Catherine's Palace, what one intelligent Russian thinks of Putin and unexpectedly candid view of history

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Day 20

This morning’s outing was to Pushkin and Catherine’s Palace. The palace was built by Peter the Great for his wife Catherine, although it was significantly enlarged by Catherine the Great. The opulence is like Versailles, but the scale is larger because everything in Russia is larger than Europe. The highlight is supposed to be the Amber Room, but I found the most interesting part an exhibit showing the reconstruction after WWII. After the war broke out and it became obvious, that the Nazi’s were going to get close to St Petersburg, Russian women (all the men were fighting) buried a large number of statues and artifacts. The Nazi’s never made in into St Petersburg, but they did capture and destroy several of the summer homes, palaces, including Peterhof and Catherine’s Palace. All that was left of the buildings were shells. After destroying the buildings, the Nazi’s planted tens of thousands of land mines, so before reconstruction could begin, lots of people died removing them. Early on restoration work was done by volunteers who were replaced with crafts people with specialized skills like cutting amber and applying gold leaf. Restoration of these buildings to over 20 years.

While the Communists, despised the aristocracy they also were nationalist and viewed these buildings as the national treasures that they are. These building now are part of the “biggest and best” that enhances Russia’s standing in the world. The buildings really are spectacular.

At various places the crowds were ferocious. Sorry if this isn’t politically correct, but people in the large groups of Chinese tourists scream and yell and one another which exacerbates the chaos. Although it is cold and raw, I’m glad we’re here now because if it’s crowded now, it will be a madhouse in the summer at the height of the tourist season.

We stopped on the way back at the Memorial to the people who survived the siege in WWII. Nearly 700,000 people died of starvation during the 20-month siege, most during the first winter. We watched a short documentary comprised of short videos and photographs while Konstantin explained what happened. After all the history I’ve read, it is obvious to me that the Russians were responsible for the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. The Allies may have added the coup de grace, but the Russians did the bulk of the fighting. 10 million Russian combatants and non-combatants died in the war. Just as in 1812 in the War with Napoleon, the Nazis underestimated the Russian winter and the capacity of the Russian people to fight insurmountable odds.

When we got back to the hotel, I asked Konstantin if he would recommend a place where we could get a quick sandwich. He offered to want us to his favorite sandwich place and joined us. We quickly moved to discussing political issues and we did not hear what we expected. Konstantin said he basically supports Putin. In his opinion Putin is not an autocrat because is juggling the interests of conservatives, libers and big business. He thinks Putin is acting in the best interests of Russia. His worry is the Med, who he considers an idiot will succeed Putin. He told us the Med had tried to get a law passed that if you were caught driving with anything other than 0% alcohol, you would be fined the equivalent of $15,000. Many people don’t make that much money annually, so Konstantin asked what such a person should do with a fine that size…. commit suicide? He also doesn’t think that Russia influenced the US election in 2016. He quoted a statistic that the Russian political ads for a tiny percentage of the total number of political ads. I tried to explain how the US election is decided by a very small number of swing states and well positioned political ads could have a disproportionate impact. He watches some international news as well as Russian news, but we all view the world through our own political lens and make the fact fit that perspective. Oh, we also talked about Syria. I agree that in many ways trying to overthrow Assad resulted in unexpected consequence. Yes, Assad is a dictator, but he did protect the Christian minority and the country sort-of worked. Now we have an endless war and Assad will probably remain in power over a giant pile of ruble with untold suffering. I acknowledged that my position was not the mainstream in America. He thinks the chemical attacks are staged to make Assad look bad in world public opinion. He asked why is Assad is winning would he want to do something that would turn public opinion against him? It was very friendly and after lunch he walked us to the subway to get to the Political History Museum. Subways in St Petersburg are deep because of the land fil issue. You ride up or down on an escalator for about 90 seconds at the station we were at. Most of the time if you look down, you don’t see the bottom. I don’t look down.

The Political History Museum was also a surprise. We did not expect a candid retrospective on the negative parts of Russian history, specifically the terror under Stalin. But the museum had a large display symbolizing the gulag and narrative that didn’t mince any words. It did skip the famines, but nobody’s perfect.

We had too leave the museum too soon to get to the ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. The ballet was Stone Flower by Prokokiev. IT was his last ballet that was written after he had been called in by the powers that be and told his music needed to conform more closely to Soviet Realism standard. The ballet was a folktale. The plot was banal, the music OK, the choreography had lots of elements of folk dancing and the dancers weren’t as good as the Bolshoi. I’m glad we went, but even happier that we were able to see the Bolshoi.

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Photos

Concealing construction
We saw this in lots of places in Russia and Berlin

Honoring the sacrifice of the people of Leningrad
The city was under siege by the Nazis for 20 months. 1/3 of the city died from starvation and yet they persevered.