Last Friday we left Moscow, this time not for the quiet town of Suzdal, but for the cosmopolitan city of Petersburg. The city was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 to serve as Russia’s “Window to the West.” St. Petersburg has been the backdrop for many events in Russian history, such as the Decembrists revolt, the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution, and the Siege of Leningrad (in the nineteenth-century St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd and then Leningrad). From 1712 to 1918 it was the Russian capital; currently it is the second largest city in all of Russia.
St. Petersburg is also famous as the setting for Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment, in which Dostoevsky portrays the life of a young student (Raskolnikov) who kills a money-lender in order to test if he’s a great man. Raskolnikov believes that Great Men are able to step over lesser individuals in order to achieve great things, without feeling guilty about their actions. However, after the murder we see how Raskolnikov is tormented by his crime, proving he is indeed not a great man.
In the novel, St. Peterburg is more than a backdrop—nineteenth-century St. Petersburg inspired Crime and Punishment and many of Dostoevsky’s other works. Dostoevsky describes parts of the cities in such detail that researchers have been able to pin-point exact locations despite the fact that Dostoevsky doesn’t name them. These places in the city influence the characters’ actions, causing them to carry out terrible deeds that they would not have otherwise done. Nineteenth-century Petersburg also served as an inspiration for the writers Gogol, Beliy, and Pushkin. All wrote about the destitute conditions in the city and how it affected Petersburgers.
Indeed, much of nineteenth-century Petersburg was terribly depressed. The city rapidly expanded throughout the nineteenth-century which led to severe overcrowding. By the 1840s people were renting rooms in flats rather than a whole flat and 20 years later renters had begun subletting “corners” of rooms. Living conditions were poor for all except the wealthiest of aristocrats. Educated civil servants without a noble background lived from pay-check to pay-check and sometimes literally rented spaces under stairwells. Living conditions for the expanding proletariat class were far worse: fifty people living in room less than 20 ft long was not unusual. Even worse, many workers lived in barracks in shifts where men had a spot to sleep for 12 hours and women for the other 12 hours. Conditions on the streets were no better: there were an estimated 30,000 tons of feces in courtyards and on streets throughout the poorer sections of this city. These kinds of conditions allowed diseases to thrive and caused St. Petersburg to have the highest mortality rate of any European city. (Lincoln)
Modern Petersburg is a much more pleasant place than it was in nineteenth-century. While in Petersburg we visited several museums and wandered around the city. We enjoyed the European architecture, series of canals, and the almost white-nights (since Petersburg is located so far north, there are days in the summer with more than 20 hours of sunlight). One of our excursions in Petersburg was a Crime and Punishment themed tour which we researched and led ourselves. We visited some of the prominent locations in the novel, such as Rashkolnikov’s apartment, the money-lender’s apartment, the police station, and the Haymarket.
Seeing these locations gave us a new perspective on the novel. In particular, we noticed that Raskolnikov’s apartment was isolated on the top floor of a building that is in a maze-like area of the city. His apartment is only a few blocks away from the Haymarket, which was one of the poorest sections of the city. Just about anything was sold there and it was the most important market in the city because it connected Moscow to St. Petersburg. For many years Dostoevsky lived in the neighborhood around the Haymarket. In the novel the Haymarket is a central location and symbolizes the worst aspects of Petersburg. The Haymarket is much cleaner nowadays, but the large number of stores and people that we saw there showed us that it is still an important gathering point in the city.
Being in St. Petersburg showed us another side of Russian of life and showed the contrast between St. Petersburg and Moscow. St. Petersburg reflects a more European Russia, while Moscow reflects a more Eurasian Russia. It was useful and important for us to see another side of Russian culture and experience the city that has influenced so many of Russia’s great writers.
Bibliography
Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. Boulder, CO: Basic, 2002. Print.
