Blog — Russia June 1-13, 2011 This trip to Russia is including 3 days of touring St Petersburg, followed by 5 days of cruising on the Volga River and finally 3 days of touring in Moscow. The tours are very informative. The countryside and the river stops are interesting and the on board Historian gives a delightful history of the Russian people of the Tzarist, Communist and present times and the rocky transitions in between. This is the first day on the river, having left St Petersburg and the hectic touring schedule for the more relaxed cruise to Moscow (which will be hectic once again.) It’s also the first day the Internet has worked … so I’ll catch up on this blog and post a few photos.
Part of the hectic-ness was produced by having the ships dock 45 minutes to an hour away from City Center. It seems like such an easy problem to solve and it would take away a lot of traffic, to just dock the ships downtown like they do in the rest of Europe. I’m sure there are Russian politics at play, that are above our pay grade…. The ship is not up to the Uniworld standards that we’ve become spoiled by, since Russia owns all the ships and only allows leasing by the various cruise companies.
Some passengers are complaining about the service and the boat … but we are here to see Russia, not a doctored up tourist version … so what we are seeing is perfect. After all, these folks have only been experimenting with Free Enterprise for 20 years and since we dont have it perfect yet after 200, we are happy enough to give them some slack and remain curious. One thing that is noticeable is the desire to provide excellent service by many of the young staff … but you can see that their training and the policies set by their corporate supervisors just cant possibly deliver 5 star service. The “That’s good enough” attitude seems to have held over from the Communist era. This will no doubt change for the better as competition continues to improve everything. There are two forces that could derail that improvement. Corruption: both in the government and the Mafia have both hampered the otherwise meteoric progress of this short experiment in Capitalism. The other unknown is the sizable group who liked it better under Communism. This was reported by both our tour guides and our Phd Historian.
We learned that one of Mr Putin’s last acts as president was to cancel all elections of governors and make all future governors appointees of the president. He is no longer president, but as Vice President, everyone knows he still wields the power and after sitting out a term or two, will probably be president again. This centralization of power smells like a resurrection of Totalitarianism. We’ll have to wait and see. Our Historian as well as some of the museum tours pointed out a tendency to accept and even prefer a King or Tzar, or Powerful Leader that has been part of the Russian psyche for hundreds of years. First the Tzars, then to the Bolsheviks, then the Communists & KGB, now it seems now to be consolidating once again at the top. But with the internet and television, it may be too late. Enough young people may have seen and tasted too much for the genie to be forced back into the bottle … Yes, we’ll have to wait and see.
The Hermitage is one of the world’s greatest museums. It would take a week to see it all. It was the Winter Palace before becoming a museum. The Yusimov Palace was another museum, a smaller palace of a business family which was said to have amassed even more wealth than the Romanov Tzar dynasty.
The art pieces and gold and mirrors were like the Louvre museum and Versatile palaces because they were fashioned after them. The Russian monarchs did not promote the education of Russian arts or architecture, choosing rather, to import the talent from Western Europe. Whether this was planned, to keep the serfdom system in place or not, the effect is that there is very little “Russian” art or architecture. There are great collections of the Dutch and Flemish masters, French, Spanish and Italian artists, but not much from Russia. And of course the arts were repressed for 70 years of Communism. Once again, we’ll have to wait and see as this sleeping giant wakes up. The highlight of the museums and palaces for me, Dave, were the inlaid parquet floors, truly works of art.
We learned that St Petersburg is a city of 5 million built on Islands, where several rivers converge at the Bay of Finland. So the city has more canals and waterways than Venice and is only exceeded in water transportation by Amsterdam. Also of note is the fourth largest unsupported domed cathedral, St Isaacs. 1,2 & 3 being Rome, London, & Florence. Swan Lake, the Ballet was interesting, different to us as we are not ballet or opera fans.
The architecture of the ballet house was amazing and the whole ballet thing was unique. Perhaps we’d better get with the program as grand daughter, Abigail is taking ballet lessons…. Men in tights will take a little getting used to…. Vehicles and Traffic are another subject. The streets were designed for the fewer cars of the austere Communist regime. With perestroika came more prosperity, and a lot more cars … and huge traffic jambs. About the cars, it is rare to see a Russian made car, the “Lada.” They are stripped down projects from the Communist era that break down a lot and no one wants them, preferring the comfort of Western models, Ford, VW, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, etc. Gas prices, after conversion from rubles are about the same as at home, around $4.00 per gallon. One of the best parts of this type of cruise is meeting people from all over the world. Two of the main places that the 160 people on this cruise come from is Florida and especially Canada. Tonight I learned about Hockey and Canadian Football … Twelve players and three downs, eh! Also the Ukranian Orthodox Church. One man’s father had deserted the Communist army and emigrated to Canada after spending time in the Gulag. Another’s had been at Normandy where (we learned when we were there) the Canadians had performed so well. Lot’s of dots of history connect together on a cruise like this.