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110-567: In 19th-century Saint Petersburg , a young girl named Sasha watches as her beloved grandfather – a noted explorer named Oloukine – departs upon a voyage to reach the North Pole on board the Davaï , a specially designed icebreaker built to withstand the harsh arctic conditions and paid for by the Tsar of Russia. After years without word from the vessel, the Tsar declares a reward of 1 million rubles for proof of

220-696: A UNESCO World Heritage Site . Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage , one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center , the tallest skyscraper in Europe , and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020 . The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Russian Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul . The consecration of

330-525: A historically strategic port , it is governed as a federal city . The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress , and was named after the apostle Saint Peter . In Russia , Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power . It served as

440-668: A capital of the Tsardom of Russia , and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War , the most lethal siege in history. In June 1991, only

550-426: A few failures in the top electrical wires. The trams ran at the speed of 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) and could carry 20 passengers per carriage. The carriages were converted from the used horsecars . About 900,000 passengers were transported over a regular season between 20 January and 21 March. The sparking of contacts at the top wires amused spectators in the night. The first concrete bridge across Neva,

660-613: A few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the USSR , voters supported restoring the city's original appellation in a city-wide referendum . As Russia's cultural centre, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018. It is considered an important economic, scientific, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times, the city has the nickname of being "the Northern Capital of Russia" and

770-521: A fortress at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, which was later called Ingermanland . The small town of Nyen grew up around the fort. Before the 17th century, this area was inhabited by Finnic Izhorians and Votians . The Ingrian Finns moved to the region from the provinces of Karelia and Savonia during the Swedish rule. There was also some Estonian , Karelian , Russian and German population in

880-464: A man falsely claiming to be the captain, the Norge departs without her and she is forced to wait for its return while working as a dogsbody in a tavern . When the Norge returns, Sasha uses her grandfather's notes to convince the real captain – Lund – that she can locate the Davaï , meaning Lund and his crew may claim the Tsar's 1 million ruble reward. Lund is bound by honor to grant Sasha passage, as Larson

990-484: A much larger flood of 760 centimetres (300 in) was described in 1691. Besides flooding as a result of tidal waves, in 1903, 1921 and 1956 floods were caused by the melting of snow. The Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia classifies the Neva as a "heavily polluted" river. The main pollutants include copper , zinc , manganese , nitrites and nitrogen . The dirtiest tributaries of

1100-492: A new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south. Constructivism was rejected in favour of a more pompous Stalinist architecture . Moving the city centre further from the border with Finland, Stalin adopted a plan to build a new city hall with a huge adjacent square at the southern end of Moskovsky Prospekt , designated as the new main street of Leningrad. After the Winter (Soviet-Finnish) war in 1939–1940,

1210-530: A new plan in 1737. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka . It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty building and are now known as Nevsky Prospect (which is considered the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Avenue . Baroque architecture became dominant in

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1320-446: A political humiliation to the Tsar, who had invested heavily in the expedition, and so Tomsky intends to see that Oloukine's name does not adorn the building. Attending Sasha's ball, he loudly feigns outrage when Sasha points out that her grandfather's notes detail how he took a different route than the one assumed by the Tsar's advisors, and after Tomsky storms from the building, the other guests follow him, keen to distance themselves from

1430-509: A rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed but is evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716, Peter the Great appointed Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. The style of Petrine Baroque , developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace , Kunstkamera , Peter and Paul Cathedral , Twelve Collegia , became prominent in

1540-463: A year. Near the Ladozhsky Bridge there is an underwater tunnel to host a gas pipeline Nord Stream 1 . The tunnel has a diameter of 2 metres (6.6 ft) and a length of 750 metres (2,460 ft) and is laid at a maximum depth of 25 metres (82 ft). Neva is the main source of water (96 percent) of St. Petersburg and its suburbs. From 26 June 2009, St. Petersburg started processing

1650-465: Is 7 mg/L. The basin area of Neva is 5,000 km , including the pools of Lake Ladoga and Onega (281,000 km ). The basin contains 26,300 lakes and has a complex hydrological network of more than 48,300 rivers, however only 26 flow directly into Neva. The main tributaries are Mga , Tosna , Izhora , Slavyanka and Murzinka on the left, and Okhta and Chyornaya Rechka on the right side of Neva. The hydrological network had been altered by

