History History

The region of St. Petersburg, populated by Slavs, Finno-Ugric peoples and other ethnic groups, has belonged to the zone of influence of Ancient Russia since the 9th century AD. In fact, it was at that time that it was integrated by the principality of Novgorod, 200 km to the south. This medieval city is an important centre of trade with northern and western Europe. Later, it actively traded with the cities of the Hanseatic League. The Neva River and Lake Ladoga are privileged transport routes in this trade.

While central and southern Russia is all busy trying to stop the Mongolian invasion from the eastern steppes, the Swedes take advantage of the situation to settle on the banks of the Neva River and thus cut off the Russians. Prince Alexander's Novgorodian troops repelled these enemies from the North during the Battle of the Neva, which became a true symbol of the struggle for independence and gave the prince his nickname "Alexander of the Neva" (Alexander Nevski). His courage during this battle, which seemed lost in advance, due to the modernity of the Swedish army and the occupation by the majority of the Russian troops on the Eastern Front, made him a saint of the Orthodox Church. It is almost natural that he will become the patron saint of St. Petersburg.

The everlasting Swedish invader took advantage of a vacancy in tsarist power at the end of the Riourikides dynasty (1598) to settle over a large part of the northwest. Russia is now cut off from the Baltic, an important maritime trade area. Peter the Great, heir to the Romanovs, came to power in 1682 and marked the end of this period, which historians called the "Time of Troubles".

Peter the Great was eager to regain access to the Baltic Sea and to steer Russia towards Europe in order to modernize it. For more than twenty years, from 1700 to 1721, Russian troops tried to push the Swedish enemy ever further north. In 1703, the Tsar's troops regained control of the Neva River, and the city of St. Petersburg was founded on May 27th with the beginning of the Peter and Paul Fortress on Rabbit Island.

Much more than a military base, Peter the Great's ambition there, in the middle of these swamps on an arm of the Neva, was to build one of the most beautiful cities in the world by bringing together the best engineers and architects of his time. It was here that he built a city "out of nothing" which in 1712 became the new imperial capital instead of Moscow. It was to Saint Petersburg and what it meant for Russia that Peter the Great dedicated his reign until his death in 1725.

After the death of the founding czar in 1725, his wife Catherine did not really succeed in taking the reins of power. The pretenders to the throne are intriguing and the court has to move to Moscow for a while. Many officials are delighted to leave the isolated marshlands and return to the splendour of Moscow. The city became capital again when Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, came to power in 1741. During her reign, St. Petersburg became a European capital of 150,000 inhabitants, competing in luxury and majesty with its western counterparts.

After the death of the founding czar in 1725, his wife Catherine did not really succeed in taking the reins of power. The court had to move to Moscow for a while. Many officials are delighted to leave the isolated marshlands and return to the splendour of Moscow. The city became capital again when Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, came to power in 1741. During her reign, St. Petersburg became a European capital with a population of 150,000, rivaling in luxury and majesty with its western sisters.
The splendour desired by Empress Elizabeth I developed mainly in the city's surroundings. Peterhof is redesigned by the architect Rastrelli, who also designed Smolny Cathedral and the Winter Palace. The Grand Palace and the fountains are covered with gold, precious stones and statues that reflect Elizabeth's lavish spending character. At Tsarskoye Selo, Catherine's Palace is transformed into a royal residence overflowing with luxury and embellished with Baroque gardens. She also establishes the first Academy of Fine Arts. Playing public relations before her time, she gives back to the worldly life all its intensity and immoderation. The city lives to the rhythm of balls, receptions and fireworks given by the empress.

This flamboyant woman has a falot son, Pierre III, who marries a young and ambitious German princess: the future Catherine II. It was under her reign that the magnificence of St. Petersburg took on its full scope. She came to power in 1762 after a coup d'etat against her husband, and met virtually no political obstacles. The elites highly appreciated the culture and the links with the European courts of Great Catherine. A cultivated woman, who appreciated the philosophers of the Enlightenment, Catherine also enjoyed surrounding herself with an incredible luxury. She was the first monarch to move into the Winter Palace. Passionate about art, she undertakes a collection that quickly reaches such dimensions that new buildings have to be constructed on the banks of the Neva River. This collection is the origin of the Hermitage collection, one of the richest in the world.

Like Peter the Great, Catherine is obsessed with construction. She built many new buildings: the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Fine Arts, Russia's first public library, Gostiny Dvor (a gigantic shopping mall) and an incredible number of educational institutions. A woman of power, sensitive to the ideas of the Enlightenment, she undertook a reform of the city's administration. The office of mayor was created in 1766, and in 1774 the city councils were organized, which twelve years later became the municipal duma.

The era of pomp and pharaonic projects, political reforms and European influence ended in 1796 with the death of Catherine the Great. Her son Paul I makes a 180-degree turn. An ultra-conservative, he put an end to the political freedom of the new municipal institutions and transformed the entire country into a vast bureaucratic enterprise. This flourished under the reign of Alexander I, who in 1802 created a system of ministries in which the ministers reported directly to the monarch. In 1810, he established the Council of State. Saint Petersburg became a city of order, inhabited by a host of civil servants. Alexander was a military man at heart, and he repulsed Napoleon's troops to Paris from 1812 to 1814. The standards taken from the French army are displayed in a new building, the Notre-Dame-de-Kazan Cathedral.

