Society and culture in Saint Petersburg

The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.

Today, St. Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.

The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in St. Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.

Soviet-made films, such as the trilogy of "Maksim" by director Grigori Kozintsev may show the complex history of St. Petersburg with some propagandistic tone.

Film Noi vivi, based on the novel We the Living by Ayn Rand, comments on Italian politics by way of featuring the October Revolution.

Russian Ark, filmed entirely in the Hermitage, shows the life of the Tsars and their entourage in the original interiors of the Winter Palace.

Onegin (1999 featuring Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler and Lena Heady) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions.

The Stroll (2003) by Aleksei Uchitel featured many attractions of the city with Irina Pegova playing the role of a mysterious, well endowed and enchanting Russian beauty.

Dostoyevsky called it "The most deliberate city in the world", emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia.

The effect of life in St. Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky.

Another important feature of early St. Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to St. Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of St.

[citation needed] 20th-century writers from St. Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Andrey Bely, Yevgeny Zamyatin with his apprentices Serapion Brothers created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights in the understanding of society through their experience in this city.

Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.

Zenit now plays their home games at Gazprom Arena Many important Russian and international figures, politicians, businessmen, artists, writers and scientists were born and/or have lived in Saint Petersburg.

These include many of the Russian emperors; the historic figures Grigori Rasputin, Felix Yusupov, Aleksandr Menshikov, Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, Aleksandr Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov, Eugene Botkin, Peter Carl Fabergé, and the Stroganovs; the writers Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolay Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nikolai Leskov, Ayn Rand, Yevgeni Zamyatin, Vladimir Nabokov, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Ivan Efremov, and Joseph Brodsky; the composers Anton Rubinstein, Aleksandr Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Andrei Petrov; the painters Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoy, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Aleksandr Benois, Kazimir Malevich, Léon Bakst, and Marc Chagall; the scientists Dmitri Mendeleev, Nikolay Semyonov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Yakov Frenkel, Zhores Alferov, Leonid Kantorovich, Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan Pavlov, Ivan Sechenov, Heinrich Schliemann, Abram Ioffe, and Boris Piotrovsky; businessmen Alfred Nobel, Ludvig Nobel, Emanuel Nobel, Robert Nobel, Nikolai Putilov, and brothers Elisseeff; the cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Sergei Krikalyov; the ballet dancers Vaslav Nijinsky, Marius Petipa, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Galina Ulanova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Rudolf Nureyev; the entertainers Sergei Diaghilev, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Fedor Shalyapin, Grigori Kozintsev, Nikolai Cherkasov, Boris Babochkin, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Georgy Zhzhyonov, Georgy Tovstonogov, Kirill Lavrov, and Alisa Freindlikh, the conductors Eduard Napravnik, Aleksandr Gauk, Alexander Siloti, Evgeny Mravinsky, Yuri Temirkanov, and Valery Gergiev; the mathematicians Sofia Kovalevskaya, Pafnuti Chebyshev, Leonhard Euler, and Grigori Perelman; and the politicians Vladimir Lenin, Piotr Stolypin, Aleksandr Kerensky, Sergey Kirov, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Anatoly Sobchak, and Vladimir Putin.