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.
"...will certainly introduce... students, to the more conventional delights of a city... which is better-known for inhabiting the tropes of 'museum city' and 'theater set'...."
Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford, The Russian Review, Vol. 68.3 July 2009
"... the essays underscore the fact that for many Russians, Piter is a nostalgia museum, a sacred place. Preserving Petersburg will appeal... to scholars who are interested in the arts and those who are... familiar with the city's history and monuments."
Michael Hamm, Centre College, H-Urban, Sept. 2009
"A truly innovative contribution to the scholarship on Petersburg... The volume should be read by all serious Slavic scholars."
