Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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Moscow & St. Petersburg
in Depth
Russia fills out Europe's right flank and reaches across the top of Asia
to wade in the Pacific, making it European, Asian, Arctic, and none of the above. Its
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. Russia's leaders have been expert at inflicting ugliness on their people, and
Russians have become expert at putting up with it. Yet the country has survived and
thrived, producing some of the world's best science, music, and literature. More remark-
ably, Russians are among the most festive and giving people on the planet, always ready
to put their last morsel of food and last drop of drink on the table to honor an unex-
pected late-night guest with toasts, more toasts, and laughter. Moscow has dominated the
country's political, economic, and cultural life for most of the past 900 years; St. Peters-
burg, during the 2 centuries when it assumed the role of Russia's capital, plunged the
country at long last into the modern world. The two distinct, yet distinctly Russian, cit-
ies remain the pride of this unfathomably vast country.
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RUSSIA TODAY
Under Putin, who was overwhelmingly
elected president in 2000 and just as
enthusiastically reelected in 2004, Russia
became undoubtedly a calmer and richer
place than it was under his predecessor. He
cut income taxes to a flat 13%, allowed the
sale of land for the first time since Lenin's
days, and presided over the greatest growth
in Russia's economy in decades—at least
until the new global financial downturn
hit in 2008. But Putin was able to do all
this largely because he disabled his politi-
cal opposition. A well-financed pro-Krem-
lin party, United Russia, broke the
Communists' hold on parliament and
squeezed out the pro-Western parties as
well, leaving few independent voices in
the legislative branch. Feisty television sta-
tions were shuttered under Putin, for what
prosecutors called financial reasons and
journalists called political ones. Russia's
richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was
sentenced in 2005 to prison on tax evasion
charges that he says were punishment for
his support of opposition parties; his
Yukos oil empire was dismantled by the
state. In 2006, the killings of two vocal
Kremlin critics, journalist Anna Politkovs-
kaya and former KGB agent Alexander
Litvinenko, cast a further shadow over
Putin's administration.
Russia's relations with Western govern-
ments have suffered as a result, especially
as Moscow has sought to reassert its influ-
ence beyond its borders in ways not always
transparent or democratic. Foreign inves-
tors, though, remain hungry for a piece of
Russia's petroleum riches amid mounting
concerns about worldwide energy sup-
plies.
Small-scale crime went down under
Putin, partly thanks to his increased use of
KGB-style security services. Many Rus-
sians welcomed this new order after the
