Saint Petersburg (pop. 5,601,911) is the second largest city in Russia, after Moscow. It is one of the world’s leading cultural centers and one of Russia’s chief industrial centers. The city is also an important port and a railroad hub. St. Petersburg lies in northwest Russia, where the Neva River flows into the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea.
St. Petersburg served as the capital of Russia from 1712 to 1918. It was the first Russian city built in imitation of Western European cities. With dozens of islands and about 500 bridges spanning its many rivers and canals, St. Petersburg resembles Amsterdam in the Netherlands or Venice, Italy. The city’s palaces, wide avenues, and public squares resemble those of such cities as London and Paris.
Because of its far northern location—about 60° north latitude—St. Petersburg has short periods of daylight in winter and long periods in summer. For about three weeks in June, it has “white nights,” during which the sky is never completely dark.
The city has had several names. Czar Peter I (the Great) founded it in 1703. In admiration of Holland, he gave the city the Dutch name of Sankt Piter Burkh (City of Saint Peter), but it soon became known as St. Petersburg. After Germany declared war on Russia in 1914, at the start of World War I, the name was changed to Petrograd. The country’s leaders substituted the Russian ending grad for the German burg. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed under Russia’s leadership. In 1924, the Soviet Union’s Communist government renamed the city Leningrad in honor of V. I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Communist Party. The name was changed back to St. Petersburg in 1991, the year the Soviet Union was dissolved and Russia became an independent nation.
The city
was built on marshland at the mouth of the Neva River. Land was reclaimed by digging numerous canals and by fortifying the banks of the river and its branches. Most of St. Petersburg lies just a few feet above sea level, and the city floods frequently. The worst floods occurred in 1824 and 1924. In 2011, a dam was completed across the Gulf of Finland to protect St. Petersburg from flooding caused by storm surges.
The Peter and Paul Fortress, begun in 1703, is the oldest structure in the city. Many Russian monarchs are buried in a cathedral inside the fortress.
The center of St. Petersburg developed along the southern bank of the Neva. The historic Winter Palace, which was completed in 1762, served as the main residence of Russia’s monarchs. It is now part of the State Hermitage Museum.
In the early 1800’s, a commission that included noted architect Carlo Rossi established a design for the center of the city. The General Staff Building, designed by Rossi and completed in 1829, stands across Palace Square from the Winter Palace. Nearby, the massive golden dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia and the tower and slender spire of the Admiralty, Russia’s former naval headquarters, rise above the city. The center of St. Petersburg is surrounded by old residential areas that have stone or brick apartment buildings.
Three luxurious palaces built in the 1700’s—Pavlovsk, Peterhof, and Tsarskoye Selo—still stand in suburbs near St. Petersburg. These palaces, famed for their architectural excellence, were summer homes of Russia’s monarchs. The grounds of Peterhof, Peter the Great’s summer residence, feature a system of over 150 fountains. All three palaces were damaged during World War II (1939-1945), but they have been carefully reconstructed and are popular tourist attractions.
Construction of the Lakhta Center, a commercial and office complex several miles northwest of the city center, began in 2012. The exterior of its 87-story central tower building was completed in 2019. At 1,516 feet (462 meters) high, the skycraper is the tallest building in Europe.
Education and cultural life.
The city’s many institutions of higher learning include two of Russia’s largest universities, St. Petersburg State University and St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University. The Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, established in 1862, is the country’s oldest music school. Its graduates include such famous composers as Sergei Prokofiev, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. St. Petersburg’s world-renowned ballet school, now called the A. Ya. Vaganova Russian Ballet Academy, trained such famous ballet dancers as Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev, and Anna Pavlova.
St. Petersburg is the home of many fine museums and theaters. The Hermitage has one of the largest art collections in the world. The Russian Museum has the world’s largest collection of Russian art. The Mariinsky Theater (known as the Kirov Theater in Soviet times) presents ballet and opera. Dramatic productions are offered by several theaters, including the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Dramatic Theater.
St. Petersburg occupies an important place in Russian literature. A number of famous Russian authors have used St. Petersburg as a setting for many of their works. These writers include Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Andrey Bely.
The people.
Most residents of St. Petersburg are ethnic Russians. Minority groups include Ukrainians, Jews, Tatars, and others.
The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest religious denomination in St. Petersburg. There are also Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Baptist churches in the city, as well as a synagogue and a mosque. Religious life revived after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government had restricted religious practices.
Economy.
St. Petersburg is one of Russia’s largest industrial centers. Manufacturing and construction employ a large percentage of the workers. St. Petersburg has been a major shipbuilding center since the early 1700’s. Other important products include chemicals, heavy electrical machinery, household electric appliances, precision tools and instruments, rubber products, and textiles.
St. Petersburg’s industries and location make it an important trade and distribution center. A high-speed rail line connects the city with Moscow. St. Petersburg has several other railroads and airlines as well as a seaport.
History.
In 1703, during the Great Northern War (1700-1721) between Russia and Sweden, Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg as a fortified settlement. He sought to make the city a “window to the West,” a way to bring to Russia the Western European culture and technology he admired. In 1712, Peter moved Russia’s capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Tens of thousands of forced laborers died draining the swamps and building the city. The new capital soon became the intellectual and social center of the Russian Empire.
Many major events in Russian history have taken place in St. Petersburg. In 1801, high-ranking military officers murdered Czar Paul I in the Mikhailovsky Castle. In 1825, several thousand military personnel tried unsuccessfully to prevent Nicholas I from becoming czar following the death of his brother Alexander I. In 1881, a group of revolutionary terrorists assassinated Czar Alexander II a few blocks from the Winter Palace. In 1905, troops of Czar Nicholas II killed or wounded hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace. This Bloody Sunday slaughter, together with other factors, seriously weakened the czar’s hold on power.
In early 1917, riots and strikes took hold of Petrograd, as the city was then called. Nicholas II was forced to step down that March, and a temporary government took over. In November, Bolshevik (Communist) forces seized the city and formed a new government, headed by Lenin. The Bolsheviks moved the capital back to Moscow in 1918. In 1922, Russia and three other republics united to form the Soviet Union. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad upon Lenin’s death in 1924.
In 1934, a Communist Party leader named Sergey Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad. His murder touched off the Great Purge, when the government’s secret police killed or imprisoned millions of people.
During World War II, Leningrad was a major target of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. German armies laid siege to the city for 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944. Historians estimate that approximately 1 million civilians died in the siege. Most died from hunger or cold during the winter of 1941-1942. In addition, more than 1 million Soviet army troops were killed or wounded or went missing in the effort to break the siege. The city was badly damaged by aerial bombardment during the siege, but it did not fall.
Many of the city’s historic structures were rebuilt after World War II. Thousands of apartment buildings were built to ease a severe housing shortage. A subway was built in the 1950’s, and buses, trolleys, and trams were added.
In August 1991, Communist officials attempted to overthrow Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. More than 130,000 people filled Palace Square to demonstrate against the coup. The coup failed in the face of the protests, which had also occurred in Moscow and other Russian cities. That September, the city changed its name from Leningrad to St. Petersburg. In December, Gorbachev resigned, and the Soviet Union was dissolved. Russia and other former Soviet republics became independent nations.
See also Hermitage; Leningrad, Siege of; Peter I, the Great.
