CITY OF THE CZARS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19718, 8 December 1926, Page 3

CITY OF THE CZARS

DOOMED TO EXTINCTION PETROGRAD IN ECLIPSE Tragic news filters in from Petrograd. Slowly, implacably, the dethroned capital crumbles away. Each day the one-time glittering city of the Czars sinks a little further into the obscurity from which a wave of the imperial sceptre was sufficient to bring! it forth. Like the first man, this city has risen by the sole effect of a creating will, and now, like all mankind, it returns to dust. Now is the passing of Peter the Great’s own foundation which for 200 years has braved the hostile nature of its geological situation. The river, imprisoned within a bed of stone, has more than once challenged the imperial order that a great city must arise out of the marshlands, yet, despite the onslaughts of nature, it has required, says Serge de Chessin in “L’Echo de Paris,’’ the direful reign of anarchy to devastate the city of Peter the Great. The writer describes his recent visit to the former R.ussian capital:— “One of the purest joys of Petrograd, the Cathedral of St. Isaac, is lamentably in need of repair. Beneath the weight of its marbles, bronze domes and enormous monoliths of pink granite the vast structure shows signs of sinking. “For years the soil beneath the building has been subsiding, and today the water from the Neva is filtering through, eating slowly away the great blocks, pursuing its work of disintegration. The same fate awaits another architectural wonder, the Admiralty, an immense white and yellow structure. Here again are fissures in the walls and foundations, letting in the water from the river, to ooze its way through, setting up mouldiness with its poisonous odours. The sanctuary of the Russian Marine threatens to collapse under the action of that same river which was its very cradle. “Petrograd always needed a special system of urban hygiene to ward off the ravages of the inclemencies of her geographical position, but the Soviets take little heed of the city’s demands to-day. An artificial town, Petrograd required artifice to dissimulate the ravages of time. Except for a few bare buildings, the former capital of Russia is a city built of bricks which hide themselves behind a superficial mask which may be likened to cosmetics. “And if the paint and powder, so to speak, be not renewed from time to time the tear and wear, like wrinkles on an ageing woman’s race, are soon apparent. “Not only does Bolshevism abandon the city to its decadence, but it hastens the approach of death, taking .advantages of the state of coma of the moribund town to rob it of its remaining treasures. Slowly, but surely, Petrograd is dying. Everything has been taken from her, even with a stroke of the pen, have Bolshevists wiped out the name that meant history, and which was bequeathed the