The politics of remembering: Saint Petersburg's 300th anniversary

Abstract

With Leningrad abandoned, what are the stories told about St. Petersburg, the town named after Apostle Peter? In particular, how was the city's Tercentenary jubilee staged? Discarding images related to Lenin and the Soviet era could signal liberation. Tapping into alternative mnemonic resources could allow the city to free itself from a variety of constraints by utilizing the imperial heritage and the various linkages to Europeanness embedded therein. However, the effect could also be one of being trapped in time, with the city thereby also being unable to break outside the established territorial constraints. The stories told could restrain rather than liberate in being told in a manner that is inconsistent with the challenges that the city — and Russia at large — are currently facing both internally and in view of its rapidly changing external environment. This is the issue that we tackle by viewing the city's 300^th anniversary as a mnemonic battlefield.