Saint Petersburg

Peter the Great is a colossal phenomenon in Russian history with no other figure of a similar stature. His age, from the late seventeenth century through the first quarter of the eighteenth, was the era of great achievements and brilliant military victories, the time when Russia joined the European family of peoples. Perhaps there was not a single sphere in the country's life that Peter would not change by his iron will according to European models. "He was your god, Russia!" exclaimed the poet Mikhail Lomonosov in his ode devoted to the Emperor. Peter the Great introduced new forms of governing the country, put in order church affairs, established the Academy of Sciences and founded the first Russian museum - the Kunstkammer. He put up large new factories and plants, improved the tax system, introduced more perfect methods in agriculture and horticulture, built new roads, organized trade and postal communication. Many of his reforms have become an essential part of our very being so that now we cannot imagine ourselves living in a different way. It is from Peter's age on that we begin our calendar year in January basing our chronology on the birth of Christ. We read books written in the language innovated by the efforts of Peter the Great, and we are indebted to him even for the typeface used in these books. It was in the time of Peter the Great that the first Russian newspapers, secular schools and secular books appeared. "Wine-making, chemists' shops, military hospitals, medicines - we owe all these innovations to the indomitable activities of Peter the Great.

The poet Alexander Pushkin wrote that "Russia entered Europe during the age of Peter the Great as a ship moving down its building slips - accompanied by the striking of axes and the thunder of cannon." The focus of this activity was St Petersburg, the new capital of Russia and "a window onto Europe".

Portrait of Peter the Great Lacquered miniature. 18th century

Three hundred years ago, during the age of Peter the Great, nobody thought about the brilliant grandeur of the capital city on "moss-grown, boggy shores", as Pushkin put it. This territory, then called Ingermanland or Ingria, with the mixed Finnish, Swedish and Izhora population, was ceded to Sweden according to the Stolbovo Treaty of 1617, although it had been part of the Yodsky piatina (district) of the Novgorod Principality before. Ingria blocked Muscovy's access to the sea and a war against Sweden was imminent. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the lands around the Neva turned out to be the stage of the prolonged Russo-Swedish conflict known as the Northern War. It was then, to an accompaniment of cannon fire, in gunpowder smoke, that the future capital of Peter's renovated Russia was born.

The course of events was rapid. On 1 May 1703 the Swedish fortress Nyenskans on the right bank of the Neva surrendered, but the Swedish fleet still threateningly loomed in the distance. It was necessary to control the delta of the Neva and the Tsar made up his mind to build a fortress on an islet located in the widest part of the river where it divides into two branches. The islet was called Hare Island by the Finns and Merry Island by the Swedes. On l6May 1703 work on the site began: sand-banks were artificially raised above the water level, long piles were driven into the bottom and earthen ramparts were put up. In June, the foundations of a wooden church consecrated to the Apostles Peter and Paul, a predecessor of the present-day SS Peter and Paul Cathedral, were laid down. It was then that the fortress was named Saint Petersburg. Under the protection of the fortress ramparts and cannon construction work on Birch Island (now the Petrograd Side) began. A modest timber house called the Red Chamber or the Original Palace (now the memorial Log Cabin of Peter the Greaton the Petrovskaya Embankment) was erected within three days for the Tsar. Soon the first pontoon bridge, a trading arcade and a landing-stage were built, and the first ship with goods moored there. Thus a new city was born as a fortress and a port in the conditions of the war and it was destined to have a great future. The burgeoning city derived its name from the fortress and became the embodiment of the reforms introduced into Russian life by Peter the Great. At first St Petersburg grew in a haphazard way and its future wholly depended on the outcome of the Northern War. In the Battle of Poltava, which took place on 27 June 1709, the Russian troops dealt a crushing blow to the Swedish army. This crucial victor became a new "foundation stone" in the construction of the city on the Neva. In 1712 the royal family moved from Moscow to St Petersburg, together with the government collegias or ministries and numerous dignitaries. And although there was no official decree about the shift of the capital, the new city became the centre of life in the Russian State. The Tsar-Reformer built his favourite "paradise" with a wide sweep and passion, inviting architects from Holland, France and Germany. Peter's ideal was Amsterdam - an accurate, businesslike city that charmed him during his travel abroad. The stone St Petersburg was to replace the wooden Moscow and to win fame as the new Rome, and that is why Peter made the coat-of-arms of his new capital similar to that of the Vatican.

