History of Saint Petersburg

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great

The city of Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703. It became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained as such for more than two hundred years (1712–1728, 1732–1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the October Coup.[1]

The new capital

Latin: Sankt, as in Sankt Goar and some other European cities (it is a common misconception about the "Dutch cultural origin"; for local versions, there are Sant[2] or Sint in modern Dutch. Besides Netherlands, Peter the Great also spent three months in Great Britain so it is preferable to speak about the general European experience which influenced the tsar.)[3]

St. Petersburg is actually used as an English equivalent to three variant forms of the name: originally Санкт-Питер-Бурх (Sankt Piter-Burkh), later Санкт-Петерсбурх (Sankt Petersburkh), and then Санкт-Петербург (Sankt Peterburg). The full name is often substituted by the abbreviation SPb (СПб). Sankt was usually confined to writing; people usually called it Петербург (Peterburg) or the common nickname Питер (Piter). Petrograd (Петроград), the name given in 1914 on the outbreak of World War I to avoid the German sound of Petersburg, was a Slavic translation of the previous name. The name was changed to Leningrad (Ленинград) in 1924.

The city was built under adverse weather and geographical conditions. The high mortality rate required a constant supply of workers. Peter ordered a yearly conscription of 40,000

serfs, one conscript for every nine to sixteen households. Conscripts had to provide their own tools and food for the journey of hundreds of kilometres, on foot, in gangs, often escorted by military guards and shackled to prevent desertion, but many escaped; others died from disease and exposure under the harsh conditions.[4]

The new city's first building was the

Dutch engineers whom Peter had invited to Russia. Peter restricted the construction of stone buildings in all of Russia outside St Petersburg so that all stonemasons would come to help build the new city.[5]

At the same time Peter hired a large number of engineers, architects, shipbuilders, scientists and businessmen from all countries of Europe. Substantial immigration of educated professionals eventually turned St. Petersburg into a much more cosmopolitan city than Moscow and the rest of Russia. Peter's efforts to push for modernization in Moscow and the rest of Russia were completely misunderstood by the old-fashioned Russian nobility and eventually failed, causing him much trouble with opposition, including several attempts on his life and the treason involving his own son.[6]

Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the

Cornelis Cruys, commander of the Baltic Fleet. Inspired by Venice and Amsterdam, Peter the Great proposed boats and coracles as means of transport in his city of canals. Initially there were only 12 permanent bridges over smaller waterways, while the Great Neva was crossed by boats in the summertime and by foot or horse carriages during winter. A pontoon bridge
over Neva was built every summer.

Peter was impressed by the

Great Peterhof Palace were built between 1714 and 1725.[7] In 1716, Prussia's King presented a gift to Tsar Peter: the Amber Room.[8]

St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was established in the city. After the death of Peter the Great, Menshikov was arrested and exiled to Siberia. In 1728 Peter II of Russia
moved the capital back to Moscow, but four years later, in 1732, St. Petersburg again became the capital of Russia and remained the seat of the government for about two centuries.

Revolutions

The Church of the Savior on Blood commemorates the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated
The protected cruiser Aurora, symbol of the October Revolution, now a museum
Lenin's mug shot 1895

Several revolutions, uprisings, assassinations of tsars, and power takeovers in St. Peterburg had shaped the course of history in Russia and influenced the world. In 1801, after the assassination of the Emperor Paul I, his son became the Emperor Alexander I. Alexander I ruled Russia during the Napoleonic Wars and expanded his Empire by acquisitions of Finland and part of Poland. His mysterious death in 1825 was marked by the Decembrist revolt, which was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas I, who ordered execution of leaders and exiled hundreds of their followers to Siberia. Nicholas I then pushed for Russian nationalism by suppressing non-Russian nationalities and religions.[9]

The cultural revolution that followed after the Napoleonic wars further opened St. Petersburg up, in spite of repression. The city's wealth and rapid growth had always attracted prominent intellectuals, scientists, writers and artists. St. Petersburg eventually gained international recognition as a gateway for trade and business, as well as a cosmopolitan cultural hub. The works of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
and numerous others brought Russian literature to the world. Music, theatre and ballet became firmly established and gained international stature.

