SAINT PETERSBURG

Russian Sankt Peterburg, formerly (191424) Petrograd, or (192491) Leningrad city, extreme northwestern Russia. It is one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. The second largest city (after Moscow) in Russia, St. Petersburg has played a vital role in Russian history. Founded as St. Petersburg by Peter I the Great in 1703, it was for two centuries the capital of the Russian Empire (17121918). It was the scene of the February and October revolutions in 1917 and was a besieged and fiercely defended city during World War II. The modern city is important as a cultural and industrial centre and as the nation's largest seaport. In 1924 it was renamed for the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, but it reverted to its original name in 1991. St. Petersburg is situated on the delta of the Neva River where it debouches into the Gulf of Finland, about 100 miles (160 km) from the Finnish border. The city once spread across nearly 100 islands of the delta and across adjacent parts of the mainland floodplain, but many of these islands have now been joined by landfill. The low and originally marshy site has made the city subject to recurrent, often severe flooding. Canals and natural channels assist drainage and make St. Petersburg a city of waterways and bridges. The climate is of the modified continental type, with marked maritime influences. February temperatures average 18 F (-8 C), and July's average 64 F (18 C); the mean annual precipitation is 23 inches (585 mm). St. Petersburg is a major centre of Russian manufactures. The city's industries include engineering (production of armaments, nuclear reactors, electrical and power machinery, electrical and electronic goods); printing; shipbuilding; the manufacture of chemicals and chemical products; and the production of consumer goods. Imports include metal pipes, factory equipment, chemicals, sugar, cotton, and fruit. The city exports machinery, timber, coal, potassium salts, and pyrites. Central St. Petersburg is divided by distributaries of the Neva River into four sections: the Admiralty Side, Vasilyevsky Island, the Petrograd Side, and the Vyborg Side. Industrial and residential suburbs spread north and south. The Admiralty Side is particularly rich in museums, monuments, and historical buildings and squares. From the Admiralty, the nucleus of Peter's original city, the great thoroughfare known as Nevsky Prospekt radiates eastward. The street is lined by palaces, churches, stores, cafes, and theatres. St. Petersburg displays a remarkable richness of architecture that includes the cathedral of the Peter-Paul Fortress, the Summer Palace, the Winter Palace, the Smolny Convent, the Vorontsov and Strogonov palaces, the Kazan and St. Isaacs cathedrals, the Smolny Institute, the new Admiralty, and the Senate. Music, ballet, and theatre enjoy a long and continuing tradition in the city. The city is one of the most important Russian centres for education and scientific research. It contains the University of Saint Petersburg (1819; formerly Leningrad State University), the Academy of Fine Arts (1757), the Institute of Mines (1773), and the Military Medical Academy (1798). The library of the Academy of Sciences is the country's most prominent research establishment. Bus, streetcar, and subway are the principal means of local transportation. The city is a focus of rail routes to eastern European cities. The Pulkovo International Airport is 11 miles (18 km) south of the city. Area Greater Saint Petersburg, 521 square miles (1,355 square km). Pop. (1993 est.) city, 4,387,400; Greater Saint Petersburg, 4,952,300. Russian Sankt Petersburg, formerly (191424) Petrograd, and (192491) Leningrad, city, extreme northwestern Russia. A major industrial and cultural centre and an important port, it lies about 400 miles (640 kilometres) northwest of Moscow and only about 7 south of the Arctic Circle. The second largest city of Russia and one of the world's major cities, St. Petersburg has played a vital role in Russian history. For two centuries it was the capital of the Russian Empire. The city is particularly renowned as the scene of the February and October revolutions of 1917 and as the besieged and fiercely defended city of World War II. Architecturally, it ranks as one of the most splendid and harmonious cities of Europe. Its historic central district was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1990. city, Pinellas county, west-central Florida, U.S., near the tip of Pinellas Peninsula, adjacent to Tampa Bay. Settled in 1876 by John C. Williams of Detroit and Peter A. Demens, who built a railroad that reached the site in 1888, it was named for Demens' birthplace in Russia. In the late 1940s St. Petersburg became one of the first Florida cities to promote residentism, encouraging former tourists to spend their retirement years there. A resort