Tour Recalls the Leningrad of President Putin's Childhood
Staff Writer
This is the house where President Vladimir Putin lived in his childhood," says St. Petersburg guide Kirill pointing at an old, five-story yellow building at 12 Baskov Pereulok. The building differs little from other houses in the historical center of Russia's cultural capital where the president was born 52 years ago in a city that was then called Leningrad and part of the Soviet Union. A street cleaner sweeping the tiny well-paved yard where several expensive foreign cars are parked, is not surprised to see another group of people staring at the house's windows trying to guess which window once belonged to the Putin family. Kirill, who declined to give his last name, is a historian who conducts the tours for Falkon, a company that started organizing tours of city sites connected to Putin two years ago in response to demand from clients. "We would never have come up with such an initiative if there had been no demand," said Farman Mamedov, head of Falkon. Mamedov said demand for Putin tours peaks around the time of Putin's birthday - Oct. 7 - and that the clients who want to take the tour are largely journalists or people from other parts of Russia. On Nov. 3, this journalist and one from French newspaper Liberation were the clients. Mamedov said the demand for Putin tours is not high, and that the firm does not advertise it. The two-hour tours cost several hundred rubles per client depending on how many people take part and the size of the bus used. "I want to emphasize that our excursion has nothing to do with politics, Putin's cult or anything like that," Mamedov said. "I personally respect Putin, and think Russia has improved a lot thanks to him. But there is no personality cult or fanaticism about him. To my mind, Putin is a very modest person." In the early 1950s, Putin and his parents lived in one room of a three-room communal apartment. They shared a common kitchen and bathroom with their neighbors. "They say Putin had a very hospitable mother, and that his friends could easily come to their home, where she would feed them," Kirill says. In those days many Leningraders, who had survived the hungry years of the World War II siege, focused on food, and for many of them it was a priority and obsession to feed children well, he adds. The excursion starts at the Snegiryov maternity home at 5 Ulitsa Maya-kovskogo, where the future president was born in 1952. The three-story gray and yellow building next to Nevsky Prospekt is still a maternity home. "Putin was born into a completely ordinary St. Petersburg family," Kirill said. "And he was a genuine St. Petersburg native because he was the third generation of his family to live here." Putin's grandfather Spiridon Putin moved to St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century from a village in the Tver region. Spiridon Putin, who worked in the restaurant of the Astoria hotel, had six children, one of whom was the president's father, also named Vladimir. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1911. The communal apartments in the house on Baskov Pereulok where the future president spent his first years are gone. Wealthy people who have bought the apartments in what is a prime location handy to the city center have replaced them. The area has been home to other famous St. Petersburg natives, including dissident writer and winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for literature Joseph Brodsky. The poet lived very close to Putin, and the two may have occasionally passed each other in the street, Kirill said. A couple of minutes' drive from the apartment is the Preobrazhensky Cathedral, a classical yellow church surrounded by a fence topped with golden eagles - a symbol of tsarist Russia - where Putin was baptized a few months after his birth. Kirill said Putin's mother most probably took her little son to the church without the knowledge of his father, who was a member of the Communist Party. Party members faced problems if the authorities found out about a baptism. Next stop is a building on Ulitsa Nekrasova, where the Putins used to go to the banya because their apartment had no bath. The banya on Ulitsa Nekrasova has now gone. School No. 193 where Putin studied in the first eight grades is another historical building, the facade of which is currently covered with scaffolding. Teenage students crowd at the entrance during a break. Several years ago the secondary school was turned into a professional economics lyceum, where children study for a particular profession at the same time as completing their general education. The students know Putin studied there, and they are proud of it. "I like Putin," said Marianna Oganesyan, 16. "I like him because he is a modern man, has good manners, and dresses well." Kirill says that when Putin was young there were few places where young people could go for entertainment. The tour takes in two of the most popular places of Putin's youth, the buildings which housed the long-gone Lug and Iskra cinemas. Putin's involvement in sport and exercise, which continues to this day, started at 21 Ulitsa Dekabristov, in 1967. He joined a children's sport society called Trud (Labor) and learned self-defense and later judo. Kirill points at a huge building at 4 Liteiny Prospekt, which houses the region's police and FSB, where, while still at school, Putin, asked what he should do to become a secret agent. There, in the KGB reception room, they told him that he would first have to acquire a degree, preferably in law, which Putin later studied. The bus goes to Liniya 22 of Vasilevsky Island, where the law faculty of St. Petersburg State University is located. The outside of the building is likely much the same as it was when the future president studied there, but it has changed significantly inside. Yevroremont has transformed the once decaying walls and ceilings into well-lit and modern educational space. You can enter only if you have a special pass. Ivan Chizhov, 21, fifth-year-student of the faculty, said Putin's having studied there "adds prestige to the faculty." "I see Putin as a well-educated man, who knows what to do, who has a strong character, and who is very responsible about his job," Chizhov said. Kirill said St. Petersburgers think it is very important that one of their own heads the country. "Leningraders always had a feeling that neither Lenin, nor Stalin, nor Nikita Khrushchev [former Soviet leaders of the country] liked the city, and therefore gave it a hard time or just ignored it," he said. "Putin is the first native of the city to head the country in the almost 100 years since the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, ruled it from St. Petersburg," Kirill said. "And he hasn't forgotten his home city." "When he brings top foreign guests to this city, Putin advertises St. Petersburg to the world," he added. The next stop is near a five-story yellow building on Liniya 2, where the adult Putin lived with his family when he was a deputy mayor in the early 1990s. Kirill doesn't know in which apartment the Putins lived, and invites his clients to use their imagination. He also recommends the restaurants where Putin took guests such as U.S. president George Bush and Jacques Chirac, president of France. Among them are Russkaya Rybalka (Russian Fishing) and Podvoriye in the suburb of Pavlovsk. "Of course, those are rather new places because when Putin was young, most of the population could only afford to go only to a pelmennaya (cafe, where one could eat Russian dumplings) or a pivnaya (pub)," he said. The excursion comes to its logical end near the seat of the St. Petersburg government at Smolny, where Putin worked for five years as the head of the foreign affairs committee.
|
Перевести на русский
Print this article
