Total Licensing Winter 2007 - (Page 124)

Warning : session_start : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : session_start : Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 TOTAL LICENSING in those important formative years before Soviet ComDISCOVERS RUSSIA munism, it was not so! St. Petersburg was Russia’s window to Europe – to the West. It had the greatest amount of foreigners living in it: architects, artists, scientists, teachers, diplomats, ambassadors to the Court, and imported skilled workmen. In the Spring of 1703, after a lot of European travel, the larger than life “Czar of all the Russias,” Peter the Great, brought into being in the marshy, uninhabited lands at the place where the Neva River flows into the ocean The Finnish Gulf , a place named Sankt Pieter Burkh, named later by its future inhabitants “Piter” the Dutch version. At different times, this region had belonged to Swedes,Teutonic Knights, and others. Peter wanted Russia to become a sea-faring nation, like the Dutch. He admired the canals of Venice and Amsterdam, and he wanted to borrow from the Frenchmen, English, and Germans, the scientific and technological advantages current in the Europe of his day. He wanted to infuse them into the still almost medieval status of his Empire. A new planned Capital was to become a symbol and show the way. For 200 years thereafter, poets from Pushkin to Dostoevsky, to modern day Gogol and Akhmatova, tried to describe Piter’s conflicting moods: its “White Nights”, its wintry, icy snow and fog, its position of straddling Asia and Europe, its later Industrial Revolution, the influx of the workers that there created the “Brave New World of Communism”, and in February 1917 under the leadership of fiery orator Trotsky it became “The Cradle of the Revolution.” Under Peter’s successors, Empresses Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, endless streets, palaces, churches, and monument, bridges and docks, were constructed by Italian imported architects Rastrelli and Quarenghi. Russian composers Glinka, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, and others, created a Russian sound based only partially on European tradition but enriched and flavored by the indigenous folk music of the widespread realm from the Georgian Mountains to the Valleys of the Volga, Don, and Djinieper. During that time, St. Petersburg equaled, or surpassed, the glamour of Paris or Vienna. In 1918, the new Bolshevik government under Lenin decided to escape from these memories and comparisons and move the government back to Moscow, where it had started after the Dukes of Muscovy united the early Russian lands in the 14th century after they had beaten back the “Tartar Hordes.” Interestingly, in 1913 – less than one year before the beginning of the World War I tragedy – the Romanoff Czars celebrated their 300 year anniversary on the throne, and their capital, St. Petersburg, celebrated its 210th year. It had grown to over two million in population – but tellingly, besides Imperial and Nobility pomp, seventy percent of ate horse or dog meat, or almost and mass assimilation. It expanded nothing, died, melted lipsticks to fry from its East European base really bread made with yeast from cellu- only in the last 300 years. lose, and ate grass and weeds and America had slavery till the 1860s, hemp. Floorboards had been torn Russia had serfdom until the Proup to give minimal heat when there forma Liberation of Serfs in 1861. was no other heating material left. Unlike America’s stable experiment Children sleds replaced cars, buses, with Enlightenment and Democand streetcars. Railroad tracks racy, Russia had a succession of fafrom the interior had been cut and therly leaders who were presumed Lake Ladoga remained the only to make all decisions and concern opening in the “Ring of Death.” themselves with the country’s welDiseases added to hunger, 53 thou- fare. sand people died in December 1941 alone. Some evacuations un- THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA OF TODAY der fire were managed. By the end It has many facets. For another of 1942, Leningrad’s population had snapshot, let us look at the OLIshrunk to about one million. At GARCHS and their Power. We all, the end of the siege, misery had and particularly those of us who claimed the lives of more than a read the business press, have read million Leningraders, twelve times the names: Berezhovsky, Gusinsky, as many people as would perish in Khodorkovsky, Smolensky, GazHiroshima in 1945. prom, Vinogradov, Avtovaz, NTV, There had never been in history Yukos. It was the 1970s and Stalin such a long siege, of was gone! Khrushchev, who began any city, but in the mid- the dismantling of the Stalin cult, Even at night, churches are now allowed dle of it all on August had fallen! Brezhnev had been apto shine 9, 1942, the Leningrad pointed General Secretary of the Philharmonic pre- Communist Party in 1964, and miered Shostakovich’s somehow the Soviet system of new Seventh Sympho- economic central planning from top ny in the war-torn city, down was showing bigger and everfrom a score flown bigger cracks. Political pandering in by special military by State appointed bosses of State plane from Kuibyshev enterprises, bribery, out-right stealto which Shostakovich ing by people in a position to do so, had been evacuated. favoritism – all diseases spawned As in the days of Na- by a competition-less society that poleon’s ill-fated cam- can live by faked glowing reports to paign against Moscow, all-powerful superiors, had increasRussia had proved ingly destroyed production and once again during the distribution of goods. These goods years of siege, and the the population desperately needed its citizens were peasants. None- many years of rebuilding and recon- and sought. Prices were controlled theless, eighty percent of St. Pe- struction afterwards, that strongest in the hope of controlling discontersburgers could read and write, of Russian qualities – unbelievable tent without Stalin’s iron hand. and there were already 150 movie patience with adversity – and, yes, They were kept artificially low, houses in the city. heroism. BUT THERE WERE NO GOODS – Only once more in modern times I have tried to study and reflect. there were SHORTAGES! SHORThad “Piter”, now Leningrad, held Historically, America had its “Wild AGES! Long lines formed on the center stage of Russia and World West” and grew new in its rebel- first rumor of some items now War II. Hitler invading Russia saw lious non-European way, eliminat- arriving in a government store or it as a nearby plum to garner and ing the Native Americans. depot – and disappointment when his famous Wehrmacht Army sur- Russia had its “Wild East,” connect- there wasn’t enough! Warehouses rounded it with its tanks, planes, ed with it in land and heavy guns. The Russian Army, mass but totally at this time, was no match for the different culturally German troops and withdrew. Un- and historically, in believably, this city of abandoned the trans-Ural excivilians held out and endured for panse containing the famous “900 Days”. The young the deserts of old people were already in the army, civilizations and but there were almost three million the frozen northcivilians left, mostly middle-aged ern tundra of “Siand older men, women and chil- beria.” It joined Intercontinental, the only US exhibitor, with dren. Despite all the shelling and into it, its foreign customer Victor Tchichadze of Izo bombing, Leningrad dug ditches, tribes by expansion 124 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . 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Total Licensing Winter 2007

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