city with some industry, it is connected by bridges with the city of Tampa and the mainland (east and south) and with a string of sand-reef island resorts known as the Holiday Isles, to the west, between the Gulf of Mexico and Boca Ciega Bay. It is the seat of Eckerd College (formerly Florida Presbyterian College; 1958), St. Petersburg Junior College (1927), and Stetson University College of Law (1900), and it has a fine-arts museum (1961). Inc. town, 1892; city, 1903. Pop. (1992 est.) city, 235,306; TampaSt. PetersburgClearwater MSA, 2,156,055. The early period Foundation and early growth Settlement of the region around the head of the Gulf of Finland by Russians began in the 8th or 9th century AD. Known then as Izhorskaya Zemlya, or more commonly as Ingermanland, or Ingria, the region came under the control of Novgorod, but it long remained thinly populated. In the 15th century the area passed, with Novgorod, into the possession of the grand princes of Moscow. Sweden annexed Ingria in 1617 and established fortresses along the Neva. During the Second Northern War (170021) Peter the Great, seeking a sea outlet to the west, constructed a fleet on the Svir River (which connects Lakes Onega and Ladoga) and, sailing across Lake Ladoga, launched an attack on the fortress of Noteburg (now Petrokrepost), where the Neva flows out of Ladoga. In 1703 Noteburg fell to Peter; afterward he captured the Swedish fortress of Nienshants on the lower Neva, thus gaining control of the delta. On May 16 (May 27, New Style), 1703, shortly after the fall of Nienshants, Peter himself laid the foundation stones for the Peter-Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island. This date is taken as the founding date of St. Petersburg. In the spring of the following year, Peter established the fortress of Kronshlot, later Kronshtadt, on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland, to protect the approaches to the delta. At the same time, he founded the Admiralty shipyard on the riverbank opposite the Peter-Paul Fortress; in 1706 its first warship was launched. Around the fortress and shipyard Peter began the building of a new city to serve as his window on Europe. Just upstream of the Peter-Paul Fortress, the first small house, built for Peter himself in the early days of the city's construction, is preserved as a museum. Although the first dwellings were single-storied and made of wood, it was not long before stone buildings were erected. The first stone palace, still preserved, was completed in 1714 for Prince Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, first governor of the city. From the start the city was planned as an imposing capital, on a regular street pattern, with spacious squares and broad avenues radiating out from the Admiralty. Architects, craftsmen, and artisans were brought from all over Russia and from many foreign countries to construct and embellish the new town. In 1712 the capital of Russia was transferred there from Moscow, although it was not until 1721 that Sweden, in the Peace of Nystad, formally ceded sovereignty of the area to Russia. Members of the nobility and merchant class were compelled by Peter to move to the new capital and to build houses for themselves. Government buildings and private palaces and houses arose swiftly; among the earliest buildings were the Merchants' Exchange (now the Naval Museum), Customs House (now the Museum of Literature), and marine hospital, together with the Summer Palace. Canals for drainage were cut through the marshy left bank of the Admiralty Side. The first floating bridge over the Neva was constructed in 1727, and soon more than 370 bridges had been built across the many canals and river channels. Marshy, flood-prone land and an inhospitable climate made construction expensive in terms of human life; St. Petersburg, it was later suggested, rested on a swamp of human bones. A harbour was constructed, and Peter took measures to curtail traffic through Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, previously Russia's major port. In consequence, as early as 1726 St. Petersburg was handling 90 percent of Russia's foreign trade. In 1703 work began on the Vyshnevolotsky Canal in the Valdai Hills, the first link in a chain that by 1709 gave the capital a direct water route to central Russia and all of the Volga basin. Industry soon began to develop. The original and flourishing Admiralty shipyard was joined by enterprises to supply its needs and those of the growing fleeta foundry to produce cannons, a gunpowder factory, and a tar works. Merchantmen as well as warships were built, and before the end of the 18th century papermaking, printing, and food, clothing, and footwear industries had been established; as early as the 1740s a factory was set up to make china. By 1765 the population numbered 150,300, and by the end of the century it had reached 