ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia's baroque czarist capital is girded this weekend to wrap President Bush and nearly 45 other world leaders in an extravagant bear hug to celebrate its 300th birthday.
Peter, as the locals call the city, has perhaps not been at once this radiant and this tense since the October Revolution, in 1917.
Aboard a gleaming white cruise liner in the Neva River, President Vladimir V. Putin convened a summit meeting Friday of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the club of leaders of former Soviet nations. On Saturday comes a summit meeting with leaders of the European Union, followed on Sunday by a 90-minute one-on-one with Bush.
So much for the official excuses for this weekend's appearance of most global statesmen, leaders from Italy to India and China to the Czech Republic, in this city of 4.5 million. This is a weekend of laser shows, concerts, sailing regattas, historic tours and literally palatial parties in an imperial city where it currently does not get dark until well after 1 a.m.
Every minute bears the personal stamp of Putin, a native Petersburger whose passion for his hometown has propelled more than $1.3 billion in federal spending to replaster and paint his city's grimy facades, repave its roads and repair its great monuments for the party.
Private businesses contributed at least another $290 million to restore the Konstantin Palace, conceived by Peter the Great as his personal Versailles, and prepare it for Saturday's European summit meeting.
Many ordinary people here are grousing about the spending on palaces rather than on crumbling infrastructure, about the smell of corruption in repair contracts and about the omnipresent security that has kept them a discreet distance from the prime, VIP spots to view the celebrations.
But beneath the grumbling runs a thread of pride that Russia's second city is getting its long-delayed due.
"We took lots of pictures and bought lots of postcards, and we're going to make albums to celebrate the anniversary of my city," 77-year-old Anna K. Kostina said as she stood in Palace Square after having her photo snapped with an actor dressed as Peter the Great. "We'll send copies to all our relatives — in Ukraine, in Voronezh, in Pittsburgh."
Peter was gloriously sunny and cloudless most of this week. But as skies began to glower Friday, the government ordered a fleet of 10 military aircraft aloft to bomb the approaching clouds with "environmentally pure substances and internationally certified chemicals" to wring the rain from them before they reached town.
It was a master example of the fastidiousness with which officials have approached this grand city's tricentennial. But as VIP planes began heading en masse into Pulkovo Airport on Friday afternoon, it was cloudy and drizzling.