A History of St. Petersburg

St Petersburg under the Tsars

It was Peter the Greats desire to make Russia a European power that led to the founding of St Petersburg. At the start of the Great Northern War of 1700-21 he captured the Swedish outposts on the Neva, and in 1703 he founded the Peter & Paul Fortress on the Neva a few miles in from the sea. After Peter trounced the Swedes at Poltava in 1709 the city he named, in the Dutch style, Sankt Pieter Burkh really began to grow. Canals were dug to drain the marshy south bank and in 1712 he made the place his capital, forcing administrators, nobles and merchants to move there and build new homes. Peasants were drafted in for forced labor, many dying from exposure and overwork. Architects and artisans were brought from all over Europe. By Peter's death in 1725, his city had a huge population and 90% of Russia's foreign trade passed through it.

Between 1741 and 1825 under Empress Elizabeth, Catherine the Great and Alexander I it became a cosmopolitan city with a royal court of famed splendor. These monarchs commissioned great series of palaces, government buildings and churches, which turned it into one of Europe's grandest capitals.

The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and industrialization, which peaked in the 1890s, brought a flood of poor workers into the city, leading to overcrowding, poor sanitation, epidemics and festering discontent. St Petersburg became a hotbed of strikes and political violence and was the hub of the 1905 revolution, sparked on January 9th 1905 when a strikers' march to petition the tsar in the Winter Palace was fired on by troops. By 1914, when in a wave of patriotism at the start of WWI the city's name was changed to the Russian-style Petrograd, it housed 2 million people.

The Bolshevik Revolution and Communist Domination

Petrograd was again the cradle of revolution in 1917. It was here that workers' protests turned into a general strike and troops mutinied, forcing the end of the monarchy in March of that year. The Petrograd Soviet, a socialist focus for workers' and soldiers' demands, started meeting in the city's Tauride Palace alongside the country's reformist Provisional Government. It was to Petrograd that Lenin traveled in April, 1917 to organize the Bolshevik Party. The Bolsheviks occupied key positions in Petrograd on October 24th. The new government operated from the city until March 1918, when it moved to Moscow, fearing a German attack on Petrograd. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was a hub of Stalin's 1930s industrialization program and by 1939 had 3 million people and 11% of Soviet industrial output.

When the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941 it took them only two-and-a-half months to reach Leningrad. His troops besieged it from September 1941 until late January 1944. Many people had been evacuated; nonetheless, between 500,000 and a million died from shelling, starvation and disease.

Post War and the Fall of Communism

After the war, Leningrad was reconstructed and reborn, though it took until 1960 for its population to exceed pre-WWII levels. In 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the residents of Leningrad voted to rename the city St Petersburg. Foreign investment has given the city a boost and St Petersburg has re-established itself as Russia's window on the West.

The Hermitage

The State Hermitage is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. The museum is located in 5 historical buildings of St. Petersburg, including the Winter Palace,the former residence of Russian tsars. The buildings of the museum, by themselves, are architectural masterpieces. The collections of The Hermitage number over 3 million items from prehistoric to modern times. Magnificent works of art embracing prehistoric culture, Egyptian art, the art of Antiquity, and great collections of Western-European paintings and sculptures are displayed in 400 halls of the museum.

Peter and Paul Fortress

The Peter and Paul Fortress was founded by Peter I in 1703. Besides the ancient fortifications, on the grounds of the fortress one can visit the Sts.Peter and Paul Cathedral of the early XVIII century with the burial vault of Peter the Great and other Russian tsars, the museum in Trubetskoy bastion prison, expositions include The History of St.Petersburg, The History of the Imperial Mint, Pechatnya or Printing Workshop, and a museum on cosmonautics and missilery. From the middle of the 18th century St.Peter and Paul Fortress contained Russia's political prison. The first inmate was Peter's own son Alexey (Peter supervised his son's torture), who was followed by other notables such as Dostoevsky, Gorky, Trotsky and Lenin's older brother, Alexander. The cathedral, though plain on the outside, has a magnificent baroque interior. Between the cathedral and the Senior Officer's Barracks is a statue of Peter the Great. Rubbing his right forefinger apparently brings good luck.

Pushkin Flat Museum

Pushkin died in this house by the Moyka River in 1837, after a duel with French soldier of fortune Baron d'Anthes, who had been publicly chasing Pushkin's beautiful wife, Natalia. The museum includes a Russian-language tour (English tours can be arranged in advance). The apartment has been reconstructed to look exactly as it did in the poet's last days. The duel was widely seen as a put-up job by Tsar Nicholas I, who disliked the famed poet's radical politics - and who, rumor has it, may have been the one really after Natalia. For the morbid, on display are the poet’s death mask, a lock of his hair, and the waistcoat he wore when he died.

