St Petersburg
seeks return to imperial glory
By Clem Cecil in Moscow
(Filed: 17/03/2002)
ST PETERSBURG is to be restored to its pre-revolutionary glory with the help of £250 million in public funds and an innovative scheme in which individuals and organisations sponsor monuments for repair.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, who was born in St Petersburg and was its deputy mayor from 1994 until 1996, announced ambitious plans last week to rebuild the crumbling Baroque city in time for its tricentenary in 2003. The scheme was welcomed by non-Muscovites, who have yearned for a dilution of the wealth and power that Moscow has accrued since Stalin made it the capital after the 1917 revolution.
While St Petersburg lost its status as capital, it also escaped many of the knocks suffered by Moscow over the following century: Stalin widened main streets in the new capital to make way for extravagant military parades and Nikita Khrushchev blithely bulldozed several churches within the Kremlin to accommodate a modern concert hall. Nobody touched St Petersburg, however, which became shabbier but retained its intrinsic beauty.
The new scheme will correct that shabbiness and St Petersburg will, Mr Putin hopes, regain some its former importance as Russia's cultural and political centre.
St Petersburg's City Hall Landmark Committee, in co-operation with the St Petersburg Times newspaper, has set up a website where potential sponsors can pledge funds to their choice of monument from a list of more than 150 in need of renovation. The names of sponsors will be given on hoardings at sites while work is carried out but will not remain after repairs are complete.
The monuments are as diverse as sculptures from the garden of Yekaterinsky Palace, the former imperial residence, to the grave of the Art Nouveau artist Mikhail Vrubel or the stained-glass windows from the house where Vladimir Nabokov grew up.
The website has attracted corporate sponsors and individuals. An American widow will pay for the restoration of the grave of the poet Anna Akhmatova, and Russian oil company Faeton has chosen to sponsor repairs to the statue of Peter the Great, the city's most famous monument, known as the Bronze Horseman.
The Alexander Column, so tall that Catherine the Great would not ride near it for fear that it might topple over, is being repaired by a Turkish construction company.
The World Monuments Fund aims to complete restoration of the Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum, just outside the city, by 2003. The palace was Catherine the Great's personal dacha, where she entertained her friends and lovers.
Behind Mr Putin's ambitions to restore the city lie plans to use St Petersburg to entertain visiting heads of state more frequently. He is transferring some of the prestigious functions that Moscow has enjoyed since 1917 "to enliven the atmosphere of St Petersburg, both morally and materially".
The centrepiece of his plans will be Konstantinovsky Palace, built for Prince Konstantine in 1720, which will be used for state receptions. In his attempt to focus attention away from Moscow, Mr Putin also floated the idea of moving Russia's Central Bank from the capital to St Petersburg.
"It is lucky for us that the tricentenary plans coincided with Mr Putin's election in 2000," said Lyudmila Kirilova of the St Petersburg Preservation and Development Fund.
While sponsors restore the details of the city, bigger monuments and buildings, such as the National Library and Sheremetev Palace, will be repaired by the state. Mr Putin has allocated the city £250 million this year from public funds that would have been spent on Moscow.
Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow and a former political opponent of the president, is furious at the redirection of funds that he claims are needed to complete important building work that is transforming the capital from a drab Soviet mammoth to gleaming capitalist opulence. Mr Luzhkov received a further rude shock this month when he was told that Moscow's budget was to be cut by almost 20 per cent.
St Petersburg's building budget has doubled since last year but is still lower than Moscow's in proportion to its population. The rest of Russia is now looking forward to the day when readjustment away from the bloated capital reaches beyond St Petersburg to the rest of the country.