If you really want to know someone, you have to be aware not only of his or her present days, you need to have some information from the days of old. If I want to get to know the city I live in, it's not enough to see it every day and to watch its everyday life, there are facts from its past I have to take into account. So I looked back, where and when (and why) St. Petersburg began.
The very foundation of the city is not just a historical fact, but also a myth, a legend, where truth is no longer obvious. One of those legends says that the City of St. Peter could not be at the spot where it was founded. Earth was too swampy, and ways of building which were actual those day were too weak to make the idea of St. Petersburg something more than just and idea. But the city was built, and very soon people started to say that it was a miracle, that it was built in heaven and then lowered down to Earth. Maybe it because of that I've always been quite indifferent about the city in general: I live in a city that should have never existed in the first place.
Before there was the city, the Emperor of Russia Peter the Great erected a fortress which is still there, Peter and Paul Fortress. After the fortress there was a shipyard, and only then the city had started to grow around it. Unlike many other fortifications in the world, this one has never looked aggressive, not from my point of view, anyway. Maybe this is one of the reasons I've never had any special feelings about St. Petersburg: it is not what it have to be. And it's really not. It's something more that just a city, more than just a fortress. Long ago St. Petersburg had changed the entire country, not just from the outside, but from the inside, too.
Fourth Rome — that's what Peter the Great intended to build on shores of Neva. The heart of the Empire. The cultural, economical, military and governmental center of the land. Fourth Rome, the one that could not be, the one that should not be, for Philotheus of Pskov had once said: "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth". Peter the Great had great ambitions and great vision, regardless the monk's word, maybe even to spite his proclamations, and he succeeded perfectly. St. Petersburg become the capital of Russian Empire in 1712 and quit this job only in 1918, so for more than 200 years the city was the core of the country. Quite a term, one must admit, considering the fact that it was founded in 1703, and I can actually see or at least feel the consequences. There's a popular joke in my city: only in St. Petersburg moving to Moscow isn't a step forward, but a hopeless descent. On some level we still feel ourselves like metropolitans, like people from the capital (the real capital, some might say). It really annoys me, in myself and in the others.
It's a great city. It's a beautiful city. I bugs me that I can't see what people see in it. I know people who really love it, deeply and sincerely. I know people who hate it, - deeply and sincerely. But I feel no excitement about it at all. Nada. No love, no hate. But I want to find something in St. Petersburg that will make me feel about it, no matter how good or bad this feeling is going to be. Goal is set. The searching party has landed.
Fourth Rome — that's what Peter the Great intended to build on shores of Neva. The heart of the Empire. The cultural, economical, military and governmental center of the land. Fourth Rome, the one that could not be, the one that should not be, for Philotheus of Pskov had once said: "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth". Peter the Great had great ambitions and great vision, regardless the monk's word, maybe even to spite his proclamations, and he succeeded perfectly. St. Petersburg become the capital of Russian Empire in 1712 and quit this job only in 1918, so for more than 200 years the city was the core of the country. Quite a term, one must admit, considering the fact that it was founded in 1703, and I can actually see or at least feel the consequences. There's a popular joke in my city: only in St. Petersburg moving to Moscow isn't a step forward, but a hopeless descent. On some level we still feel ourselves like metropolitans, like people from the capital (the real capital, some might say). It really annoys me, in myself and in the others.
It's a great city. It's a beautiful city. I bugs me that I can't see what people see in it. I know people who really love it, deeply and sincerely. I know people who hate it, - deeply and sincerely. But I feel no excitement about it at all. Nada. No love, no hate. But I want to find something in St. Petersburg that will make me feel about it, no matter how good or bad this feeling is going to be. Goal is set. The searching party has landed.
