Soviet Union The Rebirth of St. Petersburg

By JAMES CARNEY/ST. PETERSBURG

On a warm fall evening, pedestrians jam the wide sidewalks of the city's main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt. They bustle by a young couple absorbed in a passionate kiss, and glance, if only briefly, at a marquee announcing a new American B movie. But at a wall plastered with advertisements and political manifestos, a few stop to listen as members of a small crowd argue the merits of removing Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, from his mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square and burying him in a local cemetery. WE MUST SAVE OUR BELOVED CITY FROM THE CORPSE OF LENIN, reads a sign posted on the wall, accompanied by a sketch of Lenin with horns sprouting from his head. THE CORPSE OF LENIN IS THE CORPSE OF SATAN.

The metropolis that is famed as the cradle of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is throwing off its communist legacy with a vengeance. Known for 67 years as Leningrad, Russia's second largest city last week officially became historic St. Petersburg again. The name change is largely symbolic. Statues of Lenin still loom over city parks and cast long shadows in front of train stations. The city council, mindful of budget constraints, has decided not to spend any money on new road signs or stationery. But the rechristening reflects a deeper transformation that optimists say has affected many of the city's 5 million residents. "On the surface, nothing has changed in the way we live," explains Sergei Fyodorov, a taxi driver. "But the people in this city have changed. The change is in our souls. We feel free at last."

Led by Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, a hero of the resistance to August's aborted hard-line coup, reformers in the city are trying to pull St. Petersburg out of Moscow's shadow and transform it into a gateway to the West. Some even suggest returning the political capital to St. Petersburg, though Sobchak says his task is "to revive St. Petersburg as the financial, cultural and scientific capital of Russia." For a precedent, Sobchak turns to the city's founder, Peter the Great, the Czar who set out to westernize the backward Russian Empire. "For 10 years Peter the Great tried to carry out reforms in Moscow, but nothing came of it," Sobchak says. "Then he moved to the banks of the Neva River, founded a capital here and achieved his reforms. And so now we have the chance to repeat Peter the Great's experiment."

Peter's efforts date back to 1703, when he began building his city from the miasmic swamps of the Neva River. He wanted to open "a window on Europe," a point of entry for the flow of Western ideas into his isolated empire. The reformist Czar hired Italian architects to design a modern European capital with intersecting avenues lined by stately homes and grand palaces.

But St. Petersburg's architectural charm and rich history will do little to diminish the formidable obstacles confronting Sobchak as he tries to reform the city's economy. His advisers are working on plans to create a "free economic zone" around the city by Jan. 1, in the hope that lower taxes and fewer customs barriers will encourage foreign banks and companies to invest. So far, Moscow is going along with the idea. But even Anatoly Chubais, Sobchak's chief economic adviser, admits that the free economic zone is "a risky policy" prone to failure if Russia's economy as a whole does not improve. "Even if we wanted to create capitalism in just one Russian city, it wouldn't be possible," says Chubais. "We have the same ruble and the same financial system."

St. Petersburg will also be a testing ground for the conversion of Soviet factories from military to civilian production, since 70% of the city's industries work on military orders. Though some critics accuse the mayor of cozying up to the military-industrial complex, Chubais argues that the abundance of enterprises producing high-tech equipment such as satellites and communications systems gives the city an edge in attracting foreign capital. But Western firms may be reluctant to make investments in a republic as unstable as Russia. If so, Sobchak's St. Petersburg could be rocked by massive unemployment as Moscow trims orders for military hardware.

A persuasive speaker who counts John F. Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle among his role models, Sobchak, 53, is one of the most influential politicians in Russia, behind only Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Yet conservative and liberal opponents alike accuse him of resorting to authoritarianism in running the affairs of St. Petersburg. "God never gave Anatoly Sobchak the talent to work with other people," wrote one critic. Sobchak, a former law professor, dismisses the accusations as the grumblings of "incompetents" on the unwieldy, 382-member city council. Thanks to his national status, Sobchak says, he is "much more successful in solving the problems of the city than any of my would-be successors."

If all goes well with Sobchak's economic reform plans, Chubais predicts a rise in the standard of living in the city by the end of 1992. The question is whether St. Petersburg residents will have the patience to wait that long. Leonid Keselman, a sociologist who specializes in public opinion surveys, believes they will. "The people of this city have suffered for a long time without hope," he says. "Now they have something real to hope for." If Keselman is right, it may be only a matter of time before Peter the Great's old capital reclaims its place among the great cities of Europe.