Pictures

At last I have managed to upload some pictures. Hurray!
Click for bigger versions, but be warned - they are 2-3 MBs each.

The gigantic war memorial on Moskovskaia Prospekt commemorating the seige of Leningrad (constructed by volunteers). Note also the 21-story apartment blocks either side.


'Samson and the Lion' - the centrepiece of Peterhof's 'Grand Cascade'. Celebrates Russia's victory over Sweden in 1730:


Palace Square (as seen from an open window of the Hermitage):


Lenin Statue (around Moscovskaia Square)


Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood:


That took ages. More soon.

hmmm

Reading Russian newspapers from 100 years ago is hard, repetitive and rather dull. Who'd have thought?

This is rather better.

Half way point

3 weeks down and 3 to go.
On Wednesday we made our first visit to the Hermitage, which - if possible - is even bigger than I remember. And now it is occupying another building (the General Staff, on the other side of Palace Square from the Winter Palace) which we did not even go in to. Our (Russian) student cards get us free access but we still had to queue up outside with the tourists for half an hour... lucky it wasn't raining.
Very strange to come to Russia to see such a huge collection of iconic West European art (nearly all the serious Russian collections are held by the Russian Museum, although those are frequently lent out for exhibition in the West to make money). Still, very well worth it. And always good to be revisit the insane opulence of the Imperial court.
Found a nice nugget in one of the guide books: there is nothing attaching the 600-tonne Alexander column in Palace Square to its base. It just sits on top of it.

Yesterday we walked around Vasilevsky Island, which is nice and quiet in places, has a gigantic cemetery, and still has many Soviet emblems etc on the outsides of buildings. A nice change from the slightly insane city centre, and some fantastic abandoned factories and crumbling apartment blocks. Picures... well, one day.

Now that the Makhno miniseries has finished, there's no longer much on television. Last night, we had the choice of: Evita with Russian subtitles; a dubbed version of 'Zeus and Roxanne' (which appears to be a inter-species love story of some sort), and Russian versiuons of 'Big Brother', 'Who wants to tbe a Millionaire' or 'Wheel of Fortune.' Happily, the latter are hilarious, with people breaking in to song at every opportunity for no apparent reason. Well, it's better than 'Casualty'.

Overheard in St Petersburg

'What does she come out with when she HASN'T been thinking?'

American girl in the internet cafe:
"I told Josh [on Facebook] that I miss him more than a fat cat on a diet misses twinkies... it took me a while to come up with something really witty to say."


Meanwhile, the owners of the internet cafe have just started watching a Russian-dubbed version of The Big Lebowski. Fantastic!

exhaustedly

On Wednesday we visited the Museum of Political History on the Petrograd Side. This is housed in a building where Lenin installed himself between April and July 1917. Its most famous exhibit is a recreation of Lenin's office there.
I have to admit to being a little bored by the museum in general - much of it consists of documents and photographs about various figures which have been reproduced, with more detail and context, in books. But there are some very interesting exhibits, and the collection of materials relating to 'everyday life' (from an example of the kind of leather jackets revolutionaries wore in the early 20s to a recretion of a 1980s living room with a figure sitting reading the critical journal 'Ogonyok') were well worth the visit.
We have nearly exhausted ourselves with sightseeing, although we have seen only a fraction of the city's attractions - and have as yet no plans for the weekend except for some badly needed revision of Russian grammar, which is currently causing us endless problems. (As RL said the other day, we are now getting to the stage with the Russian where our eyes are being opened to how much we do not know. This kind of Socratic ignorance is proving something of a dent to confidence.. but we are getting there). In term of sightseeing, I am still desperate to go and see what remains of the Bosheviks' "Museum of Atheism "... more on that later.
Swan lake was good, except for a great deal of flash photography, and lots of clapping at the wrong time - both of which seemed to be the responsibility of the inordinate number of French people in the audience. On that, no comment.

On a happy note, I found a DVD of one of my favourite Russian films (Alexei Balabanov's 'Brother') in a supermarket for 100 roubles (2 quid), which was very nice.

Lugovoi

Well... events of the last couple of days are not altogether encouraging in terms of Anglo-Russian relations. Moscow has asserted that it will not extradite Andrei Lugovoi, because Russia's constitution prevents citizens' extradition. The Foreign Office refuse to consider Moscow's offer to try Lugovoi in Russia and "is expected to announce a tough response as early as next week" this morning's FT reports. “you can expect something to be announced to parliament very soon,” says "one Whitehall insider.
"Analysts said a return to the Cold War tactic of diplomatic expulsions was one option likely to be being considered, alongside visa bans on certain law and order officials, or withdrawing cooperation in areas such as education, social affairs or counter-terrorism information."

This is not encouraging for those of us who rely on such cooperation. In certain areas - like access to archives - there has been a dramatic decline in accessibility to Western researchers since 2000, and this kind of antagonism is only going to make the situation worse. It is a curious irony: if the government listened more carefully to the kind of political science research carried out with the money it provides to the research councils and universities - the kind of research it is so ready to jeopardise with ill-considered threats and insinuations - it might realise that these kinds of tactics simply are not going to intimidate Putin's government.
This kind of thing is not helped by sloppy journalism. A story datelined today (for tomorrow's paper?) on Guardian online suggests:
"President Putin has angrily dismissed as "stupidity" Britain's request for Mr Lugovoi's extradition. The Kremlin has already waged a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Britain's ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, carried out by activists from the Russian youth group Nashi. Pro-Kremlin protesters picketed the British embassy, jumped in front of the ambassador's car and heckled his speeches. The anti-UK campaign has spread to the British Council, which has been raided by tax officials wearing balaclavas, and was last month told to move out of its offices in the city of Yekaterinburg."
Well, this is a dodgy insinuation. Nashi (whose links with the Kremlin are dubious - it is certainly not true to suggest that it is simply an organ of the Kremlin) began its campaign against Tony Brenton after the latter attended an opposition conference in July 2006 - 5 months before the Litvinenko murder.

