Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ballerinas and pop singers sipping their favourite cups of coffee. And, like all their St
Petersburg predecessors, the new ruling elite wants to leave its own distinctive mark
on the city: the proposed Gazprom City skyscraper, renamed the Okhta Centre. After
all, nothing says 'I own you' quite like a 400m tower of glass and steel (see the boxed
A Soviet census-taker stops a man along Nevsky pr:
Where were you born? St Petersburg.
Where did you go to school? Petrograd.
Where do you live now? Leningrad.
Where would you like to live? St Petersburg.
Local Spook Makes Good
When St Petersburg native Vladimir Putin was elected president in 2000, speculation
was rife that he would transfer the Russian capital back to his home town. When Len-
in relocated the capital to Moscow rather hastily in 1918, it was supposed to be a tem-
porary move. Furthermore, the new millennium brought a new regime: what better
way to make a significant break with the past? Most importantly, Putin's personal at-
tachment to his home town was significant.
Born in 1952, Putin spent his childhood in the Smolny district. Little Vlad went to
school in the neighbourhood and took a law degree at Leningrad State University, be-
fore working in Leningrad, Moscow and East Germany for the KGB. In 1990 he re-
turned to his home town, where he was promptly promoted through the ranks of local
politics. By 1994 he was deputy to St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. In his of-
fice in the Smolny Institute, Putin famously replaced the portrait of Lenin with one of
Peter the Great. Quite where this apparent reformer went is anyone's guess, but as
Putin went from the Smolny to the Kremlin, his newfound reformist instincts clearly
became clouded by his atavistic KGB loyalties.
As the city economy slowly recovered from collapse and shock, Sobchak was voted
out of office in 1996. Putin was then recruited by fellow Leningrader, Anatoly
Chubais, to join him in the capital in the Kremlin administration. After another rapid
rise through the ranks, he took over the FSB (the postcommunist KGB). In 1999, after