Total Licensing Winter 2007 - (Page 124)
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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
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Total Licensing Winter 2007
Total Licensing Winter 2007
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