A city of many contrasts

A City of Many Contrasts

Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia

By W. Bruce Lincoln

Basic Books.

419 pp. $35.00.

Reviewed by

Gene Sosin

Author, "Sparks of Liberty: An Insider's Memoir of Radio Liberty"

ON A rainy evening

in October 1986, I arrived in Leningrad for the first time in almost 30 years. Signs of liberalization by the new Communist Party General Secretary, Mikhail S. Gorbachevshortly to become known as perestroika and glasnost-were already visible. Once settled in my hotel, I took a taxi to the Neva. There on the river's shore, atop a huge granite monolith, stood the object of my nostalgia: the menacing bronze statue of Peter the Great astride a rearing steed. It symbolizes the city he founded in 1703 as a bastion against the Swedes and other enemies. He named it "Sankt Pieter Burkh" in Dutch, to invoke the industrious and seafaring people of the Netherlands he was determined to have his backward subjects emulate. Russians soon called it "Sankt Peterburg," affectionately "Piter," and so it remained until 1914, when it became Petrograd, then Leningrad in 1924, and again St. Petersburg in 1991.