St Petersburg: A Cultural History

OTHER BOOKS BY SOLOMON VOLKOV

Young Composers of Leningrad (Leningrad and Moscow, 1971)

Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York, 1979)

Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: Conversations with Balanchine on His Life, Ballet and Music (New York, 1985)

From Russia to the West: The Music Memoirs and Reminiscences of Nathan Milstein (New York, 1990)

Joseph Brodsky in New York (New York, 1990)

Remembering Anna Akhmatova: Conversations with Joseph Brodsky (Moscow, 1992)

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Copyright © 1995 by Solomon Volkov

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Volkov, Solomon.

St. Petersburg: a cultural history/Solomon Volkov; [translator] Antonina W. Bouis.

p.   cm.

Includes index.

1. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—Civilization.   I. Title.

DK557.V65   1995

947′.453—dc20   95-24116

CIP

ISBN 0-02-874052-1

eISBN: 978-1-451-60315-6

0-684-83296-8 (Pbk)

To Erwin A. Glikes (1937-1994)

For eighteen years my publisher, mentor, friend

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 describing how the great city of St. Petersburg was built, how the mythos of this wonder was created, and how classical Russian literature from Pushkin to Dostoyevsky boldly and brilliantly interpreted the image of the city and, in the end, profoundly changed it.

CHAPTER 2 which describes how the mirror that reflected St. Petersburg for almost one hundred fifty years was passed from the hands of the writers to musicians and then artists, and in which the reader learns how a Queen of Spades, if felicitously played, could influence the charms of an imperial capital.

CHAPTER 3 in which we learn how merry it was living in Petersburg in 1908, how that merriment was soon interrupted, and how the city first lost its name and then its status as capital of Russia and, almost dead of hunger and cold, tried to remain faithful to itself. This is the Petersburg of Anna Akhmatova.

CHAPTER 4 in which a young hero—renamed, like the marvelous city in which he was born and grew up—undergoes quite a few exciting adventures and mind-boggling experiences in that amazing city, so that when he quits his native shores hastily, he becomes at long last a celebrated choreographer and, along with his fellow émigrés Stravinsky and Nabokov, carries the glory of his birthplace to distant America. This is the Petrograd of George Balanchine.