I ask because the Chinese in recent decades seem to have decided that letting Westerners steal their cultural treasures was undesirable, but there doesn't seem to be huge government support for preservation either (yet?). This based on what I saw at the Great Wall.
Then there's the whole thing about suppressing the bits that are hard to whitewash. There are a bunch of laws currently in force that ban "denial of facts established by the ruling of the International Military Tribunal, approval of crimes, established by that ruling, as well as dissemination of knowingly false information about actions of the USSR in WW2 period". That last bit is the catch-all that can be used to censor pretty much any opinion not in line with official propaganda. Here's the law in question (in Russian):
http://www.zakonrf.info/uk/354.1/
For example, last year, a man was convicted and fined for sharing an article about Soviet occupation of Poland on his social media feed, because said article stated that USSR attacked Poland jointly with Germany, and therefore both countries bear equal responsibility for starting WW2. This was deemed as "contrary to the findings of the IMT" by the court (which is true, since any such questions related to Poland were effectively sidestepped under Soviet pressure). Here's the article in question (in Russian):
Many of the major attractions in St. Petersburg and the surrounding areas are historical and were rebuilt after the siege of Leningrad, though at great pain due to difficulty in raising funds to do the restorations. The city thrives on the more world renown cultural heritage (ballets for example), and many of the old soviet performers are still draw huge crowds and fill arenas/auditoriums. Many older Russians I've met look very fondly back at the USSR; younger generations have a mixed attitude, many just echoing their parents' sentiments, others enjoying modern Russia.
As far as preservation goes, I think it depends on just how crappy it is. There's a few buildings downtown in St. Petersburg that are the last few that were directly involved in the Siege of Leningrad (remnants of former buildings) and there is discussion on what to do with them - knock'em down and replace or restore as a historical site. It's prime area and the buildings weren't of any importance, but at the same time, the history of WW2 is just really tightly woven into pretty much everything, so there is some deadlock on what to do. Much of SPB was rebuilt to "it's former glory" after the siege so there is interest in restoring what was lost. But it also hasn't stopped gigantic shopping malls from being installed downtown in these spaces, with the exterior of course matching the surrounding architecture.
Many older Russians I've met look very fondly
back at the USSR; younger generations have a
mixed attitude, many just echoing their
parents' sentiments, others enjoying modern
Russia.
We (partner and I) haven't pressed much into how much she actually knows about what was happening politically, but that's the perspective that a lot of other older folk echo. The few older people I have seen pressed on it usually just get stubborn about the bad parts of the USSR and don't want to talk about it.
This seems to be the main point rather than democracy being hard to comprehend or inefficient.
Looks like they're beginning to rewrite it. "Russian state is 1000-years old", "Russia singlehandedly won WW2" and so on.
Combined with "Westerners are evil" rhetoric it helps keep population under control.
> letting Westerners steal their cultural treasures
I cannot see where this comes from. Is there any stealing at all?... The movie Great Wall uses Great Wall in a way that is trade-mark hollywood, i.e., purely symbolic, none of cultural connection at all. The story of Great Wall can be made on almost any world famous building/artifact... If that counts a steal, then hollywood cannot make anything not stealing...
I'd put it on par with a small town's local museum. Maybe the expectation was that people would go to the larger museums downtown, but it seemed surprisingly undersized and thrown together for a large tourist site on a pretty amazing object of historical significance.