Word: petersburgs
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...PETERSBURG, RUSSIA—As I walked down the Griboedova Canal a few days ago, I gazed at the onion domes of the Church on Spilled Blood. The zig-zagging blues and stripes of gold on its seven cupolas glimmered in the sun, and no matter how many times I walk down Griboedova, their brilliance never fails to grab my attention. The domes, and the church they adorn, were built over the spot where leftist terrorists assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and have glimmered ever since as brilliant reminders of the old tsars in a city already filled with...
Indeed, big and expensive public spaces like the Church on Spilled Blood made St. Petersburg a showcase for the old Russian aristocracy. The Romanovs themselves erected statues, planted gardens and constructed enormous palaces in the city, leaving their permanent stamp on what was once a stinking, mosquito-infested swath of swampland. Enterprising nobles also helped build this neo-classical masterpiece of a city as they built huge homes on Nevsky Prospect, the Northern Capital’s main street. And except for a little crumbling, and some more recent renovation, the center of St. Petersburg hasn’t changed...
With these constant reminders of the despots of the old empire all around them, you would think that the average St. Petersburger would be all tsared-out. But it seems that even in Petersburg these days, Russians just can’t get enough of those Romanovs...
...year, Fortune 500 firm would cost the economy billions of dollars by year's end. Despite such stakes, Putin has remained frustratingly, if typically, silent. Filling the vacuum are people close to the President saying openly that by attacking Khodorkovsky, a hard-line Kremlin faction known as the Petersburg group has escaped Putin's control. The group - made up largely of senior officials who, like Putin, are veterans of the Soviet KGB - is said to be trying to push the President into an aggressively populist stance in preparation for the presidential elections next spring, Gleb Pavlovsky, a key Kremlin strategist...
...feel they are a cover for Putin himself. "I don't see these folks as independent actors," says Michael McFaul, a professor at Stanford University and specialist in Russian politics. Pavlovsky maintains that the faction, not the President, is pushing this particular crusade. After crushing independent TV networks, the Petersburg group is falling victim to its own propaganda. "These are people who control TV news, who order programs and who have started believing what they see on television," Pavlovsky says. Putin's public silence has complicated the crisis, which has now gathered so much momentum that it will be hard...