On a warm fall evening, pedestrians jam the wide sidewalks of the city's main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt. They bustle by a young couple absorbed in a passionate kiss, and glance, if only briefly, at a marquee announcing a new American B movie. But at a wall plastered with advertisements and political manifestos, a few stop to listen as members of a small crowd argue the merits of removing Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, from his mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square and burying him in a local cemetery. WE MUST SAVE OUR BELOVED CITY FROM THE CORPSE OF LENIN, reads a sign posted on the wall, accompanied by a sketch of Lenin with horns sprouting from his head. THE CORPSE OF LENIN IS THE CORPSE OF SATAN.
The metropolis that is famed as the cradle of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is throwing off its communist legacy with a vengeance. Known for 67 years as Leningrad, Russia's second largest city last week officially became historic St. Petersburg again. The name change is largely symbolic. Statues of Lenin still loom over city parks and cast long shadows in front of train stations. The city council, mindful of budget constraints, has decided not to spend any money on new road signs or stationery. But the rechristening reflects a deeper transformation that optimists say has affected many of the city's 5 million residents. "On the surface, nothing has changed in the way we live," explains Sergei Fyodorov, a taxi driver. "But the people in this city have changed. The change is in our souls. We feel free at last."
Led by Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, a hero of the resistance to August's aborted hard-line coup, reformers in the city are trying to pull St. Petersburg out of Moscow's shadow and transform it into a gateway to the West. Some even suggest returning the political capital to St. Petersburg, though Sobchak says his task is "to revive St. Petersburg as the financial, cultural and scientific capital of Russia." For a precedent, Sobchak turns to the city's founder, Peter the Great, the Czar who set out to westernize the backward Russian Empire. "For 10 years Peter the Great tried to carry out reforms in Moscow, but nothing came of it," Sobchak says. "Then he moved to the banks of the Neva River, founded a capital here and achieved his reforms. And so now we have the chance to repeat Peter the Great's experiment."
Peter's efforts date back to 1703, when he began building his city from the miasmic swamps of the Neva River. He wanted to open "a window on Europe," a point of entry for the flow of Western ideas into his isolated empire. The reformist Czar hired Italian architects to design a modern European capital with intersecting avenues lined by stately homes and grand palaces.