The walk to the banks of the great Neva is not far. As I approached it from the north I thought I spied an eight out for a mid morning row. I was wrong. It was an ice flow drifting gently and with purpose, east. More followed.
I can forgive myself for mistaking a low-rise iceberg for an up-market canoe. For a start, despite the hour, it was almost dark. Cars silhouetted, bustling and drumming across cobbled streets as they made their way through the late morning rush hour. Commuters paced the streets, wrapped up in layer upon layer of wool and fur and anything that kept out the chill.
I’d left my hotel after two hours of emails, one hour of conference calls, three mini-meetings and a hearty breakfast of rather chewy oats, at 9.45 a.m. As I got outside I realised why Russian hoteliers skipped the windows and invested everything in a state of the art heating system. It was pitch black and minus 5.
Despite the bleak start to the day, St Petersburg shone. No slush or mud or dark lines of traffic could dampen my enthusiasm for the place. It is truly grand, with centuries old buildings standing steadfastly along the river’s edge. Each arcs neatly around baroque cathedral spires cast in glowing gold. Unlike the grand palaces of Paris or Venice, St Petersburg’s buildings are crusty and battered on the outside. Many are shrouded in scaffolding and large sheets of plastic, a mosaic of salmon pink and mint green and raw plaster. But behind the walls and down the alleys there’s the rumblings of a new revolution that’s coming to life.
There’s a very palpable sense of aspiration in St Petersburg, as if the 5 million people there are waking from some enormous community sleep in, brushing themselves down and saying with one almighty yawn, “Right, now its our turn again”. It’s not hard to imagine the buildings on the riverbanks quickly regaining their majesty too. Outside, vehicles of wealth deftly muscle their way through the traffic. Range Rovers growl menacingly and Audis and Mercedes roar through back streets with little regard for anyone or anything. It’s boom time in St Petersburg and after 200 years of recession, everyone is hungry for a piece of it.
En route to Russia, I stopped in New York and then London. There things are a whole lot different. For the established elite, privilege is a right. But there’s a sense that more and more of the aspiring classes have become comfortable in their respective zones of perceived entitlement. That’s a dangerous place to be.
New York is brilliant in every sense of the word. It positively buzzes with energy. No slouching here. Slouching is for losers. Crush or be crushed. That’s the spirit. And of course it works beautifully. When I walked to the Weber Shandwick office on my first day there, crossing Lexington and then Madison at 56th, I was stopped in my tracks as the top of the Chrysler building came into view, glistening in the morning sun. Of course stopping in New York is grave error. A social no-no if ever there was one. They say you can spot a tourist a mile off in NYC. They’re the ones who are looking up. But it was truly glorious to breath it all in and well worth the havoc I created as the morning sidewalk traffic flow went haywire around me.
Despite all this, New York felt a little cumbersome – over-gorged perhaps, and somewhat bloated on its excess. It remained strong and confident and clear of purpose. But in the streets of Manhattan that morning it was more of an individual one-upmanship than the community I witnessed in St Petersburg a few days later. To draw a sporting analogy, it’s rather like the difference between a quarterback and a scrum. One is shiny and sparkly and heroic, the other down and dirty and locked in its single purpose of gaining ground. Both want to win, but they go about it in their own very unique way.
London is different still, with it’s own perculiar twist. It bustles and thrives with the best of them, standing squat and confident in its unique bulldog guise. But it’s more circus than scrum. And its certainly not quarterback. Frightful idea. Let me explain.
I arrived in London shortly after the Croatians had knocked England out of Euro 2008. It demanded, quite rightly, a media Inquisition of the highest order. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Sudanese government had just locked up an “innocent schoolteacher and mother of two” for naming a classroom teddy bear, Mohammed. And then there was the absolute horror of Donorgate. Not, as you might expect, the discovery of a factory just outside Nottingham at which children’s kidneys were removed for sale to the highest bidder. No, worse. Donorgate revolved around the donation of a few thousand quid to the Labour Party, albeit it in breach of recently introduced legal and policy changes prohibiting it.
The British media are probably the best ever when it comes to scandal and intrigue. It’s their very own version of what the Americans call shock and awe. But what struck me most during my two days in London was the fact that, despite the vehement bickering and bloodletting, there’s an underlying sense of “oh well” that has underpinned so much of what is actually British. Eventually it comes to a point where we just expect to loose. Ultimately, Londoners would rather bunker down and just get on with it. It’s what got them through the Second World War; it’s what gets them through Wimbledon every year; and it’s what will get them through any future horrors when horror comes there way. Which other country still considers it’s national pinnacle to be an event that took place at Wembley Stadium 42 years ago?
And so I fear that both New York and London, in their different ways, have that tinge of Empires end about them. Their economic dominance has been a mainstay of their existence and has allowed them to counter most threats to their status in the world. The economic maturity of the BRIC countries will certainly challenge this status, but is not that that will be their undoing.
Naill Ferguson, Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, argued that great economic forces don’t make history, individuals do. For him, the world is neither regressing nor progressing. Only the actions of individuals determine whether Empires stand or fall.
I’d go further and say that whilst individuals may be the catalyst, its communities and their collective behaviours that will determine the rise and fall of future Empires. From what I saw in St Petersburg this morning, the dawn of a revitalised Empire may not be so far away. When the people speak as one, worlds change.
