Russia

St.Petersburg

While Moscow is Europe’s most Asiatic capital, then St Petersburg is Russia’s most European city. It was created by Peter the Great as his ‘Window on the West’ with 18th and 19th-century European pomp and orderliness. It is one of Europe’s most chanting cities. Area: 600 sq km (235 sq mi) Population: 4.2 million Country: Russia Time: GMT/UTC plus 3 hours from October-March; plus 4 hours April-September Telephone area code: 812

Events:

February: Goodbye Russian Winter April: The St Petersburg Music Spring June: White Nights, when night never falls. December: Russian Winter Festival, Christmas Musical Meetings

Orientation:

This city has been built on a grand scale, with large palaces and boulevards. It sprawls across and around the mouth of the Neva River, which splits the city into three sectors. The north side of the city has three main areas. The westernmost is Vasilevsky Island. The middle area is Petrograd Side. And the third area is Vyborg Side.

When to go:

St Petersburg is a year-round destination. The city’s northern latitude means long days in summer and long nights in winter. In winter, hotels and tourist attractions are less crowded and, there’s a twinkling magic about the winter sky. Climate-wise, St Petersburg is much milder than its extreme northern latitude would suggest.

Beaten Track:

Radio-Tele Antenna The Leningrad Radio-Tele Broadcasting Center’s antenna is open to visitors. The 50,000-watt, 310m transmitter tower offers excellent views of the city and its environs. There is an observation deck 200m (660ft) up the structure. Petrodvorets Peter the Great built a series of palaces on a beautiful site 30 km west of St Petersburg. The combined ensemble is known as Petrodvorets. The occupying Germans trashed this legacy of tsarist overindulgence in WW II. What you see today is largely a reconstruction from photographs, drawings and anecdotes. Fountains add a great deal to Petrodvorets’ impressive charm. Petrodvorets’ other components include the Grand Palace and Peter’s original villa, Monplaisir. Pushkin The summer palaces at Tsarskoe Selo (renamed Pushkin in 1937 to commemorate the centenary of his death) were created for Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. They lie 25km (15mi) south of St Petersburg. The baroque Catherine Palace was left in ruins by the Germans at the end of WW II. Today it is a masterpiece of restoration. The facade features golden domes and blue and white detailing. The interior glitters with mirrors, chandeliers and cherubs. If you are visiting the city in summer, paddle away through the canals and lakes on Yelagin Island. There are also rowing boat rentals at the northern end of the moat around the Peter & Paul Fortress. If you fancy going further afield, take a yacht up to the Gulf of Finland and plant your parasol on the beach. Winter can be just as active. If you, like the Russians, enjoy cross-country skiing, Toksovo, a popular resort just north of St Petersburg, is the place to head to.

History:

St Petersburg’s origins lie in Peter the Great trouncing the Swedes at Poltava in 1709 – he renamed the city, Dutch style, Sankt Pieter Burkh, In 1712 it became his capital. By the time of Peter’s death in 1725, the city had a huge population. Ninety per cent of Russia’s foreign trade passed through it. Peter’s immediate successors moved the capital back to Moscow. But Empress Anna Ivanovna (1730-40) returned to St Petersburg. Between 1741 and 1825 under Empress Elizabeth, Catherine the Great and Alexander I it became a cosmopolitan city with a royal court of famed splendor. Industrialization which peaked in the 1890s. This brought a flood of poor workers into the city. The result was overcrowding, poor sanitation, epidemics and discontent. St Petersburg became a hotbed of strikes and political violence. By 1914, with a wave of patriotism at the start of WW I the city’s name was changed to the Russian-style Petrograd. It was here that workers’ protests turned into a general strike. The troops mutinied and this led to an end of the monarchy in March. It was to Petrograd that Lenin traveled in April to organize the Bolshevik Party. The city was renamed Leningrad after his death in 1924. It was a hub of Stalin’s 1930s industrialization programme and by 1939 had 3 million people and 11 per cent of Soviet industrial output. When the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941 it took them only two-and-a-half months to reach Leningrad. Hitler hated the place since it was the birthplace of Bolshevism – he swore to wipe it from the face of the earth. His troops besieged it from September 1941 until late January 1944. Between 500,000 and a million died from shelling, starvation and disease. After the war, Leningrad was reconstructed and reborn. In 1991 the Soviet Union was officially proclaimed ‘dead’ and residents of Leningrad voted to rename the city St Petersburg. Foreign investment gave the city a boost. St Petersburg did re-establish itself as Russia’s window on the West. The people were freer and the shops were stocked. But many didn’t have the money to enjoy the new prosperity. The crime rate soared.

