Moscow Diary: Haunted by history

The BBC's James Rodgers explores the world-famous, opulent Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg - and finds some modern echoes of the imperial past. His diary is published fortnightly.

'WINDOW ON EUROPE'

The chimes made me jump.

The Hermitage has one of the finest art collections in the world

A clock which had first been brought here to amuse long-dead tsars and tsarinas had burst into life. It was a mystery why it had suddenly struck at 10 past the hour.

It had a clarity which stood out in a world of phoney ring tones and sms alerts.

The museum doors were long closed. The galleries were empty and echoing. It was the end of a day of live broadcasting from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

We had spent most of the week there. As time passed, the sense of being in a place loaded with history grew stronger.

The Hermitage stands at the heart of Russia's story, and the story of Russia's relationship with the rest of the world.

At the dawn of the 18th Century, Tsar Peter the Great conceived his new capital as a "window on Europe".

And St Petersburg proudly presented the face of a newly rich and confident nation when it hosted the G8 summit in the summer of last year.

Russia's royal family and aristocrats began the museum's collection in the 18th Century.

Treasure trove: The Pavilion Hall at the Hermitage

Today, their replacements at the top of Russia's rich list are taking on that role. Earlier in the week, the Hermitage's head of new acquisitions, Viktor Faibisovich, had showed me some of the recently arrived treasures.

"Now the prices for Russian art are very high," he explained.

It was not all bad news. It seems the rich Russians who are driving demand are also prepared to be generous.

"Sometimes our compatriots become our sponsors," Mr Faibisovich noted, before removing some packaging to reveal a work by the painter El Greco.

Even for all their legendary excess - wild parties in expensive ski resorts, paying top stars for private concerts - the oligarchs are not yet in the same league as the aristocracy once were.

BRUTAL SIEGE

The Hermitage's collection is so vast - some three million items - that in 2003 they opened the "Modern Hermitage" in a suburb of the city.

Soviet troops finally broke the siege of Leningrad in January 1944

It is a cross between a store room and a museum. There are dozens of chairs which look as if it they might once have seated diners at a palace banquet. There are royal carriages, and even imperial sledges.

Walking through it reminded me of stories of super-rich compulsive shoppers who own more clothes and shoes than they could ever wear. Here were the art, furniture, and sculpture collections of their 18th- and 19th-Century equivalents.

This is not just a tale of luxury. St Petersburg - also known in Soviet times as Petrograd and Leningrad - has also been the scene of unimaginable suffering.

The Hermitage was the Russian royal family's palace until revolution swept them from power to imprisonment, then death.

Along with the rest of the city, it endured siege and starvation as Hitler's armies strove for 900 days to force Leningrad to surrender.

Lyudmila Voronikhina joined the museum's permanent staff just after the war. She is still working. The day after we met, she was due to sit on an interview panel for prospective museum guides.

As a schoolgirl, she escaped the siege. But she could name most of the people shown in a leaflet depicting life there during the war.

The Hermitage cellars became bomb shelters.

"Old women and children were left here for the daytime, and those who had to work, went to their work," she recounted. "But that was only up to February 1942, because already in autumn 1941 people started dying."

REVIVING PAST GLORIES

If there is a time in St Petersburg's past which echoes today, it's before the coming of communism.

Now, as then, Russia has a government focused on one man. The post-Soviet political system puts the president at the centre of everything.

The Russian Orthodox Church has regained its prominent role in society, although the numbers who actually attend services are relatively few.

A whole new class of wealthy merchants has emerged. Like their 19th-Century predecessors, they are happy to spend some of their riches on acquiring art for public institutions.

So why the sudden chimes?

Maybe the spirit of one of the palace's former residents had returned to see the new Russia, and was checking if the clock was still working.

CLIMATE CONFUSION

Just over a week ago, Moscow was enjoying an "Indian summer", as we say in English, or "grandmother's summer" (babye lyeto), as they say in Russian.

Temperatures topped twenty degrees. By the end of this week, they may touch freezing point for the first time this autumn.

These rapid changes are part of the annual pattern in a country where it sometimes seems that autumn and spring only last for a few days.

Last winter was Russia's warmest since records began.

A recent BBC World Service poll suggested that more than 50% of Russians did not know much about global warming.

Another mild winter might make people here start to wonder.

---

Your comments:

Maybe it might have been worth mentioning how a large proportion of the artefacts in the Hermitage actually arrived there? The impression that everything was legitimately acquired by Russian aristocracy is not quite the whole truth. A brief mention of the hundreds of years of 'acquisitions' wouldn't hurt; after all, the Beeb wouldn't dream of not mentioning the true origin of the Elgin Marbles should they be the subject of an article, would it?
Bob, Milan, Italy

How interesting in stories of incredible wealth, the story of those on whose backs the wealth was built is rarely mentioned. There is little manmade splendour in this world that does not have a layer of abused humans at the very bottom. When I see photos of the Hermitage or Versailles, the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon, I see the pain and suffering that built it. Our modern America has its homeless we cannot house, and illegals we are willing to exploit.
Dean Pappas, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

You made a typical mistake in translating the idiom "ba'bye leto": "baba" here definitely means a middle-age woman (consult the 19th c. Russian literature), if grandmother was meant they would use the word "staruha". So basically the metaphor behind this expression is a middle-age woman, perhaps the one having spent decades in marriage, regaining her beauty for a short while before turning into an old woman for good.
Marina Lomaeva, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

I visited Moscow in September 2006. I found the Metro to be far superior to the Sydney rail system (even with no knowledge of Russian at all). As far as having the locals give you advice, it happens all over the world, not just in Russia. Interacting with the locals is how you really experience a foreign culture - not just seeing the things on a pre-packaged tour. Moscow is not that different to any large city - the contrasts between the haves and the have nots occurs absolutely everywhere. We just tend to overlook it when it is in our home town or country. Moscow is a vibrant changing city - it is not New York or London or Sydney - it is Russian and it is fabulous!
Karen, Sydney, Australia

El Greco was not a Spanish painter, as BBC's James Rogers asserts, but a Greek painter who matured as an artist in his native island of Crete, having trained to become a master of the painter's guild in Heraclio (Candia), within the tradition of Post-Byzantine art.
Paul Kouts, Athens, Greece

[James Rodgers writes in reply: "Paul Kouts is quite right to point this out. While he produced some of his finest work in Spain, El Greco was indeed born on the island of Crete."]

This diary, has been lovely to read, at last Russia is appreciating its past, as with the UK, they will have lots of tourists flocking there to see the splendours of Russia's past. Well done Russia!!
Allison Mcalpine, Southampton, UK

I haven't ready the other journal entries but this one is boring. The Hermitage is such an astounding place it dwarfs all the other museums in Europe put together. This author makes it sound trivial.
Terry Randall, London