The son of Emperor Nicholas I, Emperor

emancipation of the serfs
(1861) caused the influx of large numbers of poor into the capital. Tenements were erected on the outskirts, and nascent industry sprang up, surpassing Moscow in population and industrial growth. By 1900, St. Petersburg had grown into one of the largest industrial hubs in Europe, an important international center of power, business and politics, and the fourth largest city in Europe.

With the growth of industry, radical movements were also astir. Socialist organizations were responsible for the assassinations of many public figures, government officials, members of the royal family, and the tsar himself. Tsar

Lenin and other revolutionaries. The Revolution of 1905 initiated here and spread rapidly into the provinces. During World War I, the name Sankt Peterburg was seen to be too German, so the city was renamed Petrograd.[11]

1917 saw the next stages of the Russian Revolution

Provisional government and the "pro-communist" Petrograd Soviet.[14] Then the Provisional government was overthrown by the communists in the October Revolution,[15] causing the Russian Civil War
.

The city's proximity to anti-Soviet armies forced communist leader Vladimir Lenin to move his government to Moscow on 5 March 1918. The move was disguised as temporary, but Moscow has remained the capital ever since. On 24 January 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. The Communist party's reason for renaming the city again was that Lenin had led the revolution. After the Civil War, and murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, as well as millions of anti-Soviet people, the renaming to Leningrad was designed to destroy last hopes among the resistance, and show strong dictatorship of Lenin's communist party and the Soviet regime.[16][17]

St. Petersburg was devastated by Lenin's Red Terror[18] then by Stalin's Great Purge[19] in addition to crime and vandalism in the series of revolutions and wars. Between 1917 and 1930s, about two million people fled the city, including hundreds of thousands of educated intellectuals and aristocracy, who emigrated to Europe and America. At the same time many political, social and paramilitary groups had followed the communist government in their move to Moscow, as the benefits of capital status had left the city. In 1931 Leningrad administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast.

In 1934 the popular governor of Leningrad,

Leningrad Affair,[22]
were fabricated and resulted in death sentences for many top leaders of Leningrad, and severe repressions of thousands of top officials and intellectuals.

Siege of Leningrad

Main article: Siege of Leningrad

During

Hitler's order the Wehrmacht constantly shelled and bombed the city and systematically isolated it from any supplies, causing death of more than 1 million civilians in three years; 650,000 died in 1942 alone.[23] The secret instruction from 23 September 1941 said: "the Führer is determined to eliminate the city of Petersburg from the face of earth. There is no reason whatsoever for subsequent existence of this large-scale city after the neutralization of the Soviet Russia." Starting in early 1942, Ingria was included into the Generalplan Ost
annexation plans as the "German settlement area". This implied the genocide of 3 million Leningrad residents, who had no place in Hitler's "New East European Order".

Hitler ordered preparations for victory celebrations at the tsar's palaces. The Germans looted art from museums and palaces, as well as from private homes. All looted treasures, such as the Amber Room, gold statues of the Peterhof Palace, paintings and other valuable art were taken to Germany. Hitler also prepared a party to celebrate his victory at the hotel Astoria. A printed invitation to Hitler's reception ball at the Hotel Astoria is now on display at the City Museum of St. Petersburg.

During the siege of 1941–1944, the only ways to supply the city and suburbs, inhabited by several millions, were by aircraft or by cars crossing the frozen Lake Ladoga. The German military systematically shelled this route, called the Road of Life, so thousands of cars with people and food supplies had sunk in the lake. The situation in the city was especially horrible in the winter of 1941–1942. The German bombing raids destroyed most of the food reserves. The daily food ration was cut in October to 400 grams of bread for a worker and 200 grams for a woman or child. On 20 November 1941, the rations were reduced to 250 and 125 grams respectively. Those grams of bread were the bulk of a daily meal for a person in the city. The water supply was destroyed. The situation further worsened in winter due to lack of heating fuel. In December 1941 alone some 53,000 people in Leningrad died of starvation, many corpses were scattered in the streets all over the city.

"Savichevs died. Everyone died. Only Tanya is left," wrote 11-year-old Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva in her diary. It became one of the symbols of the blockade tragedy and was shown as one of many documents at the Nuremberg trials.

The city suffered severe destruction – the Wehrmacht fired about 150,000 shells at Leningrad and the Luftwaffe dropped about 100,000 air bombs. Many houses, schools, hospitals and other buildings were leveled, and those in the occupied territory were plundered by German troops.

