Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia

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.

Helena Goscilo is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. Her many books include Russia Women Culture, edited with Beth Holmgren (IUP, 1996), and Anastasia Verbitskaia's Keys to Happiness, translated and edited with Beth Holmgren (IUP, 1999).

Stephen M. Norris is Associate Professor of History at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He is author of A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 and editor (with Zara Torlone) of Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (IUP, 2008).