A Trip to Russia Matt Campbell

From March 9 – 19, 2006, twelve people – Dr. Naum Kats and his wife, Marina, Robert Hanson, Yuri Gordon, Larissa Chopyk, Robert Muth, Molly McElrath, Shiry Ginosar, Katie Boatner, Polina Vinogradova, Ezekiel Charlesworth, and Matt Campbell - from Carnegie Mellon traveled to Russia, the former Cold War superpower that rose from the ashes of the Second World War. With the collapse of communism in 1991, Russia has sort of fallen off the map. Groups of students much more frequently visit the more conventional Europe – Spain, France, and Germany – not Russia, a peculiar mixture of European and Asian elements. Russia has always had an interesting history, before and after communism.

The 12 members of the trip all had different motivations for going to Russia. Dr. and Mrs. Kats are both natives of St. Petersburg, the Russian city to which we traveled. Yuri and Polina both have Russian heritage, while Larissa is of Ukrainian noble stock. Shiry and Zik (Ezekiel) are both prolific travelers. The rest of us are just Russophiles! Many of us met through classes on Russian culture and language taught by Dr. Kats. No matter what our individual reasons for coming to Russia were, everyone in the group was eager to explore and make the most out of this amazing experience.

The Russia that we experienced this past March is a nation in transition from communism to capitalism. The consumer culture of capitalism has come to Russia. The streets are lined with shops and cafes. The cafes are all very different. Each has its own personality and offers a wide range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Many of the shops sell boots to cope with the snow that still blanketed the city, although much of the snow turned to slush as the sun visited St. Petersburg for the first time in months.

St. Petersburg has always been a city with disparate identities. It was constructed by Peter the Great in the early 18^th century. It was meant to be a Western city in its architecture, its societal customs, etc. For that reason, many Russians hated the city. The tsarist capital was also the center of the October Revolution in 1917. Socialism, born in Germany, was raised in Russia. The Soviet Union became the antithesis to the Western political and economic system during the Cold War. Not only was the Soviet Union the antithesis of Western culture, it was a serious challenger.

On our trip, we saw many of the Western and Russian elements of St. Petersburg. We saw Russian art and European art. The Hermitage Museum, part of the tsar’s Winter Palace, is one of the great museums of the world. The walls of this palace are adorned with paintings by Rembrandt and Rafael, to name but a few. The museum also has Roman antiquities and items of archaeological interest from the 4^th and 5^th centuries. The Russian National Museum, separate from the Hermitage, contains the greatest works of Russian art by painters such as Briullov, Kramskoy, Repin, and Levitsky.

The entire city is a work of art. The city is filled with noble palaces constructed in neo-classical and baroque styles by Italian architects. St. Petersburg is known as the “Venice of the North.” Ornate bridges cross the many canals that separate the dozens of islands on which the city was constructed. We saw plaques and the famous Bronze Horseman statue that memorialize the victims of the disastrous floods that have struck the city over the centuries.

St. Petersburg had an interesting history during Communism. Lenin, the first Communist leader, despised St. Petersburg and moved the seat of government back to Moscow. The city was devastated economically and its prestige was severely damaged. The city saw a mass exodus of its denizens. There is a fierce cultural competition between St. Petersburg and Moscow that rages even to this day.

St. Petersburg is a city of survival in many ways. It was besieged by the Nazis for 900 days during World War II. Leningrad, as the city was known then, held no strategic value for Hitler. But Hitler saw St. Petersburg as well as Moscow as the cultural centers of the Slavic peoples. Hitler wanted to annihilate St. Petersburg. He wanted to starve the city to death and the Luftwaffe bombed warehouses of food in the encircled city. Hundreds of thousands died from starvation, but the common citizens and peasant soldiers survived. Although we travelers did not visit the mass graves of the dead, we saw the tall obelisk and sculptures that commemorate the defenders of Leningrad: ordinary men, women, and children.

We visited two suburbs of Petersburg, Pushkin and Pavlovsk. Both contain opulent royal palaces that were gutted by the Nazis in the war. The two palaces have been painstakingly rebuilt and restored by the Russians with the help of many allies, including Germany. Each room had a photograph of itself before it was restored. The photos were unrecognizable. Not even the ceilings and walls had been left intact.

Russia has a rich religious history. There are beautiful, highly ornate cathedrals everywhere. The interiors of the churches are incredible as well. Russian Orthodoxy gives a lot of meaning to icons, and they are prominently displayed. The Russian Orthodox Church is another story of survival. The soviet state was atheistic. The Orthodox clergy was executed and arrested in droves. Yet, the years since 1991 have seen an incredible resurgence of religion. No people have been as terrorized and repressed by their leaders than the peoples that made up the Soviet Union: Ukrainians, Poles, Chechens, Jews, the peoples of the Caucasus, etc. Yet not even the terror of Stalin, doubled by Hitler in World War II, could stamp out religion and culture in Russia.

Russia plays a large role in the world today. Russia is very active in the affairs of its Eastern European neighbors, states that have only been independent since the late 1980s. Russia also holds a lot of influence and has strong diplomatic relations with countries like Iran, North Korea, and China. These three nations often rely on Russia to counteract pressure applied by the United States.

Russian culture – art, literature, music – is also very important and interesting. Russia was the center of many avant-garde movements in art at the turn of the 19^th century. Modern ballet and dance take their precedent from Russian ideas.

The most interesting quality of Russia and St. Petersburg though, is something universal. We, current students, had our first experience on 9/11 of an attack on our ideology of democracy and capitalism. We have felt for the first time perhaps an enemy that wanted to destroy our civilization. This has been a fact of life for Russia for centuries. First, the Mongols ruled over much of Russia between the 13^th and 16^th centuries. Then, Napoleon in the early 1800s tried to conquer Russia. Then, Lenin and Stalin tried to engineer a new society that controlled culture, self – expression, government, and the economy. Hitler wanted to enslave the Russian population and make Russia a German colony. The amazing Russian capacity for survival is perhaps their most important and inspiring quality.

The trip was a complete success. The people, places, and events we had studied, the music we heard, the literature we read, the paintings we saw in photographs and videos, all came alive for us when we went to Russia and heard and saw the real things. In studying a culture inside a classroom 4,000 miles away, one can’t help but feel detached from that culture. But after our trip to St. Petersburg, we all feel a lot closer to Russia.