Vytegra Day 2: School No. 2

Yesterday we went to School No. 2 where we met the Russian schoolchildren and give our presentations on America. After a long day at school we met with some of the Russian students in the cafe at our hotel. To finish the day we watched a concert put on for us by the musical school.

The trip to School No. 2 has to be my favorite activity for the day. Having lived in Germany, I have experienced both American and German classrooms, which helped me see the differences that the schools in Russia have with those of America and Germany. School No. 2 was built in the late 1800s, and reflects the architecture of the time. Even the principal looks as if she just walked out of 19^th Century Russia. The students were very friendly, and we had good Q & A sessions with them. Everyone wanted to meet us, and we spent a lot of time just signing autographs and giving out our email dresses whenever we entered the hallways. The female students seemed especially keen on getting Clark, Andrew, Ian, and my contact information. While I met a lot of people, I didn't get to know in much depth anyone except for the 4 students that I was paired off with for the small group sessions. When I spoke with the Russian students later on at the cafe, I became better acquainted with several more.

Some of the students said that Vytegra was boring and that they wanted to move to Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Vologda to escape, many students said that they would be willing to return to Vytegra after graduation but could not, because there were no job opportunities. This migration to the cities and exit from hometowns is very familiar to me, as I do not expect to return to Detroit or even stay in Michigan after graduation, because there are too few jobs available in my concentration. Even though Detroit is still a major city, it seems to share many characteristics of the Russian provinces, of being in economic decline and experiencing a “brain drain” of university graduates.

After two days in Vytegra, I've noticed quite a few differences between Vytegra and St. Petersburg. While both Petersburg and Vytegra are known for shipbuilding, Petersburg has a more diversified economy and tourism to boot. Vytegra is suffering from an economic slump, which can be seen in the condition of the local buildings and the financial condition of the Vytegra museum. On an individual level, Petersburgers are much more loud and outgoing in public than Vytegrans, and are much more willing to speak with strangers on the street. So far, the stereotypes of provincial Russia that we learned in class are holding up, but we have a few more days to test them.

Day One: Saint Petersburg

Our first day in Russia was spent in the northern capital of St. Petersburg. We first visited the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace, had lunch at Shtolle, a restaurant with a specialty of traditional Russian pies, visited Peter and Paul Fortress, then were given a few hours of free time to explore the center of the city along Nevski Prospect.

One only needs to walk along the river in St. Petersburg to notice a few of the 1,500 palaces that make up what natives refer to as the “city of museums,” according to our tour guide, Yulia. The Winter Palace is the grandest of them all and houses only a part of Catherine the Great’s massive art collection. The Baroque style of architecture reveals the Czar’s massive amount of wealth that was used to hire foreign architects and collect enough art to cover fourteen miles of corridors. Catherine expressed her power with her money and her art collection. She accumulated about 300 pieces a day for thirty-four years and had to expand the Winter Palace to include an additional four more buildings to use as “storage” for all of her art. However these storage buildings are unlike any other. They are decorated just as extravagantly as the Winter Palace and show off the royalty’s Imperial power over the country.

The town of St. Petersburg was started on Peter-and-Paul Island with a church and a fortress. The architecture on this island is very contradictory to that of the island that houses the Winter Palace. As opposed to the extravagant rooms, emphasis on detail, and bright colors, the buildings on Peter-and-Paul Island are much more conservative, with an exception of the church, the central focus. The church was instructed to be the tallest point in the city by Peter the Great and remains so to this day. It is unlike any other Russian Orthodox Church with its lack of domed spires, gold leafed ornaments, huge windows, and pastel colors. The fortress on the other hand was painted only in grey scale and the small windows offer little light. Unlike the Winter Palace, no ornaments adorn the rooms, which are very unimpressive with their low, arched ceilings. These differences can be attributed to the time it took from when Peter the Great first decided to build a city in this location to when Catherine the Great decided to make it into an Imperial city and spend all of her money on its extravagance.