As a result of the siege, about 1.2 million of 3 million Leningrad civilians lost their lives because of bombardment, starvation, infections and stress. Hundreds of thousands of unregistered civilians, who lived in Leningrad prior to WWII, had perished in the siege without any record at all. About 1 million civilians escaped with evacuation, mainly by foot. After two years of the siege, Leningrad became an empty ghost town with thousands of ruined and abandoned homes.

For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the siege, Leningrad became the first to receive the Hero City title, as awarded in 1945.

Postwar reconstruction

Saint Petersburg TV Tower (326 m high)
Kirov Stadium
Hotel Pribaltiyskaya

The war damaged the city and killed many old Petersburgers who had not fled after the revolution and did not perish in the mass purges before the war. Nonetheless, Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. In 1950 the

Leningrad Metro, the second underground rapid transit system in the country, was opened with its first six stations decorated with marble and bronze
.

Timeline of post-war recovery

1945–1970s

1946

  • January – December: some schools, universities, and colleges reopened.
  • January – December: some theatres and movies were opened to the public.

1947

  • May: The fountains of Peterhof park were opened to the public again, but the palaces were in ruins for the next several decades.

1949

Stalin set up a plot to have the leaders of the city government arrested and killed.

Leningrad Affair
.

1955

  • Leningrad Metro
    , which was designed before the war in the 1930s to serve as an underground shelter, was completed after the war and opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. It became the second underground rapid transit system in the country.
  • The population of Leningrad, including suburbs, increased in the 10 post-war years from under 0.8 million to about 4 million.

1960s

  • The Ilya Repin House Museum is restored in the northern suburb of Repino, and open to the public. However, most of the artist's original paintings and personal items remain missing since the Finnish army was there during WWII.

1970s

  • The Memorial to Defenders and Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad is erected at the former defence lines on
    Moskovsky Prospekt near Pulkovo Airport
    .

2003

  • May: the Amber Room was re-created with the sponsorship of Germany. It is open to the public in the completely restored Catherine Palace.
  • 27–31 May marked the 300-year anniversary of the city.

2004

  • January: the 60th anniversary of the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944 was officially celebrated in St. Petersburg on 27 January 2004. About twelve thousand survivors of the siege who were children at the time of WWII, are now living on a state pension in St. Petersburg and suburbs. Tens of thousands of other survivors, who were evacuated from besieged Leningrad as children, are still living in Russia and other countries across the world.

Postwar history

During the late 1940s and 1950s the political and cultural elite of Leningrad suffered from more harsh repression under the dictatorship of Stalin

redistribution of wealth caused struggles within the Soviet government and communist party, which led to their fragmentation and played a role in the eventual collapse of the USSR.[citation needed
]

On 12 June 1991, the day of the

mayor of the city.[28]
Among his first initiatives, Sobchak attempted to minimise Moscow's federal control to keep the income from St. Petersburg's economy in the city.

Original names were returned to 39 streets, six bridges, three Saint Petersburg Metro stations and six parks. Older people sometimes use old names and old mailing addresses. The media heavily promoted[when?] the name Leningrad, mainly in connection with the siege, so even authorities may refer to Saint Petersburg as the "Hero city Leningrad". Young people may use Leningrad as a vague protest against social and economic changes. A popular ska punk band from Saint Petersburg is called Leningrad.

federal subject of Russia
of which the city of St. Petersburg is the capital.

In 1996,

city legislature
re-appointed her as governor.

