This year (2007) St. Petersburg had an honor and privilege to be an organizer of the annual conference of Euroclassica which was held from 19-th to 22-nd of September. It was the first time when such a congress has taken place in Russia. 33 representatives from Austria, Belgium, Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA attended the conference in St. Petersburg. Besides there were 15 participants from Russia (Moscow, Perm, Tomsk, Petrozavodsk, Saratov), Ukraine (Simferopol') and a lot of teachers, scientists and students of Latin and Greek from St. Petersburg.
The conference was opened at the Philological Department of the State St. Petersburg university, the former palace of Prince Peter the Second (beginning of the XVIII century). The participants were greeted by the President of Euroclassica Prof. Francesco de Oliveira, by the representative of the university and the director of the Bibliotheca Classica Petropolitana prof. Alexander Verlinsky, by the director of the Anabasis Foundation for the Support of Classical Education Elena Juzbashjan and the director of Gymnasium Classicum Petropolitanum Sergey Buryachko who addressed the participants in Latin. The programme was quite intensive in order to present to the participants the different aspects of studying classics in Russia and in St. Petersburg in particular: the school and university education (member of Russian Academy of Sciences N. Kazansky, Prof. A. Podossinov, Dr. V. Zelchenko); personalia (Prof. A. Gavrilov spoke about Jakov M. Borovskij a famous Russian scientist and translator who also used to write his poems in Latin). The presentation of Latin manuscripts of St. Petersburg by Dr. V. Mazhuga was to prepare the participants for the visit to the Russian National Library and its Manuscript Department on 21- st of September. Latin inscriptions in St. Petersburg by Dr. O. Budaragina was accompanied by a lot of photos of St. Petersburg architecture preparing the people for the bus tour of the city after the session on the first day of the conference. Finally, Prof. Anton van Hoof told about the first contacts of Euroclassica with Russia at the beginning of 1990 when he visited St. Petersburg and Moscow for the first time. It was a time of great hopes of restoring the classical education which was destroyed partly at the universities and totally at schools during the time of soviet regime in Russia.
The next day the session took place at the State Hermitage Museum. Director Prof. Mikhail Piotrovsky started the meeting with an opening address to the participants. There was a talk of Dr. Nadia Jijina devoted to Greek and Roman art at the Hermitage as a support for pupils and students who study classics, and then Anna Namojlik spoke about Greek inscriptions from Bosporus, Chersonesos, Nympheus and Olbia. Prof. Jos Navarro presented the talk of Prof. Maria-Eleftheria Giatrakou who unfortunately could not attend the conference for the first time in the history of existing of Euroclassica. Dr. Natalia Botvinnik told the audience about the peculiar features of Horace-Pushkin Monument. Andreas Thiel and Peter Glatz presented the web site of Euroclassica where we could see the newborn page of Russia. Finally Prof. Ladislaus and Marie Bolchasy had announcement about a self-study series Artes Latinae and kindly presented their product to the participants. You can find the most of these presentations on the web site of Euroclassica.
Then there was a workshop in the galleries of the Hermitage where the participants could study Scythian gold, Greek and Roman art. In the evening the participants were invited to the Bibliotheca Classica Petropolitana (BICL) where its director Alexander Verlinsky spoke about the history of this institute, its library and the scientific journal Hyperboreus. The people were tired after so long a day; one can see it in the photo. But then they were refreshed by the dinner at Gymnasium Classicum which is located at the same building as BICl which is very helpful both for teachers of Latin and Greek, as well as for the students of the Gymnasium who want to study classics more profoundly. The dinner was accompanied by a shot performance in ancient Greek (from the Dialogs of gods by Lucianus) staged by the pupils of the Gymnasium under the direction of Elena Juzbashijan. Finally all the participants together with the pupils were singing in Latin the Beatles Yellow submarine (Imo sub mari) with guitar accompaniment by our teacher of Latin Elena Zheltova.
I. Municipio meo Fuit nauta nobilis. Ille retulit nobis Laete vivi sub undis.
II. Ergo solvimus rates, Perge, rector, donec stes. Ubi nos, si placet dis, Condat unda viridis.
Twice Flava nave manemus sub mari, Imo sub mari, imo sub mari. Etc. (Trans. M. Pozdnev and V. Zelchenko)
The third day of the conference was devoted to the visit to the Russian National Library, in particular to the Study of Voltaire, the Room of Faust, where the collection of incunambulas and elseviers, books on the chains is on display and to the Department of Manuscripts. After that the participants had a guided bus tour to the palaces and Catherine the Second residence in Tzarskoe Selo.
On Saturday according to the tradition of Euroclassica the General Assembly was held. This year it was especially important as there were elections of a new president of Euroclassica and a new executive committee. One can read about it in Minutes of the General Assembly in St. Petersburg 2007 in Newsletter 16.
This conference was very important for the Russian association of Euroclassica as well because we had an opportunity to meet colleagues from many European countries, to make contacts asking about teaching of Latin and Greek in their countries, to discuss the ideas and projects of Euroclassica with its representatives. On the other hand we used the chance to invite the teachers of Latin and Greek from over Russia to hold the assembly of our association and as a result to expand it including such cities as Tomsk in Siberia, Petrozavodsk in Karelia, Perm and Saratov. Before that only St.Petersburg and Moscow took part in the projects of Euroclassica. We have also given our association a new name Societas Russica Magistrorum Linguarum Classicarum. On January 2008 we plan to attend the annual congress of the university and school teachers in Moscow to promote Euroclassica. We have no opportunity to hold the meetings of the association quite often - Russia is so large, you know. In this way we are going to use actively a web site of our association which is bilingual, English-Russian: www.librarius.narod.ru/scholae. On Friday 20-th of September there was an announcement of Euroclassica conference on television in the news of St.Petersburg and then the report was devoted to this event showing the conference participants and the performance in ancient Greek at the Gymnasium Classicum. Some time later there was issue of the journal St.Petersburg university (#15, October 31, 2007) with the article devoted to our conference (http://journal.spbu.ru). So we used the conference also for lobbing the classical education in St.Petersburg.
For me as an organizer this conference was a great ordeal and I was rewarded when I saw how warm was the meeting of our former student Anna Hesina who visited Academia Latina in 2006 with Eva Tarandi and Barabara Pokorna. Or when Vera Zhizhina, a young teacher of our Gymnasium, its former student and the graduate of 2007 of the Classical Department of the university, met Anton van Hooff and then Jos Navarro who were her teachers in Academia Aestiva 2001. Of course, there were some inconveniences which gave me a kind of stress. I hope that you did not notice some of them. For example, we planned the Neva and canals boat trip on the first day of our conference, but in the afternoon when the session was over I knew that there was a flood and the water level was so high that the canals boat trip - which was always splendid - now was absolutely impossible. Nevertheless we took a risk doing only the Neva trip and this time nature took pity on us showing the marvelous and grand sunset.
I would like to thank vice-president of Euroclassica Francisco de Oliveira who got me to organize the conference of Euroclassica in St. Petersburg and Christine Challer who helped me kindly and patiently giving advices etc. I am also grateful to all the participants who have attended St. Petersburg.
