St. Petersburg : Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Written on the occasion of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, Arthur L. George's sweeping history chronicles the city's first three centuries, from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin (who hails from the city). Scholarly, engagingly written, and entertaining, this book captures the city's glorious yet tragic history from its foundation in remote swamps through its brilliance under Catherine the Great, the tragic Decembrist Rebellion, the Russian Revolution, Stalin's Terror, the siege of Leningrad in World War II, and the city's rebirth and the restoration of its name following the Soviet Union's demise. Equally remarkable is the account of the extraordinary flowering of culture that took place in the city, including the Golden Age of Russian, poetry, the emergence of Russian ballet, the literature of the nineteenth century and Silver Age, the World of Art movement culminating in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and the birth of the avant-garde. Yet George's narrative is always tied to the heroic, fascinating, and often tragic personal stories of the city's most renowned citizens, including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Akhmatova, Shostakovich, Baryshnikov, and its late mayor, Anatoly Sobchak. George, a longtime resident of St. Petersburg, brilliantly captures the spirit and rhythms of the city and its people, whether at Catherine the Great's parties, among high society in Pushkin's time, in the squalor of Dostoevsky's slums, throughout the dark days of the Terror and the World War II blockade, or during the heroic resistance to the 1991 coup attempt.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Globe & Mail - Saturday, August 9, 2003

Petersburg, Petrgorad, Leningrad -- the city that is marking its 300th anniversary this year has a rich, tumultuous history. That history is all here, including some of its most famous citizens from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, as well as a great intellectual past including the likes of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Anna Akhmatova. Arthur George lived and worked in post-Soviet Russia and knows the history.

Gilbert Taylor - Booklist August 2003

St. Petersburg was commanded into existence by Peter the Great, and its inherent artifice has made it one of the world's most storied cities, the stage for political and artistic dreamers. In this comprehensive chronicle, the authors introduce these figures, who were dissatisfied in some way with Russian traditions. Throughout, the Georges devote attention to St. Petersburg's beguiling physical appearance -- canals, bridges, promenades, and palaces -- but their most lively writing hones in on the interplay between power and intellect, reaction and reform. Presenting capsule biographies of each type in each era (such as Czar Nicholas I and poet Alexander Pushkin), they tend to describe more than analyze, which is the right tack to reach their readers: those interested in St. Petersburg but not yet steeped in its tumult of war, revolution and aesthetics. The late historian W. Bruce Lincoln (Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia, 2001) owned this audience; the popularity of his many works augors well for the Georges' solid survey.

Publishers Weekly

The Russian city of St. Petersburg has long been celebrated as Russia's window onto the West. In this detailed volume, the Georges attempt to make the city a window onto Russia as well. Arthur George, a businessman who lived for two decades in Russia, displays a thorough knowledge of published work on the country and the city, which is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year. From its founding in the early 18th century by Peter the Great as Russia's "western" city to its leading role in 19th-century cultural life, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and WWII (when, as Leningrad, it suffered a horrific Nazi siege), the Georges barely miss a beat. St. Petersburg has long played a central role in Russian life and the seemingly never-ending pain of its people. As the authors put it, "No modern city has experienced such excruciating upheavals, violence, losses of its people, and suffering as Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad experienced in the first half of its 20th century." The Georges cover it all, focusing on political, economic and cultural matters, with a few overtures toward social history. In fact, the book is particularly strong, like the city it covers, on intellectual life, describing such personalities as the poet Anna Akhmatova. But history is not just a matter of compilation, it is one of interpretation as well, and here the Georges fall short. On the whole, they fail to convincingly interpret their information-how the history of St. Petersburg has been different from Moscow's, for example-and many readers are likely to feel lost in the mass of details provided. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Recounting history from the perspective of a city yields rich and often unusual angles, especially when the city is as central to Russian history as St. Petersburg. There are other fine histories of St. Petersburg in English, such as Katerina Clark's Petersburg and Solomon Volkov's St. Petersburg, but they are cultural histories focused on writers and artists. George instead offers a panoramic history of the city that starts with a detailed story of its construction under Peter the Great and then traces its role in the political, cultural, religious, and everyday life of the country, emperor by empress. He devotes individual chapters to Pushkin's and Dostoyevsky's Petersburg and finishes with the great dramas of the revolution, World War I, the Leningrad siege, the postwar period, and the present. Although not a tourist's coffee-table book, the intellectually curious traveler will enjoy George's account as much as the student of history.

Library Journal