White Nights and Dark Days at St. Petersburg

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The Hermitage

Did I see the darkness of night while we were at St. Petersburg during the second week of May? Not at all, because it was light when I woke up very early in the morning (about 4:30 AM) and it was still light when I went to bed very late at night. (about 1:00 AM)

However, the word ‘light’ should be taken here to mean a weak, insipid fluorescence filtering through the dark clouds. In fact, the long twilight of the cloudless nights was brighter than the dark, cold days.

Perhaps that is why they are called ‘white nights’, a regular, annual phenomenon in Northern latitudes but unusual to our Indian eyes.

It would have been romantic walking hand in hand with Avi along the rivers and canals of the city when the night was as bright as early evening (as the websites claimed) but with temperatures at 3 degree centigrade, we did not think so. Sitting on the broad, warm window-sill of our hotel room and looking at the people walking about on the streets during the long twilight, was romantic enough for us.

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great, ‘Tsar and Autocrat of all the Russians’ on 27 May 1703 and remained the capital of Russia till the Russian Revolution of 1917. Like other major cities, it did not grow from a nucleus of a cluster of huts but was forged into a city from marshy land. Peter had foreseen the need of naval supremacy for Russia and for that he needed a city with an access to the sea (or Gulf) and hence he started and won a ‘Northern War’ against the Swedish who were ruling the land. The capital was moved from Moscow to St Petersburg in 1712.

A common mistake is to assume that St. Petersburg is named after its founder, Peter the Great, though he was no saint. (Yes, I mean it both ways. He was no saint judging by his temperament and deeds, and neither was he “canonized” by a Pope.) However, our guide made it clear that the city was named after St. Peter the Apostle and NOT after Peter the Great. For some time it was called ‘Petrograd’ and during the Communist heyday, it was called Leningrad.

And yes, it is St. Petersburg (Burg pronounced as ‘boorg’) and not St. Petersberg. A ’berg’ is a mountain in German while a ‘Burg’ is a castle. (Burg is derived from an Indo-European root with equivalents like ‘Burj’ in Hindi or ‘Buruj’ in Marathi.) The first structure in St Petersburg was ‘Peter and Paul Fortress’ and then the city grew around it.

Our first glimpse of St Petersburg was disappointing. Compared to the upbeat, prosperous Moscow, St Petersburg looks like an old dowager queen who was once beautiful and gracious. The city’s grand palaces stand in stark contrast with dilapidated old residential buildings.

The Winter Palace on the bank of Neva is a majestic building and so is the Admiralty. The Hermitage Museum, which is housed within the Winter Palace, is one of the largest collection of Art and one has to ‘waste’ a whole day on it (for tourists, it is mandatory sightseeing)

However, we wasted a day on Hermitage, which in any case, could not be used for visiting the suburban Imperial Estates because it was a particularly cold, cloudy and rainy day. The ‘Hermitage’ offered shelter from the elements, warmth, nice exhibits to view, lovely but expensive trinkets to buy and a food-court. (Should I also mention nice, clean toilets?) It was a day well spent indoors.

The same thought seems to have occurred to a million other tourists and all of them had converged on the Hermitage that day.

I suppose we have grown tired of the museums. How much costly kitsch (read high Art for this word) should I see? Those Tsars and Tsarinas had untiringly amassed immense wealth in the form of paintings, sculpture, jewelry and what not, (at the expense of the public, of course.) but I was tired of looking at those ‘bejeweled snuff-boxes of Catherine’ and ‘bejeweled daggers of Peter’ kind of thing. The guide told us that Catherine (or was it Elizabeth? Gentle readers, please forgive my lack of interest in History and also please remember how many marks you scored in History in your school-days.) spent so much from the Treasury that at her death, it contained only three Roubles.

BTW, ‘Hermitage’ means a dwelling place of a hermit and a ‘hermit’ means a recluse, a person who prefers solitary existence. Within the scope of these definitions, the solitary lifestyle can be luxurious.
So, all those Tsars and Tsars had a right call themselves ‘hermits’.

Silly me! Why did I associate monastic cells, austerity, ashes and hair-shirts with the word ‘hermit’?

Looking at the lifestyle of those Tsars and Tsarinas, I wouldn’t mind becoming a hermit myself.

No wonder there were Peasant Revolutions every now and then in Russia.

St. Petersburg is a young city but it has seen a lot of bloodshed in its short life so far. What with the three Revolutions and the 900-days of the tragic ‘Siege of Leningrad’, I suppose, Rasputin’s prophesy, “The Neva will be red with blood” has come true.

Happy is the tourist who goes to a city without reading its history. We were blissfully happy when in St Petersburg, because we read the history only after we came back.

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