Teaching Geography Workshop 6: Russia – Part 1: St. Petersburg
JIM BINKO:
Though Russia is a huge country, it has just two major cities. Moscow is
the political and economic center; but in this program we look at Russia's
second city, St. Petersburg. It is a city of five million, located far from the
Russian core.
As you watch the St. Petersburg case study, consider the physical and
human characteristics of places and notice the specific characteristics
that define St. Petersburg. Why is Russia's second-greatest city located
so far to the north? Looking at the patterns and networks of economic
interdependence on earth's surface and considering the processes,
patterns and functions of human settlement will give us clues to St.
Petersburg's unusual location.
Keeping these standards in mind, look for and identify how patterns of
economic interdependence influence the development of urban
centers. Later, we visit a class in St. Louis, Missouri, where students
explore urban location and function as they construct their own mental
maps of Russia. Standard two discusses how we use mental maps as
ways to organize information about people, places and
environments in a spatial context. Post-communist Russia is trying to
re-establish St. Petersburg as their "window on the West." But as you will
see, the transition to a market economy has not been a smooth ride for
this Russian city and its people.
NARRATOR:
1917: St. Petersburg is where the Russian revolution began. Inflamed by
leaders like Vladimir Lenin, the Russian working class revolted against
the czarist system. This marked the beginning of 70 years of Soviet
communist government. Under the czars, St. Petersburg was Russia's
capital. It was an industrial city and a trading port with strong links to
western Europe. For a city with such a significant role in both Russia and
the world, St. Petersburg's location was--and still is-- exceptional. It lies
almost as far north as Anchorage in Alaska. Yet it is actually the fourthlargest city in Europe after Moscow, London and Paris.
The reason St. Petersburg is here is because of one man, Czar Peter the
Great. 300 years ago, he chose this location on the Neva River delta to
build an entire new city. Palaces and churches, boulevards, a shipyard
rose out of the swamp.
SUSAN HARDWICK: St. Petersburg is a remarkable and amazing city. When Peter the Great
selected this isolated site, it didn't seem to have a chance of surviving.
But he wanted to find a place that would both be close to Europe and
provide an outside port for Russia so that Europeanization of his country
could begin in earnest. It was the only way he could see to really
modernize Russia, and he succeeded. St. Petersburg became the
cultural center and the capital right up to the time of the revolution.
NARRATOR:
After the 1917 revolution, St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad, after
the new leader, Lenin. He moved the capital to Moscow and decided the
cultural heart of Russia would instead become an industrial center. Then
in 1989, the Soviet era ended. St. Petersburg regained its original name.
Since then, Russia has gone through a wrenching transition from the old
communist system to the new free-market economy. The changes in this
city of five million people have affected everyone.
HARDWICK:
The first time I was in St. Petersburg was in the late '80s, a few years
before the breakup of the Soviet Union, and I was amazed when I landed
at the airport because as soon as I got in the terminal, I felt that I was in
this completely foreign place. I was really an outsider. Going back just a
few years later, everything seemed to have changed. There were signs
welcoming us in English, and it really seemed like St. Petersburg, once
again, was reaching out to the outside world. I think the most visible
evidence of that really is in the commercial landscape of the city. I noticed
in the late '80s there just weren't goods anywhere. If you did come across
anything that you needed to buy, it was probably either in a touristy state
store or it was available at a small corner kiosk where goods would be
piled up and people would be waiting in line to buy things. Just a few
years later, those kiosks had multiplied all over the city and they were
supplied with all kinds of goods. And in the last five to ten years, those
kiosks have transitioned, some of them, into permanent buildings just
packed with all kinds of products for people to buy.
NARRATOR:
After decades of living in a communist economy, one of the biggest
changes for all Russians is housing. In the Soviet era, the state owned
everything, so all housing was controlled by the government. In the early
1990s, the Gorunovs lived in what had been a standard Soviet apartment.
It was built in the late 1970s and housed a family of four. Mr. Gorunov
worked as a chemistry teacher, his wife, Sofia, director of a school. They
had two daughters. Their apartment was small, so the Gorunovs had to
use every inch of space.
