History of Saint Petersburg

Conscripts had to provide their own tools and food for the journey of hundreds of kilometres, on foot, in gangs, often escorted by military guards and shackled to prevent desertion, but many escaped; others died from disease and exposure under the harsh conditions.

The marshland was drained and the city spread outward from the fortress under the supervision of German and Dutch engineers whom Peter had invited to Russia.

[5] At the same time Peter hired a large number of engineers, architects, shipbuilders, scientists and businessmen from all countries of Europe.

Substantial immigration of educated professionals eventually turned St. Petersburg into a much more cosmopolitan city than Moscow and the rest of Russia.

Peter's efforts to push for modernization in Moscow and the rest of Russia were completely misunderstood by the old-fashioned Russian nobility and eventually failed, causing him much trouble with opposition, including several attempts on his life and the treason involving his own son.

Inspired by Venice and Amsterdam, Peter the Great proposed boats and coracles as means of transport in his city of canals.

Initially there were only 12 permanent bridges over smaller waterways, while the Great Neva was crossed by boats in the summertime and by foot or horse carriages during winter.

Several revolutions, uprisings, assassinations of tsars, and power takeovers in St. Peterburg had shaped the course of history in Russia and influenced the world.

His mysterious death in 1825 was marked by the Decembrist revolt, which was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas I, who ordered execution of leaders and exiled hundreds of their followers to Siberia.

The works of Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and numerous others brought Russian literature to the world.

Socialist organizations were responsible for the assassinations of many public figures, government officials, members of the royal family, and the tsar himself.

Tsar Alexander II was killed by suicide bomber Ignacy Hryniewiecki in 1881, in a plot with connections to the family of Lenin and other revolutionaries.

The city's proximity to anti-Soviet armies forced communist leader Vladimir Lenin to move his government to Moscow on 5 March 1918.

After the Civil War, and murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, as well as millions of anti-Soviet people, the renaming to Leningrad was designed to destroy last hopes among the resistance, and show strong dictatorship of Lenin's communist party and the Soviet regime.

[16][17] St. Petersburg was devastated by Lenin's Red Terror[18] then by Stalin's Great Purge[19] in addition to crime and vandalism in the series of revolutions and wars.

Between 1917 and 1930s, about two million people fled the city, including hundreds of thousands of educated intellectuals and aristocracy, who emigrated to Europe and America.

At the same time many political, social and paramilitary groups had followed the communist government in their move to Moscow, as the benefits of capital status had left the city.

[20] The death of Kirov was used to ignite the Great Purge[21] where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected "enemies of the Soviet state" were arrested.

By Hitler's order the Wehrmacht constantly shelled and bombed the city and systematically isolated it from any supplies, causing death of more than 1 million civilians in three years; 650,000 died in 1942 alone.

All looted treasures, such as the Amber Room, gold statues of the Peterhof Palace, paintings and other valuable art were taken to Germany.

During the siege of 1941–1944, the only ways to supply the city and suburbs, inhabited by several millions, were by aircraft or by cars crossing the frozen Lake Ladoga.

The German military systematically shelled this route, called the Road of Life, so thousands of cars with people and food supplies had sunk in the lake.

The city suffered severe destruction – the Wehrmacht fired about 150,000 shells at Leningrad and the Luftwaffe dropped about 100,000 air bombs.

[citation needed] This redistribution of wealth caused struggles within the Soviet government and communist party, which led to their fragmentation and played a role in the eventual collapse of the USSR.

[citation needed] On 12 June 1991, the day of the first Russian presidential election, in a referendum 54% of Leningrad voters chose to restore "the original name, Saint Petersburg", on 6 September 1991.

In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected the head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration, and changed his title from mayor to governor.

The move partially restored Saint Petersburg's historic status, making the city Russia's second judicial capital.