On the beach: notes from a Finnish Gulf resort
NATO’s Summit in Vilnius has come and gone. The Ukrainian counter-offensive is winding down for lack of ammunition and the need to reconfigure the troops following horrendous losses. The Russian offensive has not yet begun. And so we Russia experts find ourselves in the summer lull that you typically expect in July, when the vacation season is in full swing.
How long this pause in news-making events will last no one can say. In the normal course of events, the next big international gathering on the global schedule comes only in the period 22- 24 August, when the BRICS leaders assemble in Johannesburg. Reports from South Africa tell us that Vladimir Putin will attend in person together with his peers.
Under these conditions of lull, I propose to do what I indicated was in my plans before undertaking this trip to Russia: to share with readers my travel impressions of Russians on their summer holidays in the greater St Petersburg region.
I have been spending this first week of my trip close to the city, just 25 kilometers to the northeast along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. The settlement where I am staying is called Repino, in honor of Russia’s most celebrated artist of the late 19th, early 20th centuries, Ilya Repin, whose country house, or dacha, now a state museum, is just a couple of kilometers down the road from my hotel Repinskaya. I will have a word or two to say about him in a moment. But first I want to explain what this hotel means to me by offering some reflections on past visits. Then I will speak about its present day clientele and the whole related question of “family values” in Mr. Putin’s Russia.
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My stay in Repino is what I will call the ‘Rip Van Winkle’ experience. I was last here perhaps 25 years ago, when the very hotel where I am now renting was a shabby whore house of sorts: the clientele consisting of truck drivers took rooms by the hour for sexual services. But that was nothing unusual in the Yeltsin years, when the economy was wrecked, when decent people of middle age were out of a job and their sons, at best, worked as body guards or barroom bouncers, when all too many of their daughters were call girls. That was the time of unregulated real estate development, when there was good reason to fear that the whole coast would be divided up among the wealthy, who would build three meter high fences around their beachfront properties and the public would be herded into what remained of open sand.
On the other side of the coastal highway, a short walk up the hill in the direction of the suburban railway line, there was a hold-over institution from Soviet days, the summer House of Cinematographers, where film makers in the LenFilm studios and other high ranking staff and actors could reserve rooms for themselves and family on a full board basis and spend some weeks relaxing by the sea at negligible prices. As a journalist covering St Petersburg’s cultural life, my wife got rooms there for herself and our daughter. I dropped in on weekends. The place was shabby. The big stars dropped off their kids for whom their aged parents served as guardians, while they headed off to more classy vacation destinations.
The House of Cinematographers closed down more than a decade ago. And the Hotel Repinskaya entirely reinvented itself in line with the new values and new economy of the Putin years. The building was gutted and refitted to become the very modern, comfortable and medium priced family hotel that we are living in today. There are many young families here, by which I mean families with one or several infants, toddlers or primary school age kids. There are also some elderly couples who may be taking their young grandchildren in charge. And there are some pairs of elderly ladies who rent self-catering studios in the same hotel. The hotel offers afternoon entertainment for the kids supervised by gals in yellow sweat shirts with “Animation” printed on them. The term is taken unapologetically from the French lexicon of Club Med establishments.
Rooms in the Repinskaya hotel are now priced at the ruble equivalent of 120 euros per night for two including breakfast in what they call their “comfort class” rooms, meaning 30 meter rooms with balconies overlooking the sea. The same surface area is also on offer at nearly the same price divided into two bed rooms that sleep four in what we would call a family suite in American jargon. This configuration surely was well planned to appeal to the hotel’s target audience. The rooms for two have double jacuzzis built into the bathroom, a lavish feature for young couples.
And what is the social status of the clients? Do not pay attention to dress, because there are no starlets here and everyone is quite casual. The key is in the parking lot: not a single simple Lada. The cars appear to be mostly in the 30,000 – 50,000 euro price range. The Mercedes crossovers are now being muscled out by Chinese Heelys and Havals. The owners are, by definition, middle middle class. The truly wealthy Russians have their own dachas or apartments on the coast, or are now in Dubai and have no need for Repino.
Cross references to the European way of life abound. The breakfast coffee in our hotel is provided by automatic machines making espresso, Americano and Cappuccino directly from the coffee beans they grind and the fresh milk that they steam to order. And what is unusual about that, you may comment? What is unusual is that the coffee is of the same quality as we get in the Venice hotel we like best. Coffee like this is devilishly hard to find in Brussels.
