Northern Capital Being ‘Mummified’ by ‘People from Moscow,’ Shevchuk Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – For the third time in a row, St. Petersburg is being ruled by “people from Moscow,” Mikhail Shevchuk says. Such officials are not necessarily Muscovites as some might think but rather “people examined, approved and confirmed in office by the supreme power.” They thus bring a Moscow perspective regardless of where they are from.

            The St. Petersburg journalist says that Aleksandr Beglov “like his two predecessors” was sent to the Northern Capital from Moscow; but in contrast to them, he is not the product of the capital’s governor training center but rather a member of “the guards’ cohort,” that is, “an old acquaintance of the president” (region.expert/mummiespb/).

            Russians love to give St. Petersburg beautiful epithets like the naval capital and window on Europe and the city of three revolutions but now it has become primarily “a bureaucratic capital,” Shevchuk says. It copies Moscow and is forced to use Moscow’s money and Moscow’s model for everything even when that is against the interests of the city.

            Alienating Europeans from visiting the city because of Moscow’s anti-NATO statements may seem fine to “people from Moscow” but hardly to Petersburgers who don’t think visits by Germans or Dutch are about “feeding NATO” as officials like to say but about sharing a common European past and future.

            Now, there are more Chinese tourists in St. Petersburg than Dutch or German ones, as if Peter the Greet opened a window not to Europe but to Asia.” Of course, the authorities are pleased: the Chinese are less likely to contaminate the residents of the Northern Capital. “There is the language barrier, don’t you know?”

            This Muscovite attitude toward St. Petersburg leads to absurdities, Shevchuk says. “There is a committee on Arctic affairs in the city, but there isn’t one, for example, on the affairs of the Baltic Sea, even though the Arctic is far away, and the Baltic is in front of our eyes.”

            Beglov shows himself committed to continuing this downgrading of the city. His first foreign visit by tradition was to Finland, but instead of meeting with young engineers and programmers who have fled St. Petersburg to work there, he met with veterans of the World War II blockade.

            He has been copying Moscow in other ways as well: He got money from Moscow to build a park like the one in Moscow and is currently reforming the city’s transportation infrastructure not in the ways that the city requires but in ones that copy whatever Moscow officials are doing in Moscow.

            The distinctiveness of St. Petersburg is being minimized, and for residents, maintaining their traditional feelings of standing apart from the rest of Russia requires an act of will.  The city is being “mummified,” reduced to the common logic of Russian, that is, Muscovite, reality rather than growing organically.

            Even the new logo eliminates almost all reference to the city except its name – and the placement of one letter suggesting its bridges!  One wonders, the journalist says, “how many people will guess what this means without explanations.” Probably a lot more than those in Moscow responsible for it.

            Not long ago, Petersburg was “the flagship of democratic changes in post-Soviet Russia.” But now even its Legislative Assembly which was at the forefront of these, is afraid to hold a session commemorating them. “Not a single deputy” called for doing so.  Their city is now under “outside rule,” that is, by Moscow.

            It recalls the city’s fate when it was surrounded by the blockade, but such recollections are encouraging. That blockade ended, and “sooner or later,” the current one will end as well.