Some general commentary about October 10

As ever, I highlight efforts made by opponents of the Gazprom skyscraper project because their voices tend to be dismissed as backward and ignorant within Russia, and are barely if ever heard outside of Russia. Whether or not a person supports the construction of a 400-meter building within sight of the St. Petersburg city center, a fair evaluation of the entire situation demands recognition of the valid comments raised by those who do not support that construction.

However, there are certainly voices raised in support of the skyscraper. On comment forums for all the news outlets quoted in the post just below, at least 1-2 comments expressed support for the project. On September 29, Nevastroyka ran an article quoting several of “the most talented Petersburgers” who support “Okhta Center”: radio and TV host Sergei Stillavin, businessman Oleg Tinkov, media figure Dmitrii Puchkov, Vice-President of the Russian Union of Architects Aleksei Vorontsov, science fiction writer Boris Strugatskii, and web designer Artemii Lebedev (whose blog, asserts the article, is read by over 100,000 people every day). In general, these supporters see the Gazprom project as bringing money, dynamism and excitement to a city with a decaying infrastructure and little economic power.

The comments of such supporters usually assume that opponents of the skyscraper dislike the height or architectural style above all; for this reason, they often claim that the opponents want to live in the past and deny Petersburg a vital, prosperous future. This aspect of the divide between the skyscraper’s supporters and opponents is interesting – probably more complex than just “new growth vs. nostalgia” or “future vs. past,” but in some ways suggesting a difference in temperament. As the magazine Ekspert pointed out about the demonstration in March 2007, and as the Delovoi Peterburg reported pointed out this past Saturday, opposition to the Gazprom tower is not limited to unsuccessful people trying to live in a lost Soviet past. However, Gazprom supporters tend to label them that way.

Previous posts here have emphasized a point that sometimes gets lost in this depiction: opposition to the skyscraper is not based solely on the building’s height or on its architectural design. The chief (although not very sexy) problem lies in the project’s detrimental effect on the new system of building codes and procedures – a system that represents the hard work of Petersburg’s planning community as well as the public participation of residents from all over the city.

10 October Demonstration against Gazprom Tower

On Saturday 10 October, the announced meeting took place outside the Iubileynyi (Jubilee) Stadium. (See post below.)

During the day, Fontanka reported that estimates of the size of the meeting varied. The police estimated that about 2500 people were there; a participant estimated 3500. Other observers reported that about 3000 were present, but not all simultaneously; these observers estimated that about 30% of those attending were clearly against the Gazprom skyscraper, while others had other complaints related to urban development – encroachment on green space, eviction from private car garages, or unregulated infill construction.

Zaks.ru reported that a petition with signatures compiled during the entire course of the meeting gathered just over 4600 signatures total.

The number of signatures prompted a commenter on the Delovoi Peterburg site to claim that the total attendance at the meeting was nearer to 5000 people.

Fontanka reported that isolated groups of protesters on a range of issues could be seen throughout the crowd, including workers from the local Ford plant and people dissatisfied with the presale conditions for residential purchase.

As the Fontanka reporter pointed out, this meeting is the first in the past two years to gather more than 2000 people. She also commented, “The atmosphere on the square recalled the best times of informal parties in the late Leningrad period.” Her coverage focused partly on the participation in the meeting of people who had been in the Leningrad artistic underground and frequented the café “Saigon.”

The headline for a similar article in Delovoi Peterburg on 10 October read “In Petersburg, a reincarnation of civil society in honor of Gazprom.” This reported claimed that “the Saturday meeting in defense of Petersburg resembled the November demonstrations from the 1980s: songs and dances, handing around fruit and vegetables, smiling people, a packed house."

Reporter Belogrudova wrote, “Instead of just the 2-300 ‘dissenters’ who came to the last march, here there were 1500-2000 acording to police, 2500-3000 according to the participants. The ‘marginal’ figures who usually dominate such events were replaced by professors and students, doctors and managers – the kind of faces that you are more used to seeing in the Financial-Economic Institute or St. Petersburg State University, in an expensive clinic or a class A business center than on a square with flags and revolutionary slogans.”

