LENINGRAD

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4231, 15 January 1940, Page 3

LENINGRAD

RUSSIA’S WINDOW OF EUROPE. VANISHED POMPS OF CZARDOM. The general orientation of Soviet Russia’s foreign policy is still an insoluble enigma to the world. But behind the brutal and unprovoked attack on Finland there is one very reasonable ground for Soviet apprehension. Almost on the frontier separating the two countries, and at the head of the Gulf of Finland, stands the Russian city which since 1924 has been called Leningrad. If Finnish territory were to be occupied by the troops of some first class military and naval power—Germany for Instance—this vital strategic and industrial centre would be extremely vulnerable to attack from both land and sea. The Soviet Union might thus be shorn at one stroke of her chief naval base, her only Baltic port and her second largest city. For two hundred years before the revolution of 1917, the former St. Petersburg was also the seat of such Government as the despotic Romanoffs suffered to exist. But when the Bolsheviks transferred the political administration of the country to Moscow, the historical heart of Russia, they were not prompted by motives of caprice or convenience. Their move was far more deeply significant. By this act they unequivocally expressed their determination to break for ever with the quasi-European policy which the once Czarist capital represented, and to reshape the national destiny more in accordance with the Russian spirit. AN “ALIEN” CAPITAL. As compared with any other great national metropolis, St. Petersburg, magnificent city though it was, seemed always somewhat alien, artificial and remote. Erected at the beginning of the eighteenth century amid the swamps and marches of the Neva at such incredible cost in treasure and suffering that it was said to be built on human bones, it was designed by the great Romanoff autocrat whose name it used to bear to be Russia’s "window on Europe.” Under the Czarist regime it remained the political capital and royal residence, but ii6w its past glories stand only as a reminder of the efforts made by a despotic dynasty to graft a Western veuees upon a semi Oriental people.

Ths result is that In character and atmospherb Leningrad' to-day appears the least Russian of all the Soviet cities. Many of its most notable public buildings, such as the’ Winter Palace and the University, were erected by foreign architects, and in design and construction merely follow Western European models. Speciments of the garish, barbaric style usually associated with Russian architecture, especially of the ecclesiastical type, are, of course, to be found. One example is the multicoloured onion domed church which was built as a memorial to Alexander 11., who was assassinated there by a bomb in 1881. Another is the mosque, which was presented to one of the Czars by the Shah of Persia for the use of Mahometan residents; a third is the Buddhist Temple, which stands on an island in the Neva. But such lone outposts of Asiatic splendour are merely exiles in this city of the cold northern mists.

More typical of Leningrad’s formal Western atmosphere are the two magnificent Romanesque Cathedrals of Kazan and St. Isaac. To all outward seeming these two magnificent churches are still the places of worship they used to be, but in reality they are used now as anti-religious museums—to mock and desecrate the very faitli they were constructed to glorify. TilE IMPERIAL PALACES. The chief relics of Czarist rule are, however, found not in Leningrad itself, but in the ornate Imperial palaces at Peterhof and .Pushkin City near by. These magnificent structures were to St. Petersburg what Potsdam used to be, to Berlin and Versailles to Paris. Once the centre of a luxurious court life, they are today the playgrounds of the ordinary people on their day of rest. By carefully restoring and preserving these one time seats of the mighty the Bolshevik authorities have provided their proletarian followers with wonderful surroundings for their recreation, such as they could never have hoped to create for themselves.

Peterhof, built, as its name implies, by the great Romanoff, is a typical eighteenth century royal residence. In the grounds are a terraced park and some magnificent fountains, which still play regularly during the summer months. But the most interesting feature of all is the quaint little Dutch farm house, “Mon Plaisir,” which Peter infinitely preferred as a home to his more palatial mansions. Here he would sit drinking and carousing with his vulgar cronies, or watching with his telescope the warships He built and loved as they manoeuvred off the island base of Kronstadt; and here, too, in the tiny, low ceilinged bedroom this lord of all the Russians breathed his last. Just out of Leningrad in the opposite direction lies the even more magnificent imperial estate Which before the revolution was called Tsarskoye* Selo? but which had since been re*

christened by the Bolsheviks Pushkin City. IJere the luxurious palace built by Catherine the Great,' which for lavish extravagance probably excels any other building ever erected. Originally it was copiously decorated with gold leaf, both inside and out. The external gilding has now been largely worn off by exposure to the weather, but the interior is still one long successlon tit dazzling rich apartments In which gold is the dominating hote. Hence double effective by contrast are such elaborate masterpieces as the Chinese chamber, which is almost completely panelled with exquisite Coromandel screens, and the famous amber room, where the walls, casements and decorations are all faced with pure amber, the gift of Frederick the Great of Prussia.

