Saint-Petersburg through centuries – in the Presidential library historical materials

May 27, 2017 marks 314 years since the founding by Peter the Great of the new city, the future capital of the Russian Empire – Saint-Petersburg. The electronic portal of the Presidential Library has formed an extensive electronic collection, thanks to which it is possible to trace all the stages of the development of the brilliant city on the Neva from the time of its foundation to the beginning of the XX century. The selection includes guides to places of interest and sights, reference, statistical, visual materials, descriptions and artistic and historical reviews of the city, which will be of interest not only to local historians, but also to all who are interested in urban history.     

Peter I, who defeated the Swedish flotilla and became the absolute master of the Neva, initially wanted to establish a military post, then a port, "at last a city in which to concentrate all the activities of its people, all elements for the life of the transforming kingdom", we read in Ivan Pushkaryov's work "Description of Saint-Petersburg and the county-level cities of St. Petersburg province".  

Saint-Petersburg today is far from the image that Peter the Great intended. "He intended (according to the Trezzini project) to build the Vasilievsky Island with the best buildings, cutting it with canals, like Venice, giving the same character to the Petersburg and Admiralty islands. Actually, the original core of the urban settlement was formed on the Petersburg Island, where in the year 1708 there were up to a dozen slobods and streets against the fortress and further along the Nevka River, connecting the Minor Neva with the Great Neva to the Vyborg road that existed then. <...> As for the left bank of the Neva to Fontanka, then at first, on the basis of Saint-Petersburg, he was a kind of suburb called Liteiny Sloboda (from the Foundry Artillery Court transferred from Moscow)", - we learn from the "Guide to St. Petersburg" 1886.

"To look" at the city of the times of Peter the Great and the subsequent years of its development is possible thanks to the visual materials of the electronic collection of the Presidential Library. For example, in the album "Views of Petersburg of Elizabethan era" 55 magnificent reproductions of paintings and graphics with panoramas of embankments, street prospects, sketches from city life, images of now existing palaces and bridges are collected. 

The materials presented in the collection give an opportunity to also feel how the city grew, gradually occupying more and more new territories. From the "Newest collection of various information about Saint-Petersburg and its environs" in 1861, you can find the following information about the Krestovsky Island, which today cannot be called the outskirts: "At present it belongs to the princes Beloselsky-Belozersky. On the south bank there is a dacha that was built by the pavilion in a cross-shaped manner and gave rise to the name of the Island. <...> On the east side, where the public park is located, a stage is set up, on which music sounds weekly. In general, Krestovsky Island is perhaps the most favorite place for walking all the classes of urban residents. Message on steamboats from the Summer Garden and on the yaks from the Palace Bridge". 

The electronic collection also includes digitized editions, thanks to which we can visit the streets of the city on the Neva and feel its spirit. "It is four o'clock. In silent streets, there is a monotonous noise and rustle; it is a creak of shovels and shuffling of a broom; thousands of janitors silently sweep and clean streets and sidewalks in the city, each at their own house. An hour passed, and the ringing of the long shepherd's horn caused cows that mooed out onto the streets and stretched along the pavement to the outposts", A. P. Bashutsky describes the early morning in the third volume of his work “Panorama of St. Petersburg”, published in 1834. And in 1840 the boy, who first came to the capital, tells his sister in a letter: "Imagine a street of such a width that you could call a square; Continue it, in the most direct direction, until its ends are lost in the misty distance; on the sides of that street, build, in your imagination there are majestic tall buildings; see their signboards of all sizes, of all genera, in all languages; imagine the most magnificent shops in the lower tier of those houses; fill the streets with crews; sidewalks, seated with limes, revive, and you will have something like Nevsky Prospekt". Live sketches of the impressed child were published in 1841 in the book "Reflections of Petersburg in Miniature".  

In 2017, the 100th anniversary of the revolution in Russia is celebrated. In this regard, the collection of the Presidential Library represents the "city of three revolutions" through the local story of Peter Stolpiansky "Revolutionary Petersburg: near the cradle of Russian freedom". The publication is devoted to various places in Petersburg, connected with the history of the revolutionary movement in the second half of the XIX century. The book introduces "the topography of the action, mainly the People's will and their predecessors", the daily life of the city.

The Presidential Library will continue to replenish the fund with electronic copies of unique historical documents and other materials devoted to the history of St. Petersburg.