St. Petersburg and Moscow in twentieth-century Russian literature

Abstract

At one pole, St. Petersburg, the rectilinear city built on desolate marshland by the sheer force of one man’s will, gazing from Russia’s northern border towards the West and modernity; at the other, Moscow, sprawling and chaotic capital of old Rus’, geographical and emotional heart of Russia. This is the central dichotomy around which Russia’s urban myth has grown, in which the country’s two largest cities are as inherently opposed as the masculine and feminine genders of their Russian (or not-so-Russian) names, Sankt-Petersburg and Moskva