Petersburg Residents Research Articles

Problems and solutions of multi storey buildings: Okhta business center integration in historical center of Saint Petersburg

This research is an attempt to make the analysis of possible solutions to the problem of the land where the Okhta Center was to be constructed. The authors studied the case from the historical, practical and cultural sides. In order to find out the current public opinion on this matter two surveys were held both among St Petersburg residents and foreign guests of the city. The main aims of this article were to find the solutions, that would lead to improvement in the cultural and social level of St Petersburg citizens’ life. The possible outcomes of this research are increasing incomes of the city budget, raising the status of the city and the development of Krasnogvardeisky region of St. Petersburg.

Social conflicts as seen by residents of Saint Petersburg: An empirical study

This article describes the attitudes of Saint Petersburg residents to social conflicts. The author analyses their assessments of danger associated with social tension in the Russian society. This tension becomes particularly pronounced during the time of economic, social, and political turbulence. The research aims to examine the existing threats and identify opportunities for reducing social tension. The article makes a practical contribution to the development of social policy and civil society. The author describes the attitudes of Saint Petersburg residents to various social conflicts. They believe that religious and ethnic conflicts are the most dangerous ones and consider ‘conflicts over property and status’ a minor threat. Residents, associating themselves with the middle class, are more inclined to stress the danger of religious conflicts compared to those who associate themselves with the lower class, which is corroborated by a comparison of real incomes. The intensity of personal anxiety, experienced in the presence of people differing from the respondents, can be described in the following way: the most acute anxiety is caused by people of a different nationality, followed by nationals of other countries and members of other religions, then people with differing political views, and compatriots from other Russian regions. These data make it possible to identify hidden connections and patterns in the socio-demographic structure of these attitudes, which can be instrumental in obtaining a comprehensive picture of threats and emerging social conflicts and, hence, in preventing them.

St Petersburg: shadows of the past

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities-a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past. In this beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly shows how creative engagement with the past has always been fundamental to St. Petersburg's residents. Weaving together oral history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts, journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now. Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city's glamorous center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and elusive place.

Investigation of frequency of occurrence of core Y haplogroups in residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg

The collection of DNA from 239 Moscow residents and 62 St. Petersburg residents has been investigated by means of a biochip for genotyping haplogroup markers of the Y chromosome, including M130 (C), M145 (DE), P257 (G), M69 (II), U179 (I), M304 (J), M185 (L), M231 (N), M175 (O), P224 (R), L146 (R1a), and M343 (R1b). The distribution of haplogroup frequency in populations native to Moscow and St. Petersburg has been obtained. Three subsamples that vary in the duration of residence (one, two, or three generations) were compared. The increase in J, G, and R1b frequencies may be related to immigration from the Caucasus and other regions.

Medical and social characteristics of in-patients with injuries

An anonymous sociological survey of 408 patients hospitalized due to injuries in R.R.Vreden RNIITO and traumatological departments of St. Petersburg city hospitals was carried out. The social structure of injury victims under hospital care has no fundamentally differences comparing to the social structure of the city population. The most patients were males, aged 20-30 and 40-50 years, St. Petersburg residents, with higher and secondary education. Most of the patients were married, had an average or low income, living in decent housing. Many of the injured have abused alcohol, smoked regularly, some use drugs. Most often injuries leading to hospitalization occur as a result of falls, and criminal attacks and road accidents. According to opinion of the majority of patients, sanitary condition of their departments is good, but the quality and range of food does not satisfy most of the respondents. Many patients are faced with the need to pay for the recommended care. Patients highly appreciate the human and professional qualities of the medical staff. The social efficiency of treatment coefficient was 0.95.

Homes across the Border: Russian Summer Houses in the Karelian Isthmus and the Finnish State, 1917–1927

At the end of the 19th century, numerous St. Petersburg residents established their summer homes in the Karelian Isthmus, a picturesque region in the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous province of the Russian Empire. The ease of travel between the Russian imperial capital and the Finnish seaside towns contributed to this practice. After 1917, a new border regime delineated the nascent Finnish state from the equally new Russian/Soviet state. This change displaced the majority of Russian proprietors, as well as those imperial subjects who rented vacation properties from local Finns. This article addresses how state-building practices distinguishing between insiders' and outsiders' access to rights and privileges reflected the significance of territorial borders as markers of a state's territorial sovereignty. It does so by investigating how Finnish–Russian social ties affected the Finnish government's management of real estate owned or used by subjects of the former Russian Empire. Using archival material from the Administrative Organ for Property of Foreign Owners in Viipuri Province (Finland), this article examines how property settlements decisions had unintended consequences when officials attempted to balance state and individual interests. These decisions in turn challenged the primacy of the territorial border as an institution that separates insiders from outsiders.

Почему петербуржцы отправляются за покупками в Финляндию? Исследование трансграничного шопинга

The paper discusses cross-border shopping considering it as a practice of shopping outside one’s country of residence. The article is focused on the shopping practices of St Petersburg residents visiting the capital of Finland. The popularity of cross-border shopping has been increasing over in Russia as it became a part of the middle-class lifestyle. Drawing on the data from qualitative interviews, author discusses a set of reasons stimulating and restraining cross-border shopping.

