In the early 1960s, Oxford student Mary McAuley had the rare opportunity to study in Leningrad. Memories of the terrible Nazi siege marked her Russian friends who were children during the war. By the ’60s, the terror of Stalinism had receded into a new normal of surveillance and circumspection.
McAuley returned often to the beautiful city of canals, cathedrals, colleges and palaces throughout her career as an academic and policymaker. She came back after Leningrad returned to its original name, St. Petersburg. In Remembering Leningrad, she finds that the post-Soviet transition brought winners and losers (people on fixed incomes fell into the latter camp as prices soared). Homelessness and street crime increased even as cars and consumer goods became more common. Old habits persisted. Russians “had little concept of a structured day,” she writes. People ate and slept as opportunity allowed and idleness was the rule at many workplaces.
Remembering Leningrad relies on everyday experience rather than sociological or economic theory. Working in Russia in recent years as a grant writer for the Ford Foundation, McAuley saw rising living standards, business growth, facelifts to decaying buildings and the stifling of political opposition.
