LENINGRAD IN DECAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 211, 7 September 1925, Page 15

LENINGRAD IN DECAY.

GHOST OF ITS OLD SELF.

DROP IN POPULATION.

FROM 1,600,000 to 650,000.

No city in Russia has been more profoundly affected by the revolution and its aftermath than Leningrad, the old capital. Once the -"head ,, of Russia, as Moscow was its the old St. Petersburg s-oenis even to have lost its intelleetua Isupremacy and its artistic prestige. Tlw city is merely a decaying monument of the past. The removal of the capital to Moscow would inevitably have spelled Leningrad's doom as a political "centre, but tlgp metropolis which Peter the Great built more than 200 years ago has greatly deteriorated in other respects. Most of its great public buildings and private mansions are falling into ruin for lack of money with which to repair them. All tho fine foreign embassy buildings, including that formerly occupied by tho Americans, show the ravages of time, weather and neglect. The Winter Palace, the Admiralty, all the elegant edifices along the Neva, the palnces of the nobles, wear a dull, drab dress as if mourning for the past. Million Lers Population. Tho population has docreased from l,'i(>0.000 to 630.000. Tho foreign visitor expresses woiirler how even this reduced number can support themselves, for the city has few industries, and tlure is miu-li unemployment. The business life of the city is confused almost entirely to halting retail tr.iiie.

The famous Novsky Prospect, the '"Broadway" of Leningrad, i-, only a cliost of its former splendour, gaycty and picturesque.ness. The smnll retail stores, bazaars, arcades, confectioners, emporiums and bookshops that oii'-e made t:ie broad thoroughfare vie with Fifrh Avenue in New York, have given plate to unattractive i-o-op°rative and Matt , stores, cheap cinema theatres and Communist centres.

J All credit, however. Tiiu.'t be {riven J the bolsheviks for having, on their I slender means, kept the public museum", picture frrtllerio-. narks and other jilfu-os ■up (o their iVrnn-r standards. As in the il'vs of tiie Oars, the Hermitaffn Fine Art- Museum retains its place as one of tli eline«t i-i all Europe. It-s collection of Rembrandt. Van Dvck. Murillo,

Velasquez. Snyders and Wouvertnan ! paintings is ;.aid to be superior to that lof tho Metropolitan Museum in New lYork.

Safety Prompted Charge The Bolsheviks appear to have shown the same indifference, and lack of sentiment toward Leningrad as a political centre as the Turks have manifested toward Constantinople. In removing the seat of government from Leningrad to Moscow, the Bolsheviks, like the Turkish Nationalist s. who transferred their capital to Anporo, were actuated by reasons of security. They believed the «iic which Peter the Groat chose for the national capital on the shore' of tire (>ulf of Finland exposed them too much to the danger of foreign attack. There was nothing they said, to prevent any of the European navies from sweeping across the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland and invading Russia's shore?.

there are few railroad higrhwr.vs out of Leningrad by which the Boi*heviks could floe in the event of foreign attack, while in Moscow there are many convenient exits if the Government should ever be to leave the capital in a hurry. Moscow is 400 r.iiles inland from the neare-t body of water to which a foreign foe would have access which <rivo« tho Bolsheviks "1111----munitv from foreign incursion.