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Information about St. PetersburgThe lands along the Neva River have belonged to the Ancient Russian state since at least the 9th century AD. From the 9th century onwards this area was part of the Principality of Novgorod. The ancient city of Novgorod was an important center of domestic and international trade and craftsmanship.In the 16th century the power and prosperity of Novgorod was subdued by Moscow and the lands along the Neva River became part of the centralized Russian state - Muscovite Russia. However, at the beginning of the 17th century serious unrest began to brew in Russia, after the last Tsar of the Riurik dynasty - Fiodor Ioanovich (the son of Ivan the Terrible), had died leaving no heirs to the throne. The new ruler, Vasily Shuisky, invited the Swedes to fight on his side. The Swedes realized how weak Russia was, and decided instead to occupy a significant portion of North-Western Russia. Even after the new Romanov dynasty was established in 1613, Russia had to admit some territorial losses. A new border between Russia and Sweden was established by the Stolbovo Treaty of 1617. For the remainder of the century the Neva River area became a part of Sweden, and the Swedes effectively cut off Russia from all Baltic trade routes. By the end of the 17th century Peter the Great was determined to change the status quo, regain access to the Baltic Sea and establish stronger ties with the West. In thehope of achieving these goals he embarked on the Northern War with Sweden (1700-1721). In 1703 the Russians gained control over the Neva river and on May 16, 1703 (May 27 - by the modern calendar) he founded the city of St. Petersburg on the banks of the river. When Peter the Great died in 1725, his wife Catherine assumed power and the city experienced a short decline while various rulers fought over the throne. For a short period, in the late 1720s, the royal court was moved back to Moscow. Many of the nobility and merchants, forced by Peter the Great to move to St. Petersburg, now chose to leave the city. St. Petersburg was only fully revived when Peter's daughter Elizabeth became Empress in 1741. Elizabethan St. Petersburg became a lively European capital and its population reached 150,000 people. During the reign of Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, St. Petersburg developed into a fine European capital to rival those of any in the West. Elizabeth's nephew Peter III did not rule the country for long, but shortly after assuming power was overthrown by his wife, a German princess, who reigned the country as the famous Catherine the Great. Under her rule St. Petersburg was turned into a "Grand City". Catherine the Great assumed power in 1762 after a coup d' etat, which she engineered together with the officers of the Royal Guard. Unlike her husband, she was well loved by the country's elite and received a very good press in Europe thanks to her contacts with various figures of the French Enlightenment. Catherine enjoyed an extremely luxurious and decadent court life and was the first monarch to move into the newly built Winter Palace. Catherine started a royal art collection which later developed into the world-famous Hermitage which required the construction of several additional buildings (the Small Hermitage and the Old Hermitage) along the Neva embankment to house the growing number of exhibits. Catherine commissioned the building of the Hermitage Theater and ensured the area surrounding the palace was adorned with the finest houses and the only the most elegant architecture. When Catherine the Great died in 1796 a whole new period in Russian history started. Catherine's son Paul I introduced some ultra-conservative policies, curtailed the power of the St. Petersburg local administration and made several major steps towards turning Russia into a bureaucratic state. The worst fear in Paul's life was the fear of being assassinated. In an attempt to protect himself from the threat of assassination, he built a fortified palace for himself - the Mikhailovsky Castle. However, his paranoia was little help in the end and Paul was assassinated on March 12 1801 in his private bedroom in the newly built castle. On his assumption of power, Alexander I introduced a series of political reforms, which entirely restructured the government and included the creation in 1802 of a system of ministries with ministers reporting directly to the monarch and the founding in 1810 of a State Council. When Alexander I suddenly died in the town of Taganrog (some say, he ran away to Siberia to escape the heavy burden of power) in December 1825, a political crisis erupted. A group of liberal young army officers (later called the "Decembrists") started a revolt, hoping that Nicholas I, Alexander's younger brother, would have to sign and endorse a National Constitution. They brought their soldiers to Senate square by the Bronze Horseman, but remained inactive. The uprising was cruelly crushed, the five organizers executed and the rest exiled to Siberia. In response to the Decembrist Uprising the new Emperor, Nicholas I, chose to adopt a much more conservative series of policies and Russia once again degenerated into an economically backward bureaucratic state. In the Imperial capital, St. Petersburg, the desire for military-like orderliness reached ridiculous heights and military order was established throughout the city in all manner of institutions. Paradoxically, culture flourished in St. Petersburg despite this oppressive regime. Alexander Pushkin wrote some of his best poetry, before being killed in a duel in 1837, Mikhail Glinka, one of the first great Russian composers, wrote his best operas and chamber music and Fiodor Dostoyevsky lived and wrote in St. Petersburg between 1837 and 1844. When Alexander II was crowned Russian Emperor, the country was still reeling with a humiliating defeat at the hands of Napoleon in the Crimean War. Something had to be done to boost the national economy and ensure political stability. With this in mind, the Emporer undertook a series of reforms, which included the emancipation of the serfs 1861. Despite the scale of these reforms some revolutionaries