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| Behind the Facades |
Getting away from the tourist delights, we walk and talk with Peter, a local resident and guide company owner. He peels back the gold skin of St. Petersburg’s onion, to explain a bit of what’s behind the street-front facade, into areas graffitied in Cyrillic.
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| Palaces to apartments |
I asked him how the private property concept was going. Under communism, he explained, this city full of private palaces and huge mansions all became property of the State. Landless peasants moved in, made two 7-foot stories out of what had been 14’ ceilings - the noble furnishings provided firewood.
Your space was decided by simple division : People into space = your room. Peter grew up living in the 6.5 square meters the Party had decided was his share. When this “workers paradise” collapsed, all these parts of rooms were deeded to those living in them. Overnight, squatters became homeowners, some bought to become landowners and then landlords. Others sold and were shocked to find they now had to pay rent and utilities - and could be fired.
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| Plastering the outsides |
Things got pretty “wild west.” Corruption has now grown to the “suitcases of money” size. Allow 60-75% for bribes added to the cost of construction so quality work is not what counts. If you know the right people the money flows in - Comrade turned President Putin is a local boy, “Good for the city, bad for the people.”
Just the fact that we could discuss all this, while walking the streets, shows a quantum change from the Soviet era. People now have access to real news, they can own/buy/sell property and keep the money they earn and profit from their skills and ideas. But uncertainty about what will happen next, sends deposits offshore - like to Cyprus and Greece, not into Russian banks. The newly rich are largely disconnected from the ideal of helping to make the Motherland a better place, and they live like Czars - grabbing what they can and wintering abroad - while running their businesses from offshore, online.
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Church of the Spilt Blood
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But for us tourists, the onion domes are grand, gold gilded - and for the one called “Church of the Spilt Blood” - gaudy´. (A name OKed by the same marketing focus group that picked a guy nailed to a tree to be the company logo?) Young men graduating into the Army discuss business and travel, not old soldiers’ empires, and the go-getters like Peter, will work with what they can get - while the getting is good.
- Cyrillic Stew
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| The Old Guard |
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| Newly graduated 2LTs. |
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