Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
St. Petersburg's
reputation as Russia's intellectual and cultural center has not
brought the city the prosperity that today's Moscow enjoys, but Petersburg has better
hotel choices and a restaurant scene nearly as vibrant as the capital's. The vision of the
city's founder, Peter the Great, lives on—even new buildings adhere to the symmetry
and classicism of Peter's day.
Although Russia as a whole is a graying country with a relatively low standard of
living, Moscow and St. Petersburg are its glaring exceptions, and are experiencing a
genuine economic boom that has brought them in line with the world's richest cities.
For tourists there's never been a better time to visit Russia. Surly Soviet service is
giving way to smiling efficiency, new restaurants open in Moscow almost daily, and
fashions are as fresh as in Milan. Cash machines are ubiquitous and English is increas-
ingly widespread. Russia has, at last, opened its doors to the world.
A LOOK AT THE PAST
Russia's struggle for identity, association, and empire has defined it since the Vikings
formed the state of Rus nearly 1,200 years ago. Blood and repression have marred this
struggle, right up to today.
Moscow has dominated the country's political, economic, and cultural life for most
of the past 900 years; St. Petersburg, during the 2 centuries when it assumed the role
of Russia's capital, plunged Russia at long last into the modern world.
The first Russian state was founded in Novgorod in the 9th century, and later
shifted to Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine. The era of
Kievan Rus,
as it was called,
saw the flowering of a major European entity, whose territories stretched across pres-
ent-day Belarus, Ukraine, and much of western Russia. As Kievan Rus, the country
gained a religion and an official language and developed the distinctive architectural
styles seen across the region today.
Moscow
became the seat of Russian authority in 1326. The Russian state was fee-
ble, however, and fell to repeated invasion by Mongol Tatars from the east. The Tatars
kept Russia's princes under their thumbs until Ivan III (Ivan the Great) came to power
in the late 1400s. His reign saw Muscovite-controlled lands spread north to the Arc-
tic and east to the Urals. Ivan the Great launched construction of the Kremlin's mag-
nificent cathedrals and its current walls.
His grandson Ivan IV, the first Russian crowned “czar,” became better known as
Ivan the Terrible.
He instituted Russia's first secret police force, persecuted former
friends as enemies, and killed his own son and pregnant daughter-in-law in a fit of
rage. The country and his dynasty were devastated by the time Ivan IV died in 1584.
The ensuing decades were wrought with bloody, corrupt struggles that came to be
known as the
“Time of Troubles.”
At last the 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov, a dis-
tant relative of Ivan the Terrible, was elected czar in 1613. Mikhail established a
dynasty that would last until czar Nicholas II was executed by Bolsheviks 300 years
later.
Although Russians through the ages have debated whether to look to western
Europe or to their Slavic roots for inspiration,
Peter the Great
had no doubts. Peter
traveled to western Europe and upon his return moved to a swamp on the Baltic Sea,
transforming it into a capital of columned, Italian-designed palaces along broad
avenues and canals. St. Petersburg's beauty came at a great price: Thousands of people
died fulfilling Peter's sometimes impossible building orders.