Time running out at the internet cafe and I have been distracted by having to write an email to the Guardian about the above innaccuracy. Tonight we are going to see Swan Lake at the Marinskii theatre. More news soon!

Touristy

We have spent the weekend in museums. Yesterday, the Russian Museum (which exhibits Russian art from icons up to about 1950) and today the Ethnographic Museum (which was created as a display of the cultural diversity of the various peoples of the Soviet Union). Both museums are so overflowing with fantastic displays that they left us exhausted.
I have managed to procure a poster of Briullov's excellent 'The Last Days of Pompeii' (unfortunately, the picture below cannot do justice to this gigantic painting).

I have also found a shop selling old Soviet posters for a reasonable price (about 7 Pounds each) and will likely procure one. I will also go vodka shopping this week. Anyone who wants something brought back from Russia and hasn't told me so yet should get in touch. I can accomodate at least two or three further requests.
Finally, I am very excited that there is an ongoing mini-series about the life of Nestor Makhno on Russian TV. Makhno was the leader of a Ukranian peasant-anarchist movement in the Russian civil war, which I studied for my undergraduate dissertation a year ago. Very exciting. Unfortunately it is apparently a 12-part series, with one episode a week, and we are only here for 6. And our Russian skills are coming along so well that we can almost understand the newsreaders, who somehow talk at about 4 times the pace of anybody else.

Details

Well... I have been asked for details, so here are a few.
Borat fans: the Russian for church is 'Храм' (pronounced 'khram')
Notable culinary discovery thus far: pancakes made out of fried shredded potato, stuffed with minced pork, and served with a mushroom and sour-cream sauce. Stupendous. Pirozhki (pastries stuffed with meat) are also excellent, but then we all knew that, didn't we?
Just how cheap is the beer? In the shops, around $1, or 50p, for a pint of decent Russian beer. In the bar, a bit more - about $1.50.
Pictures look impossible until I get back. But I have 100 so far, and there are still 5 weeks to go - so when they come, they will be many. :) I can, however, illustrate with pictures pilfered from elsewhere.
This week it has been sunny and hot, so that parks and the grounds of palaces are full of sunbathers. As I write, it has started raining properly for the first time. We have been taking advantage of the good weather, while it lasts, to wander around the city a bit and look at various churches and palaces. From the extremeley Russian Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood (so called because it was built on the site of the 1881 assasination of Tsar Alexander II)...


... to the quite deliberately Western St. Isaac's Cathedral, designed by the French architect Auguste de Monferrand.


This Saturday, Elton John will play an open-air concert in Palace Square (the square outside the Winter Palace/Hermitage).

There are also posters everywhere with a picture of some extremely decrepit looking Rolling Stones, who are also playing here soon, apparently.

Plans for the weekend include a trip to the Russian Museum (which has all the Russian stuff, while the Hermitage has mostly stuff stolen or bought from Europe). Happily, we have been issued with student cards, which give us reduced access to all museums and cathedrals, and free access to the Hermitage. It should also get me in to the Russian State Library, when I venture there, but alas, I haven't managed it yet.


"Paka" ('bye for now' / 'see you soon'!)

PS: for those who are interested, RL and I are reading 'Discipline and Punish' and having heated discussions about compulsion and consumption in capitalism. Oh yeah, and we are still learning some Russian too :)

Russia

Well, we are here.
We spent the whole day yesterday walking around the Fontanka island (the central part of the city, where we are staying) and taking photos. We have bright sunshine, and it's very warm - fantastic. Everything in the city seems to be on a huge scale. Massive buildings (so big it's hard to take a photo that gets any detail but that the whole building fits in to), wide roads (where the drivers weave between traffic giving no indication) and the huge river Neva and its bridges. When we got here on Saturday night and began to walk around (at around 10.30 pm, when the sun is setting - it's properly dark by about 1am) there were runners finishing a marathon on the Nevskii Prospekt, and a large group of inebriated soldiers marching up and down in the Palace Square (outside the Winter Palace/Hermitage).
I've already taken a few good photos, but cannot yet find a way to upload them. It may have to wait until I return.
Each situtation of interaction leaves no option but to learn a bit more Russian. In at the deep end indeed, but there is already a lot of progress in the first 48 hours. I have yet to be tempted to really indulge in the dangerously cheap beer (perhaps over the weekend) but we have already had a nice mixture of food - the good, the bad and the ugly. So much to do, so little time, but we are having a lot of fun. Today we discovered that our student cards from the unviersity give us free access to the Hermitage (it normally costs around 20 pounds) so we may be spending a while there. I have yet to venture to the National Library of Russia for an interrogation about why I want to use it - apparently they speak little or no English.
The internet cafe timer is about to run out, so adios for now!