{"id":1132,"date":"2020-08-26T09:34:02","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T13:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2020-08-26T09:34:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T13:34:02","slug":"life-in-living-history-an-autumn-in-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2020\/08\/26\/life-in-living-history-an-autumn-in-st-petersburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in Living History: An Autumn in St. Petersburg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Matthew Stanonis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stepping off the airplane into a city of\nglittering palaces and gold-tipped churches was the culture shock of a lifetime\nfor an American boy from Ohio\u2019s Amish country. More comfortable with apple pie\nand dairy farms than apartment blocks and statues of Lenin, the semester I\nspent in Russia\u2019s northern capital, St. Petersburg, provided an experience\ntruly a world away from my daily beat. Though profoundly different from my\nhome, the change of scenery was expected; as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld\nwould say, it was a \u201cknown unknown\u201d. What was entirely unexpected, an \u201cunknown\nunknown\u201d, was the depth and sincerity of the human connections that I built in\nthis far-away place. These surprise experiences ranged from becoming friends\nwith a Turkmen migrant working in a hostel in Tbilisi to becoming a late-night\nlegend at a karaoke bar, and did much to personalize my perception and\nunderstanding of Eurasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last fall, I enrolled as an exchange\nstudent at the Smolny Campus of St. Petersburg State University through the\nCIEE program. I took my classes in Russian, enforcing a challenging but\nrewarding regimen of linguistic and cultural immersion. The courses in Russian\nPolitical and Social Life, Cultural Comparison Between the US and Russia, and advanced\nRussian language  did much to provide\ninsight into the culture, politics, and worldview of the planet\u2019s largest\ncountry. Of course, classroom immersion in Russian also significantly and\nauthentically advanced my language proficiency. The professors were skilled at\ndelivering complex lectures with grace and poise, and fortunately for me, a\ndegree of mercy while grading. Smolny\u2019s academics constantly challenged and\ncalled me to dive deeper into the material, and accordingly, the social\nmechanics and constructions of the country that I found myself in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a major urban center, there were\nunlimited experiences on offer in St. Petersburg, ranging from rap concerts to\nOrthodox liturgies. I was fortunate to take advantage of many of them, and now\nin the era of quarantine and social distancing, I wish I had done so much more.\nIn my short time there, I developed a love for a crisp, fermented bread drink\ncalled kvass<\/em>, drank horse milk with\nan Armenian man we met on a bus, triumphed as champion of a durak<\/em> tournament, joined a traditional\nRussian choir, ate cold pickled herring covered with sour cream and beets with\nmy host mom, began to appreciate the scarce blessing of daylight, and most\nimportantly, developed strong friendships that continue to span time and distance.\nThe examples of goodwill from my host nation are endless. My host family\nwelcomed me home each night, not only to show me kindness, but also to ensure\nthat I was practicing Russian from the moment I walked in the door till I went\nto sleep each night. My host mom went above and beyond to make me feel\ncomfortable and even baked a lemon pie, my favorite treat, each time I had a\nchallenging test or returned from a weekend trip. Though I enjoyed many of\nthese experiences, the most spiritually consequential aspect of my social\neducation in Russia was weekly attendance of Orthodox Mass. Though the language\nwas unfamiliar, the cadence, tradition, and prayers of the liturgy, along with\nthe native community of faithful, provided me sanctuary, peace, and a profound\nlesson in the universality of human faith. Put into a cliche, I found a home\naway from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While my professors and friends were\nhelpful teachers, my favorite lessons were found in the time between the end of\nclasses and the door of my apartment. On the way to get my metro pass, I\nstumbled across the residence of Anna Akhmatova, Russia\u2019s poetic conscience\nunder Stalinism. The popular Hermitage art museum I frequented is accommodated\nin the gilded Winter Palace of the Romanov dynasty. I lived directly across the\nstreet from Troitsky Sobor<\/em>, the\nOrthodox cathedral where Fyodor Dostoyevsky was married. The building in which\nI studied was a converted monastery school built under the orders of Catherine\nthe Great, and still houses a massive cathedral in its heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For all it\u2019s glory, not all of St.\nPetersburg\u2019s history dealt with poetry and empire. Like most places, there is a\ndark aspect to Petersburg\u2019s story, and touching the memorials with my own eyes\nand my own hands made an impact on how I conceptualize and feel<\/em> the tragedies throughout history. On the path to my weekly\ncard night, I passed a rose-littered sign to the citizens of Leningrad, warning\nof an increased danger on one side of the street due to the positions of Nazi\nartillery. The august spires of Orthodox churches in the city were painted grey\nfor camouflage against the bombsights of German warplanes flying overhead.\nPiskarovskoye Cemetery, which we passed on a tour, holds the bodies of 490,000\nsoldiers and civilians who perished in the Blockade of Leningrad. The deceased\nincluded the parents and grandparents of many of the students and faculty that\nI had come to know personally. The Smolny complex, the home of my university\nfaculty, saw more than it\u2019s fair share of tragedy. Vladimir Lenin designated\nthe complex to be the headquarters of the Bolsheviks during the Russian\nRevolution. Within its walls, the boss of the Leningrad Regional Soviet, Sergei\nKirov, was assassinated just a few years later in 1934, serving as pretext for\nthe horrifying Great Purge. The building now houses the governor\u2019s office, and\nwas the place where current President Vladimir Putin built his early political\ncareer. In both good and bad, these buildings and sites, catching my eye on my\ncommute, didn’t just increase self-awareness in the context of time and place,\nbut diminished the degrees of separation that I felt with historical events and\nfigures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were three modes of education that\nI found as a student in St. Petersburg. I learned by academic study, social\nexperience, and simply, by place. Every college student \u201cunique\u201d enough to pick\nsleety St. Petersburg over balmy Barcelona already has strong reasons for being\nthere. For many, a semester abroad is spent to improve language skills to\nassist their quest for a State Department job (or something similar). For\nmyself, it was to see and explore a country that I\u2019d spent years studying. The\ntrue wealth and richness of the semester, however, was not found in the known\nunknowns of palaces and pirozhki<\/em>, but\nthe \u201cunknown unknowns,\u201d the fulfillment that one gleans from the mundane\nmoments of their experiences and reflections. An autumn in St. Petersburg was full\nof surprises, and personal development, and I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better\nsemester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matthew Stanonis is a senior majoring in Russian, East European Studies, Political Science, and International Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Stanonis Stepping off the airplane into a city of glittering palaces and gold-tipped churches was the culture shock of a lifetime for an American boy from Ohio\u2019s Amish country. More comfortable with apple pie and dairy farms than … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":1144,"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-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","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=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1147,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}