【经济学人】白色的夜，黑色的历史丨2017.07.30丨总第976期

St Petersburg: Three Centuries of Murderous Desire.

圣彼得堡：三个世纪的屠杀欲望

By Jonathan Miles.

作者：乔纳森·迈尔斯

Random House; 488 pages; £25. To be published in America by Pegasus in March 2018

兰登书屋；488页；25英镑。将于2018年3月由珀加索斯出版社于美国出版

ANNA AKHMATOVA, one of Russia’s finest 20th-century poets, once described St Petersburg as being “particularly well suited to catastrophes”. Founded in 1703, the city went on to experience two historical traumas—the Russian revolution and the siege of Leningrad, as it was known under the Soviets. In his new biography of the tormented delta, Jonathan Miles, a British cultural historian, manoeuvres swiftly through these tragedies, devoting the bulk of his attention to the social and cultural life beneath the city’s “spiders’ webs of tramlines”.

安娜·阿赫玛托娃，20世纪俄国最有才的女诗人之一，称圣彼得堡为“尤其适合灾难发生的地方”。圣彼得堡建立于1703年，他经历了两次历史上的大灾难——俄国革命和封锁列宁格勒，列宁格勒是苏联时期的名称。乔纳森・迈尔斯是一位英国文化历史学家，在他的对这段历史的描述中，他熟练地穿梭于悲剧中，集中大量的注意力在如蜘蛛网密布的城市交通之下社会和文化生活中。

By almost every measure St Petersburg is a haunted metropolis. The windswept city built on the mouth of the Neva is prone to flooding, as is vividly described in Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman”, the greatest literary tribute to Peter the Great’s austere and splendid creation. The city stands as a testament to the manic ambitions of a ruthless and visionary tsar who showed no regard for human life in his bid to westernise Russia.

几乎在每一个方面圣彼得堡都算是多灾多难的城市。暴露在风口的圣彼得堡城建立在涅瓦河出口，使得它容易遭受洪水。在普希金的《青铜骑士》内这座城被生动地描述过。这部作品也被认为是最伟大的对彼得大帝朴素和辉煌创造的颂歌。圣彼得堡也被认为是对残忍和有远见的沙皇的癫狂野心的证明，他不考虑人们的生活，在他的命令下西化俄罗斯。

At the end of the 17th century Peter travelled to several European capitals, including Riga and London. He also went to the Netherlands to learn at first hand about Dutch shipbuilding techniques—part of an effort to strengthen his naval campaign against Russia’s Ottoman neighbours. H e returned home determined to build a new capital city of harbours and canals in the mould of Amsterdam which, unlike landlocked Moscow, could welcome ships from across the worl d. （读者试译） St Petersburg would be Peter’s “window to Europe”.

在17世纪末，彼得大帝游历了欧洲各国首都，包括里加、伦敦。他也前往荷兰学习造船技术的一手资料——这有助于强化俄罗斯的海军实力以对抗邻国奥斯曼土耳其。回国后，彼得大帝决定以阿姆斯特丹为样板，建造充满海港与运河的新的都城。但是阿姆斯特丹能够迎接世界各地的船队，而莫斯科是个内陆城市。 （期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~） 圣彼得堡将成为彼得大帝“面向欧洲的窗口”。

• mould 模版    landlocked 被内陆包围的

Mr Miles estimates that 30,000 people died, many of them succumbing to malaria , scurvy and dysentery , during the initial construction, while others were torn apart by packs of wolves in broad daylight. It is unlikely that such suffering bothered the tsar , who enjoyed executing criminals and traitors in public. Peter coerced wealthy Muscovites to move to his new capital, threatening them with the loss of their titles if they did not comply. European art, culture and trade were in vogue, but European liberalism was kept at arm’s length and would remain so for hundreds of years to come.

