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