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The hermitage for leaders
Traditional Indo-Russian ties were invoked, endless expressions of friendship were recalled. But what really swung it, said those involved, was the glory of St Petersburg, writes Nilova Roy Chaudhuri.
The negotiations could have swung either way. Finally, after a tense half-hour wait in the bus along the banks of the Neva, as the rain poured down outside, an official from the MEA’s XP division came and said, “Let’s go.” Around 15 of us from the media and half a dozen officials (mostly MEA and PMO) galloped through traffic across the road, walking in through a dingy little door to gain entry into one of the world’s grandest palaces, the Winter Palace of the Czars known now as the Hermitage Museum.
It was Monday morning. Museums the world over are closed on Monday. And the Russians are nothing if not sticklers for rules. So when they got a request to open up for a serious culture-starved hacks on a Monday morning, the response was, naturally: take a hike. The negotiations had started the previous day. The rules do not permit it. But, to the credit of the new Indian babu, no was not an acceptable answer.
Traditional Indo-Russian ties were invoked, endless expressions of friendship were recalled. But what really swung it, said those involved, was the glory of St Petersburg, and, more mundanely, a bit of paper. The letter faxed from the Indian Consul-General’s office to the museum director. The all important seal of officialdom was the clincher! And you thought Indian bureaucracy was the ultimate.
Further negotiations followed. But this time internal. Would we spend several hours there and miss the boat to Strelna, where the G-8 and other leaders (including sadda paaji) were discussing mundane things? And sponsors of terrorism. And the Middle East. And Iran’s nuclear problem. And WTO. You get the idea, it’s a talk shop. Or should we race through the museum in an hour, picking the exhibits we wanted to see and make it to the pier on time?
At the Hermitage
We opted for the latter, passing in a haze through the phenomenal, jaw-dropping opulence of the Grand Palace and the Little Palace. Then, from the 27 million-odd exhibits, we picked our way through the Impressionists, the Rembrandt rooms and the Da Vincis. Some dazed students, making copies of the Rembrandts, wondered what had hit them with this chattering, photograph-clicking lot.
An hour later, talking with aplomb of ‘check out this Picasso’ and that Monet, ‘hey these sculptures are Rodins’, ‘look at the colours of these Van Goghs and Gauguins’, and ‘see the lines of this Leonardo’, we emerged, sated, and made our way to the pier. And on to Strelna’s Konstantinovsky Palace, to take in the day’s press conferences, briefings and making some sense of the larger picture. All in a day’s work.
The Hermitage was initially conceived as a place where Catherine the Great could contemplate the world’s woes in solitude, like a hermit, (hence the name Hermitage, which stuck, despite the Soviets). It started out with just the ‘private’ collection of the Czarina. Branches of royalty and the Russian nobility went on to pick up works by the world’s greatest artists, at throwaway prices, and place them on display at the Hermitage, which transformed itself from being the Winter Home of the czars to one of the world’s great repositories of fine art. Unlike many museums, the Russians claim there are very few stolen works of art.
More museums than people
The Hermitage is just one of over 200 museums in St Petersburg. In the run up to the G-8 summit, the President, Vladimir Putin, told the citizenry to take their annual holidays. All the homeless were relocated to where they would not be visible. So there were literally more museums we passed than people. And not a protester in sight. True democracy, a la Soviet style. From a museum of dolls, to one of ‘curiosities’, one for water supply and, most interesting, a museum of vodka.
The last czar
Located on the Gulf of Finland, close to the Arctic Circle, days in St Petersburg (known initially as Petrograd in the times of the Revolution, and later as Leningrad -- because the hero landed here from “immigration in Finland,” the earnest guide told us), are dark and dismal. So, to add colour and replace the missing sun, the czars used gold, (what else?)
They also brought in architects and artists from Italy and Spain to model and embellish the palaces, adding Mediterranean colours to the grey environs. After museums, there are churches (“People have now become more religious since the Soviets”, the guide added again) and palaces, the opulence of which made one realise why old Lenin made so much headway with the revolution from here.
Moscow is mostly dreary Soviet, St Petersburg is pure baroque opulence, reflecting the grandeur of old Russia, something that Putin is trying very hard to recreate. Earlier this year, he had world leaders over to celebrate his home town’s 300th birthday. The Egyptian sphinxes and Chinese lions along the waterfront were all spruced up and a special fountain set up along the waterfront has become the latest exhibit in Russia’s most expensive city.
His office is located in the Old Palace facing a wooden hut where the city’s founder first lived. And his plans match Peter the Great’s, making him popular with the local citizenry.
White lights and rain
The summit was scheduled for mid-July, during the period of the ‘white lights’, when the sun hardly sets, and the place is lighted naturally. But the rain played spoilsport with all of Putin’s plans to showcase his ‘Venice of the north’. And security ensured that there was a complete no-show by protesters. Though on the same island, we didn’t even get a glimpse of the Konstantinovsky Palace where the summiteers (modern day czars) met, talked and lunched in imperial grandeur.
