Title Page Framing, Walking, and Reimagining Landscapes in a Post-Soviet St. Petersburg: Cultural Heritage, Cinema, and Identity by Kiun Hwang Undergraduate degree, Yonsei University, 2005 Master degree, Yonsei University, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2019 Committee Page UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Kiun Hwang It was defended on November 8, 2019 and approved by David Birnbaum, Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of History of Art & Architecture Vladimir Padunov, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Advisor: Nancy Condee, Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures ii Copyright © by Kiun Hwang 2019 Abstract iii Framing, Walking, and Reimagining Landscapes in a Post-Soviet St. Petersburg: Cultural Heritage, Cinema, and Identity Kiun Hwang, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2019 St. Petersburg’s image and identity have long been determined by its geographical location and socio-cultural foreignness. But St. Petersburg’s three centuries have matured its material authenticity, recognizable tableaux and unique urban narratives, chiefly the Petersburg Text. The three of these, intertwined in their formation and development, created a distinctive place-identity. The aura arising from this distinctiveness functioned as a marketable code not only for St. Petersburg’s heritage industry, but also for a future-oriented engagement with post-Soviet hypercapitalism. Reflecting on both up-to-date scholarship and the actual cityscapes themselves, my dissertation will focus on the imaginative landscapes in the historic center of St. Petersburg in the post-Soviet society in terms of how they retrieve and reclaim the imperial heritage, its aesthetics, and mythologies, and in terms of the relationships toward images and identities of urban landscapes, proposed or desired by individuals, collectives, authorities, and developers. One purpose of this dissertation is to challenge Toporov’s mythopoetic space, based on dualism, and to reveal the urban heterogeneity and complexity in the new connections the city has made with the imperial past, when a new identity was required for the transitional period of the 1990s, the period of stabilization of the 2000s, and the rising political and international vulnerabilities of the early 2010s. The dissertation scrutinizes individual cases in the post-Soviet period, selected for their ability to showcase the aesthetic and narrative policies that spurred iv discursive responses from visitors and residents: the Hermitage Museum; the Dostoevskii Memorial Apartment and its walking tour; Sokurov’s and Balabanov’s cinematic spaces; the architecture projects of the second stage of the Mariinskii Theater and the Okhta Center; public art and memorials. Each case reveals internal dynamics in creating a new aesthetics and a sensorium of its community. In exploring their internal dynamics, the dissertation relies on Bennett and Duncan’s theoretical principle of museums, rooted on Foucault’s discipline of the gaze, and on de Certeau and Lefebvre’s re-claiming of the city space by human mobility. v Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 2.0 The Hermitage as Local, National, and Spiritual Ark ...................................................... 18 2.1 Hermitage and Its Relation To the City ..................................................................... 21 2.2 Hermitage: Birth of the Public Museum .................................................................... 24 2.3 Hermitage as Comrade of Martyrdom and Suffering .............................................. 32 2.4 Hermitage as the Ark of for Eternal Spirituality ...................................................... 37 2.5 Epilogue ......................................................................................................................... 48 3.0 Making Dostoevskii Memorable in Leningrad/St. Petersburg ......................................... 54 3.1 Revival of Local Memory ............................................................................................. 59 3.2 Local Memory into Sacred Memory ........................................................................... 65 3.3 Performance of Cultural Memory .............................................................................. 70 4.0 Aesthetic Degradation in the Transitional Period ............................................................. 82 4.1 Aesthetic Degradation in the Cinematic Cityscape ................................................... 84 4.2 City without Memory and Past ................................................................................... 90 4.2.1 Happy Days ......................................................................................................... 90 4.2.2 Brother ................................................................................................................ 99 4.3 City under the Amoral Gaze ..................................................................................... 104 4.4 City of Transition in Retrospect: the 1990s from the 2000s ................................... 109 4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 116 5.0 Making the Historic City Global: The Mariinskii Theater and the Okhta Center ...... 120 5.1 New Brand for the Cityscape ..................................................................................... 121 vi 5.2 The International Competitions & Global Architecture ........................................ 125 5.3 Revival of the Imperial Capital against the Imperial Museum-City ..................... 138 5.4 Ideal Cityscape: Contested Site and Spatial Hierarchy .......................................... 145 5.5 Afterword .................................................................................................................... 153 6.0 Inscribing History and Memory: Manuscripts Made of Stone, Metal, and Plywood ..................................................................................................................................................... 157 6.1 Anti-monuments and Haptic Walking ...................................................................... 161 6.2 On the Brink of Cemetery or Theme-park .............................................................. 172 6.3 Anti-monumental Commemoration and Mourning ................................................ 177 6.3.1 Whom to Memorialize on the Wall ............................................................... 181 6.3.2 Individualized Memorials: Last Address ...................................................... 188 6.4 Claim to Wall: Gandhi ............................................................................................... 193 6.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 201 7.0 Afterword............................................................................................................................. 203 Appendix A Chronology of St. Petersburg Landscapes ........................................................ 206 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 219 Filmography .............................................................................................................................. 255 vii List of Tables Table 1 Chronology of St. Petersburg Landscapes ..................................................................... 206 viii List of Figures Figure 1 Hanging Nikolai II’s Portrait in Hermitage-Niks ........................................................... 29 Figure 2 Raphael Loggia in Russian Ark ...................................................................................... 40 Figure 3 Aleksandra and the Nun, Walking Along the Gallery of the Romanov Family in Russian Ark .................................................................................................................................... 41 Figure 4 The Grand Staircase Scene in Russian Ark .................................................................... 43 Figure 5 Displays at Dostoevskii Memorial Apartment: Hat, Rocking Horse, Anna Grigorievna’s Table ............................................................................................................................................. 66 Figure 6 (From Up to Down, Left to Right) Vladimir Church, the Monument to Dostoevskii and the Metro Station Vladimirskaia, Kuznechnyi Market, and Dostoevskii Museum on Google Maps ....................................................................................................................................................... 70 Figure 7 Visitors’ Map for the Vladimir Square Route, Distributed at the 2017 Dostoevskii Festival ......................................................................................................................................................