St. Petersburg, pt. III

Here is one image of the new Russia, the army is still around, although I saw a lot more people in uniform in 1970-71, but they seem to be putting as much or more energy into buffing up historical treasures like the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace.

As Sandy and I walked toward this, we both remembered the revolution scene, shot as though on this very square, in the film Dr. Zhivago. That was seen as kitsch romanticism in the U.S. but as anti-Soviet propaganda by the USSR.

That marks us out as aged but with good memories, I guess. What is sometimes bizarre for people my age, particularly people who spent years studying the Cold War system of nations in international relations grad school in the 1970s is how the Soviet Union went away with a whimper, not a bang.
During much of the revolutionary time, they stored potatoes in the Church of the Spilled Blood, left. Since 1991, they have spent a lot of money rehabilitating it. We were lucky enough to attend the 100th anniversary, celebrated with fireworks over head and a very decent concert, celebrating another thing Russia has always been good at.

But it seems that quite a bit of the Soviet system is slowly coming back, with a sort of state capitalist twist. The state controls most media, especially the bigger newspapers and almost all the television, but it does so through state owned corporations, like Gazprom, that are technically private, but are in fact, highly controlled from the top down by political authorities. Political and economic are getting mushy it seems. Putin has created two parties with two different heirs apparent so that they can compete with each other in elections. Himself will apparently move on to the board of Gazprom, upon retirement, where the levers of power seem both economic and political.

The Soviet imagery, like the heroic bas relief of sailors defending the motherland during the Great Patriotic War (WW II) are still around. But all of a sudden you see American style stretch limos, too. Like this one that was usually parked in front of our hotel.