August 20, 2015

On the subway in St. Petersburg, "there is no trash, no litter, no graffiti. It is clean down there."

"Remarkably tidy for a nation that doesn't have the reputation for being pristine. And no, I did not see a cleaning squad attending to human slovenliness. I saw an occasional (but rare) guard, that's all," writes my colleague Nina, with excellent photographs.
And I saw a populace that is proud. Too proud to deface what is regarded as uniquely grand, uniquely theirs.

Which brings me to the final point: the metro was built in the years just before and after the death of Stalin. The stations are a work of art. Soviet art. There isn't a better place to come face to face with it than at the metro stations.

Times have changed since the days of Lenin or Stalin. We're back to Russia now, as opposed to the Soviet Union. And Saint Petersburg, as opposed to Leningrad. But although the city name has changed and the commercial face of Russia has surely changed too, moving further and further from the post-revolution communist rhetoric of its leaders, here -- unlike in Poland [where Nina grew up] -- the monuments to those leaders have, for the most part remained in place...

Perhaps this is true to some extent in most countries: we, too, have trouble letting go of glorified images of generals and leaders whose period of governance did not exactly embrace all the values we claim to hold dear. But in Poland, the erasure of a communist past has proceeded rapidly following the return to market capitalism. The changing of Warsaw street names is a prime example of this. Not so here....

22 comments:

mikee said...

Potemkin was Russian, wasn't he? Not Potemkin of the battleship, but Potemkin of the villages.

Not saying the subways aren't real, aren't clean, aren't run well. But weren't they built with slave labor, so why not treat them well as a memorial to the dead?

tim in vermont said...

Poland was a conquered country, of course they rid their country of the scum ring of communism.

traditionalguy said...

St Petersburg is Putin's home town. The people in then Leningrad were treated horibly by both sides in a long WWII siege. Germans starved them on one side and the communist Party did the same on the other side as Stalin used the 18 months to punish the free thinking urban and westernized Russians there who had never been as obedient as he thought they should be.

Waiting on help from a Marxist ruler is called a death sentence. We have learned that lesson too under Obama.

Putin hates the Communists too. That is why he hates Obama.

Sebastian said...

"And I saw a populace that is proud. Too proud to deface what is regarded as uniquely grand, uniquely theirs."

Putin proud. After all, defacing/erasing the past is such an un-Russian thing to do.

And sure, Putin & Co. have moved far, far away from communist "rhetoric."

Quaestor said...

Poland was a conquered country, of course they rid their country of the scum ring of communism.

Ditto.

CarlF said...

And the trains run on time.

Dan said...

Because they will take you to the Lubyanka and shoot you.

jimbino said...

We should let the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians deal with the statues of those dead dictators. I remember visiting a graveyard of Lenin statues in Latvia, I believe it was. I know there's one in Moscow and another in Talinn. Maybe they have room for Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson?

Quaestor said...

Saint Petersburg was built to be work of art in itself. The citizens of that city know and appreciate their history, therefore they don't abuse their city out of respect. I think it has been amply demonstrated that too many Americans, particularly nooyawkahs, do not know and appreciate their history; therefore they can't be expected to respect it. They can only be expected to restrain themselves while the police are watching.

Besides vulgar philistinism, which must be expected in any culture, this country has the additional problem of too many people who are literally incapable of distinguishing trash from art. Doubt me? Behold, and try to contain your outrage. That's the Guggenheim, an institution of enormous influence. Given that example I conclude its influence is overwhelmingly malign.

America particularly, but the West in general, has made its art dis-respectable. The chief culprits inhabit our universities and institutions. They are paid handsomely to degrade the achievement of millennia into drying-up racks with fresh fruit.

oleh said...

The Hermitage. Beautiful stolen art.

Was visiting the crypt of the Medici in Florence some weeks ago, and a bunch of Russians in a tour group disturbed my peace. How clever they thought they were, bragging like louts in that harsh (horosho) language of theirs about all the looted art they squirreled away at the Hermitage.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/30/arts/hermitage-in-its-manner-displays-its-looted-art.html

CStanley said...

That was an informative article, Oleh....thanks for the link.

As others have noted, the reason for the difference in Poland's destruction of Soviet influence and Russia's treatment of this part of her past is quite obvious. I find it remarkable that Nina seems to overlook the distinction, especially since she grew up in Poland. Is she an ethnic Pole?

furious_a said...

tim in vermont said...