Unlike I expected, Saint Petersburg is very different from other Western European cities I have visited. It has the rich history like that of the rest of Europe, but what surprised me the most was the lack of emphasis on the service industry. Russians do not tip, so wait staff has little reason to make their customers happy. After having ordered, we would have to wait sometimes up to ten minutes for the first drink order. The next person’s drink would not arrive at the table until five minutes after that, and the next person would receive their order another five minutes after that and this continued so that in the end, by the time the last person received their order, the first person would have already finished.

The same lack of service goes for the cleanliness of restrooms. Often restrooms had no toilet paper or paper towels and often toilets did not have toilet seats. Also nearly every restroom had a sign to not throw anything, including toilet paper, into the toilet, so if a restroom does offer toilet paper and paper towels, it would have two buckets, one for toilet paper and one for paper towels.

Also the streets, especially the sidewalks, of Saint Petersburg are in horrible conditions in the winter. The sidewalks all have an indefinite number of inches of ice on them, which makes walking extremely difficult. I would have thought that after so many years of treacherous winters, they would have come up with a practical system to keep the sidewalks clear of hazards, but that is not the case. Even so, nearly every Russian woman wears high heel boots around all parts of the city, but often has her arm tightly wrapped around a man’s, presumably their only form of support. I think at least half of us slipped on the ice walking around Saint Petersburg, and I slipped and fell twice. Amazingly, I never saw a Russian even come close to falling.

While in St. Petersburg, I would have done a few things differently. First of all, I would have liked to walk around and explore the center of the city in more depth. This includes further exploring destinations such as Church of our Savior on the Spilled Blood, a gorgeous church of typical Russian architecture, which we walked around many times but never went in to. Also, next time I visit a foreign city, I won’t be as hesitant to ask for directions. My group wondered around the center of the city for almost an hour looking for the metro station, but all of us were too scared to ask for directions, in Russian. Finally we asked a young couple who not only spoke English, but also walked us to the Metro station while talking to us about Russia.

I believe Russians who have grown up with these customs do not even bother to question the lack of services and do not expect the same kinds of services we consider standard in the United States. While roaming the streets of St. Petersburg, I noticed as early as eight in the evening, drunkenness already seemed to abound. In class, we reviewed drunkenness as an aspect of Provincial life, but this is the case in the cities as well, although perhaps to a lesser degree. After eight in the evening, it was hard to walk more than a few steps without seeing an empty bottle of alcohol dropped in the snow.

Church of Spilled Blood, near the center of St. Petersburg.

Vytegra: Day 1

On Monday, having spent the night in Vytegra we went to the local museum. Despite the day being a work holiday, the museum workers were present to give us a tour of the exhibits. After the tour, we had a snack and then got to work assisting the museum with various tasks, mine being translation of a portion of their history of Vytegra booklet. After a long day of museum work, we finally had time to catch up on our reflection essays.

I was impressed by the comprehensive exhibits that the Vytegra museum had, and by the tour through the museum. They had many taxidermy animals including a wolverine, which was of great interest to us for obvious reasons. They also had several exhibits that were of great personal interest and will be valuable to my research project; the medieval Vytegra exhibit with its many icons and religious artifacts, the 1800s Vytegra room with its pictures of the churches in Vytegra and its religious cartoon, and the Soviet exhibit and its many propaganda pieces. The translation work that I did for the museum was of personal interest to me, as it was on the World War II soviet submarine B-440 that is on display in Vytegra. But, this work was also extremely difficult. It took me the whole day to finish translating all the naval terms describing the components of the submarine and its diving protocols. We still are unsure what exactly the English equivalent is to “hydro acoustics”, though we think it might be SONAR.

The Vytegra museum gave us a great rendition of the local history, and how the local Vytegrans view their own history. They are very proud of how the German offensive was stopped in the region, of how Vytegra gave Russia 5 admirals, how the graduating class of 1941 was sent to the front, and none returned, and of the mine-clearing battalions that sustained 3 local losses when they removed everything that the Germans had left behind when they retreated. In a small provincial town like Vytegra the major events of the past have an ongoing role in the lives of contemporary Vytegrans.

