The Winter Palace is
undergoing renovations

It began: "The weeklong Russian Expo Arms 2002 — a forum for weapon makers to show off their goods to foreign buyers — got off to a bad start Tuesday after a visitor was wounded during a rocket launch."

Sometimes it seems like Russia is always just having one of those days.

Seven decades of those days under Communism gave way more than 12 years ago to a new dawn of hope — walls tumbled, freedom reigned.

Well certainly it reigned for the criminals, corporate thieves and corrupt public officials who gave away national assets to their cronies.

While in the West Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher patted Mikhail Gorbachev, and themselves, on the back, the Russian economy went into freefall and along with it life expectancy and every other social indicator.

To the small extent Gorbachev is not forgotten in Russia today — he remains a contender as the most hated man in the country. The man who knocked everything down without building anything in its place.

In fact if you want to see a Russian with a puzzled expression, try asking them who their Russian heroes are today. When I put that question to two guides who were showing us around some of the rural retreats built by the Tsars and Empresses, a long pause followed.

After a while they suggested a star skier might fill the bill.

Still gloom is an accepted part of life in Russia, not an aberration from the seamless happiness that is life's promise in the West — an aberration that must be dealt with by large doses of therapy and anti-depressants.

But in mid-summer, when Nevsky Prospekt is still bright with daylight at 11 at night, depression is not the general mood of St Petersburg.

It is now 299 years since Peter the Great decided to establish his imperial capital on the swampy delta of the Neva River.

It was a tough project and probably about 40,000 Swedish prisoners of war died in the first wave of building on the marshlands.

They were entitled to wonder what was so Great about Peter — as was his own son who was tortured and killed at his father's orders, and possibly by Peter's own hands.

Brutality and paranoia have been the hallmarks of Russian rulers for centuries. They all had a fair bit of blood on their hands, but few can also boast the achievements of Peter, the great moderniser of Russia.

The greatest of those achievements for the visitor to Russia today is St Petersburg itself.

It has been a rough ride for the city on the marshes, particularly over the past 100 years.

It began the last century still the imperial capital. In the Winter Palace in 1914 Tsar Nicholas signed a declaration of war with Germany, a document that proved to be a death warrant for three and a half million Russians, including the Tsar and his family.

During the war St Petersburg became Petrograd, to sound less German. At the end of the war the Tsar's Palace became briefly the home to a Provisional Government, until it was stormed by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

The rest is history, and a pretty black history. St Petersburg, as the imperial capital, was despised by the leaders of the proletarian revolution.

They made Moscow the capital, re-named St Petersburg Leningrad, then pretty much forgot it.

That neglect was the great gift of the Russian revolutionaries to the imperial capital. It meant that there was slow decay, but none of the wholesale destruction and re-construction that destroyed old Moscow.

The city today is a unique treasure of imperial and nineteenth century construction. Along the Neva and the network of canals are streetscapes that are variously dramatic, imposing and quietly charming.

It is an easy city to get around. Walk a block or two off Nevsky Prospekt and you will find, with a little persistence, plenty of cheap and welcoming restaurants.

For lovers of art, there is no greater collection in the world than that in the Hermitage. Music and theatre lovers are also well catered for.

Around the city are scattered the summer palaces to which the imperial families retreated for the warmer months. Virtually all were destroyed by the Nazis, but their contents were generally saved and the buildings and grounds have now been restored.

Right now getting around St Petersburg is challenging because the city is being refurbished in anticipation of the 300th anniversary celebrations in 2003.

But through the dust, the scaffolding and the jackhammers you can still see that the city Peter the Great founded in 1703 is still one of the real treasures of Europe.

July 2002