Russian Museum

The Russian Museum was opened in 1898 in the Mikhaylovsky Palace by Tsar Nicholas II. The museum is the world's largest museum of Russian art and numbers nearly 400,000 works. The museum exhibits the collection of icons, wonderful pieces of graphic art, sculpture, applied art from the 18th to the 20th centuries and the Avant-garde painting of the 20th century. It contains works by Great Russian artists: Rublev, Shubin, Kiprensky, Fedotov, Repin, Levitan and many others. The building is most impressively viewed from the back, during a late-night stroll through the pleasant Mikhailovsky Gardens. The illuminated palace by night is a perfect backdrop for romantic interludes.

St Isaac's Cathedral

St.Isaac Cathedral is one of the finest architectural monuments of the 19th century, the former principal cathedral of the Russian capital, the largest cathedral in town able to accommodate about 10,000 worshipers. The cathedral is graced with 112 solid granite columns weighing up to 114 tons each, and about 400 relieves and bronze sculptures. The granite was ordered from Finland and delivered in specially built ships and railways, 220lbs of gold leaf were used for the dome and the end result, a lavish interior of marble and mosaic, is a must-see. The observation platform on the colonnade provides a magnificent view of the city.

Kazan Cathedral

The Kazan Cathedral is an outstanding example of the early 19th-century Russian architecture, erected on the site of a small stone church to hold the ancient icon of Our Lady of Kazan, said to have caused miracles. The Kazan Cathedral encircles a small square with a double row of beautiful columns - an impressive colonnade. It took 10 years to construct this church. Kazan Cathedral was meant to be a Russian version of Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome and the main church of Russia. After the War of 1812, during which Napoleon was defeated, the church became a monument to the Russian victory. The captured enemy banners were put in the cathedral and the famous Russian field marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, who won the most important campaign of 1812, was buried inside the church.

The Communists closed the cathedral for services in 1929, and from 1932 it housed the collections of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, which displayed numerous pieces of religious art and served anti-religious propaganda purposes. A couple of years ago regular services were resumed in the cathedral, though it still shares the premises with the museum, which is now just the Museum of the History of Religion.

Yusupov Palace

The Yusupov Palace, built by Vallin de la Mothe in the Early Russian Classical style, represents a rare combination of an architectural monument and a temple of art. It was a residence of the wealthy and respected Yusupov family. The palace was the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in Russia's history, the murder of Grigory Rasputin. In 1916 a group of the city's noble elite, including one of the Grand Dukes and led by the prominent anglophile Prince Felix Yusupov, conspired to kill the one man who they felt threatened the stability of an already war-torn Russian Empire. Grigory Rasputin, a peasant and self-proclaimed holy man, had gradually won favor with the Tsar's family through his alleged supernatural powers. His control over the decisions of the Tsar and his family put him in an influential position and posed a very real threat to their power. Consequently, Rasputin was murdered at the Yusupov Palace on the night of December 16-17 1916.

In addition to being movers and shakers, the Yusupovs were great collectors of art, and their collection was known well beyond Russia. After the Revolution, most of the collection was moved to the Hermitage, though traces of the incredible wealth that once kept this place pulsating with life still remain: the various sitting rooms, the intricate chandeliers and candelabras that adorn every room and corridor, impressive Oak dining room, the Big sitting room, the sitting room with silver alcove, White Column Hall with majestic Corinthian colonnade, and the beautiful private theatre in baroque style that looks like a cozy version of the Mariinsky. Nowadays, music concerts, using old instruments from the Yusupov collection, are performed on a regular basis.

Alexander Nevsky Lavra

Alexander Nevsky Lavra founded by Peter I, was given the official title of The Alexander Nevsky Monastery of the Holy Trinity. At the turn of the 20th century there were 16 churches in the monastery complex, of which five still survive. These are Holy Trinity Cathedral, the Church of the Annunciation, St. Lazarus' Church, St. Nicholas' Church and the Church of the Holy Mother of God "the Joy of all Mourners" which is over the monastery gates. The monastery complex comprises the Tikhvin and Lazarus cemeteries where the outstanding figures of Russian culture as Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky are buried.

Visiting St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg has an airport with connections throughout Russia and Europe, though travelers from America will have to transfer from Moscow or some other European city. St. Petersburg has rail and bus connections throughout the former Soviet Union and Europe. There is ferry service between the city and several other international destinations.

The best way of getting around the city by road is by bus, trolleybus (an electric bus) or tram. The St. Petersburg metro, while less magnificent that that of Moscow’s, is first rate.