Preserving Petersburg

“Goscilo and Norris’ innovative anthology provides Slavic scholars with a panoramic view of the city’s literary, pictorial and social manifestations.” —Europe-Asia Studies

For more than three centuries, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as Russia’s westward-oriented capital and as a visually stunning showcase of Russia’s imperial ambitions, has been the country’s most mythologized city. Like a museum piece, it has functioned as a site for preservation, a literal and imaginative place where Russians can commune with idealized pasts. Preserving Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional representations. By moving beyond the “Petersburg text” created by canonized writers and artists, the contributors to this engrossing volume trace the ways in which St. Petersburg has become a “museum piece,” embodying history, nostalgia, and recourse to memories of the past. The essays in this attractively illustrated volume trace a process of preservation that stretches back nearly three centuries, as manifest in the works of noted historians, poets, novelists, artists, architects, filmmakers, and dramatists.

“The collection truly sparkles as the contributors each in turn take up this snuff box of a city . . . and breathe movement and life into the idealized Petersburg museum.” —Gregory Stroud, Bennington College

“This collection brings together history, literature, architecture, and the politics of memory.” —Choice

“An interesting and important contribution to existing scholarship on St. Petersburg’s myth, cult, and text . . . this volume is distinctive.” —Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Columbia University

“A truly innovative contribution to the scholarship on Petersburg . . . The volume should be read by all serious Slavic scholars.” —Emily Johnson, University of Oklahoma