She also reported that the meeting’s organizers considered that they were ahead in the fight to turn aside the skyscraper’s construction. First, during the two years of struggle, opponents have succeeded in changing the terms of the building’s financing: Gazprom now has to pay for the construction itself, instead of getting the city of Petersburg to build it. Second, it has been agreed to do a historical-cultural impact statement, and third, opponents have gotten UNESCO on their side.

What do Petersburgers really think? A quarrel

A week ago the main quarrel related to the Gazprom skyscraper had arisen from dueling polls of resident opinion. The Agency for Social Information obtained results showing that the plurality of Petersburgers favored the construction of the building (46%), while a minority (33%) were definitely against it. A separate poll by ToiOpinion found that, in answer to the question “Do you support the construction of a 400-meter building across from Smolny Cathedral?” 40% of respondents were definitely against and 26% were sooner against – yielding a result of roughly 66% per cent of residents against this specific construction on this specific site. ASI claims to have called 2000 subjects, while ToiOpinion called 1000 respondents.

Aleksandr Margolis, head of BOOPIiK, called the ASI poll “disinformation.” Roman Mogilevskii, head of the ASI, has threatened to sue those who have suggested that his poll was inaccurate. As Fontanka reported on September 30, Mogilevskii criticized ToiOpinion for using the word “skyscraper” in its survey questions, as well as the specific height of the proposed design; he claimed that “skyscraper is a word that has a negative connotation in our culture.” Unlike ToiOpinion, Mogilevskii has refused so far to release the questionnaire used by his team, so it is still difficult to assess his results.

Other respected polling agencies in Russia, such as BTsIOM and the Levada Center, did not conduct polls.

A loss for historical archaeology

The following site describes and shows the remains of the Nienshans Fortress, located below the site of the proposed Gazprom skyscraper. Originally, the firm's representatives promised a museum dedicated to the fortress and other evidence of pre-Russian settlements.

http://vveshka.livejournal.com/25762.html

The photos and text point out that the remains recently discovered by archaeologists date back over 5000 years to the Neolithic era.

Watch for news from Petersburg on October 10

The text given below is a public appeal from several well-known current or former residents of St. Petersburg who are famous for their cultural or scientific achievements. According to this appeal, the signatories will lead a public demonstration on Saturday 10 October to signal a protest against approval of the Okhta-Center skyscraper project.

Generally, wherever in the world a skyscraper is planned against the wishes of local residents, there is a feeling that nothing can turn back the tide of "progress", economic clout, modernization, and high-profile architecture. The steady and determined protest of all kinds of Petersburgers seeks to overturn this assumption. This in itself is fascinating and worthy of attention, whether you support or reject the skyscraper project.

Posted on the ECOM website:

October 7, 2009
An appeal to city residents to attend a meeting on October 10, signed by well-known Petersburgers

“Skyscrapers will kill Petersburg.”
Dmitrii Likhachev

On October 10 at noon by the “Jubilee” Sports Arena there will be a public meeting and demonstration in support of preserving Petersburg and against the construction of a 400-meter skyscraper “Okhta-Center.” On October 6 the meeting received official sanction.

A skyscraper will destroy the historical appearance of the city. It will bury under itself extremely valuable and as yet unstudied archaeological sites – evidence that the history of our city is even richer than is usually thought. It will set up a precedent for lawless construction, destroying—with official approval—the norms and rules that the officials themselves established. And then the barbarous destruction of Petersburg will acquire the force of an avalanche.