EXPLAINING A CHOICE OF DENOMINATION

Though the data of the latest Russian census of 2002 are presently unavailable, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, mass media, and scholars agree that an increase in ethnic and religious diversity in Russian cities is evident following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. On the one hand, there is a high influx of migrants from regions which previously contributed little to the population of Russian megalopolises (such as the Northern Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia), as well as from countries outside the former USSR. On the other hand, general interest in religion has increased because of declining economic conditions, the end of state atheist politics, and a loss of ideological reference points such as communism. This has led to the conversion of some St Petersburg residents to denominations that are non-traditional for their ethnic groups (Islam, Bahai, Buddhism, etc.). At the same time, some migrants have converted to denominations that are non-characteristic of their ethnic groups (mainly Greek Orthodox and various Protestant denominations). Religious mobility can generate problems. When a ‘deserter’ converts to a denomination that is not specific to her/his ethnic group, s/he commits a double ‘misdeed’, affecting not only her/his former religious group, but also a group of her/his ethnic origin. That is why members of the convert's group may react negatively to such a desertion, and these reactions can damage inter-denominational and inter-ethnic relations. This article is based on my exploratory analyses of viewpoints and religious histories of those who belong to the traditional denominations of their ethnic groups as well as of converts, and discusses correlations between their ethnic and religious identities.

The Past in Common: Modern Ruins as a Shared Urban Experience of Revolution-Era Moscow and Petersburg

In this article, Gregory Stroud considers the modern ruin as a site of common urban conversation and identity for large, diverse, and otherwise fractious populations of Petersburg and Moscow residents. Stroud argues that what began at the turn of the century as a relatively narrow nostalgic intellectual movement anxious over the perceived modern loss of timeless beauty and value exploded with the frustrations of the Christmas holiday during World War I into a common boulevard conversation concerning the loss of holiday, ritual, authenticity, and habit. The failure of the old regime to satisfactorily engage this conversation and to offer meaningful solutions would render such nostalgia into a biting critique of autocracy, mass consumerism, private property, and shopkeeper capitalism.

Metabolic Populational in vivo Construction of Tumors under Conditions of Individual Genetic Predisposition: Communication II

The results of the analysis of the literature data on the ethnic distribution of xenobiotic biotransformation phenotypes and on tumor incidence (for all organs in total) are presented from the standpoint of the concept by L.A. Piruzyan [1]. For a number of ethnic groups, a possibility is theoretically shown of the metabolic populational in vivo construction of tumors (depending on the genetically determined metabolic status of certain populations), i.e., of the ethnic dependence of tumors. In the American population, the higher incidence of the slow acetylation phenotype than in Swedes and in the Chinese was associated with the higher incidence of morbidity. In populations of the English, the Germans, the Swedes, and the Swiss, characterized by a low incidence of the slow acetylation phenotype, the tumor morbidity was higher than in the Chinese with a higher incidence of slow acetylators. Americans are more predisposed to tumors than the Swedes. Caucasoids with either the slow or the fast acetylation phenotype are more predisposed to tumors than the Chinese. The prevalence of the fast acetylation phenotype in the Chinese and Japanese populations was associated with the lower cancer morbidity: in the Chinese compared to Australians, Danes, Swedes; in the Japanese compared to Australians, Americans, the English, Danes, Canadians, the German, the Portuguese, Finns, Czechs, and Slovaks. The lower incidence of the slow acetylators in the Chinese than in Americans, English, Danes, Canadians, Germans, Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, and Swedes was associated with a lower rate of morbidity. In the Portuguese, the higher incidence of fast acetylators than in Danes and the lower incidence of slow acetylators than in Czechs, Slovaks, and Afro-Americans was associated with the lower rate of morbidity. In the Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese with the lower incidence of slow acetylators than in the Madras Negroids, the morbidity was higher. In Australians and Swedes, the greater fraction of slow acetylators was associated with a lower morbidity than in Afro-Americans. In the Russian population of St. Petersburg, the higher incidence of slow acetylators was associated with the lower morbidity compared to the Hong Kong Chinese. Among Poles, the slow acetylator incidence was higher and the morbidity was lower than in the Portuguese. The Japanese and the Chinese (fast acetylators) are less predisposed to cancer than the above-listed Caucasoids; among Caucasoids, the Portuguese (fast acetylators) were less predisposed to cancer than the Danes, Czechs, Slovaks, and Afro-Americans. The tumor predisposition of the Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese was higher than the predisposition of the Madras Negroids. Australians, Russians (St. Petersburg residents), and Poles were less predisposed to cancer than Afro-Americans, the Hong Kong Chinese, and the Portuguese. The morbidity of the Madras Negroids with the higher incidence of the slow acetylation phenotype was lower than the morbidity of the Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese. The incidence of the slow acetylation phenotype in Afro-Americans was lower than in the Australians and Swedes and higher than in the Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese; this was associated with the higher cancer morbidity, i.e., with the increased predisposition to tumors. The lower incidence of the T1-0 phenotype of glutathione-S-transferase in the English than in the Singapore and Shanghai Chinese and in the Japanese was associated with the higher morbidity of the English. In the Singapore Chinese, the higher incidence of the M1-0 and of T1-0 phenotypes of glutathione-S-transferase than in the Japanese was associated with the increased morbidity. In some populations, different morbidities were associated with similar incidences of one or another metabolic phenotype, or different phenotype incidences in different populations were associated with similar morbidities. The morbidity under consideration did not include chemical carcinogenesis, i.e., the conversion of procarcinogens to true carcinogens or the carcinogen inactivation. Because the results presented are preliminary, this article outlines the directions of theoretical studies that are required for definite conclusions concerning the ethnic dependence of tumors.