A short walk away is the far less pretentious mansion which Catherine built for her grandson Alexander I, but which is notable chiefly as the family residence of Nicholas 11, last of the Romanoffs. The Bolsheviks have left everything just as though the Imperial couple and their, children were still living there, and the result is a highly successful piece of propaganda. Every glimpse of the daily life of these royal unfortunates reveals only discomfort, vulgarity and mental decadence, from the colossal coUCh in the Czar’s study to the hundred odd ikons oil the walls of the Empress’ bedroom. CRADLE OF REVOLUTION. In no part of Czarist Russia was there a more marked contrast between the wealth and luxury of the court and the extreme poverty of the workers than in St. .Petersburg. Moreover, the city ‘‘had been specially built by Peter the Great to admit new ideas; its educational institutions had been largely staffed from the first by foreign teachers, and its contact with the western world was closet. It was thus the place where the struggle between conservatism and the effects of the impact of outside thought was sharpest.” For these reasons Leningrad has been the birthplace of nearly all the great revolutionary movements in modern Russian history. It was the scene of the ill-starred Dekabrist mutiny of the early nineteenth century, and of what Lenin called "the full dress rehearsal” of 1905, when peasants, marching towards the Winter Palace to present their demands to the Czar, were shot down by hundreds. Finally it Was the cradle of the successful revolution of October. 1917, which culminated in the overthrow of the Inept Kerensky Government, and the establishment of Communism.

There are many reminders in present day Leningrad of the stirring events of that fateful time. One of the most iniprefisive is the very fine square of the victims of the revolution. Less conspicuous, but far more deeply significant, must, be the simple study in the former monastery of Smolny, which served as Lenin’s headquarters during the struggle. Unfortunately, however, this place, like many other centres of interest in the Soviet Union, is, for some inscrutable reason, barred to foreign visitors. A CHANGED CITY. In December, 1931, the Soviet Government published its historical manifesto to the proletariat of Lenin, grad, in which it expressed the intention of transforming it into a model socialist city. Since then an entirely new Leningrad has begun to take shape. Large blocks of workers’ flats have been constructed like the municipal tenements of Vienna, and the extent of the water and lighting systems has been more than doubled. A separate administrative centre is being constructed, connected to the town proper by an asphalted road so wide that it requires nine water carts working abreast to cover its surface. Here is being erected the immense Palace of the Soviets, a building not much smaller than a similar edifice in Moscow, which when completed will be the largest structure in existence.

Innumerable industrial concerns have sprung up which were unknown under the Czarist regime. In the metal and engineering industries alone over 200 new types of production have been mastered. To the factories of Leningrad belongs the honour of building the first tractor to be used on the collective farms, and also the gigantic turbines and dynamos installed on the Dnieproges hydro-elec-tric station in the Ukraine, the second largest water power station in the world.

As a result of these improved living and working conditions the population, which had sunk as low as 700,000 in 1917, rose to 1,600,000 in 1927, and to-day is approaching the 3,000,000 mark. Much, of’course, remains to be done before the gaiety and bustle of Czarist days are restored. Transport is hopelessly inadequate, and is limited largely to a tew trolley buses and to electric trams which are always crowded to the point of suffocation, while the marshy nature of the subsoil makes an underground railway impossible. The older part of the town is particularly shabby and dilapidated, as the paint on houses and buildings quickly peels off owing to the abnormally damp climate. There are no shops worthy of the name, and (perhaps most noticeable contrast to earlier years) no fashionably dressed women. In particular the famous Navsky Prospekt (now ,sth of Octo, her Street) is only a disthal travesty of its former Stuart and elegant self.