Map of Leningrad, Russia

Leningrad was the toponym of the Russian city in 1924-1991 after the death of Vladimir Lenin. After that period the city was renamed as Saint Petersburg. It was the capital of Imperial Russia for over 200 years which was started in 1703 as the City of Saint Petersburg by Tsar Peter the Great. During world war one in 1914 it was renamed Petrograd due to the fact that the name was too Germanic while after the Bolshevik Revolution it was changed to Leningrad. The city played a central role in Soviet history and with regards to the duration of the Siege of Leningrad in the course of World War II, the 872 days of suffering and massive loss of life. The city went through a referendum in the year 1991 and was given back its original name.

History

On May 27, 1703 Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great as part of his modernization efforts to bring Russia into the modern world and create a presence on the Baltic sea. The city was constructed on the marshlands which were conquered by Russia in the Great Northern War and were supposed to be the window of Russia to Europe. In 1712, it became the capital of the Russian Empire and replaced Moscow. The building, influenced by Western European architectural style, was rapidly becoming a political, cultural and scientific center.

The city located the imperial court and the government during the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Key events in Russian history were witnessed there, such as the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, when there was a demand for constitutional reforms and the 1905 Bloody Sunday massacre when peaceful protesters were gunned down by the Troops of the Tsar, and this unleashed revolutionary leanings.

Anti-German sentiment appeared during World War I and the renaming of the city to Petrograd became reality in 1914. The city of Petrograd was the centre of the Russian Revolution in the year 1917. The result of the February Revolution was that Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and the Romanov dynasty came to an end. The Provisional Government was replaced by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin in October of the same year and the October Revolution happened.

In 1924, when Lenin died, the city was renamed after him to be Leningrad. In spite of the fact that the capital was already relocated to Moscow in 1918, Leningrad was the major cultural and industrial center. The Soviet Union also depended on its shipyards, its armament factories and its scientific institutions.

September 8, 1941, Nazi Germans and Finns surrounded the city completely sealing it off by land. The siege continued 872 days after which it was lifted on January 27, 1944. The situation was terrible- food was living, no fuel and the winter was bitterly cold. More than one million of the civilian population were affected by the war, mostly starved and frozen to death. The city did not give up, although it was quite extreme. It became a symbol of Soviet perseverance and patriotism and was afterward granted the status of the Hero City.

After the war Leningrad was reconstructed, but never again had status as the capital city. It remained an important vehicle in Soviet science, industry and culture. Its intellectual and artistic traditions were sustained by the Hermitage Museum, and the Mariinsky Theatre and by academic institutions. The city also gave rise to the underground cultural and political opposition during Brezhnev times which handed out physicists and dissidents like Andrei Sakharov.

During the reforms that were initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, citizens started making demands of giving more regards to the pre-Soviet heritage of the city. Shortly after the Soviet Union dissolved, in a 1991 referendum, there was a majority vote on the renaming of the city with most voting to restore the name of Saint Petersburg. This change came into existence on September 6, 1991. But the adjoining administrative areaК©¨ German: administrative district) kept the name Leningrad Oblast.

Culture

The city was built under the design of European style architecture designed to westernize Russia, and was created by Peter the Great in 1703. The city also had canals and had a structure similar to what cities in Europe like Amsterdam and Venice could offer.

It was the centerpoint of the Russian Enlightenment by the 18th century. Imperial Academy of Arts was established in 1757 and trained numerous eminent Russian painters and sculptors. The city was home to literary greats, who include Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol and this has made the city to be known as the literary capital of Russia. In particular, the works by Pushkin are linked closely to the town and he gained the title of the founder of modern Russian literature.

The theatre was designed in the 19th century, it is named Mariinsky Theatre and home to the best-of-the-best ballet and opera in the world. It gave birth to careers of such legends as dancers and directors as Marius Petipa and Anna Pavlova. The city is still an important hub of classical music and dance and the Mariinsky Theatre and Mariinsky Theatre orchestra continue to enjoy international esteem.

Leningrad was also a city of culture with a cultural significance during the Soviet period although affected by the ideologies. Institutions like Leningrad Philharmonic and the Kirov Ballet (today the Mariinsky Ballet) kept thriving with the support of the state. The city was home also to the main museums, such as the State Hermitage Museum which was one of the art museums in the world and the largest one as well. The city of Leningrad nevertheless hosted underground artistic movements, such as samizdat (self-published literature), nonconformist visual arts, and non-official rock-music scenes, in spite of censorship.

In the early 20th century, Leningrad had been a cradle of the Soviet avant-garde to which such figures as Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky contributed to modern art and architecture. Later, in the late Soviet period, it was also an alternative music center that produced such powerful rock bands as Kino and Aquarium.

Language

The independence of the State is another factor to explain why Russian was the main language spoken in Leningrad throughout its history. Being the second largest city of the Soviet Union and the center of intellectual and cultural life, it was influential in the formation and standardization of the modern Russian language and literature.

The founders of the city originally called it Saint Petersburg- which is a Dutch and German name. This showed admiration Peter had of Western Europe and his plan to transform the city into a European styled capital. This consequently made Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and France early giants of influence on the language use in Saint Petersburg especially among the aristocrats, military and educated elite in the city. During the 18th and early 19th centuries French was commonly spoken among the circles of nobles, and most of the educated Russians were bilingual or even multilingual.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the city was renamed as Petrograd to eliminate the Germanic suffix. When Lenin died in 1924, it was renamed as Leningrad, which would suit the Soviet ideology better.

It was a great hub of the development of Russian literature. Authors like Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anna Akhmatova lived in the city or wrote about it and also contributed a lot to Russian literary language and style. The author, Pushkin who is thought of as the father of modern Russian literary works had a sophisticated and easy to follow style which influenced the common standard language of literature.

During the Soviet period, there was a language policy that focused on the state use of Russian in the entire USSR. Nevertheless, there were also regional and minority languages because of the internal migrations and the ethnic structure of the city such as Ukrainian, Tatar, Yiddish and Finnish.

Leningrad also grew into a linguistic opposition, even though the censorship of the state was effective. Underground publications (samizdat) published suppressed literary and political writings which were usually in highly sophisticated and highly contradictory Russian with roots back in the older times or richer usage of more expressive forms of the language lacking in the official Soviet style.

Geography

It is situated in the northern-west region of Russia located close to the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland which is a part of the Baltic Sea. It is at the opening of the Neva River that flows out of the largest lake in Europe, Lake Ladoga.

Saint Petersburg is constructed using a number of islands and low-lying marshes, and more than 40 rivers, tributaries and canals guiding it. This has been attributed to its nickname the Venice of the north. Water also plays a significant role in the structure of the city and most of its more iconic structures are built along the Neva or along the maze-like canals. The river in itself isolates the city into two major quarters; the mainland (south) and the Petrograd side (north islands). Such main districts are the Admiralteysky District, Vasileostrovsky District, and the Central District, where a great number of historic places can be found.

The region is typified by flatlands with most of the region hardly above sea level. In order to alleviate this, a flood defense barrier was finished at the beginning of the 21st century across the Gulf of Finland.

Leningrad climate is considered as the humid continental, with long and cold winters and mild or warm summers. Winter days are followed by snow, ice and low sunshine whereas summer has what the Russians call a White Night, which occurs around the end of June, when there is hardly any sunset time, because the city is located at a high latitude.

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