(\speaking Russian\)
TRANSLATOR:
We have a three-room apartment, one room for the children, a living
room, and a study for my husband. I don't know exactly how many square
meters we have.
(\speaking Russian\)
TRANSLATOR:
About 39 square meters-- that is the living space without counting the
toilet, bathroom and kitchen.
NARRATOR:
Under the Soviet system, the government regulated how much space
was allowed per person, so the Gorunovs' apartment was typical for a
family of four. There were different types of housing and apartments were
small, but everyone's rent was low. Then in 1989, when the concept of
private property was introduced, people could buy their own apartments,
usually for only the cost of filing an application.
WOMAN:
Depending on the location of the housing in the city, how attractive the
area was, people would privatize sooner or later. If you are living in a nice
apartment somewhere in the central part of the city, it makes sense to
make it your property. In 1991, '92, about 16% to 20% of the housing was
already privatized, and now the statistics are that over... well over 50%
are in private hands now.
NARRATOR:
They still had to pay a monthly maintenance fee, but now it was theirs.
They could even sell their apartment on the open market. Those who
haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to acquire their own
apartment are likely to have a good reason.
SHARKOVA:
Those who did not privatize, it's probably because they had bad
apartments. They had bad apartments probably because they were not
positioned well with regard to the access of goods during the Soviet
times. So they are in the lower socioeconomic... of a lower
socioeconomic status than, for example, those who already have
privatized.
NARRATOR:
At the end of the Soviet era, a typical St. Petersburg family paid five to
ten percent of their total income for housing. Today the average is 40% to
50%. Incomes have risen, too, but not as rapidly, so the net effect is that
housing for most people is more expensive than before privatization. The
new apartments that are being constructed by private developers cost at
least $1,000 a square meter, so a new apartment the size of the
Gorunovs' might cost $40,000. The only people who can afford this kind
of price are the so-called New Russians.
(\speaking Russian\)
TRANSLATOR:
The overwhelming majority of new homeowners are the so-called New
Russians, people who are in the trade sector that's developing
dynamically.
HARDWICK:
They would tend to be the entrepreneurs, people that are in the travel
and tourism industry. Some of them used to work for Intourist, perhaps.
They probably speak English, German, other European languages. And
so they, along with, of course, the criminal element that's unfortunately all
too common throughout the world are probably going to be the few
people that can afford to buy property.
NARRATOR:
As long as the Gorunovs still have their jobs,~ they can afford to maintain
their apartment. But life has changed for their daughters' generation.
Their future is no longer guaranteed by the state. Many of St.
Petersburg's industries were old and inefficient and haven't survived the
transition to a free-market economy.
HARDWICK:
The pace of change in Russia has just been so much slower than
anybody could have imagined ten years ago, I think. The social problems,
political problems and other issues have just been actually really
surprising to people, and I think a lot of the people I've talked to have just
lost faith in democracy. They see that their problems are perhaps too
large to solve in the ways that they initially thought they could be solved,
and so they look back to times of more authoritarian rule almost thinking
that that might be a better place for their nation to be now. So I think it's
going to be a long road ahead for the kinds of changes to happen that
everybody expected to happen a long time ago.
NARRATOR:
One of the new continuing hopes for St. Petersburg is to redevelop its
harbor. The infrastructure is old and it operates far below its capacity.
The city has been looking for foreign investors to modernize the port
facilities. The harbor is strategically located. With the independence of
the Baltic states, St. Petersburg along with Kaliningrad are Russia's only
remaining ports on the Baltic Sea. This is all the more important because
the Black Sea ports were lost to Russia when Ukraine became
independent. Architectural consultant Vladislav Miagkov is optimistic
about the city's potential in the future.
(\speaking Russian\)
TRANSLATOR:
After perestroika, the city faced a great number of economic and political
problems related to the transition to the market economy. But the city
holds enormous potential in its well-educated populace, its intelligentsia
and its laborers. Moreover, St. Petersburg is an important railway and
transportation junction that still connects Russia with the West. That's
why our city has a chance to overcome its current difficulties. At the same
time, St. Petersburg as an important tourist and cultural center remains a
worthy representative of Russia to the world community.
