“A City Out of Nothing”
Later artists have undoubtedly, though understandably, romanticised the origins of the city that is named after Peter the Great, with paintings of Peter staring out to sea (above) as he dreams of his great port while his courtiers clutch at their hats as the wind off the Neva threatens to snatch them away.[1] Others show Peter marching sharply through his rapidly growing city while his courtiers strive to keep pace with their impatient Tsar who strides on while barking out orders. The traditional date for the founding of St Petersburg is supposed to be 17th May 1703, though inexplicably no records of the event survive in the court journals. The fanciful story that Peter was led to the spot by an eagle which later alighted on Peter’s arm has been long dismissed; in fact it is quite probable that the Tsar was not even there for the founding. A more plausible origin for Peter’s city on the Baltic was probably his interest in military fortification after he had conquered the Turks at Azov in 1695-96. As Cracraft reasonably suggests “it was in the Azov campaigns and subsequent building projects that Peter first seriously utilized the techniques of modern siegecraft and fortification, and first faced the difficulties of town planning,” experience and skill he would put to good use when planning and constructing “Peter’s City.”[2] As for the idea that the city came “out of nothing,” from empty land is wrong; there were habitations and populated residences including the residences of Swedish officials long before Peter arrived. And though in a letter to one of his courtiers Peter referred to the spot as his paradise, the location belied that idea since the climate was most inhospitable, the temperatures very cold, and the land itself was a mosquito- infected marshland which made erecting a settlement there let only a great city a daunting prospect.
[1] This account is the invention of Pushkin who used it in his poem “The Bronze Horseman” (1833) which pictures the tsar looking out over a wilderness dotted with an occasional fisherman’s hut”, Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 210-211. With the outbreak of World War I, the name was Russianised to Petrograd; and in 1924 was re-named as Leningrad. It reverted to St Petersburg in 1991.
[2] Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great, 81.
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