When Melbourne Spurned St. Petersburg

The ugly stepsister has thrown Cinderella out of the house.

Melbourne City Council has lived up to its reputation as Clown Hall. But this time it is playing with fire on issues of real consequence.

It is not just mishandling the location of a safe injecting room by playing along with the State Government to locate it outside Flinders Street station.

It is not just barricading its streets against suburban travellers to the city, who may only want to drop a friend off for a job interview in the ghost offices of the CBD.

It is not grandly claiming to lead the world on climate change or to be a ‘global city’.

No. Now it wants to comment or even influence matters of international affairs. 

Melbourne City Council has decided to sever its ‘sister relationship’ with St Petersburg, after 34 years.

Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece, perhaps longing again to be a chief of staff to a Labor Prime Minister, said “We very much hope that this is something which will be noted by the Russian people, something that is noted by Vladimir Putin as an expression of our condemnation of Russia.”  The Russian people have noticed, but Vladimir Putin is busy fighting a war with the West.

Still, Mr Reece went on, “At the City of Melbourne, we are doing everything we can – symbolic and more – to bring this horrible situation to end.” If only that were true.

There was a time when local governments were prudent about taking sides with one local diaspora against another, when war broke out on distant shores. There was a time when everyone recognised that the only constitutional authority for external affairs in Australia is the national government.

But that time is no more. Even the attention-starved councillors of Clown Hall feel they can march in, where angels fear to tread. Politics has become a virtual reality theatre state. Media stunts and gestures of support no longer serve power. Power serves stunts.

Melbourne City Councillors should reflect on the reality of its long pretence to be a sister city with St Petersburg. The ‘sister relationship’ always flattered Melbourne.

There is no Hermitage in Melbourne. Pushkin’s apartment does not survive here. You cannot admire a Fabergé egg.

There is no Peter and Paul Fortress in Melbourne. You cannot stand in the cell that Dostoevsky, Trotsky and Tito slept in.

You cannot walk Rasklonikov’s steps in Melbourne, a city that claims to be a ‘city of literature’. Andrei Bely never wrote a great modernist novel about Melbourne. We have no Bronze Horseman.

There is no Nevsky Monastery. No Shostakovich symphony. No Mariinsky Theatre.

Melbourne never experienced a 900-day siege, surrounded by German and Ukrainian soldiers in World War Two, in which one million people died. Sally Capp’s elder brother was not among them.

Anna Akhmatova did not secretly write Requiem, before burning the paper to avoid the censors, in a Fountain House in Melbourne.

There was not one event that defined the twentieth century in Melbourne. In St. Petersburg, there were many: revolutions, wars, cultural movements, political ideas, and acts of genius.

It is true that one twentieth century film that expressed the fears of nuclear war was set in Melbourne. But On the Beach chose the city because it was the arse-end of the earth.

Melbourne’s Clown Hall Councillors should also reflect on the reality of the war in Ukraine, and how their grandstanding is not helping, but bringing ruin upon that country. They should show deeper compassion for all the peoples of all the regions of Ukrainian territory. They should reflect that Ukrainian officials openly display symbols banned under Victorian law. They should reflect how standing with Ukraine may risk nuclear war. They should reflect on the deeper meanings of that novel, partly set in St Petersburg, War and Peace.

Melbourne was never more than a distant cousin of St. Petersburg. Melbourne traded off its famous cousin’s grandeur when Leningrad fell on hard times in the 1990s. Looted and betrayed by the West, St Petersburg suffered the economic and social catastrophe of economic shock therapy. They needed any act of kindness they could find. Russia has since rebuilt St Petersburg to be truly one of the world’s global cities. Melbourne did not help.

One can only hope, one day, Russia and Peter might forgive the councillors of Melbourne. It is more likely, however, they will forget them. But until that day, all the Russians of Melbourne, all the Russians of Australia, all those who respect the cultural heritage and complex history of Russia, indeed St Petersburg and Russia itself should all proudly say to the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, “You are no sister. You are nothing to me.”