NONFICTION - June 21, 1992

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: St. Petersburg in Photographs, 1890-1914 (Abrams: $60; 320 pp.). Peter the Great couldn’t stand Moscow, so he built his own city--in the middle of a swamp only 6 degrees south of the Arctic Circle. That done, he invited the boyars (Russian nobility) to come and live there. It was cold and it was wet, but it was 1703, and the czar’s word was law in those days. They stayed and they built (no one could enter the city without bringing in a stone), and in time they created what remains one of the world’s most beautiful metropolises. This handsome book of photos (necessarily black-and-white) takes the quickened pulse of St. Petersburg from 1890 to 1914, when, czarwise, it all began to come unstuck. Here are the broad boulevards; the callipygian cathedrals; bristling Nevsky Prospekt; sleighs crossing the frozen Neva. Here the cameras catch the boyars (too many) but also the muzhik , the peasants finally free; herring-vendors, bell-ringers, mustachioed merchants and saucy housemaids. Here too are the real ramparts of the city: Gorky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Pavlova, Nabokov, the wild-eyed Rasputin and the preening Chaliapin. A timely reminder that despite flood and fire, Napoleon and Hitler and Lenin, Peter’s dream still stands.