I hear St Petersburg’s police have purchased some water cannons from Israel, in preparation for the upcoming G8 summit in July. I only hope they use them on the buildings and streets of the city.

 I was in St Petersburg yesterday, and the place looked incredibly dirty and run-down. The main roads have big pot-holes; the beautiful old palace houses around Nevsky Prospekt are filthy, with peeling paint and facades blackened by car smoke; the streets are jammed with cars, and even the cars are dusty and unwashed. If this is the face of Russia which the thousands of G8 visitors will see, then it is a particularly grubby face.

 I’m not alone in finding the ‘Venice of the North’ rather shabby. The head of the Russian Federal Consumer Rights and Welfare Service, Gennady Onischenko, said on April 12th that he was similarly horrified by conditions there. “Is St Petersburg ready to receive guests?”, he asked. “Having travelled from Pulkovo to Strelna and from Strelna to downtown, I may say that the city has been reduced to awful sanitary conditions. The city should be cleaned and washed. This is required, in particular, to prevent bird flu…Petersburg is a city at risk as far as bird flu is concerned.” That would be great – the world’s leaders come to St Petersburg and get avian flu…

 One begins to wonder if the decision to hold the G8 summit in St Petersburg, rather than Moscow, will backfire. Yes, the city’s 300^th celebrations three years ago were a success. Yes, St Petersburg has tremendous cultural assets and has long been Russia’s connection to the West. And yes, the summit will bring a lot of attention, visitors and perhaps money to president Putin’s home-town. But the city is a mess.

 For one thing, it’s less safe than Moscow. You’re more likely to get mugged there – one thinks of the British ambassador and his wife, who were mugged there last year in the middle of the day. The spokesman of the city’s Ministry of Interior admitted that the crime situation in the city had worsened since the 300^th celebrations in 2003. But he says the city has the security situation well in hand – all illegal immigrants will be rounded up into special detention centres before the summit. ‘Round up the usual suspects’, as the police chief in Casablanca put it.

 But are immigrants the main security threat? More worrying are the fascists who seem to flourish in St Petersburg’s environment of economic depression. Last week, a Senegalese student was shot dead outside a club. Usually the police insist these incidents aren’t race attacks, but when the gun used has a Swastika inscribed on the handle, you don’t need to be a genius to guess there’s a race angle to the attack. And for the G8 summit, think of all the blacks, Asians, and foreigners in general descending into St Petersburg. Let’s hope they turn those water cannons on the fascists.

 St Petersburgers themselves complain bitterly about the state of their city. My cab driver got so worked up about it I wished I’d never brought it up. “Look at these streets”, he said, pointing to the pot-holes. “Do you see that in any civilized city? Even in Iran, the street surfaces are smooth. And look at all the traffic – in Moscow, they have four ring-roads. Four! We don’t even have one.”

 He blamed the governor, Valentina Matviyenko, for the mess the city is in. “Lyzhkov is obviously a good mayor, always building. Moscow’s in good condition. But Matviyenko is no good at all. Since she came into power [in 2003] the city has gone downhill. It’s not a question of money. Enough money has been put into the city for its infrastructure. But they steal it all.”

 Even the city’s greatest asset – its cultural assets – is being run into the ground. I took my grandparents to St Petersburg last year, and was shocked by how shabby the tourist experience was. To take two examples, we went to the Mariinsky, where an old crone of an attendant barked at my 80-year-old grandmother to take her coat off. My grandmother was cold and wanted to keep it on. ‘Nilzya!’ the crone barked. In the Yusupov palace, we were told we had to rent an audio guide, and we were almost thrown out of the palace when we said we didn’t want one. And then we were told that we couldn’t see the room where Rasputin was killed because it was only open to special tours, booked in advance. My general impression of the tourism industry of the city, the excellent Hermitage Gallery excluded, is of an arrogant, high-handed and complacent industry that doesn’t realize how bad it is.

 How could St Pete be cleaned up? The Kremlin is discussing some proposals to improve the traffic situation, such as building a link from the port to the motorway, because at the moment all port traffic goes straight through the city. The culture ministry is also talking about selling off some of the city’s palaces, which are really in a shocking state considering how beautiful the architecture is underneath all the grime. Surely the Kremlin could use some of its petro-dollars to give the buildings on Nevsky Prospekt a paint job?

 I would also suggest that, if the city is going to the dogs under Matviyenko, the Kremlin either finds someone better, or lets St Petersburgers themselves elect someone better. I fear the G8 summit is going to expose only too well what a poor job she is doing at the moment. Let’s hope whoever the Kremlin picks to replace Lyzhkov isn’t quite as bad.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

April 14, 2006

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