WHITE NIGHTS IN SAINT PETERSBURG If someone would ask me to think of a peaceful place I identify myself with, my answer would be St. Petersburg. I immediately think of Petersburg's white nights. This phonemenon takes place every summer when even at nights, the sky is so bright that it feels like an early evening. My experience of visiting St. Petersburg made me think that this was the city I would happily live in. I never loved the places where people go to their homes immediately after it gets dark, because they have to sleep as they go to work every morning. I never loved small, dead silent cities where people never seem to enjoy their life. When I think of St. Petersburg, I feel like this city is full of people who love getting pleasure …show more content…
Petersburg is known as the cultural capital of Russia. Ballet is a popular notable art form coming out of Russia. Founded in 1776, the Bolshoi Ballet is a classical ballet company based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and known throughout the world. The Mariinsky Ballet in Saint Petersburg is another famous ballet company in Russia. Russian literature has also had a worldwide impact, with writers such as Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky still being read around the World. Walking on the streets of St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky’s descriptions of this city are still so vivid and relevant for me. Dostoyevsky called it "the most deliberate city in the world", emphasizing its artificiality. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as an inhuman mechanism. Ancient churches in Russia are part of the national cultural pride, and many of the thousands that were ruined under communism are being restored. Colorfully painted onion domes first appeared during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. They are commonplace in Russian architecture and are predominant atop church structures. It has been speculated that they represent burning candles or vaults to heaven and often appear in groups of three representing the Holy Trinity. The flamboyant exterior of the Church of the Spillt Blood is adorned with icons in a riot of color and becomes more mind boggling the closer you
He experienced the brutal losses of his family, along with everything he owns, his faith, and almost his sanity. Many hundreds of miles away in 1570, a Russian tzar named Ivan IV Vasilyevich, better known now as Ivan the Terrible from an arguably more accurate mistranslation of his title “The Severe”, waged a massacre on the independently-minded city of Novgorod, lasting only five weeks yet leaving thousands dead; though the city’s population could not have been more than 100,000, around 30,000 were murdered, leaving 20,000 more to perish from the aftermath (Erenow, “ Massacre- Ivan The Terrible”).
In general, the contrast between human nature in Gogol’s Ukrainian tales and human nature in his Petersburg tales is striking. Whereas in his Ukrainian tales Gogol is genuinely fulsome in his praise of the ways of ordinary Ukrainian people, in his Petersburg tales Gogol is unsparing in his criticism of high social stations. This, however, should not be interpreted that Gogol praised all Ukrainians and ridiculed all Russians. Instead, he lauded the ways of common people and criticized the coxcombry of the bureaucrats and
Russia also officially known as the Russian Federation is a federal state in Eurasia. And the ninth most populous, with over 146.6 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanized than the East, about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara.
After the turmoil, new urban-industrial regions appeared quickly in Russia and became increasingly important to the country’s development (SparkNotes Editors). The population was drawn to the cities in huge numbers and education went up immensely and in turn, illiteracy went down. The revolution started a range of social and cultural activism across the opening decade of the new Soviet State (Willimont). In the years immediately following the revolution, the new Soviet State fought a civil war against the White Guards and against the invasions from the Western powers who were determined that the new communist state would not last (Harbor 10). Leon Trotsky organized the revolutionary forces into the Red Army, which defeated the White Guards and pushed back against foreign invaders.
Therefore, despite the horrors of Stalin’s regime, one could argue that the socialist realism paintings could ‘mould the consciousness of the people’ into believing that Stalin was a great and wise leader, a kind and humble man, and the father of all Soviet people, thus reinforcing his cult of personality that tries to portray him in that light. However, while art might have the power to do this, one must not forget about other visual representations of life such as photographs and posters. Their relative power and influence will be discussed later in the
He shifted the new capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, away from the center of Russian civilization. The capital had an un-Russian rectilinear street pattern, and the capital had a distinctly European architecture. To make Russia a more western-civilized community, he taxed on beards
Post WWl, Russia was still not industrialized, suffering economically and politically and in no doubt in need of a leader after Lenin’s death. “His successor, Joseph Stalin, a ruthless dictator, seized power and turned Russia into a totalitarian state where the government controls all aspects of private and public life.” Stalin showed these traits by using methods of enforcement, state control of individuals and state control of society. The journey of Stalin begins now.