迈尔斯估计，在都城建造初期有三万人付出了生命，其中许多人死于疟疾、坏血病和痢疾，其他的人在光天化日之下被群狼的利牙撕碎。可这些残酷的困难都阻碍不了沙皇的决心，毕竟沙皇本身就酷爱将罪犯与叛徒当街处决。彼得大帝强迫莫斯科的富贵阶层迁往新首都，威胁称不从者将被剥夺贵族头衔。欧洲的艺术、文化和贸易开始在这里流行，但是欧洲的自由主义思潮却与这里绝缘，接下来的几个世纪也是如此。

• succumbing to 死于

• malaria 疟疾

• scurvy 坏血病

• dysentery痢疾

• tear 撕裂

• tsar 沙皇

• coerce 强迫

• Muscovites 莫斯科人

Rather than focus on the revolution, the centenary of which falls this year, Mr Miles writes mostly of its effects on people. Between 1917 and the early 1920s, as Lenin moved the government back to Moscow, the population of the city, now renamed Petrograd, fell from 2.5m to 740,000 as food became scarce and violence and killing spread as a result of the revolution and the ensuing civil war.

今年将迎来十月革命一百周年，但作者迈尔斯的焦点不在革命本身，他描述最多的是这场革命对民众的影响。在1917年至20世纪20年代初，列宁把国家政府迁回莫斯科，并将其重命名为彼得格勒，革命后的城市食物匮乏、腥风血雨，而内战又随之到来，人口从两百五十万下降至七十四万。

• centenary 一百周年

The decision to relocate the capital was vindicated when the Nazis laid siege to the city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924. Hitler was determined to wipe from the map this cradle of communism: it was a base for the Baltic Sea fleet and one of the most important industrial centres in the Soviet Union. The 900-day siege led to mass starvation so severe that some people began to eat the flesh of the dead. In just one month towards the end of 1941, 50,000 people starved to death. The city where Shostakovich composed his famous “Leningrad Symphony” became a symbol of resistance and the strength of the human spirit—something that Stalin and subsequent Soviet rulers deeply feared. Indeed, when a museum dedicated to the suffering of the besieged opened up, it was immediately shut down and its directors arrested. The city was subjected to one of the worst post-war purges by Stalin and was sidelined economically and politically for years afterwards.

1924年纳粹封锁重新定名的列宁格勒时就证明了迁都是正确的决定。希特勒妄图将共产主义的诞生地从地图上抹去：这是波罗的海舰队的基础，也是苏维埃最重要的工业中心之一。长达900天的围攻导致大规模饥荒，并严重到出现了吃死人的现象。仅在1941年最后一个月内，就有5万人饿死 。作曲家肖斯塔科维奇作出著名乐曲《第七号交响曲》的城市成为抵抗的代表、人类精神的力量所在——这是后来的斯大林和苏维埃统治者也深深畏惧的。事实上，当一所专门讲述封锁列宁格勒的博物馆开门营业，它立即被关闭，且馆长也被逮捕。这座城市经历了斯大林时期最糟糕的战后清洗，而其政治和经济在后来也被边缘化。

• Vindicate：v.维护，证明…是正确的

• Siege：n.围攻，包围

• Cradle：n.摇篮，发源地

• Severe：adj.严厉的，严峻的

• Compose：v.作曲，组成，构成

• Sideline：v.被迫退出

St Petersburg today is as paradoxical as it has ever been. As the childhood home of Vladimir Putin, it has been promoted by the Kremlin as a symbol of Russian imperial splendour and ambition. At the same time it has also become a centre of resistance to the Kremlin’s attempt to impose its will and subvert the city’s independence and spirit. Mr Miles’s affectionate history serves as a lively contribution to perceptions of the city’s allure.

如今圣彼得堡又像曾经那样充满悖论了。作为俄罗斯总统普京的童年故乡，它被克姆林宫视为俄罗斯帝国辉煌和雄心的象征。但同时它也成为反抗克姆林宫强施意愿、破坏城市独立和自由灵魂的核心城市。迈尔斯先生深情描述的历史也为展现这个城市的魅力增添了浓墨重彩的一笔。

• Paradoxical：adj.反论的，悖论的， 相互矛盾的

• Splendour：n.豪华，壮丽，壮观

• Perception：n.知觉，感知能力，感受

翻译 ▍ 迟暮，下罗小柜员，陌上，Bibobibo

审核 ▍ 白夜叉

图文编辑 ▍喵喵

责任编辑 ▍毛毛