Preserving Petersburg History, Memory, Nostalgia [Paperback]

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.Vol. 68.4 Winter 2009An interesting and important contribution to existing scholarship on St. Petersburg's myth, cult, and text. Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Barnard College A truly innovative contribution to the scholarship on Petersburg . . . The volume should be read by all serious Slavic scholars.[A]n interesting and important contribution to existing scholarship on St. Petersburg's myth, cult, and text. . . . this volume is distinctive.This book is an important addition to scholarship on Imperial Russia's prized capital city. . . . Though St. Petersburg has consistently defied theorisation throughout its history, Goscilo and Norris' innovative anthology provides Slavic scholars with a panoramic view of the city's literary, pictorial and social manifestations. Vol. 62, No. 8As the various chapters of this fine volume make clƒ1