The museum devoted as large a portion of its space to the World War II exhibit as it did for the medieval exhibit, I guess this just shows how central the Great Patriotic War (as WWII is called in Russia) is to Vytegra. They had photos of those who died in the minefields laid around Oshta, the southernmost part of the Vytegra district, along with actual unexploded German ordinance, soviet uniforms, and photographs of the soldiers . In this focus on WWII, Vytegra is in no way different from the rest of the former Soviet Union. The USSR suffered 30 million casualties from the war, and I found it amazing that the Germans were able to advance this far into Russia. Oshta is about 400 km east of St. Petersburg, the fact that a Lake Onega flotilla was needed just shows how dire the situation of the USSR was in during Operation Barbarossa in 1941-1942. Learning the Vytegran WWII story helped me find a personal connection with the area, as my family had similar experiences in WWII, with a great uncle of mine being the only survivor out of his Marine artillery battalion on Iwo Jima in the Pacific, and my grandfather being a navy radio operator also serving in the Pacific Theater.

St. Alexander Svirsky and his monastery

On Sunday we left St. Petersburg for Vytegra. I felt some regret when we left St. Petersburg, though all the good memories we had in the last 48 ours kept me occupied for most of the 12 hour trip to Vytegra. On the way, we stopped stopped at the Svirsky Monastery, the holiest site in Russia. I was extremely excited to see the monastery, being an Orthodox Christian.

As a Reader in the Orthodox Church, I was very extremely interested in everything that our tour guide told us. The monastery is sited on the only location outside of the Holy Land where the Trinity manifested itself to a human being (in the form of three angels). The waters at the well that St. Alexander dug are said to have special healing powers, and the sand above his grave likewise. St. Alexander is also known for blessing infertile couples, especially with sons. As part of our tour, we visited the unheated summer church, where the monastic choir chanted for us. The acoustics of the church and professionalism of the singers made the experience unearthly beautiful. We did not know if we were in heaven or on earth. I spoke with the monk on guard at St. Alexander's tomb. He gave me all sorts of information on monastic life in Russia, on the religious revival that has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union, and of the miracles of St. Alexander. When we went to the grave to venerate St. Alexander, he even opened the glass case containing the incorrupt body (the body remains very well preserved, despite St. Alexander dying 478 years ago) to venerate the body. After our discussion, he even presented me with a chotki (prayer beads like a rosary) that he had received from a person who had been to the Holy Land! Sergei, one of the Ruslan leaders, and I were shocked, and very grateful for the monk's generosity.

The monastery appeared to be well kept, with the 30 monks living only on donations. The monks had a beautifully restored monastery, having been destroyed under the Soviet Union , and our tour guide told us how the soviet era mental hospital housed in the monk's dormitories had only been closed down last year. Despite its recent past, the monastery was very quiet and had a meditative atmosphere. Inside the complex I felt at peace, living only in the present, in a state of timelessness. This sense of timelessness has been an ongoing theme that the preparatory class that we had to take for the trip repeatedly emphasized. I could feel this in the Svirsky monastery.

I was very impressed by the size and the recovery of the monastery. With its near physical destruction under the Soviet Union, it is very impressive to see how beautiful the summer church was and how new the active winter church is. It was also noticeable that many of the monks were very young, one looked in his mid-twenties. The only old monk was the one whom I spoke, and he said that he had only been in the monastery for 8 years. It was an interesting contrast-the ancient buildings, location, and St. Alexander versus the newly refurnished church interiors, closed mental hospital, and the young and newly entered monks. This contrast I think speaks greatly of how modern Russia operates, as both an old, traditional nation and a new emerging post-communist society. In the monks' own words, “Russia is a strange country”.

St. Petersburg in all its splendor

It was the best of times, it was the best of times. St. Petersburg has been one adventure after another. Our first morning in Petersburg we visited the Winter Palace and the adjoining Hermitage. With the temperature a steady -8 C and snowing, the Winter Palace was blanketed in snow. The Tsars certainly built to impress, the grand staircase was a dazzling display of wealth, but this paled in comparison to the Golden Room, which lived up to its name and had been used to receive the King of Spain by President Dmitri Medvedev only the day before our tour. The vast amount of art in the Hermitage was staggering, our tour guide told us that if we were to spend 1 minute in front of eve piece of art in the Hermitage collection, we would need 9 years to see all 3 million pieces. The collection includes many originals from artists like Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, Michaelangelo and Monet. The odd thing about the collection was that it held much French, Dutch, and Italian art and next to no Russian, perhaps speaking about the Western tastes of the Tsars of St. Petersburg.