Getting There:

St Petersburg has direct air links with most major European capitals and airlines. Many of them offer several connections each week. Domestically, you can fly just about anywhere you want. St Petersburg has one bus station serving important Russian cities. The main international rail gateways to St Petersburg are Helsinki, Tallinn, Warsaw and Berlin. The city has four railway stations.

Getting Around:

Pulkova-1 and -2, respectively the domestic and international airports that serve St Petersburg, are 17 km south of the city center. The St Petersburg metro is one of the world’s best undergrounds. You’ll rarely wait more than three minutes for a train. A clock at the end of the platform shows time elapsed since the last train departed. The best way of getting around the city by road is by bus, trolleybus (an electric bus) or tram.

Moscow

Moscow’s origins go back to more than 850 years. It is full of vitality as well as chaos – result of the collapse of communism and the efforts of its citizens to reinvent their lives. The city is full of contrasts with ancient monasteries and ultra-modern monoliths standing alongside. The city is home to New Russian millionaires as well as poverty-stricken pensioners. Area: 1035 sq km (405 sq mi) Population: 8.3 million Country: Russia Time Zone: GMT/UTC +3 (October-March); +4 (April-September) Telephone area code: 095

Events:

January: December Nights Festival March: Orthodox Easter November: Great October Socialist Revolution Anniversary December: Russian Winter Festival

Orientation:

Moscow lies in the center of European Russia. The border between Europe and Asia runs down the west side of the Ural Mountains. To the east of Moscow is the Volga River. The Kremlin is in the heart of Moscow. Red Square lies along its east side and the Moscow River flows past its southern one. Moscow is flat and has few useful landmarks for getting your bearings from a distance. Its five airports are all beyond the outer ring road, 30 to 40 km from the city centre.

When to go:

July and August are the warmest months in Moscow and the main holiday season for foreigners and Russians. Summer days are long and can be wet. By the end of November Moscow is frozen most of the time. It starts snowing heavily in December and stays until April.

Beaten Track:

Sandunovskiye Baths In the narrow winding streets of the city’s north is located Moscow’s most famous bathhouse. These fading but grand 19th-century baths are a mixture of sauna and social club. The sexes are strictly segregated. VDNKh Known universally as VDNKh (USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition), in the northeast of the city, this vast propaganda park was an early casualty when those in power finally admitted that the Soviet economy was a disaster. Funds were cut off in 1990 and it remains a frightening and decaying monument to Soviet dogma. Since Moscow is a snowy place, its sports are snow-centered. There are a number of parks in the city where you can do a little cross-country skiing, or if you’re keen for speed there are a couple of downhill runs just outside the city. IN the public swimming pools you need to have a doctor’s certificate saying you’re healthy enough to take the plunge.