220,200, of whom more than a third were in the armed forces or the administration. The rise to splendour The Winter Palace, with the Alexander Column in the foreground, Palace Square, St. Petersburg, The growing city displayed a remarkable richness of architecture and harmony of style. Initially the style was one of simple but elegant restraint, represented in the cathedral of the Peter-Paul Fortress and in the Summer Palace. In the mid-18th century an indelible stamp was put on the city's appearance by the architects Bartolomeo F. Rastrelli, Savva I. Chevakinsky, and Vasily P. Stasov, working in the Russian Baroque style, which combined clear-cut, even austere lines with richness of decoration and use of colour. To this period belong the Winter Palace (see photograph), the Smolny Convent, and the Vorontsov and Stroganov palaces, among others; outside the city were built the summer palaces of Peterhof and of Tsarskoye Selo. After a transitional period, dominated by the architecture of Jean-Baptiste M. Vallin de la Mothe and Aleksandr Kokorinov, toward the end of the 18th century a pure classical style emerged under the architects Giacomo Quarenghi, Carlo Rossi, Andrey Voronikhin, and others. The Kazan and St. Isaac's cathedrals, the Smolny Institute, the new Admiralty, the Senate, and the Mikhaylovsky Palace (now the State Russian Museum) are representative of the splendid buildings of this period. Within this grand architectural setting, cultural life developed and flourished. In 1773 the Institute of Mines was established. The University of St. Petersburg was founded in 1819. Many of the most celebrated names in Russia in the spheres of learning, science, and the arts are associated with the city: Mikhail V. Lomonosov, Dmitry I. Mendeleyev, Ivan Pavlov, Aleksandr Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, among others. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment was set in the city, and the buildings described in the novel are a focus of tourism. As early as 1738 the first ballet school in Russia was opened in St. Petersburg; in the 19th century, under Marius Petipa, the Russian ballet rose to worldwide renown and produced such dancers as Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, and Anna Pavlova. In 1862 the first conservatory of music in Russia opened its doors, and there the premieres of works by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, and other composers were performed. Over all, as focus and patron of the city's cultural life, stood the imperial court; its ostentatious splendour and wealth were legendary throughout Europe. Additional reading General descriptive works in English are Nigel Gosling, Leningrad: History, Art, Architecture (1965); and K. Neubert and J. Neubert, Portrait of Leningrad (1966). Two helpful books, both translated from Russian, are Pavel Kann, The Environs of Leningrad (1981); and A. Berezina, Leningrad: A Short Guide (1980). Practical information can be found in Evan Mawdsley and Margaret Mawdsley (eds.), Moscow and Leningrad (1980). For historical background, see James H. Bater, St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change (1967); and E.M. Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come (1941, reprinted 1983), a memoir spanning the revolutionary period. On the Siege of Leningrad, see Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days (1969, reprinted 1985). An account of the city government is provided by David T. Cattell, Leningrad: A Case Study of Soviet Urban Government (1968). For politics and city planning in the 1970s, see Denis J.B. Shaw, Planning Leningrad, Geographical Review, 68(2):183200 (April 1978); and Blair A. Ruble, Romanov's Leningrad, Problems of Communism, 32(6):3648 (Nov.Dec. 1983). The cultural history is discussed in John Gregory and Alexander Ukladnikov, Leningrad's Ballet: Maryinsky to Kirov (1980). Logan Robinson, An American in Leningrad (1982), is an account by a Harvard law student.Works in Russian include L.S. Shaumian (ed.), Leningrad: entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (1957), a survey of the city's history, economics, public education, cultural and educational institutions, architecture and construction, public health service, science, literature, and art; S.M. Serpokryl (compiler), Leningrad: Dostoprimechatel'nosti, 3rd enlarged ed. (1974), on the basic architectural aggregations, squares, embankments, avenues, and suburban parks; and M.P. Viatkin (ed.), Ocherki istorii Leningrada, 6 vol. (195570), an analysis of the development of the city and its construction, with an account of the stages of its revolutionary development. See also IuriI P. Seliverstov (ed.), Leningrad: istoriko-geograficheskii atlas (1981), a historical-geographic atlas. Yelena Matveyevna Doroshinskaya Richard Antony French Mary McAuley The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica