The impassioned creations of Pushkinskaya 10 have
fallen on deaf ears at the Mayor's Office.
Q. WHAT DO ST PETERSBURG'S CREATIVE UNDERCLASS, THE MAYOR'S OFFICE, AND CHANNEL FIVE TELEVISION HAVE IN COMMON?
A. NOT A LOT. WHICH IS WHY THEY HAVE ALL BEEN DEADLOCKED IN A DISPUTE ABOUT 15,584.8 SQUARE METERS [18,701.8 SQUARE YARDS] OF CENTRALLY-LOCATED PROPERTY FOR TWO YEARS AND LOOK SET TO CONTINUE FEUDING INTO THE NEXT MILLENNIUM.
An Australian performance artist who stripped naked to reveal a large ring in an intimate place where rings are not commonly found, and then proceeded to slap himself on the head with a raw fish, was one of the many bizarre people who aroused my curiosity about Pushkinskaya 10.
Foreign visitors who receive a warm welcome in this building and attract a fascinated audience, whatever they wish to do with dead salmon, usually leave Pushkinskaya 10 in blissful ignorance of the controversy which surrounds it.
St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak is of the opinion that a building which could house some of the thousands of Petersburgers currently crammed into communal flats should not be a non-residential cultural center.
Pushkinskaya 10 is a historic building in dire need of repair. As the Mayor's Office could not finance the major repair work itself, Mr Sobchak signed a declaration in January 1994 pledging to entrust the building to St Petersburg's Channel Five television company for its employees to live in, on condition that Channel Five would find investors for the necessary renovations.
The mayor's grand plan gives short shrift to the building's current occupants -- the Free Culture Foundation (FCF), a highly active group of people who say they have prevented the building from falling apart completely while it awaits renovation. The FCF already has an agreement with the St Petersburg Property Committee (KUGI), giving it rights over Pushkinskaya 10 for a decade to come.
FCF is supposed to be making repairs, but it has very little money and or motivation to do so.
Officially no one lives at Pushkinskaya 10 and none of the flats can be leased out. All 300 individual and collective members of the FCF are supposed to pay membership fees every month, although many of the artists cannot afford the 25,000 roubles ($5.30) and do not pay at all. Whatever money is collected goes towards the 10 million rouble ($2,100) monthly rent which the FCF pays to the Mayor's Office.
Pushkinskaya 10 is home to the Fish Fabrique and Art Clinic clubs, the offices of city rock legends DDT and Boris Grebenshchikov, a travel agency and other concerns.
All of the above could probably find alternative office space, but for Russian artists working every day in unheated studios and resorting to vodka to unfreeze their fingers, their future is as unpredictable as the lighting system.
Under the Channel Five deal, there would be space allocated for an unnamed "creative center," specifically the two wings at the front entrance to the building which could accommodate up to 50 people, but there is no guarantee the FCF would be involved.
"The Soviet Writers' Union had 5,000 members," said Anatoly Margunov, deputy chairman of Channel Five. "Do you think there were really 5,000 writers in the Soviet Union? I don't. There are more than 100 artists in Pushkinskaya 10. They cannot all be genuine artists."
It is no secret that some of FCF's members are commercial organizations which pay higher fees than the artists and keep the organization alive. The ADM travel agency has all the conveniences of a modern office -- telephones, fax, photocopier and its own heating system. Outside its door the windows are broken and downstairs gallery owners sit wrapped up in overcoats.
"Why should we repair the building if we're going to be thrown out?" asked ADM director Dmitri Chetyrnov. "If they told us we'd be here for the next five years we'd fix this whole wing."
Challenged to explain his company's qualifications for being a member of the FCF, Mr Chetyrnov said, "St Petersburg is a city of culture and we arrange tours of St Petersburg. Everything connected with this city is connected with culture."
Mr Margunov has no sympathy for this view. He said 150 journalists, directors and cameramen from Channel Five were waiting in the city's queue for accommodation because they have less than five square meters (six square yards) of living space for each member of their families.
"I can't understand how our employees are worse than those people who are in the building at the moment," he added.
Channel Five's ambitions are being confounded by a small snag -- Mr Sobchak's declaration cannot take effect unless a court of arbitration cancels the agreement that the FCF already has with the Mayor's Office.
In 1991, after the permanent residents of Pushkinskaya 10 had been moved elsewhere because of its poor condition, the FCF's president, Sergei Kovalsky, signed an agreement with the committee for management of city property which is due to remain in force until the year 2006.
The dispute between the FCF and Channel Five has been taken to the court of arbitration and the legal processes are currently on indefinite hold. Members of the FCF have no intention of repairing the building while the court could take up the case again at any moment and rule that the FCF should leave Pushkinskaya 10.
When Mr Sobchak's 1994 declaration was first published, the mayor was inundated with letters and telegrams from promoters of the arts in Russia and America asking him to support the FCF's existence. Russia's Minister of Culture also intervened in favor of the FCF, saying that it had state significance.
"The question of the cultural center and the question of the building are completely separate," said Vladimir Yakovlev, head of the Mayor's Office committee for culture.
"We have a positive attitude towards the cultural center and we are trying to find alternative premises for it. But in all civilized countries such centers are located in old factories or barracks, not residential property."
Mr Yakovlev said he had considered several properties in the city, including a disused banya (bath-house), but none of them were suitable. The final twist in this saga is that the FCF and its artists are themselves prepared to move elsewhere.
"I looked at all the premises suggested by Mr Sobchak and they were in worse condition than our building," said Mr Kovalsky. "If there is a place we like then we will move there, but the city can't offer us anything."
But if the most alternative, anti-establishment section of the St Petersburg population expected a truce with the powers that be, they are likely to be disappointed. Whilst bailiffs armed with warrants and Kalashnikovs have not yet come knocking on the doors of Pushkinskaya 10 to evict Kolya Vasin, the proprietor of the John Lennon Museum of Peace and Love, or Valery Sokolov and his Nochlyezhka (Nightshelter) charity for homeless adults, a softening of the Mayor's Office line has not been forthcoming.