At the death of Paul I, a group of young officers, later called Decembristes, took advantage of the political uncertainty to revolt. They ask Nicholas I to adopt a constitution. This initiative is repressed in blood and deportation. In reaction, the new tsar adopts a harsh and conservative policy. St. Petersburg takes on the air of a garrison. Everything must be straight, orderly and discourage seditious spirits. Paradoxically, this was the era of the great Pushkin, the composer Glinka and Dostoyevsky. The imperial capital is once again the object of all architectural and urban planning attention. The Palace Square is embellished with the Imperial Guard building in 1843. Between 1839 and 1844, the Tsar had the Mariinsky Theatre built for his favourite daughter Mary.

Alexander II carried out a series of reforms, the most symbolic of which was the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. The tsar continued his reforms with the introduction of juries in the courts and a new reform of the administration of the city, giving it more autonomy. Some revolutionaries consider that this is still not enough. Alexander was assassinated on March¹, 1881. The Cathedral of the Saviour-on-the-Sang-Versé (1883-1907) is built in his memory on the very spot where he was mortally wounded. This tragic end turns Russia's reform momentum on its head. Further reforms and a genuine constitution await the signature of the new czar, Alexander III. But he prefers conservatism and repression.

This does not prevent St. Petersburg from becoming a capitalist city, where the bourgeoisie is beginning to develop. The city is populated by Russian and foreign factories, Nevsky sees opening a multitude of investment banks. In the 1890s, the city experienced a real estate boom: multi-storey apartment buildings sprouted up like mushrooms.

The beginning of the century coincided with a wave of commemorations, which were supposed to strengthen national unity behind the czar. In 1902, the hundredth anniversary of Alexander II's reforms was celebrated. In 1903, the city is 200 years old, and it is the occasion to inaugurate the new Troïtsky Bridge and the church on Senate Square. But these celebrations do not manage to calm the discontent. In January 1905, the troop opened fire on a workers' demonstration. A few months later, Nicholas is forced to adopt a manifesto, proclaiming a series of civil rights and establishing a new parliament.

The opening of this new Duma gives hope to hundreds of liberals of the intelligentsia. On the eve of the revolution of 1917, St. Petersburg experiences a cultural revival known as the "Silver Age", in reference to the golden age of Russian letters. The literary life is animated by the greatest poets of the century: Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Sergei Essenin, Nicolas Goumiliov, Marina Tsvetayeva, Boris Pasternak, Velimir Khlebnikov... All will soon be persecuted.

This seizure of power by Vladimir Lenin was not followed by a bright future, but by three years of civil war, sending the soldiers of the new Red Guard on the roads of the country, to the depths of Siberia. The starving inhabitants of St. Petersburg left the city en masse for the nearby countryside. The population grew from 2.3 million to 722,000 in 1920. Depopulated and threatened by the advance of German troops, the city lost its status as capital to its rival, Moscow. Revolutionary monuments and statues hastened to mark the city with the seal of the new power and the streets changed names. However, the New Political Economy (NEP), which allowed some bourgeois survival in the name of the transition to a socialist economy, gave St. Petersburg a real breath of fresh air

After Lenin's death in 1924, Petrograd became Leningrad (the city of Lenin). At the end of the 1920s, the panorama of the city is marked by the construction of cheap housing for workers. The large and sumptuous apartments of the old regime were transformed into communal apartments housing several families. At the same time, the authorities embarked on a programme of cultural building construction. These palaces of culture offered the population entertainment previously reserved for the elite (theatre, opera, concerts, etc.) and also allowed them to practise an art, through one of the countless clubs or circles in the city.

St. Petersburg will be the scene of one of the most tragic events of the Second World War. The siege of Leningrad will last almost 900 days during which the city is left to its own devices, starvation, cold and bombardment by the Wehrmacht, causing more than 1 million civilian casualties. Yet the city did not fall, at the cost of courage and resilience that the German army did not expect

See our dossier "The blockade of Leningrad" which retraces these 900 days out of time, this open-air hell in which the people of Leningrad showed exemplary resistance and an inextinguishable strength to live.

Once the war is over, Leningrad makes it a point of honour to get back to normal life as soon as possible. Canvases representing the original facades are stretched over the battered facades. An unprecedented housing crisis crowded families into communal apartments. Luckily, unlike many Soviet cities, Leningrad's architecture was not subjected to the onslaught of modernism, but was completely restored. The 1970s and 1980s, although freedom of expression was not on the agenda, were marked by political stability and relative prosperity. Everyone had enough to eat, went on holiday, and buying a car was complicated but possible.

During perestroika, this political stability quickly falters, and the people will soon find themselves propelled into an experience as exotic as it is new: the market economy. After the fall of the USSR, a municipal referendum restores the old name of St. Petersburg to the city, but the people of St. Petersburg are going through a very dark decade in the 1990s, marked by shortages, state failure and a painful transition.

In 2003, the city celebrates its 300th anniversary with a lot of festivities and an extensive renovation programme. In July 2006, it hosted the first G8 summit ever held in Russia. Moreover, the Petersburg origins of Russia's current leaders (Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, or Alexeï Miller, the boss of Gazprom), means that the city is the subject of much attention.

Since the turn of the decade, Saint Petersburg has been experiencing a real economic and cultural dynamism which is helping to make it increasingly attractive on the international scene: construction of the large Lakhta Center business district, a major urban renewal project on the island of New Holland (just a stone's throw from the Mariinsky)... The city has thus been awarded the 2017 World Travel Awards for the best European destination. Saint Petersburg is one of the flagship cities of the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia. It hosts 7 matches, including the France-Belgium semi-final on July 10 in its brand new Krestovski stadium.

While the rather tedious process of obtaining a classic tourist visa is still necessary to visit the rest of Russia, St. Petersburg has been innovating since then. It is now the nationals of 53 countries (including those of the European Union) who can reside up to 8 days in St. Petersburg and its region by filling out a simple e-visa form on the Internet.