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Peter the Great's Boat Mesmerizes Russian Emigres

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: February 14, 1997

Vadim Shvartsman stood and stared, rubbing his chin from time to time. He was looking at a piece of the history of the country he fled 17 years ago, a rugged and hallowed object he had not seen since he was a teen-ager.

''It mesmerizes me,'' said Mr. Shvartsman, an electrician.

He was far from alone. It is a measure of the weight of New York City's growing Russian population that an exhibit of the little boat in which Peter the Great learned to sail three centuries ago has been drawing a steady stream of his countrymen to the palm-studded Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan.

The 18-foot wooden boat has never before left Russia, but it is finding instant recognition among people brought up to think of the little boat, or botik in Russian, as something akin to the Liberty Bell. Some bend over to deliver intense lectures to small children who have never set foot in the Motherland. Some cry. A few make little jokes.

Not a few have displayed cynicism, that most Russian of survival skills. They wonder if the boat might be a fake to fool the gullible Americans.

Many say the sight of the boat is particularly poignant as they struggle to come to terms with their national identity at a time of wrenching change in the Russia they left, and they find themselves reliving old, fiery debates about how Russianness can coexist with modernism.

''To me, America and Russia have become closer with this boat,'' said Svetlana Pavlutskaya, a hair stylist who immigrated 18 years ago. ''This is our past and America is our present.''

Peter, the great modernizer, learned to sail against the wind in the boat, which he dug up from a pile of junk in one of the royal estates. He made it a symbol of his push to make Russia a nautical nation, with his newly created port city of St. Petersburg the centerpiece.

He exhibited the boat in the Kremlin to celebrate victory in war, and once used it to lead an aquatic parade: he stood in front while his top admirals rowed. ''The grandfather of the Russian Navy,'' Peter called the craft.

But the greatest meaning of the boat, which with its four tiny cannons resembles nothing so much as a toy, is its symbol of Peter the Great as a force for momentous change. ''Without this boat, St. Petersburg wouldn't exist,'' said Maya Poitsker, cultural editor of Novoyoe Russkoye Slovo, New York's largest Russian newspaper.

That in itself is deeply unsettling for many Russians, at home and abroad. The primal soul of Russia finds its home in landlocked Moscow, in introspection, in the Oriental exoticism of a Slavic identity. But Peter's determination to drag his backward country toward foreign conceptions of progress and urbanity rocked his generation, and the towering Czar, who was taller than Lincoln, persists as a potent symbol.

''The boat symbolizes Peter the Great's attempt to break through Russia's backwardness and isolation and reach out to the West,'' said David Eden, a Russian emigre who brings artists back and forth between the United States and Russia. ''Peter represents the promise that was never fulfilled.''

But it is also a promise not a few Russians fundamentally reject. ''Many people in Russia even now don't approve of Peter's politics and behavior,'' Ms. Poitsker said. ''They believe Russia can find another way.''

Some are just surprised and grateful to see the boat at all, and they enjoy its dramatic presentation in New York.

''They kept us so far from it there,'' said Irina Fogelson, an immigrant who teaches music in Brighton Beach, the predominantly Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn. She saw the botik once, fleetingly, as a child.

The daily scene at the World Financial Center includes two expert preservationists, one Russian and one American, working with small tools to preserve and better understand the boat. In addition to patching cracks and scraping off centuries of dirt, they hope to identify the species of oak in the boat, to determine its country of origin.

The guest book underlines the emotions swirling around the botik. One who signed his name B. Rolyak, who noted that he had seen the boat as a child, wrote:

''I left Russia 20 years ago, and I'm so glad I did. Because you will never change. And I used to be in love with this magic city.''

Someone who did not leave a name wrote: ''A long time ago I saw the boat in Russia and I hadn't thought about it in a long time. In spite of everything, Russia is a great country and I wish her luck.''

The boat's origins are unknown. One theory is that it was built in Russia by Dutch carpenters. Another holds that in the 1580's, the English Ambassador to Russia presented it to Ivan the Terrible as a present from Queen Elizabeth. Whichever, the young Peter found the boat in a barn or storeroom in 1688. His Dutch tutor taught him to sail.

Because the historical value of the botik has long been known, it was never neglected. It was once displayed on a pedestal in the Kremlin, and has spent most of the last two centuries in St. Petersburg, called Leningrad under the Communists.

The boat, which has been in the Central Naval Museum since World War II, is a centerpiece of ''St. Petersburg: A Cultural Celebration,'' held this winter at the World Financial Center. It is in New York for the simple reason that planners wanted something with a lot of pizazz, and figured, why not ask for the ultimate.

''I didn't know you couldn't ask for it,'' said Anita Contini, the financial center's artistic director, who refused to take nyet for an answer on three trips to Russia.

Many Americans have also been fascinated by this fragment of Russian history, but the procession of Russians is what has most struck Marie Vygodina. She is a guide to the exhibition, which also includes clothing from the royal family and avant-garde paintings.

''People come again and again and again,'' she said.

One repeat visitor is Solomon Volkov, a Russian-American writer and intellectual whose book ''St. Petersburg: A Cultural History'' (Free Press Paperbacks) has just been published.

''I touched the wood and it was kind of an electric feeling,'' he said. ''This was always the least official of our official symbols, something for which we could sincerely express our patriotic feelings.''