still considered Alexander to be too conservative in outlook. After a series of assassination attempts, on March 1 1881 Alexander II was fatally wounded and died the same day and the magnificent Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (1883-1907) was built in his memory on the exact spot of his assassination. The "Silver Age" of the city This period in the city's history was both brilliant and troublesome. It all began with the splendid coronation of Nicholas II in Moscow. In January 1905, when a peaceful demonstration of workers was fired on by troops on Palace Square. This triggered public outrage and marked the start of the 1905-1907 Revolution. The events of January 9 1905 rapidly became known as "Bloody Sunday". On October 17 1905 Nicholas II was forced to issue a manifesto proclaiming a number of civil rights and instituting a new parliament, consisting of the Duma and the reformed State Council. St. Petersburg enjoyed a cultural revival which became known as the "Silver Age" and involved many of the city's best known artists, musicians, composers, writers and poets. When World War I broke out in August 1914 it was decided to change the name of the Russian capital from the Germanic St. Petersburg to the more Russian equivalent, Petrograd. Germany was now Russia's enemy and all of the forces within the country's power had to be employed to defeat her. Most of the city's industry began to work to support the war effort and many of Petrograd's buildings, including a large portion of the Winter Palace, were turned into hospitals. Most construction work in the city stopped. The war did not progress well for Russia. The Tsar's government discredited itself and political tensions began to rise. The political and economic crisis continued throughout 1917 and in the fall the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, grasped political power. On October 25 (November 7) 1917 blank shot fired by the cruiser "Aurora" gave the signal to the waiting workers and soldiers to storm the Winter Palace, the current residence of the democratic, but largely inefficient Provisional Government. Most of the ministers were arrested and thus began 73 long years of Communist rule. At the beginning of 1918 Civil War (1918-1921) broke out and the revolutionary soldiers and workers of Petrograd became the core of the Red Guard, which later turned into the Red Army. After the end of the Civil War the city of Petrograd started to recover under the New Economic Policy (NEP), which had been proclaimed by the Bolsheviks and allowed certain elements of a market economy to operate. In 1924 the name of the city was changed to Leningrad, a symbol of its transition to a Socialist city. A Socialist City: Leningrad (1924-1941) Shortly after the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin died, the city was renamed Leningrad (supposedly by public demand). During the years of the Revolution the population of the city had dropped dramatically and the city was slow to recover from the rigors and tragedies of the war. In the late 1920s mass construction of cheap housing for workers became a very prominent feature of the Leningrad landscape. Many cultural centers, "palaces of culture", were built to provide the city's people with entertainment, clubs and other social activities. In terms of architecture most of what was built was rather modern and less than inspiring. The 900-day Siege of Leningrad This was undoubtedly the most tragic period in the history of the city, a period full of suffering and heroism. For everyone who lives in St. Petersburg the Blokada (the Siege) of Leningrad is an important part of the city's heritage and a painful memory for the population's older generations. Less than two and a half months after the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, German troops were already approaching Leningrad. The Red Army was outflanked and on September 8 1941 the Germans had fully encircled Leningrad and the siege began. The siege lasted for a total of 900 days, from September 8 1941 until January 27 1944. The city's almost 3 million civilians (including about 400,000 children) refused to surrender and endured rapidly increasing hardships in the encircled city. Food and fuel stocks were limited to a mere 1-2 month supply, public transport was not operational and by the winter of 1941-42 there was no heating, no water supply, almost no electricity and very little food. In January 1942 in the depths of an unusually cold winter, the city's food rations reached an all time low of only 125 grams (about 1/4 of a pound) of bread per person per day. In just two months, January and February of 1942, 200,000 people died in Leningrad of cold and starvation. Despite these tragic losses and the inhuman conditions the city's war industries still continued to work and the city did not surrender. In January 1943 the Siege was broken and a year later, on January 27 1944 it was fully lifted. At least 641,000 people had died in Leningrad during the Siege (some estimates put this figure closer to 800,000). Most of them were buried in mass graves in different cemeteries, with the majority in the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery, resting place to over 500,000 people and a timeless reminder of the heroic deeds of the city. St. Petersburg today The 1970s and the early 1980s were a period of stability for the Soviet Union and for Leningrad. Though political freedoms were greatly limited, most of the city's population enjoyed relative prosperity. When the government initiated the reforms known worldwide as Perestroika, stability rapidly disappeared and the population began experiencing economic hardship as the government quibbled over reforms. In 1991, after a city-wide referendum, the city of Leningrad returned to its original name - St. Petersburg. Now, just after the turn of the new millenium St. Petersburg is still in a transition period, both economically and socially. While the city's industries is still in recession, services and retail sales are gradually improving and more and more foreign businesses are being attracted to the city;s new business climate. |
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