Could be I'm right after all! However, it is going to be difficult to tell them apart -- I don't know how Czar Peter would feel about being a host at the pearly gates, that's for sure.
Anyone seen the Maxmillan Schell "Peter the Great" miniseries?
I missed that miniseries, damn it. But I've read a great deal about Piter (as he signed his own name, though he was probably baprised Pyotr). Fascinating megalomaniac. He had some traumatic childhood experiences, e.g. seeing a beloved uncle bayonetted to death by an unruly mob in front of his eyes and inheriting the crown when he was in no way mature enough to deal with it. He performed brilliantly, however, against the Swedish incursion under King Charles XII, in 1700 and managed to form some very clever and strong alliances with the Crown of Poland against the Swedes. He married a commoner -- either Latvian or Lithuanian, some historians conflict here -- who became Tsarina Catherine I. And, by conquering Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania he opened his vaunted 'window on Europe,' taking Ruissia right out of the backwaters where it had languished since the days of the Mongol Khanate.
Sorry for the digression. What I started to write was just meant to explain how come I recognized that face right away.
If I remember correctly, most of the architecture of St Petersburg were done by Italians. c.i.
That's because of Peter's obessession with Europeanizing Russia -- he saw his country as too darkly orthodox and Asian in nature.
The miniseries brings out all those points quite well -- it's still the best even over "Shogun" and "Roots."
Here's a photo of Peter the Great's ship. c.i.
Good article in this week's New Yorker on the tricentennary of St. Petersburg, Ian Frazier, the author, has been spending a lot of time there.
