The founding of St. Petersburg, chronicled in The Bronze Horseman, highlights the intention of St. Petersburg to be the catalyst for a new Russia. This modern Russia would be Peter’s gateway to Western Europe, opening up a path for Russia to develop what they had not during the Mongol occupation. In The Bronze Horseman, it’s easy to see how Yevgeny, the character that the poem focuses on, is seeing St. Petersburg open to Western Europe. However, following the disastrous flood of the River Neva, it seems like both Yevgeny and St. Petersburg have an ambiguous, if not tragic, ending. Yevgeny goes mad, chased by the main icon of St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg fairs slightly better than Yevgeny, left on a neutral note of possible success (or, at least, the continuation of opening the door to Europe). The poem ends with, “and here in charity they buried the chill corpse in a pauper’s grave,” and yet, on the page before, brings up that “there still would pound with ponderous clatter The Bronze Horseman is his wake.” Buried is the cold corpse, but the bronze horseman in St. Petersburg is always there. 

This contrast of the success of St. Petersburg (and the still-obvious identity crisis St. Petersburg caused) is apparent in Andrew Herzen’s Moscow and Petersburg. Herzen lives in Petersburg, describing the city as being the notion of a capital city without the history of one. It has all the politics and is where people are the busiest, but the people awful. Moscow, however, has kind people and the old culture of Russia but has been left behind in the modern world. There is this division of a new, politically active Russia that lacks its history and an old Russia that retains its old ways but is left behind by modern Europe.