"Stalin Apartments" on Baltic Avenue
Calamity averted: despite the Cunard Programme’s dire prophecies, the Internet didn’t go away.
On to my latest concern: as we leave port, I’m looking across a narrow strait of water, at a pair of venting Russian nuclear-plant towers.
There’s a story going around this city of 5 million – of the local man who recently celebrated his 100th birthday with this toast: “I was born in St. Petersburg, was educated in Petrograd, raised a family in Leningrad, and will be laid to rest . . . in St. Petersburg.”
If you’re an American, ask yourself: what’s the greatest crisis of your life and times? 9/11, Watergate, the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, the Great Depression?
All terrible moments and phases, certainly. But we haven’t experienced two forms of tyrannical rule and multiple revolutions – some violent, the last one mercifully velvet.
As much as we complain about our democracy and the slapstick comedy of debt-ceiling negotiations, Americans can fall back on two centuries of free markets and free thought. Unlike this country, an experiment in capitalism that’s barely two decades old.
OK, enough pontificating. Truth is, you spend time here and you can’t help but walk away inspired. Perhaps it has to do with being swathed in light for 17 hours in this, the season of “White Nights”.
Our too-quick 36 hours here started yesterday with the Hermitage (so many works of art, it takes 10 years to do the entire palace if you spent one minute on each work). Following a midday cruise along the Neva, ducking in and out of canals, we took in St. Isaac’s Cathedral (it can hold about 14,000 worshipers who stand, as is traditional, in Orthodox churches) and the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood (erected on the site where Tsar Alexander II was mortally wounded in 1881 – and, with its multicolored brick, mosaics and onion domes, a decidedly “Russian looking” church).
Today, we picked up where we left off with an hour’s drive to Peterhof – the Russian monarchy’s version of Versailles, followed by afternoon stops at the Yusupov Palace (where Rasputin met his fate) and the Peter and Paul Fortress/Cathedral, the czars’ burial place.
If you want to measure Russian progress, look no further than living conditions. As you leave the city, one encounters a series of dilapidated multistoried buildings – “Stalin Apartments”. Our tour guide grew in one: ten families, including hers, sharing a single kitchen.
Further up the street: “Brezhnev apartments”. That’s one apartment for a family of five, with a kitchen two meters by two meters.
Then, further along the way, 20-story “Putin apartments”: spacious, modern fixtures for all built by Shanghai construction firms . . . the catch being that not everyone can afford one. The St. Petersburg cruise terminal is blanketed by such high-rises. Think: Arlington, Va.’s Crystal City on steroids.
Btw, you might have noticed: no mention of “Khrushchev apartments”. The joke is: there is no such animal. The little man promised every family its own apartment. His failed state couldn’t make good on that particular vision of a workers’ paradise.
Despite Peter the Great’s dream of a more western capital in style and outlook, St. Petersburg doesn’t have the same look and feel as Stockholm and Helsinki, where every young girl seemed armed with Ray Bans and a cell phone. Still, old Soviet adversaries have invaded the city: western European autos clog the streets; American fast food is clogging arteries.
Tonight: a cigar and watching the sun set on the Gulf of Finland.
Tomorrow: Estonia, and the clash of old vs. new.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: "Stalin Apartments" on Baltic Avenue
The comments by Russians that there are no Krushchev apartments must be strongly tainted with sarcasm as there are thousands of khrushchevki plaguing the former Soviet Union these days. The khrushchevki were typically slapped together via pre-fabricated cement panels and suffer severe decay presently. Brezhnev merely took a similar design and expanded it from 5 floors to 9 floors. Both designs are complete eyesores and leave an ugly scar on the nation. Many are being demolished and some gain new facades, so there is some improvement.
The Stalin-era building were actually built with a reasonable set of aesthetics. They have a much more majestic-looking design and are much coveted in the real estate market. (the common kitchens, though still existing in some places, have largely disappeared)
However, the modern designs are definitely of better quality yet barely win the battle of aesthetics against their predecessors. My prediction is that they will be the future scars of the Russian landscape.
Edited on Jul 27, 2011 at 11:39amMay '10
Re: "Stalin Apartments" on Baltic Avenue
Fascinating description of a country that few Americans have seen first hand. I've tried to find as much Soviet humor as I can in order to understand their mindset, but family living conditions is something we rarely hear about or get to compare to our own conditions.
Bill Whalen:
Our too-quick 36 hours here started yesterday with the Hermitage (so many works of art, it takes 10 years to do the entire palace if you spent one minute on each work).
Does the Hermitage really have a collection of 5,256,000 works of art?