In this short story, Zamyatin uses the cave setting to symbolize Russia’s retreat from modern civilization. What was once the booming city of St. Petersburg now resembles an obliterated war zone. Large Mammoths walk the streets. The people live in run down apartments. The town has no electricity, no running water, and the sole source of heat for the main characters is a small cast iron stove that the people idolize.
“I will drag you kicking and screaming into the modern world”, this famous quote from the Czar, Peter the Great involved a lot of symbolic changes. In the 16th to 17th century Russia was considered to be a country that was out of order and brutal in the eyes of major powers in Europe. However, after the rule of Peter the Great, this view changed and Russia was no longer seen as a “backwards” nation. Peter the Great modernized Russia by infusing 'western' technology and by forcing his people to reject many of their orthodox christian, 'tradition-bound' customs. Specifically these included: forcing the male population to wear western clothes and cutting their beards (or pay tax), building a modern Navy, melting down Church bells to make cannons, and lastly, building a new capital city his so called, "window to the west."
An author's descriptions of space can illuminate more about a story than just the setting and tone. In Crime and Punishment (1866), Fyodor Dostoevsky fills St. Petersburg with richly described buildings, streets, weather, and people which lend to the dark, melancholy tone of the novel and help the reader visualize the setting. As Figes writes, “Petersburg defied the natural order,” its artificiality morphing the Russian people toward a more European way of life. However, “even the Nevsky, the most European of [Tsar Peter’s] avenues, was undone by a ‘Russian’ crookedness,” an organic dent in the armor of the purposefully streamlined, inorganic design of the city.
There Is More Than One Type of Hero In “Notes from the Underground”, a fiction book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Underground Man is not like the traditional main character in most other fiction books. Often books have a tragic hero where he or she either saves the days or unfortunately is killed. But that is not the case for this book, the main character shows characteristics that do not fit along the lines of a tragic hero at all. This paper argues that the Underground Man is most definitely not the tragic hero, but instead an anti-hero.
The city was now free and able to reside on its own, with the people who inhibit the city given St. Petersburg different characteristics of a typical Russian city. Evgenii is the main character of this story who is witnessing the river become very vibrant and becoming rougher through the storm. “The river is tossing and turning like a sick man in his troubled bed” (2. 5-6). A sick man lying in his bed doesn’t have a lot of freedom by his side, just like the main character was about to experience. This storm will soon set a precept of the way the story goes and the violent nature that is occurring.
Saint Petersburg, the setting of Crime and Punishment, plays a major role in the formation in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s acclaimed novel. Dostoyevsky’s novels focus on the theme of man as a subject of his environment. Dostoyevsky paints 1860s St. Petersburg as an overcrowded, filthy, and chaotic city. It is because of Saint Petersburg that Raskolnikov is able to foster in his immoral thoughts and satisfy his evil inclinations. It is only when Raskolnikov is removed from the disorderly city and taken to the remoteness of Siberia that he can once again be at peace.
In the other two stories the duality of a person becomes intertwined with the dual image of the city. In "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" the duality reflected both in microcosm of a person and the macrocosm of the city serve as a source of characters ' madness. The duality of the city develops through the Hoffman tradition of grotesque and surrealism. Gogolian Petersburg is the city of a "struggle between the dream and materiality" . In this city the real intertwines with imaginary to such an extent that it is no longer possible to detect the borderline.
My Favorite Place to Visit There are many states have I been to in my life. I have made lots of memories with the places I have been to and the people I have went with with. The first time I traveled out of state was when I was three years old.