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| Saint Petersburg Санкт-Петербург | |
|---|---|
 | |
| History | |
• Founded | 27 May 1703 |
| Area | |
• Total | 1,439 km² |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 5,708,625 |
Saint Petersburg, previously known as Leningrad and Petrograd, is the second-largest city in Russia and is situated on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two centuries and was the location of the October Revolution of 1917. With a population of approximately 5.4 million, it is Russia's cultural capital and a major industrial and scientific center. Saint Petersburg occupies a series of islands and low-lying terrain at the mouth of the Neva River, the city's climate is harsh, with short, cool summers and long, cold winters.[1]
Saint Petersburg has been a major industrial center since the late nineteenth century, with shipbuilding, machinery, defense production, and chemical industries dominating its economy, though following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the city, like the rest of Russia, suffered social decline. The restoration of capitalism devastated the social infrastructure: housing stock crumbled, industry collapsed, and poverty soared.[1]
History[edit | edit source]
Saint Petersburg was founded on May 27, 1703 by Peter the Great on territory conquered from Sweden during the Great Northern War. Peter conceived the city as a push of the empire's turn toward the Western world. Built on the Neva at the cost of lives of thousands of conscripted laborers and serfs, the city became the capital of the Russian Empire in 1712, replacing Moscow. Throughout the eighteenth century, the city grew as the administrative, cultural, and commercial heart of the empire. The reigns of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II saw the construction of many of the city's greatest architectural ensembles such as The Winter Palace, and the Smolny Convent.[1]
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of Saint Petersburg as an industrial powerhouse and the construction of railways, the expansion of the port, and the growth of factories specifically in metalworking, textiles, and shipbuilding created an industrial proletariat. By the turn of the twentieth century, the city's working class numbered in the hundreds of thousands, working under extreme exploitation. On January 9, 1905, Bloody Sunday, troops of the Tsar fired on a peaceful group of workers marching to the Winter Palace to present a petition to Nicholas II, killing hundreds. The massacre exploded a wave of strikes and protests across the country. In October 1905, a strike paralyzed the city and gave birth to the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, an early tool of workers' power that coordinated strikes, organized armed detachments, and challenged the authority of the autocracy.[1]
The outbreak of World War I in 1914, the war intensified the contradictions of Russian society to the breaking point. By early 1917, the city's workers subjected to food shortages, inflation, military disaster, and the brutality of the autocracy were pushed to insurrection. The February Revolution began in Petersburg on February 23, 1917 when women textile workers launched a strike on International Women's Day and the strike expanded into mass demonstrations, fraternization with soldiers, and within five days the collapse of the tsar’s authority over Saint Petersburg. [1]
Over the following months, with the newly established Provisional Government which provided economic collapse, industrial lockouts, and their continuation of the imperialist war pushed both workers and soldiers toward the Bolsheviks. [1]
Vladimir Lenin arrived in Saint Petersburg on April 3rd, 1917 and issued the April Theses in which he called for the seizure of state power, by September the Bolsheviks had won majorities in the Petersburg Soviet and in soviets across the country. The October Revolution occurred in Saint Petersburg on October 25 with the revolutionaries seizing key points of the city, the telegraph, railway stations, bridges, and government buildings and seized the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government had its headquarters and by the Smolny Institute, established the transfer of power to the soviets.[1]
In 1918, the Soviet government relocated the capital to Moscow to be closer to the interior and be more defensible against the ongoing civil war as Petersburg was threatened as in October 1919, the White Army reached the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, though they were repelled. Saint Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in 1924 following Lenin's death.[1]
The Siege of Leningrad between September 1941 to January 1944, was one of the longest and most devastating sieges in world history with approximately 1.1 million civilians dying to mainly starvation and cold, with the siege lasting for nearly 900 days, this was a part of Nazis' Generalplan Ost which planned the extermination and displacement of millions of Slavic people to create Lebensraum. Leningrad survived through mass suffering and heroism, and the eventual liberation on January 27, 1944 and was rebuilt and restored as a major industrial and scientific center. [1]
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Leningrad’s name was changed back to Saint Petersburg, symbolising the restoration of capitalism. The consequences were imminent: industrial collapse, mass unemployment, the destruction of social infrastructure, and the rise of oligarchic wealth and criminality.[1]