In this week's column I would like to depart from the usual format and offer a kaleidoscope of recent events in St. Petersburg.


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Another consulate general opened in town. The quiet and beautiful boulevard Malodetskoselsky Prospekt -- a name hardly pronounceable even for a Russian -- now flashes the red maple leaf of the Canadian flag. Charming Consul General Lillian Thomsen greeted Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and a few guests at the opening reception.


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The U.S. Cultural and Information Center celebrated Martin Luther King Day by showing segments of "Eyes on the Prize" -- a six-hour award-winning documentary on the civil rights movement. David Evans, the center director, introduced and commented on the series and invited guests, including students and professors of the new School of International Relations at St. Petersburg University, to reflect on the lessons of American democracy and tolerance -- issues more than vital for today's Russia.


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The literary journal Zvezda , a forum for aging liberal intelligentsia, specifically of the '60s, gave a few of its regular authors literary awards. Among the winners were Yakov Lurie, the patriarch of literary criticism; Viktor Sosnora, an iconoclastic modernist poet and writer; and Yevgeny Rein, a poet and a friend of Nobel literature prize-winner Joseph Brodsky. A special new award -- the Dovlatov prize, instituted a year ago in memory of Sergei Dovlatov, went to Igor Doliniak. Dovlatov, a Leningrad writer who died a few years ago in New York, produced works that are increasingly acknowledged as modern classics.


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Borey Art Center, one of my favorite places in the city, expanded and opened a wonderful little cafe -- a real artists' and poets' corner -- around Christmas. Hidden at the back of the gallery, the cafe is not really visible or accessible from the outside, so it is a kind of semi-restricted club. One of the first events at the cafe were the 1994 Borey awards, which went to a dozen honorees, including Borey founder and director Tanya Ponomarenko and poet Arkady Dragomoshenko, the force behind many of the gallery's projects. Those awarded got to sign themselves into immortality on bricks in the center's arch wall. Along with conventional prizes, such as Best Artist (Alexander Sementsov) and Best Show (Olga Florenskaya's Russian Design), there were lighter-side prizes, such as the award for Best Person To Talk To (artist Anatoly Belkin). Even I, in my role of American Center representative, was honored as Best Sponsor and given a volume of John Ashberry's Russian translations, funded by the center.