more on St. Petersburg

When I visited Russia, when it was the USSR, in 1970-71, the place completely shook me up. It was somber and more than a bit scary, but also very impressive in a rough-edged sort of way. As part of our officially organized Sputnik agency tour, we had two guides for our three week visit. One was the most scared and paranoid person I had yet met personally. She grew pale whenever anybody joked about anything illegal, like currency smuggling, and whispered warnings about what could happen to people who got arrested, even foreigners.


Russia is still impressively regulated and controlled. Above is a list of things you may not do at the Peter and Paul fortress, including leaping off the turrets, apparently.

The other tour guide for our group in 1970 was the most cynical person I had yet met personally. He did not believe in any of the Soviet ideas but saw the Communist Party as an excellent way to get ahead in the world. Those two sort of framed the overall impression I still have.
The Russians were and are proud of their history. They have resurrected the old history, letting the Czar and his family, killed by the revolution, be dug up and reburied in the Romanov dynasty spaces in the cathedral in the Peter and Paul fortress (left).

They are also making a lot of money off that history in tourism now, especially in St. Petersburg, which has been Russia's official window to the West, ever since Peter the Great's time. The city is gorgeous now in many ways, and was then, too, when I visited before, even though I saw it at almost the worst season (just before New Year) in one of the low point years, 1971, just three years after the Soviets had put down the Prague Spring democratization with tanks. To get in to the Pushkin Palace, you first pay a sizeable fee to get into the garden, at left, as you seen here, then another even more sizeable fee to get into the palace and museum itself, at right.

The Russians are investing big in tourism in some ways. They have recreated the legendary Amber Room in the Pushkin Palace, below, which was "lost" during World Ward II after Nazi forces carted it off from the palace. Quite an impressive achievement, at not insignificant cost. I expected to still hear a bit more, even in 2007, about how the decadent royalty had ripped off peasants and workers to create these places, which they clearly had. (We certainly heard about that in 1970-71.) But the official line now seems to be proud of Russia's magnificent history. Period. Although in the basement corridor of the Pushkin, on the way out, there were a number of classic Soviet style photo exhibits of how the heroic staff had saved much and then restored most of the rest after the Nazis seized and destroyed the place.