After our Hermitage excursion, we had lunch at one of the Stolle Cafe chain restaurants, which specialize in traditional Russian cuisine. Our meal included kapustiye pirogi (russian savory pastries with cabbage), borscht with plenty of sour cream, pelmeni (russian dumplings similar to ravioli), and a salad consisting of apple shavings and shredded cabbage. Petersburgers seem to be very fond of smoking, especially indoors, something that as an American I'm not used to.

After lunch, we had some free time to wander about in downtown St. Petersburg around the Church on the Spilled Blood, to buy souvenirs or just sight-see. I used this opportunity to speak privately with out tour guide, who was very willing to give her opinions on life in St. Pertersburg, contemporary and in Soviet times, and even what she thought of the Russian Orthodox Church. She gave me plenty of information on the Church on the Spilled Blood, how it had only been completed in 1907 and was closed in 1917, destroyed in WWII, reconstructed by the Soviet government over a period of 40 years, and now a museum.

The next item on our itinerary was the Sts. Peter and Paul fortress, the very heart of Peter I's St. Petersburg. Even though the fortress has never seen combat, it has housedd the Trubetskoye Prison, a maximum securitycomplexx used for the violent or political criminals. We saw the former cells of Russian dissidents like Krapotkin, Alexander Ulyanov (Lenin's Brother), and Lev Trotsky. We saw the cell named “the punishment cell” where inmates who broke the rules of the prison were kept in solitary confinement. Though closed now, Trubetskoye has never had a successful escape attempt.

St. Paul Cathedral is also in Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress, and its spire is said to be the highest point in St. Petersburg, as Peter I commanded it so, a law that is still on the books today. This is perhaps the most unorthodox church I have ever seen belonging to the Orthodox Church. Without the Cyrillic lettering, I would have guessed that we had entered a classic Baroque Cathedral in France or Italy. It has classical frescoes on the ceilings, western-style depictions of Jesus, the Theotokos (Mary, the Mother of God), and the Saints in the iconostas, the wall of icons that separates the altar from the nave and symbolizes how humanity's sins isolate it from God, was unlike anything I have seen anywhere else in the world. The cathedral, though, is the burial place of every Tsar since Peter I.

After all this sightseeing, we were given the late afternoon and evening as free time. My group of Monica and Andrew navigated several stores and a Subway only using Russian. The architecture in downtown Petersburg is remarkably old, being of 18^th and 19^th century styles, unlike the Stalinist buildings that we saw on the trip from Pulkovo airport on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The pastel colours of the city center contrasted very nicely with the overcast sky that we had throughout our stay in Petersburg. This was different to the Stalin-era drab grey blockish buildings that make a ring around downtown, but even later buildings built in Petersburg, such as the 1907 Church on the Spilled Blood.

St. Petersburg has been a lot of fun, and if we had stayed longer I'm sure that we would have had even more adventures, but we came for Vytegra. Tommorrow promises to be an interesting day, I'm looking forward to the Svirstroy Monastery that we'll be vising on the way to Vytegra.

Past and Present in Provincial Vytegra

After exploring Petersburg and the surrounding countryside, we finally arrived in Vytegra, and spent the day getting a quick introduction to the history and current state of this rural town. It took a while for me to get my bearings, but after a few hours of exploring, the modern-style grid-like city center was easy to navigate. We navigated down the sidewalks to the mayor’s office, where renovation construction and ambitious sports center plans were juxtaposed against other dilapidated features of the town, which I will explain in further detail below. Nonetheless, after meeting with the mayor and the town administration, we headed down the road to the museum.

