The Miracle of Perm: From Russian Gulag to Avant-Garde Mecca

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Perhaps the city's traditions explain why so many people here welcome all types of art with so little prejudice. Even under Ivan the Terrible, art blossomed in Perm. In the mid-16th century, the czar gave free rein in Siberia to the Stroganov family, legendary for its patronage of the arts. And even though some things were buried in the communist era, the ballet in Perm shone during World War II, when the Kirov ensemble was evacuated to Perm from Leningrad, boosting the reputation of the local Tchaikovsky Theater, which is still standing today.

According to the will of the city fathers, the avant-garde and the classical go hand in hand here. The opera is producing both "Swan Lake" and a musical version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's famous gulag work, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." In the rebuilt cathedral, old masters are hanging on the walls and the roof trusses are decorated with a collection of carved saints. Perm has even more nostalgia to offer: Near the restored Dr. Zhivago house, which is believed to have served as a model for Nobel Literature Laureate Boris Pasternak, stands Russia's first statue of the long ostracized writer.

Young people are more attracted to the city's festivals, which take place once every two months, and some of which bring a touch of Woodstock to the Ural Mountains. They hang on every word of Vladimir Sorokin, probably Russia's most controversial contemporary writer, whenever he comes to Perm to read passages about the Russia's mafia problems today and in the future, from his latest book, "Day of the Oprichnik." "There are no longer any readings in Moscow," he says. "People there are too arrogant. It's different in Perm."

Risks to the Perm Miracle

The term "world class" is much-used in Perm these days, by people like gallery owner Marat Gelman, Boris Milgram, the region's culture minister, and Governor Chirkunov. If they have their way, one day the city will be known for its world-class museum, a world-class ballet and a world-class theater. Anything that stands in the way of this vision is disparaged as nonsense. Critics are seen as troublemakers, which is precisely where the risks to the Perm miracle lie.

The communists a sharply critical of the city officials, calling their cultural program "pornographic" and "pseudo-liberal." They would prefer to invest the money in social programs. "They should take a look at the enthusiastic museum visitors. The Communist Party is always the last to notice what people really want," says Gelman, who refuses to acknowledge that, even in times of crisis, society needs a carefully gauged balance between current spending on the poor and investment in a cultural future.

And the "Congress of Perm Intellectuals," which opposes what it claims is growing domination by the "Varäger" or "vikings" from Moscow? "They're all narrow-minded and envious," says the gallery owner, who doesn't feel the need to include local sensitivities in his plans.

The canny governor, at least, has realized that a functioning civil society in Perm is necessary if his policies are to succeed in the long term. The cultural breakthrough, says Chirkunov, is only the beginning, and he expects it to be followed by a boom in foreign investment and tourism. "I get along very well with the opposition movements, the non-governmental organizations, the Greens and the critical press," Chirkunov says cautiously.

Limits to the Freedom of the Press

Unlike most Russian governors, he is not a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party, which is one reason he faces the constant threat of replacement. The overly successful (the "dangerous ones," from Moscow's perspective) are almost as much in jeopardy as politicians who have been disappointments in office. "We strive for open-mindedness in every respect," Chirkunov stresses.

But with such statements Chirkunov is thoroughly ignoring reality, say his critics. "For a long time, Perm had the reputation, and justifiably so, of being the capital of the Russian democracy movement," says Alexander Kalich of the human rights organization Memorial. "Today that reputation is at least somewhat tarnished." Granted, the opposition newspaper Permski Obozrevatel, which sharply satirizes the powerful in Perm, is still being published. And local journalists are far removed from the physical and mortal dangers their counterparts face in Moscow or the Chechen capital Grozny. But even in Perm, government officials have shown that freedom of the press is by no means unlimited. For example, the city's public prosecutor's office used flimsy charges to have critical photographer Vladimir Korolyov arrested and thrown in prison for several months.

But at least public discussions in the city seem relaxed: in the cafés on Sibirskaya Street, where the first Western designers, like Ermenegildo Zegna, have opened boutiques; in the Irish pub or one of the half-dozen pizzerias that have popped up in downtown Perm; or in the "Extra" tattoo parlor or the lawn in front of the university entrance, where the statues of Lenin and Stalin are still smiling at each other. Nevertheless, the members of the opposition in Perm are not the only ones who fear that the authorities are pursuing their model projects too rigidly, while marginalizing anyone who disagrees with them.

There is perhaps nowhere that better illustrates where intolerance, ideology and the brutal repression of civil rights activists have led in the past than Perm.

'In Prison, I Was Inwardly a Free Man'

The Gulag Museum is just a 90-minute drive from the city. From the 1930s to 1988, dozens of these prisons existed in the steppes surrounding Perm. The dissident Sharansky was incarcerated in one of these camps. To keep from losing his mind in the bitter cold of his isolation cell, he dreamed up chess problems, which he would solve in his head. "And yet I began to hear voices and at some point I lost consciousness." He was removed from the cell, taken to the gulag hospital, and then returned to the cell. When the guards took away his psalm book, Sharanski went on hunger strike, and he was returned to isolation again. The cycle continued for six long years.

"My God, you're going to Perm. If I had time I would go with you," says Sharansky, 61, who was elected head of the Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency, Israel's official immigration organization, at the end of June. "I often think of the black-and-white world of the gulag, when I knew exactly what was right and what was wrong."

Sharansky's autobiography is imbued with a strange yearning for the old Perm. "In my prison cell, I was inwardly a free man. Things are much more complicated outside. There are thousands of options. In a certain sense, I am no longer free, because I can only be free with those I left behind."

But the Perm he remembers ceased to exist long ago.

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• Part 1: From Russian Gulag to Avant-Garde Mecca
• Part 2: Where the Classical and the Avant-Garde go Hand in Hand