The sub-title "miracle, mystery, authority" comes from "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, a novel by the famous Petersburg writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. The words aptly can be applied to the life - past, present, and future - of the city; and they summarize the...
In the preface to his book St. Petersburg: A Cultural History,
Solomon Volkov says...
"The
beauty of Petersburg's historic buildings is obvious.
Erected with unparalleled sweep, luxury, artistry, and refinement, they exude
an almost mystical enchantment, particularly during the white nights of early
summer, which plunge the classical architecture into an atmosphere of
fantasy....In Petersburg, the inanimate excitingly came to life, palaces
and monuments moved onto the pages of prose and poetry or were reflected
in the spellbinding music, only to freeze once again on the granite banks
of the river and along the open squares but now enriched and elevated,
like magically enticing symbols." (p.xii)
"...The miracle of the almost instantaneous appearance of the capital of a
huge empire on inhospitable northern soil was so striking, and the cost of
that miracle in human lives was so high, and the personality of its
creator so extraordinary that Petersburg quickly inspired both praise and
condemnation of a mystical character." (p.xiii)
It was the poet, Aleksander Pushkin, who first interpreted the mythos of St.
Petersburg in his poem "The Bronze Horseman" (1837).
The famous St.
Petersburg statue of Tsar Peter astride a rearing horse, neither going
backward nor forwards, became the symbol of the city. Pushkin saw in this
symbol the "emblem of Petersburg, a sign of its majesty and endurance, and
also...the awful fate and terrible suffering that was to befall the city."
(p.xiii)
The mythos became fully formed in the second half of the nineteenth century with the growing cache of "literary works, paintings and drawings, music, and theatrical productions devoted to it, the marvelous buildings but also the complex of philosophical and moral ideas connected with Petersburg's special place on Russian soil and in Russian history." (p.xiii)
The paradise that Peter envisioned, was transformed by the writers Nikolai Gogol, who "saw Petersburg as a virtual kingdom of the dead" full of "demonic forces hostile to humans...soulless government offices, and the multitudes of petty clerks within them." (p.xiii) From Fyodor Dostoyevsky came "foreboding and prophecies of doom" (p.xiii) Peter Tchaikovsky used that sense of "life over the abyss" in his ballets and particularly in his "Petersburg" opera, The Queen of Spades (p.xv)
Historical and authorative political figures also shaped the mythos of Petersburg. The brilliant flowering of Russian culture, which came with the Russian modernist movements, fell victim to the oppressive controls exerted by the new Soviet government, swept into power with the wave of the Revolution of 1917. Lenin moved the capital from St. Petersburg back to Moscow. Stalin subjected Leningrad (St. Petersburg was renamed for Lenin who died in 1924) "to terrible suffering, felt nothing but suspicion and hostility for the city, fearing the development there of a hotbed of politcal and cultural opposition." (p.xvi) Thus, Petersburg / Leningrad became a martyr to "Soviet" culture and Soviet history.
It was further martyred during the 900 day German siege of Leningrad during WWII. Stalin's oppression after the war pushed the Petersburg / Leningrad culture underground. Government oppression continued after Stalin's death in 1953. Only with Gorbachev's unleashing of "glasnost'" or "openness" were the poets, musicians and artists of St. Petersburg allowed to reemerge--Akmatova's poems were then published in full; Joseph Brodsky (Nobel Prize winner, expelled earlier to the West) was "reclaimed"; composers (such as Shostakovich) finally had all their works performed in public; canvases were brought out from dusty warehouses. In 1991 the name "St. Petersburg" was again returned to the city.
Now the Soviet era is receding into memory - St. Petersburg, like Russia,
"hopes for phoenix-like rebirth". (p.xvii)
Back to the SOAR course page: "St. Petersburg, Russia"
Back to the "St. Petersburg" course home page
Back to the "Russian at St. Lawrence" page
Last update: 11/24/04