Word: russian
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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...
This really hit me after I took my eyes off the church’s domes. I was with a friend of mine, and as we went over to a nearby vendor’s stall to pick up a few gaudy, multi-colored matreshki (Russian nested dolls), we heard chanting behind us. We looked and saw throngs of people exiting the church and marching down the banks of the canal...
...procession started with a group of long-bearded Russian Orthodox clergymen dressed in their traditional black robes. They carried forked red banners as another led the chanting by speaking into a small microphone. Men in the back of the crowd carried racks of speakers to amplify the voice of the chant-leader. He would speak, and the long line of lay Russians would follow after his words. The chanting flowed beautifully back and forth among the crowd...
When my friend told me that Nicholas II had been recently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, it all seemed to make sense. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russians have been looking back more fondly on tsarist days. Old Russian typography is becoming increasingly popular in Russian advertising. Books on Nicholas that would have never made it to print 20 years ago now fill the history section of the city’s central book store, Dom Knigi (“House of Book”). Portraits of the last tsar...
...company. Deripaska denies any wrongdoing. This is a separate and complex case, but the fact that Deripaska is related by marriage to the Yeltsin family added to the mood of factionalism run amok. Two key Kremlin officials, Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, have been repeatedly singled out in the Russian press as playing a crucial role in the Khodorkovsky affair. Many observers 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...