A premium quality, premium price “Gastronom” across the road from our hotel offers Italian biscuits and other treats at sky-high prices for a clientele of dacha owners who will pay for the pleasures of Florence while staying at home.
Otherwise, the hotel breakfasts here are very typically Russian: great variety, ranging from the essential pancakes (bliny) with jam and hot oatmeal kasha (cereal), to cocktail hot dogs and Swedish meatballs, to a variety of potato and rice salads, cheese cakes and so on, as well as the fermented milk drink ‘kefir’ with or without fruit, down to the fresh watermelon coming from the deep Russian South. Breakfasts are by tradition the biggest meal of the day. When they are included in the room rate, as is the case here, you have already cut your out of pocket expenses for daily living substantially.
The hotel offers bicycle rental and there are many takers, since there are asphalted bicycle and pedestrian paths running parallel to the highway for dozens of kilometers.
Of course, most vacationers are here for the beach and a word about that is in order. The Repinskaya hotel faces the beach directly and you have just a 200 meter walk through fine sand to reach the water’s edge. On the negative side, this particular beach is very shallow, by which I mean that you have to wade out 100 meters to be in over your knees and 300 meters to be in water over your waste. On a windy day, and the days presently are windy, that is a long way out in the cold when you have finished your swim. The water temperature itself is a bracing 18 degrees Centigrade.
However, just 5 km further down the road away from Petersburg there is a beach at Zelenogorsk which is swimmable almost from the shoreline. We went there today and what I saw along the way there is a necessary complement to my remarks on the Rip Van Winkle nature of this whole experience.
What was clear is that our fears from the distant past that the shore would be privatized and closed to the general public were misplaced. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact that the entire coastal zone is part of the federal St Petersburg region. To my mind this suggests that the opportunities for corrupt real estate dealings against the public interest were reduced dramatically as compared to a situation where low level local authorities open to graft would be making zoning decisions.
Whatever the reason, the situation today is remarkable on a European-wide level. The entire sand shoreline extending for dozens of kilometers is open to the public for free, without any of the private concessions for chaise-longue renters that blight the shore in Belgium or in Italy, for example. Along the coastal road there are numerous parking areas so that tourists can access the beaches wherever they wish. Meanwhile, on the other side of the coastal road there are pine forests which, in the autumn, are the happy hunting grounds for seekers of boletes and other prized mushrooms.
Lest anyone believe that the Petersburg’s coastal strip on the Gulf of Finland is just for summers and autumn outings it bears mention that in full winter these resorts attract cross country skiers. That the beaches might offer good ski trails as the snow accumulates is self-evident. What is not obvious is that the Gulf itself can offer terrific skiing when it freezes solid. The water of the Gulf is only slightly saline, so that the big freeze is all the more likely even in less severe winters. Besides the skiers, there are many ice fishermen who venture out onto the Gulf to spend the day, comforted as they are by flasks of vodka or brandy.
On this coastal strip there are desirable hotels and there also are many very attractive restaurants which have distinctive menus. On a summer weekend like today, every table is taken and you may find that you have to wait in line to get seated since no reservations are accepted.
One example of the themed restaurants is an eatery several kilometers from us which has interconnected ponds in front of it from which the diners catch their own fish for the chef to prepare. Needless to say they are not fishing for catfish but for sturgeon and other prized catches.
Another restaurant just near our hotel operates under the name “Stroganoff” and is a palace for meat-eaters. The central part of the menu lists “strip loin, rib-eye”and other American beef cuts alongside the universally known filet mignon in portions of 300 to 350 grams. Most remarkably, the list of these cuts is in duplicate: one for corn fed beef at around 35 euros and another for grass fed beef at around 24 euros. To my knowledge, carnivores in Belgium are offered no such choice…
*****
Now that I have mentioned Zelenogorsk, I return to souvenirs of the past before adding some comments about the family-oriented present that is very evident in this town.