The Constitutional Court of Russia completed its move from Moscow to Senate Square in St. Petersburg in 2008. The move partially restored Saint Petersburg's historic status, making the city Russia's second judicial capital.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 1-57912-433-X
    )
  2. ^ Cf. Sant Georg am See in an article written in Dutch.
  3. ^ W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (Basic Books, 2000).
  4. ISBN 0-517-06483-9
    )
  5. ^ The St. Petersburg of Peter the Great
  6. ^ Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978)
  7. ISBN 0-7892-0217-4
  8. ^ Peter the Great's amber room reborn
  9. ISBN 0-7432-7332-X
  10. ISBN 0-7432-7332-X
  11. ISBN 0-679-43572-7
  12. ISBN 0-521-84155-0
  13. ^ Tony Cliff "Lenin: All power to the Soviets" Lenin: All Power to the Soviets 1976 Pluto Press
  14. ^ Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution (New York, 1990)
  15. ISBN 0-14-018293-4
  16. ^ Leon Trotsky. Memoir and Critique. New York, 1989.
  17. ^ Felix Yusupov. Memoirs, Lost Splendor, New York, 1953.
  18. ISBN 1-4000-4005-1
  19. ^ Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6
  20. ISBN 0-7615-0718-3
  21. ^ Great Purges: Great Purges Archived 17 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine Spartacus Educational
  22. ^ Stalin and the Betrayal of Leningrad by John Barber
  23. ^ The siege of Leningrad 8 September 1941 – 27 January 1944 Archived 22 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ "Medics and the siege" a book by a group of Medical Doctors studying starvation, epidemics, stress, and other diseases during the siege of Leningrad. Russian original: "Медики и блокада" Татьяна Михайлова, Лидия Веришкина. 2005. St. Petersburg.
  25. ISBN 0-7615-0718-3
  26. ^ Russian publication: Ленинградское дело – надо ли ставить кавычки? Archived 11 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ Russian publication: Маленков против Жданова. Игры сталинских фаворитов. [1]
  28. ^
    ISBN 0-679-41376-6

Bibliography

See also: Timeline of Saint Petersburg § Bibliography
  • Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. (Frances Lincoln, 2006).
  • Anokhin, A. A., et al. "Post-Soviet urban environment: the experience of St. Petersburg." Regional research of Russia 7.3 (2017): 249–258. online
  • Barskova, Polina. "The Spectacle of the Besieged City: Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 1941–1944." Slavic Review (2010): 327–355. online
  • Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. (McGuill-Queen's University Press, 1976).
  • Brumfield, William Craft. The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
  • Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
  • Clapperton, James. "The siege of Leningrad as sacred narrative: conversations with survivors." Oral History (2007): 49–60. online, primary sources
  • Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • Cross, Anthony, ed. St. Petersburg, 1703–1825. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
  • George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003.
    ISBN 1-58979-017-0
    .
  • Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941–1944. (UP of Kansas, 2002).
  • Hare, Richard. "St. Petersburg Petrograd Leningrad 1703-1953" History Today (Dec 1953) 3#12 pp 823–834. popular
  • Hughes, Lindsey. Peter the Great: a Biography (Yale UP, 2004) pp 203–247.
  • Hwang, Kiun. Framing, Walking, and Reimagining Landscapes in a Post-Soviet St. Petersburg: Cultural Heritage, Cinema, and Identity'" (PhD Diss. U of Pittsburgh, 2020) online .
  • Jones, Michael. Leningrad: State of siege (Basic Books, 2008).
  • Kelly, Catriona. "'The Hermitage and My Own Front Door': Local Identities in St. Petersburg." Ab Imperio 2010.4 (2010): 463-505. online
  • Keenan, Paul. St Petersburg and the Russian court, 1703-1761 (Springer, 2013).
  • Kirschenbaum, Lisa. "Remembering and Rebuilding: Leningrad after the Siege from a Comparative Perspective." Journal of Modern European History 9.3 (2011): 314-327. online
  • Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge UP, 2006).
  • Klapuri, Tintti. "Literary St. Petersburg in Contemporary Russian Transnational Writing: Anya Ulinich, Gary Shteyngart, and Zinaida Lindén." Scando-Slavica 62.2 (2016): 235-248.
  • Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. (Basic Books, 2000).
  • Maddox, Steven M. Saving Stalin's Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930-1950 (Indiana UP, 2014).
    • Maddox, Steven. "Healing the Wounds: Commemorations, Myths, and the Restoration of Leningrad's Imperial Heritage, 1941-1950" (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008) online
  • Miles, Jonathan. St. Petersburg (2019), cultural history.
  • Morel, Thierry and Elizaveta Renne. The Splendor of St. Petersburg: Art & Life in Late Imperial Palaces of Russia (2019) excerpt
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  • Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. (St. Martin's, 1995).
  • Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. (U of California Press, 1990).
  • Ruble, Blair A. “The Leningrad Affair and the Provincialization of Leningrad.” Russian Review 42#3 (1983), pp. 301–320. online
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  • Zlatar, Zdenko. "'For the Sake of Slavdom': St. Petersburg Slavic Benevolent Society-A Collective Portrait of 1913." East European Quarterly 38.3 (2004): 261+.
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