1 Between Refeudalization and New Cultural Politics: The 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg Elena Trubina In this paper, I look at the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg in order to show that certain elements of public memory and cultural politics can be seen as counterbalancing the tendencies of "state image promotion". 1 Introduction The dissemination of a positive image of Russia has been implemented both nationally and internationally. The celebration of capital cities that comprises an important part of the Russian political culture has also been involved in the ongoing state image promotion (cf. Boym 2001). With this in mind, I will first trace the continuities between pre-Soviet and post-Soviet cultural practices in the light of Habermasian work on public sphere. Second, I will outline what I believe are the promising approaches and strategies of the new cultural practitioners. Finally, I will touch briefly upon the methodological problems related to a researcher's wish to retain both the normative and the descriptive dimension of his or her work on a particular case. By applying the notion of "refeudalization" to the discourses and signifying practices through which a number of officials have constructed dominant representations of the city and its inhabitants, I hope to emphasize the complexity of the constellation of historical epochs, temporalities, mythologies, ways to sustain state power, 1 For an extended version of this paper, cf. Trubina 2005.