My first visit to Zelenogorsk was back in 1972 when I and other Fulbright scholars as well as faculty on the US-USSR academic exchange were invited for cocktails by the American Consul to his dacha in Zelenogorsk. We all knew that Zelenogorsk was just within the 30 km limit from Leningrad which was as far as foreigners could travel in the Soviet days. The Consul was a generous host and it was a memorable visit. That was when I learned a bit about the history of Zelenogorsk from its pre-Soviet Finnish name Terijoke.
My last visit to Zelenogorsk was in 2010 when we traveled through it on the way to or from the town of Primorsk, further up the coast and just shy of Vyborg, where my wife and I went to meet realtors and inspect plots of land available for construction or ready built homes for use as summer residences. That whole adventure is described in some detail in Dacha Tales: Life in the Russian Hinterland, Larisa Zalesova (2020).
Zelenogorsk was then still in a dilapidated state. The main promenade-park leading down from the coastal highway to the shoreline passed between broken down amusement park rides.
Today that blighted past is as if it had never been. The statue of Lenin still stands above the coastal road, but is now surrounded by a well-tended lawn. The park promenade is decorated by seasonal floral beds that add a touch of dignity. The rides for children are in perfect operating order and have their little customers on board. There is a very handsome Ferris wheel at the far end. Along the way are stands selling hot corn on the cob, ice cream and hot dogs. The 200 meter wide sand beach is immaculate. There are several unusual bentwood two-seater benches in the sand for use first come, first served. There are new coupled demi-circle wooden changing rooms. The swings and other playground structures are made from bare brown logs. These innovative and aesthetically pleasing natural wood solutions extend to the park benches lining the promenade.
I stress that the accent is on providing free of charge facilities suitable for families with young children. Vladimir Putin and his government speak of “family values.” The park in Zelenogorsk and what I have seen in our Repino hotel show that these values are not just empty words of politicians: they are implemented in ways that have impact on people’s consciousness and daily pleasure.
The democratic nature of these resorts is underlined by their being well served by public transit. The shore line comes within the Petersburg municipal authority and the buses now running every 15 minutes from a major Metro stop in the city to Zelenogorsk are the same latest issue buses that operate in my borough of Pushkin. They are all fitted with credit card readers for payment and have video displays showing and calling out the next bus stops. In addition, these resorts are served by commuter trains.
*****
At the outset, I mentioned that the most famous painter of the reign of Nicholas II, Ilya Repin built a country house here which he named Penaty with reference to Roman mythology and their gods protecting the family hearth. The house was destroyed during WWII but then was reconstructed and today is furnished with art works, furniture and memorabilia going back to the artist’s forty years of residence here from 1890 till his death in 1930.
During that time, Repin experienced what so many people in Central Europe went through at the conclusion of WWII and what Ukrainians may well go through when the present war ends: finding themselves in a new country with new borders though they had not moved one inch from their homes.
Following the October Revolution and the independence of the Principality of Finland from the Russian Empire, the whole swathe of the coast down to what is now Repino was no longer Russian. The artist found himself in Penaty high and dry and penniless in a foreign land, and when he died and was buried on the property, he was still in a foreign land. It became Russian again only in 1940.
A year ago, when we toured the National Museum of Art in Helsinki, they were running a major exhibition of Ilya Repin, whom they designated in large letters as a Finnish artist and in small letters as a Russian. Of course, Repin was no more a Finnish painter than Rakhmaninoff was an American composer, though many New Yorkers would say otherwise.
Repin never took Finnish citizenship, though he donated many of his art works to the State in Finland and received commissions from wealthy locals to do their portraits, which was his special and distinguishing talent.
Repin’s major art works that are world renowned include his tragic portrayal of Ivan the Terrible holding in his arms the body of his son whom he has just murdered. Then there is his monumental painting of the Volga boat haulers. Not to mention his large scale painting of the Zaporozhie Cossacks, which present you with an admirable psychological portrait of the cutthroats described by the Ukrainian-Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol in Taras Bulba. Given where we are in the war, that paining in particular is very timely. All of these paintings can be seen in the Russian Museum in downtown Petersburg.
Ilya Repin lived and worked at the same time that fellow Russian artists like Malevich were laying the foundations for a new, abstract art that would dominate the 20th century. But for his psychological insights into his subjects, who were among the most famous singers, literary figures and statesman of his age, Russian culture owes a great debt to Repin. This suburban museum gives the visitor a homely understanding of the man and what made him tick. I heartily recommend it to anyone venturing this way.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023