1760-471: Is both his first mate and brother, and Larson has gambled away the price of Sasha's passage during the unprofitable voyage from which the Norge and its crew have just returned. The crew at first warm to Sasha over the long course of the voyage, but when the Norge is destroyed because of Larson's lack of experience, the crew turn upon Sasha as rations dwindle and they begin to blame her for their dire predicament. Days into their seemingly futile journey across

1870-492: Is combined with the city's Russian heritage. Another nickname of Saint Petersburg is "The City of the White Nights" because of a natural phenomenon which arises due to the closeness to the polar region and ensures that in summer the night skies of the city do not get completely dark for a month. The city is also often called the "Northern Palmyra ", due to its extravagant architecture. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans ,

1980-552: Is connecting the River Volkhov and Neva. Some of its historical structures are preserved, such as a four-chamber granite sluice (1836) and a bridge (1832). On 21 August 1963, a Soviet twinjet Tu-124 airliner performed an emergency water landing on the Neva near the Finland Railway Bridge . The plane took off from Tallinn -Ülemiste Airport ( TLL ) at 08:55 on 21 August 1963 with 45 passengers and seven crew on board and

2090-1023: Is home to notable federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation . It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia , as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy , and the Leningrad Military District of the Russian Armed Forces . The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute

2200-691: Is navigable throughout and is part of the Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea–Baltic Canal . It is the site of many major historical events, including the Battle of the Neva in 1240 which gave Alexander Nevsky his name, the founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703, and the Siege of Leningrad by the German army during World War II . The river played a vital role in trade between Byzantium and Scandinavia . The earliest people in recorded history known to have inhabited

2310-448: Is still named Leningrad . Having passed the role of capital to Petersburg, Moscow never relinquished the title of "capital", being called pervoprestolnaya ('first throned') for 200 years. An equivalent name for Petersburg, the "Northern Capital", has re-entered usage today since several federal institutions were recently moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Solemn descriptive names like "the city of three revolutions" and "the cradle of

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2420-639: Is Αγία Πετρούπολη, Agia Petroupoli ). Saint Petersburg has been traditionally called the "Window to Europe" and the "Window to the West" by the Russians. The city is the northernmost metropolis with more than 1 million people in the world, and is also often described as the " Venice of the North" or the "Russian Venice" due to its many water corridors, as the city is built on swamp and water. Furthermore, it has strongly Western European-inspired architecture and culture, which

2530-433: The Davaï ' s final resting place, effectively declaring the vessel sunk with all hands. Sasha, now 15 and about to host her debutante ball , sneaks into a newly built library wing to be named for her grandfather in order to view the many artifacts he had donated, but while there, she overhears a conversation in which Prince Tomsky belittles her grandfather's achievements. Tomsky considers Oloukine's failure to return as

2640-685: The Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985. In October 1946 some territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland , which had been annexed into the USSR from Finland in 1940 under the peace treaty following the Winter War , were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District . These included the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948). Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over

2750-606: The Great Northern War , Peter the Great captured Nyenskans and soon replaced the fortress. On 27 May [ O.S. 16 May] 1703, closer to the estuary (5 km (3 mi) inland from the gulf ), on Zayachy (Hare) Island , he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress , which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia; in some years several Swedish prisoners of war were also involved under

2860-513: The Hermitage Bridge . From 1727 to 1916, the temporary Isaakievsky pontoon bridge was early constructed between the modern Saint Isaac's Square and Vasilievsky Island . A similar, but much longer Trinity pontoon bridge, which spanned 500 metres (1,600 ft), was brought from the Summer Garden to Petrogradsky Island . The first permanent bridge across Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge ,

2970-518: The Leningrad Affair (1949–1952), a notable event in the postwar political struggle in the USSR . It was a product of rivalry between Stalin's potential successors where one side was represented by the leaders of the city Communist Party organization – the second most significant one in the country after Moscow. The entire elite leadership of Leningrad was destroyed, including the former mayor Kuznetsov ,

3080-685: The Narva Triumphal Arch . In 1825, the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after Nicholas assumed the throne. By the 1840s, neoclassical architecture had given way to various romanticist styles, which dominated until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider ( Mariinsky Palace , Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace , Nicholas Palace , New Michael Palace ) and Konstantin Thon ( Moskovsky railway station ). With

