Many a sociologist have aspired to define the "True St Petersburger" and "True Muscovite"

All people are different, and the place where you live determines your idiosyncrasies to a great extent. A city is not just houses and streets, although houses and streets do matter. A city is the people who live in it. They share a common culture and a set of symbols and are, in turn, shaped by them. The circle completes itself.

That’s all in theory. In reality, there exist many cities that are exactly alike, populated by the same people with the same lifestyles: they do the same jobs, earn the same money, drink the same vodka and actually look the same. They are statistics. Then again there are cities that claim to possess their own cultural milieu and a special breed of residents. Those cities zealously keep up the image of their ‘ideal resident’ that may or may not be true to reality. Every now and then, the ‘ideal resident’ pops up in a novel or launches a loud election campaign.

Cities like that may be numerous, but we know at least two of them that have certainly made a cult out of their ‘culture,’ and have been pitted against each other ideologically for a very long time. St Petersburg and Moscow carefully test their citizens against their benchmark notion of an ‘ideal resident.’

The very special, metaphysically predetermined rivalry between St Petersburg and Moscow is an old story. It seemed that every stone brought to the banks of the Neva in Peter’s time dealt another blow to Moscow’s self-esteem. But Moscow never fell; it simply crawled into the shadows like a wounded animal, and lay in wait for a couple of centuries while St Petersburg thrived, conjuring up some strange, alien ambience within itself that neither Moscow nor Russia had seen before, and eventually drowned itself in that ambience. The nucleus shifted to Moscow once again. The empire is starting again from scratch on the ruins of a new, proletarian lifestyle.

For 70 years Leningrad found consolation in its high-brow opposition to Moscow’s new imperial grandeur, propagating what it believed was a special breed of people called residents of Leningrad. The opposition to proletarian Moscow crystallized in dissidence and that special quiet St Petersburg intelligence. Opinion polls indicate (Ideal St Petersburgers and Muscovites in the Opinion of the Two Capitals, Telescope #3, 2002) that these are still the defining characteristics of a ‘true St Petersburger,’ named by 27.8% of the interviewees.

A scene: two alcoholics are fighting for a seat on a bus. They are swearing, flailing their arms, and a fight seems imminent. Eventually one says, reproachfully: “How can you, ……. act like this? We are supposed to be St Petersburgers, aren’t we?” In other words, the ‘ideal’ still lurks somewhere in the dark recesses of the subconscious mind, and sometimes even rears its head. According to residents of St Petersburg, the ‘true St Petersburger’ is cultured, intelligent, courteous, well educated and friendly.

According to the polls in the capital, the ‘true Muscovite’ has the same features aplenty, and the selfsame ‘intelligence’ actually comes first. Muscovites, however, were not as homogenous in their answers: only 12% of interviewees named ‘intelligence.’ This is understandable: the quest for the ‘true St Petersburger’ has always been more important for us; the best favoured features of the St Petersburg poll, ‘intelligence’ and ‘culture,’ will never mean as much for Moscow as they do for St Petersburg’s identity. Not that Muscovites lack them or fail to appreciate them; they just don’t care as much as we do. On the other hand, Moscow has long since ceased to be the bulwark of proletarian ideology. So what exactly are we opposed to or confronted with? The much-touted challenge of St Petersburg’s ‘intelligence’ no longer has substance.

Since ‘intelligence’ is not the real bone of contention, what is? The same poll revealed that St Petersburgers are more appreciative of such behavioural traits as courtesy, friendliness, grooming, attentiveness, modesty, balance, tact and reserve. The ideal Muscovite is more businesslike, dynamic, hard-working, goal-oriented, busy. Those who visit both Moscow and St Petersburg often know the contrast between the drowsy City on the Neva and the insanely busy Moscow. The reverse was true in the 19th century, when Moscow was considered slow, pensive or drowsy, and St Petersburg was fast-paced and businesslike.

They say that ‘true St Petersburgers’ are not extinct. They are just too modest and tactful to make their presence known. Or the others are too busy to notice them. These days, St Petersburg seems to be haunted by uncertainty, stagnation, brooding and anguish. It has yet to decide whether it wants to be the No. 2 capital (although, technically, there cannot be more than one), or simply be itself, a major city in its own right.

It is sad to realize that the upcoming anniversary is the city’s inadvertent and, perhaps, its only chance to revitalize itself and think hard about its identity. One thing is clear now: it would be wrong for St Petersburg to continue its quest for identity by pitting itself against Moscow and its residents, against Muscovites. That’s a blind alley.