ST. PETERSBURG -- As the brash and noisy Goodwill Games unfold in this proud and hardened center of old Russian grandeur, nobody wants to be caught on the sidelines.


Even the Museum of Printing, in a creaky, old imperial building overlooking the narrow Moika River, is tying itself into the extravagant Goodwill machinery. An exhibit opened there Monday of 400 turn-of-the-century postcards depicting wrestlers, rowers, golfers and tennis players.


"Well," Galina Klarovskaya, a researcher at the museum, said Sunday, "this is the biggest excitement we've had in the city since the 250th anniversary celebration back in 1956 -- and anyway that came three years too late."


No such problems this time. St. Petersburg has managed to meet its timetable and get the Goodwill Games under way, although there seemed to be a few moments of anxiety when it appeared possible that spectators at the early events might come away with fresh paint on the seats of their pants.


It did not happen, and now the old northern metropolis is throwing the country's first organized spectacle since the demise of the Soviet Union.


Everywhere, there are contradictions of style. At the foot of the Peter and Paul Fortress, a mighty redoubt in tsarist days as well as a dark prison of unavailing despair where no sunlight ever penetrated, tall, young men and women in tropical tans go all out to prove themselves in beach volleyball.


Above gloomy black canals where Dostoyevsky's tormented characters once lurked, blimps advertising American soft drinks glisten in the brilliant sunshine.


And in a slick and vast opening ceremony, among the thousands of spectators are retired veterans who have been given free tickets -- each ticket worth one-third of their $45 monthly income.


That particularly amused a woman who wanted to be identified only as Marina. Her pension was supposed to rise this spring, but it did not, she said, because the city diverted money to pay for sprucing itself up. Angry as she was, though, she decided to accept the ticket and come on out to the show. "I wanted to see where my money went," she said.


It is not clear how the city managed to come up with a reported $250 million, but it has been spending freely to refurbish not only sports facilities, but also museums, churches, other buildings and parks as well.


Roofs glimmer, windows gleam, flowers bloom, gutters stay clean.


And there is more -- indeed, there is a not-too-subtle reminder of the old Soviet ways that these games are supposed to help celebrate the passage of.


The ubiquitous street-side kiosks have been swept away by suddenly vigilant tax and health inspectors, reportedly fobbed off on the city's suburbs.


Other elements deemed undesirable have been cleared from the streets as well -- not only prostitutes and pickpockets, but Azeris and Armenians, too. Motorists trying to enter St. Petersburg have to have a good reason for doing so, and there are police and soldiers virtually everywhere to keep the peace.


Even the opening extravaganza Saturday had a certain Soviet shadow to it. Although the whole thing was in reassuringly forward-looking and thoroughly modern pastels, there were telltale signs. The bearers of the Goodwill Games flag, for instance, bedecked in pastels as they were, goose-stepped their way across the field.


But who is complaining? Not Natalya Dementyeva, director of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The city sent about $34,000 her way, which went toward paint, mortar and the clearing of a couple of hundred years' worth of silt at the edge of the Neva River -- where now beach volleyball players show their stuff. "I was skeptical about the whole event," she said Sunday. "But now I can see how well it's turning out. I very much hope the city will get some long-lasting benefit from these games."


She herself has had the pleasure of putting on a sponsored exhibit at the fortress by the artist Alexei Kostroma, who works largely in chicken feathers.


"The idea is that they soften everything," Dementyeva said. Prominent is an immediately recognizable bust from the Soviet past, entitled "The Feathering of Josef Stalin."