Peter the Great died in 1725 and towards the end of his reign St Petersburg ranked with the largest cities in Russia -one eighth of the entire urban population of the state lived in the northern capital. After the death of the first Russian emperor fate seemed to play with the throne entrusting the crown now to an unstable teenager, now to a child and now to a woman - the latter had never occurred in Russian history before. The appearance of the capital changed in the course of time. Founded as a fortress, port and wharf, St Petersburggradually began to develop into a magnificent city of majestic palaces and straight streets. Talented architects carried out a large-scale construction work in the city's central areas. The contribution of such architects as Piotr Yeropkin, Mikhail Zemtsov and Ivan Korobov was especially significant. They mastered the experience of the first St Petersburg architects - Domenico Trezzini, Jean-Baptiste Le Blond, Giovanni Mario Fontana and Georg Johann Mattarnovi, with whom the style of the early Petrine Baroque is usually identified, and contin ued along the same lines. The early Baroque style was replaced by the mature Baroque of the 1740s-1760s, with Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli as its leading master. The inexhaustible talent of this exuberant Italian flowered during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter's daughter. The most significant of Rastrelli's creations, the Winter Palace, is a highlight in the centre of the city to this day.

Further changes in the predominant architectural style as well as in the entire mode of life and politics in the capital, were connected with Catherine the Great.

Portrait of Catherine the Great Painting by Stefano Torelli. 1762

The architects Antonio Rinaldi, Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe, Alexander Kokorinov and Yury Velten still worked at the junction of the two stylistic eras, but soon the true classicists - Ivan Starov, Charles Cameron, Giacomo Quarenghi and others - ousted them. Many superb palaces were built in those days, and not only in the capital, but in suburbs too - at Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, Oranienbaum and Gatchina. The royal suburban palaces surrounded the city like a precious necklace from the age of Peter the Great. Each of the suburban residences had the distinctive features of its own - the seaside Peterhof glistened in the iridescent jets of its fountains; the magnificent new royal residence, Tsarskoye Selo, was notable for its luxury; the elegant Oranienbaum charmed by its Chinese exoticism; the mysterious Gatchina delighted by its romantic atmosphere evoking reminiscences of the Middle Ages. One more suburban residence, Pavlovsk, which emerged in the latter half of Catherine the Great's reign, was remarkable for its poetic landscape park. The most brilliant monument to Catherine's reign is the Hermitage Museum, a treasure-house of unique masterpieces of world art for which magnificent buildings were erected next to the Winter Palace.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the "brilliant St Petersburg" was the flourishing capital of the Russian Empire, famous not only for its resplendent palaces, but also for its museums, theatres, concert halls and churches. It was, however, the time of incessant trials and tribulations. In February 1913 the tercentennial of the Romanov Dynasty was celebrated on a grand scale, but four years later the revolution erased the autocratic royal power. Shortly before, on 9 January 1905, the city witnessed "bloody Sunday" that marked the beginning of the First Russian Revolution. Under the pressure of these events the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II in December of the same year signed regulations for the elections to the 1st State Duma or Parliament. In April 1906 he held a reception for members of the State Duma in the St George Hall (or the Large Throne Room) in the Winter Palace. Sessions of the first four State Dumas took place in the Tauride Palace, and the same building was to become a scene of major revolutionary events.

The First World War, the October Revolution of 1917 and the fratricidal Civil War, which came in a rapid succession, brought threatening changes into the life of the northern capital. It became the scene of epoch-making and tragic events. The destinies of the city and the countiy as a whole were decided on Znamenskaya Square and Nevsky Prospekt, in Kschessinska's mansion and at Smolny, as well as in other major streets and buildings. In 1918 the new, Bolshevik government took a decision to leave the city for Moscow and the era of St Petersburg as the capital of the state that lasted nearly for two centuries, came to an end.

During the years of the War of 1941-45, known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, the city withstood a terrible siege for 900 cold and hungry days, with shelling and airraids, shortage of electricity, the unserviceable water supply system and other disasters. It took enormous efforts after the war to cure the tormented city's numerous wounds - to restore its destroyed palaces, churches and living buildings. In the course of the entire century St Petersburg never ceased to extend its area and embellish itself with new edifices, parks, bridges and works of monumental and decorative art. Large new residential areas grew on the outskirts of the city, but standardization and lack of variety unfortunately impaired this mass-scale construction.

In the twentieth century the name of the city was changed several times. During the war against Germany in 1914 St Petersburg took the Russianized name of Petro-grad (or Peter's City). In 1924, after the death of Lenin, leader of the revolution, the city was renamed Leningrad to regain, however, its original historical name in 1991.

Today St Petersburg is getting ready for the celebration of its 300th jubilee. In the course of its past centuries, the city lived through the brilliant triumphs of imperial grandeur and the terrible dramas of wars and revolutions. The well-known poet Anna Akhmatova called it "The granite city of glory and victories". St Petersburg occupies a distinctive place of its own in Russia: it has become a symbol of Russian culture, science and spiritual development and has no doubts about its future. As Peter the Great, the founder of the city, believed, the past emphasizes the grandeur of the present.