of
St. Petersburg's leading administrators, business leaders, and even artists
moving to newly vibrant Moscow, where their salaries are tripled and their
ambitions realized.

Economist Sovulkin said that brain drain will be reversed not by repainting
the city's facades but by returning to the path of liberal reform so that
St. Petersburg's many pressing economic problems can be resolved
permanently, foremost among them the city's derelict housing stock. At
present, nearly 40 percent of people in the city center live in Soviet-era
communal apartments, with two or more families sharing a common kitchen and
bathroom. Sovulkin said: "You do not get a city in good shape by painting
it every day, or before every holiday. You need to create genuine owners of
these buildings so that they can themselves hire companies, at lower
expense, to restore them. Give the buildings away to private owners. At
this point, the city collects rents but these rents are not put back into
the upkeep of the property."

Sovulkin said St. Petersburg cannot hope to emulate Moscow's development
model, but it does have a few aces of its own. The key is to adopt a
development strategy and concentrate on setting policies to achieve those
goals. "St. Petersburg could become a tourist center. But 3 million current
annual visitors, both on business and for leisure, in total: It's
laughable, just laughable. So what do you need to change things? You need
to create conditions so more hotels can open -- mid-range establishments.
You don't need to build them, you just need to create the conditions so
these hotels can open and investors can invest in them. The local
environment has to be made tourist-friendly," Sovulkin said.

Local authorities, he suggested, could also concentrate on the lucrative
convention business, using St. Petersburg's unique geographical and
historical setting to position the city as a center for Baltic and
Scandinavian conferences and business meetings. They could also trade on
St. Petersburg's once-leading status as a scientific and military research
center to launch high-tech development areas, but tax breaks and other
incentives would have to be given, to make the city a more attractive
alternative for investors than Moscow.

Although he admits the terminology may strike some Petersburg residents as
crass, Sovulkin likened the process to commercial branding. For decades,
the city's residents have sung St. Petersburg's praises in almost automatic
fashion. They invariably describe their city as Russia's most cultured, its
inhabitants as Russia's best-educated, and its museums as the worlds' best,
all while doing little to ensure it remains that way.

"St. Petersburg has tremendous potential. It has great potential due to its
historical legacy. But all these 'brands' by which the city is known to the
outside world, both in Russia and abroad, have to be filled with content,
or else they will become meaningless. First, conditions have to be created
to attract investment and then these investments must be put to good use,
to highlight our strong suits. This is the main challenge facing not only
the Petersburg authorities but the entire population," Sovulkin said.

Whatever happens in the near and distant future, St. Petersburg's residents
will always have, as a refuge, their writers, their poets, and their belief
in the city's uniqueness. Many claim a symbiotic co-existence with their
city -- an emotion that can be hard to describe but is very deeply felt.
Osipovna voiced those feelings in saying, "People who were born here or
have spent many years here cannot help feeling this aura that helps people
spiritually and defines their way of life, thoughts, and feelings."

Natalya Batozhok, head of the 300th-anniversary planning committee, told
RFE/RL she is ready to defend her city's reputation as Russia's
intellectual and cultural center any day. "A theater premiere that doesn't
open in St. Petersburg cannot be called a true premiere," she said. "And no
foreign visitor who comes to Russia without seeing St. Petersburg can claim
to know our country."

Batozhok conceded, however, that once the festivities conclude and the
federal funds dry up, her city will have to find another formula for
success. "I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately," she said. "But
I haven't hit on the right answer yet."

********