HARDWICK:
St. Petersburg is still the most beautiful city in Russia, and geographically
its location means it will never lose that importance. But after more than
ten difficult years of transition, I think that the future of Russia's
experiment with democracy and free-market economy still remains
uncertain.
GIL LATZ:
In the regions of Russia, geographers are intrigued with questions of
urban location. Russia's central city, Moscow, grew gradually as the
region's center of cultural, political and economic life. But in Russian
history, we also see other kinds of urban formation: cities created not just
by functional evolution, but by state decree. In 1703, Czar Peter the
Great established St. Petersburg in the marshland at the mouth of the
Neva River to access shipping routes to England and Western Europe.
In a matter of decades, Peter constructed this hub of international
transport and communication, Russia's window on the West. After the
revolution, Communist central planners also created cities by decree, like
this one in Bratsk. Purposely located in the barren wastes of Siberia, the
transportation challenge here was internal... and based on the railroad.
The lines brought nearby natural resources such as aluminum ore to
huge smelters powered by inexpensive energy from hydroelectric dams
like this. The fabrications were grand Soviet experiments called territorial
production complexes. These were linked in turn to manufacturing
facilities and markets in Russia's west. Now, as Russia experiments with
free markets and democracy, the whole world watches to see if she can
further integrate her far-flung regions, particularly those with
concentrations of coal and petroleum essential for development.
Technology, capital, far-sighted planning-- all of these will be required. As
centers of manufacturing, culture and transportation, it is Russia's cities
that have the most to gain or to lose.
HARDWICK:
I'm especially interested in St. Petersburg, because it's a place I've visited
and studied for many years. Human geographers are interested in why
cities are located where they are, and in St. Petersburg, the key to its
location is water and the transportation links the water provides. When
we look around the rest of the world, we see the same pattern
everywhere. Cities are located where they have good access to navigable
waterways. I grew up near Pittsburgh, and it's called "River City." Then I
moved to Sacramento, and it's called "River City," too.
I don't know how many of the world's cities actually are nicknamed "River
City," but in the U.S. alone, dozens or even hundreds could be. As we
look at cities around the world, we can easily see why the link with water
is so important. In Shanghai, China's biggest city, the Chang Jiang River
is a transportation and trade link to more than 300 million people who live
in the interior of the country. The city's coastal location also links it with
the outside world. Once called the Yangtze, Shanghai's river and its
tributaries include more than 22,000 miles of navigable waterways. River
and ocean connections have made Shanghai a trading port for over a
thousand years. In Liverpool, a deepwater port gave the city its historical
advantage, making it one of the British Empire's most important ports,
and this waterway continues to sustain and support Liverpool's renewed
vigor today.
Even in a postindustrial economy, with our advancements in
communication and global high-speed connectivity, it's easy to forget
about one of the most basic principles of good geography: Location
matters. And when we look at the central question "Why are cities around
the world located where they are?" more often than not, access to water
transportation is an important part of the answer.
BINKO:
We next visit the seventh-grade classroom of Judy Ware. It is the first
day of a two-day lesson integrating geography and world history. We see
here a good example of constructivist teaching.
Constructivism is a contemporary and popular philosophy. Over the past
decades, I have seen teaching movements rise and fall like tides, but
constructivism embodies many time-tested principles and techniques that
work effectively in the classroom. The core idea of constructivism is that
students learn best when they are actively involved in problem solving;
that is, constructing their own knowledge by continually testing their own
ideas against new data.
I hope this has a familiar ring to it. The inquiry approach that we have
been illustrating throughout this series is built on the same foundation:
problem solving and student-centered learning with real-world
applications.
In this class, Judy develops two major concepts: first, why people settle
where they do; and second, mental maps. We'll see Judy guide her
students as they add layer upon layer of information to develop a
comprehensive mental map of an unfamiliar place. As you watch, look for
ways to adapt inquiry learning and constructivist approaches to
teach your students about the patterns and functions of urban
settlements.
