Bears in St. Petersburg? No! Only beauties!

These two pictures were designed by the city’s committee for tourism to promote St. Petersburg as an attractive destination in 2006. You could see them on billboards in Tokyo, Paris, London and other cities. In the picture above the Ekaterininskiy Palace is shown (Pushkin, a district of  the city), and a bear — the animal that can never be seen here! The text in the upper side says: “Is it what you thought  St. Petersburg was like?”, and in the lower side: “Saint-Petersburg. No bears. Only beauties”.

These pictures are funny and creative and refer to one of the most powerful stereotypes about Russia circulating abroad. Yes, there are many people who still think that streets (heavily oversnowed, of course!) of Russian cities, towns and villages are regularly being visited by bears and wolves.

But partly this is true. In cities or small towns  you will never meet a bear freely walking in a street, but in villages it may happen and it happens. For instance, in a little village in Siberia where I’ve grown up. Wood is just a few meters from home, so sometimes in the winter bears facing lack of food come to try to find it. So, the stereotype is true to some extent, but it does not work for St. Petersburg and even for its surroundings! I’m not even sure that bears existed here till the foundation of the city in 1703. At least, I didn’t meet any remarks about it in materials about the city’s history.

The picture below features the Kazan Cathedral as it looks in the evening in the summer.

Photo credit: the St. Petersburg administration