Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak (1937-2000), a popular democratic leader of Russia, was elected mayor of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) in 1990.

Anatoly A. Sobchak, the urbane mayor of St. Petersburg (named Leningrad in the Soviet era) often mentioned as a future president of Russia, began his life far from the city in which he became famous. Sobchak was born in Chita, east of Lake Baikal in the Soviet far east, an area with a long revolutionary history. Both his grandfather and his father worked for the railroad and participated in the revolution and consolidation of Soviet power in Siberia. Although his family was a humble one, Sobchak revealed that his Czech grandmother tutored the family in the manners of the intelligentsia, which perhaps contributed to his demeanor and image. Like other families, the Sobchaks experienced the cruel hand of Stalinism when his grandfather was arrested in the late 1930s. His...