This year's International Economic Forum in St Petersburg marks a further stage in the development of Russia's second capital, another year of Russia's growth, and an additional move in the country's repatriation of its ideas of itself. If the disintegration of the USSR was understandably followed by a search for new anchors of meaning in a changed world, Russia's recovery has now brought it to a new point: President Putin stressed on 26 April in his annual report to the Federal Assembly the need for a common set of guidelines, including respect towards the Russian language, the country's independent heritage, the memory of its ancestors, and "every page of our fatherland's history."