The museum seemed very well maintained and seemed that it was constructed with much attention paid to every detail. A new museum employee, Olga, took us through the museum’s exhibits, explaining local flora and fauna as well as centuries of local history.

Compared to the previous readings and films I have seen, the city of Vytegra is much more open about their Soviet past than I would have expected. The main street in town is still called Ленинский Проспект, Lenin Prospect.

However, it seems that to a large degree Vytegra considers its Soviet past as just that: a historic context in which their town took its current form. In the museum, equal note was given to the Soviet period, and several representations of Lenin and Soviet "Мать"-esque propaganda posters were on display. I definitely plan on paying attention to the post-Soviet perspective more closely in the following days.

In contrast, many aspects of the town after leaving the museum reminded me that Vytegra – unlike the museum – could not be mistaken as being from anywhere in the United States. Much of the town’s infrastructure is seriously lacking in funding due to a variety of reasons, and such economic hardships were evident as we walked through the town. I was (and am) most impressed by the amount of snow accumulated. In some places the snow has reached a height rivaling my own, and to walk around it looks like they have cut into the snow and formed makeshift ice- and snow-covered sidewalks where they might be located in the few summer months. If we have complained this winter in Ann Arbor about lack of road maintenance, we have nothing to complain about in comparison to Vytegra residents, whose cars have all but disappeared in the buildup of snow on the side of the street. In addition, the large church in town, though appearing as if it were magnificent in its heyday, is allegedly falling into disrepair due to lack of funding and donations.

These developments do make me wonder whether the troubles are due to economic hardships or the priorities of government spending, but it’s likely that it is in fact a mix of the two.

I am told that Vytegra School No. 2 may not have electricity and heating tomorrow, as the government is struggling to afford such “luxuries” in many state-maintained buildings. Perhaps then I can see first-hand the effects of the economy and culture on the Vytegra youth and education in the provinces.

Journey to the Heartland

On day 2 of our tour of Russia, we experienced first-hand the other extreme of Russian life. Several hours out of St. Petersburg and we had clearly entered the provinces. Expanses of endless untamed forests and remote wooden houses went on for the entire 11-hour drive to Vytegra, and this same format is sure to continue as we explore the surrounding regions of the Vologda oblast.

From the moment we boarded our Vytegra bus, we knew that conditions in the small town were different than in lavish St. Petersburg. As we drove along the long road we encountered many modern tour buses full of Russian visitors to the region, yet ours was the middle bus pictured on the right, due to a lack of funding to fix their more modern bus that had recently broken down. Unfortunately, this theme is prevalent throughout Vytegra, as I will likely explain tomorrow, but in the meantime we made do with what we had and set off on our journey.

Unfortunately, as with most long trips, I spent most of the day sleeping, but the gem of our journey was found at the Alexander-Svirsky monastery. This was the holiest site in Russia, as the only place outside of Jerusalem where the Holy Trinity has appeared to a human, and its special place in Orthodox hearts was obvious from its meticulous upkeep. As we entered the buildings, carefully preserved icons and iconostases adorned the walls, inspiring awe amongst our group members. After receiving a brief introduction to the centuries-old history of the monastery, we were unexpectedly met by a choir of clergymen who sang booming hymns in the resonant center of the cathedral. As we toured the complex of buildings and viewed Alexander Svirsky himself (his body was found to be miraculously intact when exhumed 100 years after his death, and is still preserved today), it was obvious that the monastery was well funded, even if only funded by visitors to the region.

It initially seemed quite strange to me that amidst a region of economic hardship a religious center could be so prosperous, but then after some reflection I realized that this seemed like just the place to experience such a contrast. I have often experienced the tendency of those in rural areas and impoverished regions to have stronger religious affiliations and convictions, likely due to a greater desire (and perhaps need) for help from a higher power. As we discussed during our group reflections of the day, it was very possible that organizations and individuals donate generously in the hopes that their prayers will be answered.

As we get to know Vytegra better, I cannot wait to explore the connection between the church and the people, and see how economic circumstances affect this relationship. As we pull in to Vytegra late at night and finish reflecting, I cannot wait to see what is in store tomorrow from this already fascinating provincial town.