St Petersburg: The Hidden Interiors by Katya Galitzine Leonid Bogdanov Oleg Trubsky Pavel Demidov (review)

Abstract

338 SEER, 79, 2, 2001 There are also several typographical errors in the endnotes and index. Furthermore, although the editor claims to be adhering to the Library of Congress system of transliterationwith diacriticsin the apparatus,this is not applied consistently. This gives the impression of careless editing, and is unfortunatefor a publicationwhich aspiresto the statusof film scholarship. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies P.J. CAVENDISH University College London Galitzine, Katya. St Petersburg. 7he HiddenInteriors. Photography by Leonid Bogdanov. With additional photography by Oleg Trubsky and Pavel Demidov. Hazar, London, I999. 240 PP. Map. Genealogical tree. Glossary.Index. C30?.?. PHOTOGRAPHY makes or breaks the 'coffee table' book. Long after the book itself has been removed from the table and the text forgotten, it is only memorable images which justify a re-visiting. Leonid Bogdanov, but also importantly, Oleg Trubsky and Pavel Demidov, have provided us with an abundance of such images in Katya Galitzine's St Petersburg. The Hidden Interiors. Russia has received more than itsfairshareof artbooks of recentyearsand Galitzine and herfather,the late George Galitzine, have been associatedwith two earliersuch volumes, Imperial Splendour: 7hePalaces andAlonasteries ofRussia (i 99i) and TheRomanov Legaqy: ThePalaces ofStPetersburg (I994), both reviewed by me (SEER, 70, pp. 545-47; 74, pp. 530-32). Imperial Splendour remains unsurpassedforthe splendour(andimpressivesize)of the photographs,whilst the second, written by Zoia Belyakova, with an introduction by Katya Galitzine, alsoproduced some remarkableimages, not least of interiors. In the realm of interiors, the present book has a notable predecessor in Xloscow Revealed (I99I), which took the commendable step of promoting the photographer,John Freeman,to starbilling, and relegatingthe text, although in thisspecificcase the latter(byKathleen Berton)waswell informedand well written. Katya Galitzine does not mention A7loscowRevealed, although she would seem to have been more than a little influenced by it with respect to presentation:both have mapsindicatingthe sitingof theirsubjects,both haxve glossaries(accepting,incidentally,the existence of 'PotemkinVillages');while both lack,sadly,even smallpicturesof the exteriors of the placeswhose interiors they explorewhich would have servedasvisualcoordinates. Berton opted for a division by districtsof NMoscow; Galitzine chooses, less convincingly, a chronologicalscheme. This gives us 'Creationof a City';'The Age of Empire', 'The Alchemy of Reform', 'IndustrialChange', 'The Yearsof Revolution', 'Stalin and the Second World War', 'Institutions' and 'New Russia', but while it is obvious that certain buildings and interiors sit comfortablywithin their alloted period, others embody centuriesof devrelopment and change. Galitzine's only justification for her periodization is frequently her idiosyncratic commentaries which are part anecdote, part personaldiaryand parthistoricalcommentary.The personalfamilyhistoryof the Galitzine's is intrusive, beginning with the twvo-page family tree REVIEWS 339 (pp. I I- I2), continuing with 'what might have been' at Oranienbaum if the Reds had not taken it away (p. 43), and with Galitzines serving in the Chevalier Guards, evoked by the 'Dom Officers' (sic, cf. 'Dom Architects', pp. I60-63), and ending with the homage to the sculptor Mikhail Anikushin for whom Katya posed and with whom she worked, and the Galitzine Library, housed at no. 46 Fontanka (pp. 232-35). Although the book is aimed at what is usually called 'a wide audience', it is regrettable that the text is often so unreliable (look, for instance, at the opening lines on Thomas de Thomon's Stock Exchange, which is allegedly sited at the convergence of 'the Neva with her smaller tributary, the Nevka' [p. 50]). The book, however, lives by its evocation of the city's hidden splendour, and not, of course, of its squalor, and the familiar interiors of certain palaces, museums and libraries are found alongside a greater number of unfamiliar and unexpected ones, be they of the Admiralty and Mining Institute, of private apartments and closed institutions, or, indeed, of boiler rooms and bridges. Department ofSlavonicStudies ANTHONY CROSS Universityof Cambridge Levitt, MI. and Toporkov, A. Eros i pornografliav russkoikul'ture / Eros and Pornography in Russian Culture.Russkaia potaennaia literatura /Russian Forbidden Literature. Ladomir, Moscow, 1999. Notes. Illustrations. 701 pp. Price unknown. SCHOLARLY interest in Russian sex and pornography has emerged in several books during the last decade, but the present volume goes considerably further than any of its predecessors, such as, for example, L. Heller (ed.), Amouret Erotismedansla litterature russeduXXe siecle/ Liubov'i...