WARE:
What we're going to do is we're going to look at a map of Russia. And
what I want you to do is consider where cities would be, and then we're
going to talk about where cities are located, and where the important
cities in that particular country's history were located. The thing that I
hope at the end of all this is that you will have a good mental map of what
this region looks like.
NARRATOR:
Today's class will explore some of the reasons why cities end up where
they do, answering the inquiry question: With a simple map on the
overhead, Judy begins by asking her students to mark where they would
build a city based on just a little information.
WARE:
First thing I want you to do is look at this. This transparency has rivers on
it and the arrows show you which way the rivers flow. And so you have
major bodies of water here and here and this river flows into this one.
Pick a color and locate where you want to put a city.
WARE:
Tell us why you're putting it there.
GIRLS:
Um, okay. I would choose, like, right here. I would choose there because
it looks like... because it's got... it's kind of surrounded by the water. It
looks like it would be pretty safe from attacks and there would be, like,
the water, so there would be, like, natural resources and stuff.
WARE:
So it's defensive and it's economic.
WARE:
Okay, Leah, why right there?
LEAH:
Um, I put it up there because it's near, like, a major body of water that,
um... that kind of exports out towards the... like, Europe.
WARE:
Okay. I chose that... I chose that area because I know that the further
east you get, you get into Siberia and Siberia is plentiful in natural
resources.
NARRATOR:
Judy's students have been working on mental maps all year. Mental
maps are part of geography standard two. They allow students to
organize information about people, places and environments in a spatial
context.
WARE:
When you want to build a really good mental map in your student, you
start off with the outline of the region that you're talking about, and then
you look at the rivers, and then you add the mountains. And you ask the
kids to think about that: "Where would I live if I were a person living in this
country? Where are the natural resources?"
WARE:
Let's put a little more information on here. What have we added?
YOUNG MAN:
Mountains.
WARE:
Okay, so does anybody want to change the location of their city now that
you see where the mountains are?
YOUNG MAN:
I chose there because it's close to a lake and I realized you don't really
need a river and a lake, and it will be blocked from the harsh northern
winds because of the mountains.
WARE:
Now, I want you to realize how far north we're talking about. If you put the
49th parallel on a piece of paper here, the United States... hangs off of it
to the south. Canada is up to the north. You go over across the Atlantic,
and you have Russia. They start where Duluth, Minnesota, Montreal,
those cities all up in there-- that's where Russia starts. So you know how
cold it is up in Minnesota. So that's what they're contending with all the
time. So I think that these locations might need to reconsider. So, you
want to move your cities?
GIRL:
I'm going to move it down here because there are mountains and there's
a river.
WARE:
You're not in the marsh and you're in the foothills of a ring of mountains,
so that's good.
GIRL:
Okay, I think I want to put this, like, right here, because it's a lake and it's
not close to the marsh, and so all the people won't get all cold in the
winter.
WARE:
All righty.
NARRATOR:
Constructivism works through trial and error and the assimilation of new
information. Because students venture and then adjust their hypotheses,
the results of their critical thinking may endure much longer than if they
had never made the errors at all.
WARE:
Now I'm going to tell you where there really are some cities. Don't see a
city down here. That's really close; that's close. The squares are capitals
and the round ones are just big cities.
YOUNG MAN:
Mine's close to two capitals.
WARE:
Right.
BOY:
I have an idea why mine isn't near any cities. Because Siberia is very
cold, and it's hard to get the natural resources out of there.
WARE:
The geography with the natural resources dictates a lot of the economics
and therefore dictates the social. You know, it's how you live, depending
on where you live.
So, I got to go to Russia. I got to go in '91, and then I got to go to the
Ukraine in '93. If you can bring in things for the kids to see and touch and
handle, it really helps. The kids then have a sense of "This is what these
people do. This is their culture."
WARE:
In the north, they have amber. So... and if you're lucky, you can find bugs
in it. What was the dinosaur story?
CLASS:
Jurassic Park.
