History

St.Petersburg is inexorably linked with the personality of its founder, Tsar Peter I. Peter was the grandson of Mikhail Romanov, founder of the Romanov dynasty which ruled Russia from 1613 until 1917. Peter inherited a Russia that was too backward for his taste. Trade was relatively undeveloped due to the lack of access to a warm-water port (the Baltic belonged to the Swedes and the Black Sea was in Turkish hands) and the populace, even the aristocracy, was for the most part uneducated.

Peter’s first goal was to turn Russia into a formidable naval power. He had seen navies and wanted one too. With this in mind he attacked both north and south, taking Azov Sea from the Turks in the south in 1696 and then in 1703 driving the Swedes from the Neva delta, seizing the fortress-town Noteburg and renaming it Schlusselburg (Petrolrepost). In order to strengthen the northern position Peter decided to build a second fortress on the Neva delta.

On May,1703 Peter laid the first stone of the fortress he named St.Petersburg in honor of St.Peter, guardian of the gates of Heaven. Across the river from the fortress Peter built a shipyard (the Admiralty). Peter then figured why not build a city around his little fortress and shipyard, providing Russia with a trading port and a “window onto Europe” through which Russia could hopefully catch Poland in her underwear.

Geological conditions presented Peter with a formidable challenge. In many areas the ground was so soft that huge wooden planks had to be laid as foundation to prevent buildings from sinking. During the initial phases of construction thousands of peasants and workers died of malaria or scurvy and many were picked off by marauding wolves, earning Petersburg the epithet “the city laid on bones”. In 1712 Peter decided to make St. Petersburg Russia’s capital and required the aristocracy to move here and build lavish homes for themselves (at their own expense), as well as chip in to help build government buildings.

Petersburg after Peter

The 18^th century saw St. Petesburg develop not only into Russia’s political and economic center but into its cultural center as well. Russian and European culture met in St. Petersburg, with more and more members of the aristocracy studying abroad and learning foreign languages at home. While the rest of Russia remained mired in backwardness, Petersburg flourished under the auspices of the nobility and the merchant classes that were based here. By the end of the 18^th century secular literature and art (previously forbidden) had began to develop, setting the stage for the tremendous flowering of the arts during 19^th century.
For seventy-one years after Peter the Great’s death Russia was ruled almost exclusively by women.
The Bronze Horseman, an impressive monument to the founder of St Petersburg, Peter the Great, was built by order of the Empress Catherine the Great as a tribute to her famous predecessor on the Russian throne. An inscription on the monument reads in Latin and Russian: Petro Primo Catarina Secunda - To Peter the First from Catherine the Second.

Catherine the Great

Of all the empresses, Cahterine II (later known as Catherine the Great) deserves special note.Under her rule Russia experienced the “golden age of the nobility” where the aristocracy was permitted to forego state service and concentrate on their personal affairs. The Russian Empire expanded into the Crimea and, together with Prussia and Austria, partitioned Poland three times, controlling Warsaw until 1918. Under Catherine, Russia grew into the great European power Peter the Great had envisaged one hundred years before.

In 1873 a monument to Catherine the Great was built in a small garden just off Nevsky Prospect (between the Public Library and the Alexandrinsky Theater). Thousands of people come to visit the tomb of the city's greatest and most progressive monarch every year in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

The Decembrists’ Uprising

Anti-authoritarian sentiments burst into open demonstration in December 1825.The throne passed to Nicholas I, who had a reputation as an autocratic hard-ass. A group of disgruntled army officers gathered in Senat Square, proclaimed their loyalty to Nicholas and demanded such outrageous things as representation in the government and an end to serfdom.

Nicholas responded by bringing in loyal troops and forcing the rebels (later known as the Decembrists) to surrender. They were sent to the dungeons at the Peter and Paul Fortress, the ringleaders were hanged, and that was the last Russia heard of reform for a while.

There is no question that this revolt, combined with the waning of autocracy across Europe, profoundly affected Nicholas I’s way of thinking. Fearing revolution in any shape or form, his reign became intensely repressive with censorship heavily enforced, education abroad curtailed, and a system of secret police and internal spies put into operation. Nonetheless Petersburg was buzzing with underground discussion groups working out alternative ideas and philosophies, and Russia experienced a golden age of literature with Puskin, Lermontov and Gogol writing their seminal works and Dostoevsky and Turgenev launching their literary careers.

The Last Tsar

The last tsar, Nicholas II, was not a bad man. His wife, Alexandra, totally dominated him and together they were unprepared to deal with the tremendous crises that faced Russia. His reign was punctuated with one disaster after another, from worker and peasant uprisings to defeat in war with Japan, and his final rating as tsar suffers a lot from the fact that the four-hundred-year Romanov Dynasty ended during his reign.

The First Russian Revolution

The first major disaster happened on January 9, 1905. A crowd of workers marched to Palace square with a peaceful petition asking for better working conditions. Troops opened fire on the marchers and in the ensuing panic about one hundred died and thousands were wounded. This triggered public outrage and marked the start of the 1905-07 Revolution. The events of January rapidly became known as "Bloody Sunday".

World War and Revolution

At the onset of World War I Russians heeded the call for unity in order to concentrate on the war effort, and in a show of anti-German feeling, St. Petersburg was given the more Russian sounding name of Petrograd. Germany was now Russia's enemy and all of the forces within the country's power had to be employed to defeat her.The war did not progress well for Russia.

In 1917 the workers’ protests turned into a general strike and brought angry crowds to Palace Square, but this time policeman and soldiers refused to fire them. A provisional government was declared and Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate. It was to Petrograd’s Finland Station that Lenin, the Bolsheviks’ leader traveled in April to organize the Bolshevik Party. Lenin saw his opportunity, and on the night of October 24 after a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora on the river Neva the Bolsheviks’ Red Army garrisons seized government buildings and communication centers, arresting the members of provisional government and declaring a new government of the soviets. This coup d’etat  came to be known as the October Revolution.

A Capital Shake-up

By the beginning of 1918 German troops were so close to Petrograd that the Bolshevik government under Vladimir Lenin decided to move the capital to Moscow, which was still a long way from the German front. A depleted Petersburg took a back seat as Moscow re-emerged as Russia’s political and economic center. After the end of the Civil War the city of Petrograd started to recover under the New Economic Policy, which had been proclaimed by the Bolsheviks and allowed certain elements of a market economy to operate. Shortly after the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin died. In 1924 the city was renamed Leningrad (supposedly by public demand).  
Stalin following Lenin’s death. He despised Petersburg and its ties with both tsarism and the old revolutionaries who overthrew it. This marked the beginning of the Great Purges, during which millions of people were killed or sent to labor camps (gulags).

The Great Patriotic War

The Great Patriotic War is dated from 1941 until 1945. As the birthplace of Bolshevism, Hitler ordered to wipe Leningrad  from the face of the earth and the city was blockaded for 872 days, shelling incessantly in an attempt to destroy the population’s will. Leningrad did not give in and the blockade was eventually broken on 27 January 1944. More than 150,000 shells and bombs were dropped on the city during the Blockade and over half a million civilians had perished.

After the war, Leningrad – proclaimed a “city-hero”- was reconstructed and reborn. Following Stalin’s death things here stayed reasonably calm through the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years.

Moscow was the undisputed center of the USSR although Leningrad remained Russia’s cultural center, with many exciting innovations in art, popular music and literature.
In 1991 the Leningrad citizens voted to bring back the name of St.Petersburg and since then the city re-established itself as Russia’s window to the Europe.