About
Tsar Peter the Great founded the city on May 27 (May 16, Old Style), 1703 after reconquering the Ingrian land from Sweden. He named it after his patron saint, the apostle Saint Peter. The original name of SanktPiterburh was actually an imitation of the pronunciation of Dutch Sint Petersburg; Peter had lived and studied in the Netherlands for quite some time. The Swedish fortress of Nyenskans and the city Nyen had formerly occupied the site, in the marshlands where the river Neva drains into the Gulf of Finland.
The building of this new city under adverse weather and geographical conditions, and the high mortality rate that went with it, required a constant supply of new workers. Since inhabitants in the area were few and far between, Peter, exercising his prerogative as tsar, drafted forced labor from all parts of the country. A yearly quote of 40,000 peasants was required; the force based on a quota of one conscript for every nine-to-sixteen households, depending on location. The conscripts were expect to provide their own tools, and their own food for the journey. They traveled hundreds of miles, on foot, in gangs, often escorted by military guards and more often shackled to prevent desertion; yet despite all these precautions there were many who escaped. This, in addition to the harsh conditions of the trek with its disease and exposure, meant that Peter seldom received more than 20,000 workers in any one year; a loss of around 50% from the very start.
Since construction began during a time of war, the new city’s first building was a fortification. Known today as the Peter and Paul Fortress, it originally also bore the name of SanktPiterburh. It was laid down on Zaiachiy (Hare’s) Island, just off the right bank of the Neva, a couple of miles inland from the Gulf. The marshland was drained and the city spread outward from the fortress under the supervision of German engineers whom Peter had invited to Russia. Peter forbade the construction of stone buildings in all of Russia outside of St Petersburg, so that all stonemasons would come to help build the new city. Serfs provided most of the labor for the project.[1]
“The most artificial city in the world”, as Dostoevsky put it, was intended to become the new capital of Russia. By virtue of its position on an arm of the Baltic Sea, it was called by Pushkin a “window on Europe”. It was also a base for Peter’s navy, protected by the island fortress of Kronstadt, built soon after the city. Indeed, the first person to build a house in Saint Petersburg was Cornelis Cruys, commander of the Baltic Fleet. Inspired by example of Venice and Amsterdam, Peter the Great envisaged boats and coracles as principal means of transport in his city of canals. No permanent bridges across the Neva were allowed until 1850.
Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs (1861) caused the influx of large numbers of poor into the city. Tenements were erected on the outskirts, and nascent industry sprang up. By the end of the century, St Petersburg had grown up into one of the largest industrial hubs in Europe.
With the growth of industry, radical movements were also astir. Socialist organizations were responsible for the assassinations of many royal officials, including that of Alexander II in 1881. The Revolution of 1905 began here and spread rapidly into the provinces. During World War I, the name Sankt Peterburg was seen to be too German and, on the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II, the city was renamed Petrograd on August 31 (August 18, Old Style), 1914.
1917 saw the beginnings of the Russian Revolution. The first step (the February Revolution) was the removal of the Tsarist government and the establishment of two centers of political power, the Provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional government was overthrown in the October Revolution, and the Russian Civil War broke out. The city’s proximity to anti-revolutionary armies, and generally unstable political climate, forced Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to flee to Russia’s historic former capital at Moscow on March 5, 1918. The move may have been intended as temporary (it was certainly portrayed as such), but Moscow has remained the capital ever since. On January 24, 1924, three days after Lenin’s death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. The central committee’s reason for renaming the city again was that Lenin had led the October revolution. Deeper reasons existed at the level of political symbolism: Saint Petersburg had stood as the head of the Tsarist empire. After Moscow it was the largest city and the change gave great prestige to Lenin. The renaming to Leningrad emphatically symbolized the upheaval that had occurred to the social and political system.
The government’s removal to Moscow caused a reversal of the mass immigration of the latter 19th century. The benefits of capital status had left the city. Petrograd’s population in 1920 was a third of what it had been in 1915.
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