Word: petersburg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...metropolis that is famed as the cradle of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is throwing off its communist legacy with a vengeance. Known for 67 years as Leningrad, Russia's second largest city last week officially became historic St. Petersburg again. The name change is largely symbolic. Statues of Lenin still loom over city parks and cast long shadows in front of train stations. The city council, mindful of budget constraints, has decided not to spend any money on new road signs or stationery. But the rechristening reflects a deeper transformation that optimists say has affected many of the city...
...Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, a hero of the resistance to August's aborted hard-line coup, reformers in the city are trying to pull St. Petersburg out of Moscow's shadow and transform it into a gateway to the West. Some even suggest returning the political capital to St. Petersburg, though Sobchak says his task is "to revive St. Petersburg as the financial, cultural and scientific capital of Russia." For a precedent, Sobchak turns to the city's founder, Peter the Great, the Czar who set out to westernize the backward Russian Empire. "For 10 years Peter the Great tried...
...Petersburg's architectural charm and rich history will do little to diminish the formidable obstacles confronting Sobchak as he tries to reform the city's economy. His advisers are working on plans to create a "free economic zone" around the city by Jan. 1, in the hope that lower taxes and fewer customs barriers will encourage foreign banks and companies to invest. So far, Moscow is going along with the idea. But even Anatoly Chubais, Sobchak's chief economic adviser, admits that the free economic zone is "a risky policy" prone to failure if Russia's economy as a whole...
...most of the bigger ones, into an alliance that, combined with massive and timely Western aid, would stop the economic disintegration. And Russians have what German democrats in the Weimar period woefully lacked: forceful, popular leaders like Yeltsin -- who on the whole has been more democrat than autocrat -- St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoli Sobchak and Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov. Authoritarians as yet have no leader with any comparable clout. But a lawyer named Vladimir Zhirinovsky did run third in last June's Russian presidential election despite -- or because of -- his wild ideas (he now speaks of solving food shortages by invading...
...Petersburg, U.S.S.R...