Call for Navy HQ To Return to City

By Irina Titova

Staff Writer

Published: October 5, 2007 (Issue # 1312)

The headquarters of the Russian navy could return to its historic home of St. Petersburg if an idea from the Speaker of the Russian State Duma, Boris Gryzlov, comes to fruition.

“St. Petersburg is the cradle of Russia’s navy glory, and today as the might of our navy is being revived, such a move would be symbolic and correct,” Gryzlov said during a meeting of Duma deputies with defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, Interfax reported.

Gryzlov said the planned relocation would become an important part of “St. Petersburg: Naval Capital of Russia,” an initiative designed to boost the city’s seafaring profile.

He suggested that the headquarters could be housed in the city’s historical Admiralty building where the Russian Imperial navy command was based in the 18th century.

Experts, however, have poured cold water on Gryzlov’s idea, RBC news said.

“The transfer will cost at least five billion dollars,” military expert Nikolai Baranets said. “That’s the cost of five submarines.”

Baranets said such a decision would disrupt the work of Russian navy officers, 80 percent of whom live and work in Moscow and who are unwilling to move to St. Petersburg.

Andrei Golovatyuk, a member of the Duma’s Defense Committee, also spurned the idea, saying the Russian navy had many other problems, RBC said.

“We need to raise people’s salary, give them apartments, modernize the equipment. If the move begins they will as usual forget about all these social needs,” Golovatyuk said.

“Besides, one should not forget that navy officers control Russia’s nuclear capacity, and they should not be far away from the Kremlin,” he said.

Gennady Ozerov, vice speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the Admiralty building would need to be vacated and so the headquarters of Leningrad navy base would need to move to the city suburb of Kronshtadt. However, in general Ozerov was positive about the idea, RBC said.

Meanwhile, veterans of the Russian navy were split over Gryzlov’s idea.

Vasily Poroshin, vice president of the International Submariners Organization of CIS and Baltic countries, said the move “would be great but under one important condition.”

“The idea should be well-thought out, and big money should be allocated for developing the needed infrastructure,” Poroshin said, Interfax said.

Igor Kurdin, head of St. Petersburg Submariners’ Club, told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday he was in two minds about the idea.

“On the one hand, St. Petersburg is indeed the navy capital of Russia and it would be prestigious to have the navy headquarters here. However, I think there would be too many complications,” Kurdin said.

He said it would be hard to move all the headquarters’ officers to St. Petersburg and give them apartments. At the same time, he said that “all important questions still get solved in Moscow, and a special train would be needed to take navy officers back and forth between the two cities.”

Yury Alexandrov, president of the Northern Convoy, supported the idea.

“St. Petersburg was built to serve as the country’s navy capital, and everything connected to the sea should be here. It would restore historical justice,” Alexandrov said.

However, the naval historian Konstantin Shopotov was against the move.

“Two moves are known to be equal to a fire,” he said, meaning that relocating headquarters to St. Petersburg would be counterproductive.