History:

It is believed that the Kremlin and its surrounding areas were probably settled in by the 11th century. In 1237-38 Moscow was sacked Tatars led by Batu, Genghis Khan’s grandson. In the late 15th century, Prince Ivan III, called the Great, brought Italian architects to build cathedrals in the Kremlin and styled himself ruler ‘of all Russia’. Ivan IV (the Terrible) expanded Muscovite territory by launching the conquest of Siberia. By 1571 the city had over 200,000 people. Tsar Boris Godunov faced famine and a Polish-backed invasion. The Poles were driven out and 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar by a council of nobles, launching the 300-year Romanov dynasty and a period of consolidation during which Moscow’s territory spread southwards. Peter the Great toured Europe in 1697-98. He built a new capital, St Petersburg, on the Baltic to open Russia up to Western trade and ideas and to consolidate military victories over Sweden. However, Moscow remained important enough to be Napoleon’s main goal when his troops marched on Russia in 1812. But with winter coming, the French had to pull out little more than a month after they had arrived. The city’s population grew from 350,000 in the 1840s to 1.4 million in 1914. October 1917 saw savage street fighting in Moscow. The Bolsheviks occupied, lost and retook the Kremlin over an eight-day period. In 1918 the government moved back to Moscow after two centuries’ absence, fearing that St Petersburg (then Petrograd) might come under German attack. Moscow became the epicenter of the country’s total reorganization. Under Stalin, one of the world’s first comprehensive urban plans was devised for Moscow. The first line of the metro was completed in 1935. Boris Yeltsin, made the city’s new Communist Party chief in 1985, became hugely popular as he sacked hundreds of corrupt commercial managers, set up new food markets and permitted demonstrations. It was the rallying of Muscovites behind Yeltsin at Moscow’s ‘White House’, seat of the parliament of the Russian Republic, that foiled the old-guard coup in 1991 and precipitated the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. By the mid-1990s Moscow was very much the vanguard of the ‘new Russia’, filling up with all the things Russians had expected capitalism to bring but which had barely begun to percolate down to the provinces: banks, stock exchanges, casinos, advertising, BMWs, new shops, hotels, restaurants and nightlife. Now at the forefront of Moscow life is the influence of Vladimir Putin, who replaced Yeltsin as Russian president at the end of the millennium and is now the country’s Prime Minister.

Getting There:

Sheremetevo-2 airport, 30km (20mi) northwest of the city center, handles flights to and from places outside the former Soviet Union. There are daily flights by numerous airlines to and from nearly all European and many other world capitals, and many provincial cities, too. You can get to the five airports and the city centre cheaply by a combination of bus and metro or suburban train. But if you’re going early in the morning or late at night, or have a lot of baggage, you’ll probably need a taxi. Buses run to a number of towns and cities within about 700 km of Moscow. Moscow also has rail links to most parts of Russia.

Getting Around:

The central area around the Kremlin, the Kitai Gorod and the Bolshoi Theatre are best seen on foot. To almost anywhere else the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to get around is on the metro and on foot. There are more than 150 metro stations. Many of them are elegant, marble-faced, frescoed, gilded works of art. They’re coin-operated and easy to use, with plenty of signage and maps, and you’ll rarely wait more than two minutes for a train. Buses, trolley buses and trams run almost everywhere the metro doesn’t go, and are good for radial travel or for getting outside the center.

Novgorod

Just 190km south of St Petersburg, Novgorod was annexed by Ivan III, razed by Ivan the Terrible and methodically trashed by the Nazis. Its Kremlin includes the Byzantine Cathedral of St Sophia, the Millennium of Russia Monument, the icon-filled Chamber of Facets and the research-based Museum of History & Art.

Trans-Siberian Railway: The best way of seeing massive Russia is by taking a ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The six-day, 9446 km journey from Moscow to Vladivostok passes through through endless forests of birch and pine, log-cabin settlements and vast steppes. The route crosses Siberia’s Lake Baikal and multicultural Irkutsk. The Volga The 3700 km long River Volga is Europe’s longest. It flows from Yaroslavl to Volgograd. From here a tributary runs off to the Caspian Sea. Cruisers and steamships ply the Volga’s waters. Towns en-route include Kazan, one of the oldest Tatar cities in Russia and Lenin’s birthplace, Ulyanovsk. Sochi This Black Sea resort has the Caucasus mountains as its backdrop. It is blessed with subtropical climate, warm seas and a trendy resort called Dagomys. Gardens are all over the town. There are also many therapeutic establishments and dachas (country houses) of the powerful and famous.