“Okhta-Center” is not an expression of progress, not a step into the future, as many have attempted to show. The skyscraper of “Gazprom,” imagined and designed in imitation of the modern construction in the Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is a confirmation of the new image of Russia as a country of raw materials, a country whose relative stability is founded on the firesale of natural resources. This is not a symbol of the rebirth of Russia, but a symbol of its defeat, at attempt to glorify and immortalize that which the majority of Russian consider to be temporary and shameful for the country which was the first to step into the cosmos. It is a negation expressed through architecture of the entire history of Petersburg, of all that for which generations of Leningraders and Petersburgers lived, worked, struggled, and died.

Petersburg officials and the management of “Gazprom” have by their actions shown that they have no intention of consulting with anyone. They have ignored the opinions of specialists and thousands of signatures from city residents. They have neglected to examine the warnings of UNESCO about the exclusion of Petersburg from the list of World Heritage Sites. There was no reaction to a letter from survivors of the Siege of Leningrad. There was no response to appeals from the most famous representatives of Petersburg science and culture, who have sent several open letters to the President of the Russian Federation.

We see no further point in appealing to the government – neither the city administration, nor the federal level. We appeal to you, Petersburgers. You are the highest level of authority in this debate. All that could be done by experts in the field of historical preservation, by activists in public organizations, by journalists and by members of the scientific and cultural sphere has already been done, and it has not been enough. The decision about construction has been taken. Now there is only one way to refute it: mass public protest. No one but you can now stop “Gazprom,” which seeks to destroy our great and beautiful city. Don’t stay home. Be with us on October 10.

Writers Andrei Bitov, Nina Katerli, Tatiana Moskvina, Andrei Chernov, Mikhail Yasnov
Poet and musician Boris Grebenshchikov,
Ballerina Alla Osipenko,
Filmmaker Yurii Mamin,
Vice-president of the Union of St. Petersburg Architects, member of the International Academy of Architecture Sviatoslav Gaikovich,
Mathematical physicist Georgii Fursei,
Professors Boris Averin, Alexander Bobrov,
Historical archaeologists Lev Klein, Diakon Alexander Musin, Sergei Beletskii
Geologists Georgii Biske, Eleonora Bugrova,
Member of the executive committee of the Council of Orthodox Intelligentsia, Valentin Semenov,
Journalists Daniil Kotsiubinskii, Tatiana Likhanova, Svetlana Gavrilina, Viktor Nikolaev, Danila Lanin, Boris Vishnevskii
Lawyers Natalia Evdokimova, Yulii Rybakov

The Gazprom Controversy continues...

On September 17, I happened to look at the latest headlines on a site I sometimes visit for news of St. Petersburg, zaks.ru (the title comes from the nickname in Russian for St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly). The headline read: "Elastic Petersburg: How the city's Commission on Land Use and Construction approved Okhta-Center." I include the link to that piece below, for those who can read Russian.

http://www.zaks.ru/new/archive/view/60718

On that day, the KZZ (the Russian acronym for the Commission) met without the quorum of 15 members-- they had only 14. Eleven of those voted in favor of the "variance" requested by the Gazprom corporation-- 400 meters instead of the maximum 100 permitted for tall buildings on the proposed site.

The only member willing to talk at length with reporters was Communist Party delegate Sergei Malkov. (Those who automatically think communist=evil might have a look at the actual, populist actions of some members of that party in contemporary Russia.) Judging from the comments, the city's Committee on the Preservation of Heritage and Monuments had been pressured to stay quiet and did not send any formal recommendation to the Commission's meeting; however, the Committee's representative spoke against approval of the variance.

The ECOM group continues to provide as much information as it can about the specific details of the project. The next link below is a site showing the digitally created photo-mockups of how visible the skyscraper would be from various points around the city. An English translation of the accompanying text will be posted soon.

http://ecoist.livejournal.com/112298.html

The firm that designed the winning project is headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Thomas Campbell, a co-author of the "Article by Petersburg Activists" linked at right (an American who has lived in St. Petersburg for 15 years), sent this piece from The Guardian, written in March 2008. The author, Steven Rose, refers to the major street demonstrations that month and to their connection to outrage over the skyscraper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/03/architecture.russia