Travel History and culture Saint Petersburg: Guide Saint Petersburg, Russia - Nozio 0%

Saint Petersburg History And Culture, Russia

Peter the Great created this city from nothing on a day in May, 1703 when he vanquished the Swedish at the mouth of the Neva and proclaimed "A city must rise here.” There, between the swamp and the mud on the Gulf of Finland, the Czar Peter the Great, with his passion for the sea and an obsession with creating the first Russian fleet, a genius ship-builder and skilled city planner, realized his dream. He named the city Sankt Petersburg, in honor of his patron saint, and created an immense capital.

With its magnificent art and culture and a wonderful and tragic history unique to Russia, St. Petersburg has survived centuries of countless vicissitudes, to become today, without a doubt, the most beautiful city in the Russian Federation.

It recovered its original name, St. Petersburg, after 288 years by popular referendum in 1991, after years as Petersburg (from August 18, 1914 to January 26, 1924) and Leningrad (from January 26, 1924 to September 6, 1991).

Proclaiming it the capital in 1712, Peter the Great was inspired by Holland and Amsterdam to give the city an urban plan and beautify it with sumptuous palaces. The Czar began the work from the Petrogradskaya Island, ordering construction of the fortress of Saints Peter and Paul; the naval shipyards of the Admiralty, which is still a symbol of the city today with its unmistakable spire, and then the Winter Palace that would become the Hermitage.

Life was hard in St. Petersburg, with floods, ice and the mud of the shipyards symbolizing the life of the city. But St. Petersburg was already the cradle of Russian art and culture at that time, despite the terrible plots that bled the life from the court of the Czars and determined their succession.

The Czars and Czarinas gave great luster to the court and brought equally great tragedy to St. Petersburg.

The Czarina Anna (1730 -1740) moved the capital to St. Petersburg and made it the most modern outpost of Europe in the heart of the old Russia. She was surrounded by French courtesans, German ministers, and Italian architects and artists. She was succeeded by Elizabeth (1741 – 1761) who engaged her trusted architect, the Italian Bartholomew Rastrelli, to beautify the city with the Baroque of the Italian and French courts. The Winter Palace and Catherine’s Carskoe Selo Palace are the work of Rastrelli. Next came the moment of Catherine II the Great (1762 – 1796). A political genius, refined intellectual, as bloodthirsty as her predecessors but also an innovator, Catherine opened the doors of Russia to the Enlightenment. She received Diderot in court, replaced Baroque with Neoclassicism, and engaged the Italian architects Antonio Rinaldi and Giacomo Quarenghi and the French architect Vallin de la Mothe. With Catherine II, the Czars’ excessive passion for collecting reached its peak: she created the Hermitage, one of the museums with the greatest wealth in artworks in the world. Literature, music, and science were favored by the Czarina along with the arts until the end of her reign. During all this, the people looked on, oppressed, their condition of servitude worsened by unimaginable poverty.

 
After Catherine came other Czars, and then revolts, first by officials and the army, and, increasingly, by the people. With Nicholas came Carlo Rossi, another great Italian architect, to provide city planning and architecture. Meanwhile, human mediocrity, misery, and difficult lives were described in the pages of the great 19th century Russian writers who chose St. Petersburg as their home. Puskin, Gogol and Dostoyevsky were among them. Next, Nicholas II and the Duma arrived, with glimmers of democratic innovations. By now it was too late; the Revolution was underway. The events were precipitated by unscrupulous, ambiguous characters such as Rasputin, who destroyed the reputation of the Czars.

In 1914, St. Petersburg became Petrograd, and in 1924, Stalin transformed it into Leningrad. Through political and intellectual purges, the art and the artists were co-opted by the State. Next came two World Wars: in the Second, Leningrad resisted German attacks for 45 days. Despite the death of 800,000 people, the city resisted and was given the title of Heroic City. There followed dark years of censorship of any activity. The only courageous voice was that of Anna Achmatova (1889 – 1966) a sublime poetess, symbol of liberty of Post World War II.

In the 1990’s came the breakup of the Soviet Union and the rebirth of St. Petersburg, which returned to its former name, but also became known as the capital of crime, while teeming with new construction projects and intellectual and economic life.  In 2003, the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Foundation was celebrated, along with that of Vladimir Putin, native of St. Petersburg. Great resources were put into restoration, beautification, innovation, and a return it to its former splendors. St. Petersburg today is a fascinating city, still with many contradictions, but a place where history, art and modernity blend in the eternally unique St. Petersburg.