{"id":690,"date":"2020-02-15T21:34:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T21:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=690"},"modified":"2020-02-15T21:34:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T21:34:09","slug":"moscow-and-petersburg-another-dichotomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/jbaltayt\/moscow-and-petersburg-another-dichotomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Moscow and Petersburg: Another Dichotomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Herzen quickly characterizes the dichotomy between Moscow and St. Petersburg through their residents, the habitants\u2019 ways of life and the general feel of the city. However, after reading <em>A Guide to a Renamed City<\/em> by Joseph Brodsky, its blatantly obvious Herzen missed yet another dichotomy: globalization pit against xenophobia. <\/p>\n<p>Brodsky is awfully critical of St. Petersburg in his account, but he does concede that the city is uncharacteristically welcoming of foreigners, relative to the rest of the country. This follows from Peter\u2019s original mandate for the city, \u201c[he] wanted a gate, and he wanted it ajar\u201d (pp. 72). In other words, he did not want to simply emulate the West; rather, he wanted a portal to access it. Brodsky classifies Petersburg as, \u201can international city, with large French, German, Dutch and English colonies\u201d (pp. 82). Additionally, he includes what Pushkin had prophesied, \u201c\u2018All flags will come to us as guests!\u2019\u201d (pp. 82). Thus, instead of simply being a medium through which the West and Russia could interact, Petersburg was designed to foster globalization. <\/p>\n<p>Moscow, according to Herzen, is more traditional and spiritual. This is echoed in Brodsky\u2019s account, who acknowledges the existence of, \u201ctraditional Russian xenophobia\u201d (pp. 83). Implicitly, he is stating that Russian traditionalism and xenophobia are intrinsically intertwined. This inference becomes more explicit when Brodsky recounts the reinstatement of Moscow as the capital under Lenin, \u201cas the country, with its capital returned to Moscow, retreated to its womblike, claustrophobic, and xenophobic condition\u201d (pp. 88). Brodsky clearly states his association of traditionalism and xenophobia with Moscow, noting the country profoundly regresses under this change. However, he also gives Lenin credit for, \u201csparing St. Petersburg both ignoble membership in the global village\u2026\u201d (pp. 85). Hypocritically, he praises Lenin\u2019s capital move for its isolationism while calling traditional Russians xenophobes several times in the text. <\/p>\n<p>Intentionally overlooking the hypocrisy, it is clear Brodsky paints another dichotomy between the two largest Russian cities: future globalization and traditional xenophobia. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Herzen quickly characterizes the dichotomy between Moscow and St. Petersburg through their residents, the habitants\u2019 ways of life and the general feel of the city. However, after reading A Guide to a Renamed City by Joseph Brodsky, its blatantly obvious Herzen missed yet another dichotomy: globalization pit against xenophobia. Brodsky is awfully critical of St. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-5-the-founding-of-st-petersburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}