WARE:
Jurassic Park--\this is amber, so you can pass that around. From the
Ukraine-- they have a lot more stone in the Ukraine, so they come up with
these stone boxes. I like boxes, so I kept buying boxes. These are your
Russian stacking dolls.
WARE:
So if they're working in stone, it's going to be different than a culture that
is up in the forest and working with wood. So you get them thinking about
"What would you do if these are your resources and you wanted to do
some art?" I firmly believe that if you don't know the geography of a
region, you can't understand the history.
Several leaders said-- Peter the Great being the biggest one-- "You know
what? "We need to somehow get to trading and learning about what's
over in Europe." They fought with, um, the king of Sweden and they
claimed this land. And he had a window, then, a door, onto the Baltic,
which leads him along the northern coastline of Europe.
STUDENT:
One thing I learned about St. Petersburg in the book that we read was
that... that when they were building St. Petersburg, lots of people died.
WARE:
They did, because it was a swamp, and that's one reason why there
wasn't a city there. A lot of people died trying to build it. The buildings
were collapsing, and so he had to get very good at... Peter the Great had
to be very good at engineering to figure out how to get the city to stand.
And the city is absolutely beautiful today.
BOY:
Was Peter the Great a great engineer?
WARE:
He was a man who was fascinated by all sorts of mechanical things. He
went to learn how to build ships. He wanted to make St. Petersburg a
port. He didn't walk in and say, "I'm the head of Russia and I want to
learn." He snuck in as a worker, and he worked side by side with the rest
of the folks in the shipyard learning how to build ships.
NARRATOR:
Judy wraps up class with an initial assessment of what her students have
learned.
WARE:
I want to see if you've really got your mental map straight.
NARRATOR:
Starting again with the black-line map, students construct all features-naming rivers and lakes, placing mountains and marshes, locating cities
and routes.
WARE:
Do you remember a city?
GIRL:
Um... yeah. Moscow is, like, right here.
WARE:
Okay.
STUDENT:
I'm going to put on the names of the two seas, the Kara Sea and the
Caspian Sea.
WARE:
Okay. So what are you going to add?
BOY:
The Volga River.
WARE:
Oh, good. Yeah, we can name all these rivers now.
WARE:
You're a better citizen of the world if you have good mental maps in
place. If you know what is in a region, and that region gets invaded, you
can understand why it is being invaded. If you understand the ethnic
makeup of an area that is a political hot spot, you're going to have a good
sense of what is there and how they live there, and then their history is
going to make more sense, their economics are going to make more
sense, their society is going to make more sense and their culture is
going to make more sense.
GIRL:
Isn't the White Sea up here?
WARE:
Yes.
GIRL:
St. Petersburg is up around here.
BOY:
The Black Sea-- isn't that it right there?
NARRATOR:
The end result is a finished map drawing on their collective knowledge.
Here is confirmation that these students understand how topographic and
cultural features combine to characterize Russia.
WARE:
That's great. Thank you very much. It's been great fun. You can keep
your maps.
BINKO:
St. Petersburg is unusual in that it is a major planned city created to
serve a specific and rather narrow purpose. It is also a striking instance
of how a single geographic asset-- in this case, access to navigable
waterways-- can outweigh other disadvantages such as a frigid climate
and remote location.
In both our case study and classroom segments, we saw how the
geography standards help us analyze St. Petersburg's formation and
development. The settlement process was illustrated in Judy Ware's
lesson. Providing minimal information, she asked her students to decide
where to build a city. As she introduced more information, accompanied
by probing questions, Judy invited her class to rethink their previous
decisions. At the conclusion of the activity, students could connect the
city's location with relevant physical and human characteristics.
Judy made such connections concrete for her students through her use
of a rich collection of descriptions, maps, and cultural artifacts. So,
constructivist learning in a nutshell: engage students in problemsolving that builds on their existing knowledge, gradually introduce
new data, adjust the outcome through trial and error.
In this way, students can build a meaningful mental map that will serve as
the basis for lifelong learning. They can comprehend the spatial
organization of people, places and environments in Russia and beyond.