Poland was a conquered country, of course they rid their country of the scum ring of communism.


Stalin treated St. Petersburg (I visited when it was still called Leningrad and one could still see people who had been marked by the starvation of The Siege) like a conquered country. As cradle of the Revolution and a center of gravity for the intellegentsia, it represented a threat to his power. Leningrad party chiefs Zinoviev and Kirov were purge victims. Not said aloud until after Stalin's death was that he left Leningrad to starve rather than lift The Siege earlier to ensure its spirit was crushed.

furious_a said...

jimbino said...

We should let the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians deal with the statues of those dead dictators.


I remember the Hosok Tere (Heroes' Square) in Budapest with (1982) and without (1997) Stalin's statue. The unobstructed view of the Magyar Kings is much preferable.

The Austrians, being a more polite sort, built a fountain in front of the Soviet War Memorial in Vienna to obstruct its view from the Lorhingerstrasse and the Karntnerring.

William said...

The urban proletariat was the chosen class of the Soviet Union. I don't know about Leningrad, but in one book I read it was noted that Stalin devoted 30% of the national budget for several years running to building the Moscow subway. I understand that it's quite something to look at, but it should be noted that countless agricultural workers went hungry or, indeed, starved in order to further its construction. Perhaps you can say something similar about Versailles or even the Pyramids, but those weren't built to propagate the idea that their rulers cared about the common people.

William said...

Just now I'm reading Anna Reid's fine book, Leningrad. It is about the German siege of that city from 1941-44. The siege was awful beyond all imagining. The intelligentsia went hungry and frequently starved, but they were far from the worst victims. That distinction went to the agricultural workers who were forced to flee to the city. If they had Finnish or German surnames they were goners.....The people who ran the orphanages made out ok, but their charges mostly starved. Women who practiced cannibalism in order to feed their children were apparently treated with some leniency. I suspect that St Petersburg is a city with many terrible memories that cannot ever be assimilated into the consciousness of the people.

kcom said...

Of course, when it's tried again, they'll do it right that time. Or, if not then, the next. Or if not that time, the time after. You know, after a suitable period of time where the bodies are decayed and forgotten.

Henry said...

The MBTA is a work of art. Today it was a one-hour delay of pure contemplation.

Henry said...

That's a lovely essay, btw. With terrific photographs.

I don't think Nina's experience of great art with few people is that rare, especially in a museum open into the evening. It can depend on the city. Boston's MFA has a much more intermittent crowd flow than NYC's MMA. And I have been in the London's National Gallery an hour from closing when it was completely deserted.

Bill Befort said...

This rang a bell: I remember how, when I was in high school, returning visitors (fewer then, of course) could always be counted on to go into raptures about the gorgeous Russian subway systems. I graduated in 1959; but thanks to the miracle of the Web, if you Google on "Russian subways so beautiful 1959" you can still catch fugitive echoes of those rhapsodies from the Khrushchev era. Like Castro, some things never change.

Clyde said...

The Poles had communism imposed on them by invaders who were an historic adversary. Is it any wonder that as soon as the Russians were gone, anything having to do with them would be expunged as quickly as possible? For the Russians, however, the communist period is still looked back on with pride by those old enough to remember it. Those were the good old days, for them.

CStanley said...

The Poles had communism imposed on them by invaders who were an historic adversary.

This is what makes me question whether Nina is herself a Pole. As a second generation Polish American I can say that enmity with Russia is in our DNA, and having traced my ancestry back to early 19th century I can see how deeply it affected my family (several ancestors emigrated specifically to escape the draft while living under Russian rule, for instance.)

Maybe Nina didn't intend for her comments to brush over this history, but nonetheless it seems odd that she did.

John Stuart Mill said...


I visited Moscow and St. Petersburg a couple of years ago and during my 8-day stay was surprised to see no homeless people or aggressive panhandlers. The big shopping mall in Moscow is stunning, and the Kremlin campus is gorgeous. You can see some beautiful photos here: http://mobysal.com/photos/shopping_mall.php

I was there alone and since I don't speak Russian had to rely on the Russians for directions and guidance on local buses and the metro. I found the locals very friendly; once a bus driver went out of his way to drop me off at my hotel because I forgot to get off the first time around.