I’m back in the USSR, as the Beatles song goes (these days it’s actually called Russia).
Years ago, I visited Moscow, finding it cold with Moscovites huddled in gray stone buildings, all the better to avoid clutches of the ever-voracious mafia and kleptos.
But today I’m in the Paris of Russia, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, and Petrograd — for Peter the Great, not oil — before that). I’m here to explore the sprawling Hermitage, a 360-room art museum jammed with three million items, including paintings by Van Gogh, da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio.