Meeting Dostoyevsky – Saint Petersburg, Russia

Meeting Dostoyevsky’s Grandson On a Private Tram/Rooftop Tour of Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, Russia

Saint Petersburg, Russia is famous for its magnificent architecture, spectacular gardens, unique canals, and the Hermitage, one of the world’s best (and biggest!) collections of art. But during my three-week stay in June 2004, my most memorable experience in this incredible city was spent with Dostoyevsky’s great-great-grandson on a tram ride through the city in the pouring rain.

Tram Ride

I stayed at the terrific Saint Petersburg International Hostel (http://www.ryh.ru), a safe, clean and friendly place within walking distance of Nevsky Prospekt and the Metro. Peter’s Walking Tours (http://www.peterswalk.com), which regularly holds walking tours of the city for backpackers, posted a note on the hostel bulletin board about a special version of their Dostoyevsky tour, to include a private tram ride and rooftop celebration, on June 22^nd, the shortest of all the White Nights. The White Nights are a time when the sun sets for only a few hours and many music festivals and special events are held in the early morning twilight. I’d been in Petersburg for almost two weeks already, seen the amazing Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theatre, visited Ahkmatova’s apartment in the Fountain House, wandered around the Hermitage and the Russian Museum (even better!) and enjoyed a celebration of the city’s anniversary in the Summer Garden. A tram tour sounded like something intriguing and a bit different, so I signed up. Traveling solo and backpacking, this was the only official ‘tour’ of the city that I took during my visit.

Beyond the chance to meet Dostoyevsky’s kin, I held a more mundane interest in the chance to enjoy a private tram ride. Public transportation in Saint Petersburg is not a polite, monotonous shuffle of commuters, but a breakneck race to get a seat. Transportation choices include the unbelievably deep Metro (which you reach through a seemingly endless descent on escalators), private van-bus-taxis, and a network of trams (streetcars) which cover the city on almost every street going in almost every direction. The trams are very popular and almost always loaded with an extraordinary amount of people. During rush hours people push to get on, and then you must be careful because the doors close suddenly, without regard for a stray package or foot! Yet while I, a tourist, found the trams intimidating, the locals love their trams and are very proud of them. The trams carried soldiers to the front lines during the Great Patriotic War (WW2) and, when they were finally restarted after being shut down during the long siege, represented a kind of ‘lifeblood’ of the city. So the idea of having a tram just for our group sounded fun. Also, since the tour was at night, I hoped to enjoy seeing parts of the city without the usual press of people that flood the streets during the day.

Meeting Peter

At the appointed time for the tour, we met Peter Kozyrev at the hostel and set off on foot for the main station where the trams are kept. The sky was just beginning to cloud up, although it had been raining on and off all week. We walked through the city and chatted, learning about the city from our guide and sharing travel tips and hints with each other in typical backpacker fashion. Peter called ahead and we discovered that apparently we were late,the film crew was waiting on us.

It seems that a film crew wanted to tape a short special on the White Nights of Saint Petersburg for a German TV program and had arranged permission with the city (or some other such authority) to commission private use of a tram for this purpose. In addition, they had arranged for Alexei Dostoyevsky, the great-great-grandson of the famed St. Petersburg writer and a tram driver by profession, to drive the tram. The film crew consisted of a professional, harried-looking German-speaking reporter; an affable, Russian-speaking assistant; and a cantankerous cameraman who kept complaining that his feet hurt and that he was too old, at 58, to work nine nights straight in a row. The crew was nice enough, although they did seem more concerned about problems of lighting and sound than the actual stories which Alexei Dostoyevsky had to share.

By the time we reached the tram, it had begun to rain, and throughout the rest of the evening it poured so hard that my little travel umbrella literally collapsed. The windows of the tram fogged up from our breathing, and the reporter rubbed ineffectually on the windows and sighed repeatedly.

Alexei drove the tram and took us first to Trinity Cathedral. We tramped out into the rain and huddled under our umbrellas while Alexei explained that this was the place where his great-great-grandparents had been married. Alexei was quiet and unassuming. Balding and bearded, he looked much like his great-great-grandfather. Our guide Peter translated Alexei’s comments into English for us. Alexei was plainly proud of his family, admiring his Swedish great-great-grandmother Anna Grigoryevna very much for the work she had done in preserving and promoting her husband’s work. Anna, a stenographer by profession, was hired by Dostoyevsky to help him finish his novel The Gambler. It was with her help and influence that he went on to create The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.

At our next stop, we walked in the rain around the “crossing of seven bridges,” so named because from it you can see seven bridges where the Kryukov and Griboyedov canals converge with the Fontanka river. This is the location of Dostoyevsky’s novella White Nights. The area was under construction, so we walked over loose bricks, planks of wood and enormous mud puddles to visit Nikolsky (St. Nicholas) Cathedral. We walked around the grounds of Nikolsky, a place which during the day is filled with tourists, people walking their pets, and children playing. On this night we were one of the few people there to admire its blue and white walls and gold domes. We stopped in front of Griboyedov canal and Alexei explained to us about the symbolism of the canals in Crime and Punishment. The canals enclose this neighborhood, effectively cutting it off from the rest of the city, just as Raskolnikov was trapped by his choices and estranged from society as a result of his crimes.

Hanging out on Rooftops

Next we visited the sites which Dostoyevsky described in Crime and Punishment, including Haymarket Square and the Pawn Broker’s house. To reach the Pawn Broker’s house, we had to pass through a short, dark tunnel into the courtyard of the apartment buildings. Although the tunnel was filled with deep puddles and loose paving stones, we huddled in it for a moment to get out of the overwhelming rain. Our guide, Peter, read for us from the novel by the light of a torch. The cameraman complained because he had to stand in a deep puddle to film, but the rest of us had gotten into the spirit of the evening and traipsed through the water like school children, helping each other to keep our footing and trying to keep our voices low. It was by this time early in the morning and completely dark in the city.

After we visited the Pawn Broker’s house, Alexei drove us to Haymarket Square (intersection of Sennaya/Sadovya boulevards), now a modern city center with two major Metro stops, an outdoor market, and dozens of shops. During the day the square is a teeming mass of crowds and street vendors. But at this time of night, and because of the heavy rain, it was mostly deserted. The film crew kicked us off the tram to finish their filming so we said good night to Alexei and walked through the rain to a 24-hour bistro where we ate and dried off.

To wrap up our evening we picked up a box of red wine (like Boone’s Farm in a box!) and Peter led us to an apartment building where we rode a rickety elevator to the top floor, picked our way gingerly on wooden boards laid over some pellet-like insulation material, and climbed out an attic window onto the roof. We scooted up the metal roof to a level place by the chimneys where we could sit (actually quite comfortable, except for the damp part). By then it had finally stopped raining, and the sky began to lighten to a pale early morning mist of gray and pink clouds. We chatted, drank our wine, and waited for the sunrise. When it came, we descended to the street, said goodbye to our Russian companions, and walked back to the hostel through the quiet streets to tumble into our beds, too wired to sleep.