{"id":1016,"date":"2019-07-18T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2019-09-05T09:47:04","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:47:04","slug":"living-by-history-a-week-in-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2019\/07\/18\/living-by-history-a-week-in-st-petersburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Living by History: A Week in St. Petersburg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By August Hagemann<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nmonth, I had the incredible honor to spend a week in St. Petersburg, Russia, on\na student research grant in memory of Dr. Karen Dawisha.  My goal was to begin examining how the famous\nwriter Fedor Dostoevsky fits into contemporary St. Petersburg culture, by\nanalyzing Dostoevsky-centered tourism in the city.  While there, I experienced a city that was at\nonce thoroughly modern and thoroughly historical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              I arrived in the city late Sunday\nafternoon, and after settling into my hotel decided to take a walk to get more\nfamiliar with the area.  Fortunately,\nnighttime in St. Petersburg in July is more of a deep twilight, so I was able\nto get my first glimpses of the Winter Palace, the Kazan Cathedral, and the\nSavior on the Blood Cathedral in the soft evening light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Palace Square with the Hermitage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kazan Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nnext day, the weather was even more gorgeous than when I arrived.  With rain in the forecast for the rest of the\nweek, and most of the city\u2019s museums closed on Mondays anyways, I decided to\nspend as much of the day outdoors as I could. \nI first found myself in the Mikhailovsky Gardens, a beautiful park just\nbehind the Russian Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Russian Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even\nmore impressive to me, however, was the Summer Garden just down the\nstreet.  Once the premier fair weather\nleisure spot for the tsars and their families, the Summer Garden has been\nlargely restored according to plans available from the eighteenth and\nnineteenth centuries.  With Peter the\nGreat\u2019s Summer Palace nestled in one corner, the Summer Garden presented shady\npaths filled with Classical sculpture and elaborate fountains that spoke\nstrongly to the early 18th century taste of the tsars for European culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Summer Garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Summer Garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Summer Garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My\ntime in these gardens was my first encounter with the sort of\nmodernity-in-history that characterized what I was able to observe of the\ncity.  This reconstructed Tsarist garden,\nfilled with classical sculpture, was not crowded exclusively with historians\nand art-lovers, but with families and couples enjoying the nice weather.  Italian marble sculptures from the 18th<\/sup>\nCentury stood side by side with vendors selling lemonade and souvenirs.  It was a historical setting for a modern\nexistence.  The Field of Mars just across\nthe street hosted a similar situation — though the Monument to the Fighters of\nthe Revolution stood prominently in the center of the field, most of the area\nwas occupied by people picnicking or playing frisbee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Field of Mars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nnice weather held into the evening, and gave me a very quick idea of just how\nbeautiful the white nights can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Palace Square through the General Staff Building Arch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Palace Square and General Staff Building<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nnext day was a dedicated Dostoevsky day. \nBefore the rain began in the afternoon, I wanted to make sure I made it\nto the Raskolnikov House, where the protagonist of Dostoevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment<\/em> would have lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Raskolnikov’s House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nnext day was a dedicated Dostoevsky day. \nBefore the rain began in the afternoon, I wanted to make sure I made it\nto the Raskolnikov House, where the protagonist of Dostoevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment<\/em> would have lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dostoevsky Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dostoevsky Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dostoevsky Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To\nwrap the day up, I stopped by the Dostoevsky monument outside the Vladimirskaya\nmetro station, the Mikhailovsky Castle, which housed the engineering school\nwhere Dostoevsky studied before going on to become an author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Statue to Dostoevsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mikhailovsky Castle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On\nWednesday I walked down to Dostoevsky\u2019s final resting place at the Tikhvin\nCemetery, just outside the walls of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.  This cemetery also holds the tombs of\nTchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and other famous Russian artists, composers, and\nwriters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dostoevsky’s Grave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mussorgsky’s Grave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tchaikovsky’s Grave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My\nperception of St. Petersburg as a modern city functioning in a historical\nsetting was heightened by exploring the ways Dostoevsky was presented around\nthe city. In places like the cemetery or the Dostoevsky monument outside the\nmetro station, Dostoevsky was just one, albeit notable, part of what drew\npeople to that location. Even in the museum dedicated to him, the literature\nspoke more about Dostoevsky\u2019s home and family life than about his cultural\ncontributions. It seemed that while culture and history were of great interest\nin St. Petersburg, they were often a backdrop for other activities, rather than\nthemselves the focus. \n\nThis was not quite the case in the Hermitage. Housed\nin the Winter Palace, the second largest art museum in the world by area\nshowcased works from European masters throughout history, as well as the\ngorgeous preserved or restored interiors of the Winter Palace. Here, culture\nwas center stage. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inside the Hermitage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Throne Room, Hermitage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the Hermitage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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1812 Gallery, Hermitage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My\nperception of St. Petersburg as a modern city functioning in a historical\nsetting was heightened by exploring the ways Dostoevsky was presented around\nthe city. In places like the cemetery or the Dostoevsky monument outside the\nmetro station, Dostoevsky was just one, albeit notable, part of what drew\npeople to that location. Even in the museum dedicated to him, the literature\nspoke more about Dostoevsky\u2019s home and family life than about his cultural\ncontributions. It seemed that while culture and history were of great interest\nin St. Petersburg, they were often a backdrop for other activities, rather than\nthemselves the focus. \n\nThis was not quite the case in the Hermitage. Housed\nin the Winter Palace, the second largest art museum in the world by area\nshowcased works from European masters throughout history, as well as the\ngorgeous preserved or restored interiors of the Winter Palace. Here, culture\nwas center stage. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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St. Isaac’s Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Griboedov Canal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\nspent my remaining time in the city revisiting my favorite locations, or places\nI get I could get more out of \u2014 the Hermitage, for example, took 9 hours over\ntwo visits to see entirely. While I immersed myself in the culture and history\nof the city, contemporary life continued all around me. St. Petersburg was a\ncity with more history around every corner, but right alongside it were\nresidents and tourists alike enjoying the summer in any number of ways. History\nwas everywhere, yet people didn\u2019t see it so much as live alongside it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am\nincredibly grateful to the Dawisha family and the Havighurst Center for Russian\nand Post-Soviet Studies to travel to the city, and for a little while become\npart of that historic-contemporary milieu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Smolny Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By August Hagemann This month, I had the incredible honor to spend a week in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a student research grant in memory of Dr. Karen Dawisha.  My goal was to begin examining how the famous writer Fedor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":1025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}