3190-668: The Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland . Despite its modest length of 74 kilometres (46 mi), it is the fourth-largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge (after the Volga , the Danube and the Rhine ). The Neva is the only river flowing from Lake Ladoga. It flows through the city of Saint Petersburg , the three smaller towns of Shlisselburg , Kirovsk and Otradnoye , and dozens of settlements. It

3300-544: The October Revolution , which led to the end of the social-democratic provisional government , the transfer of all political power to the Soviets , and the rise of the Communist Party . After that the city acquired a new descriptive name, "the city of three revolutions", referring to the three major developments in the political history of Russia of the early 20th century. In September and October 1917, German troops invaded

3410-521: The October revolution " used in the Soviet era are reminders of the pivotal events in national history that occurred here. Petropolis is a translation of a city name to Greek, and is also a kind of descriptive name: Πέτρ- is a Greek root for 'stone', so the "city from stone" emphasizes the material that had been forcibly made obligatory for construction from the first years of the city (a modern Greek translation

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3520-593: The River Neva , at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea . The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area . Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As the former capital of Imperial Russia , and

3630-554: The Volodarsky Bridge , was built in 1936. During World War II, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, Leningrad was in the devastating German Siege . On 30 August 1941, the German army captured Mga and came to Neva. On 8 September Germans captured Shlisselburg and cut all land communications and waterways to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). The siege was partly relieved in January 1943, and ended on 27 January 1944. A river station

3740-604: The West Estonian archipelago and threatened Petrograd with bombardment and invasion. On 12 March 1918, Lenin transferred the government of Soviet Russia to Moscow, to keep it away from the state border. During the Russian Civil War , in mid-1919 Russian anti-communist forces with the help of Estonians attempted to capture the city, but Leon Trotsky mobilized the army and forced them to retreat back to Estonia . On 26 January 1924, five days after Lenin's death, Petrograd

3850-461: The emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and an Industrial Revolution , the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously developed on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth; it became one of the largest industrial cities in Europe, with a major naval base (in Kronstadt ),

3960-435: The 1920s and 1930s, the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs . Constructivist architecture flourished around that time. Housing became a government-provided amenity ; many "bourgeois" apartments were so large that numerous families were assigned to what were called "communal" apartments ( kommunalkas ). By the 1930s, 68% of the population lived in such housing under very poor conditions. In 1935,

4070-558: The 20-year-old Prince Alexander Yaroslavich , aimed to stop the planned Swedish invasion. The Swedish army was defeated; the prince showed personal courage in combat and received the honorary name of "Nevsky". As a result of the Russian defeat in the Ingrian War of 1610–17 and the concomitant Treaty of Stolbovo , the area of the Neva River became part of Swedish Ingria . Beginning in 1642,

4180-585: The 8th to 13th centuries, Neva provided a waterway from Scandinavia to the Byzantine Empire . In the 9th century, the area belonged to Veliky Novgorod . The Neva was already mentioned in the Life of Alexander Nevsky (13th century). At that time, Veliky Novgorod was engaged in nearly constant wars with Sweden. A major battle occurred on 15 July 1240 at the confluence of the Izhora and Neva Rivers. The Russian army, led by

4290-484: The Arctic snows, Sasha flees the group into a raging blizzard , where she is found by a husky she befriended on the ship, but rather than lead her back to the crew, the dog leads her to the frozen corpse of Oloukine. After retrieving his logbook , the corpse is carried away by the disintegration of the ice shelf. Sasha reads the log and discovers Oloukine's journey played out much as Sasha's has, with his men abandoning him on

4400-633: The Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, or almost two and a half years, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944. The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history . It isolated the city from food supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga , which could not make it through until

4510-769: The Baltic Sea. Then, the Tosna was flowing in the modern lower half of the Neva as today, into the Litorinal Sea. In the north of the Karelian Isthmus , the sea was united by a wide strait with Lake Ladoga . The Mga then flowed to the east, into Lake Ladoga, near the modern source of the Neva. Thus the Mga then was separate from the Tosna/lower-Neva basin. Near the modern Lake Ladoga, by glacial rebound land rose faster, and an endorheic lake briefly formed. This overspilled, eventually

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4620-509: The Church of the Intercession. Raised in 2007, it is a wooden replica of a historical church which stood on the southern shore of Lake Onega. That church was constructed in 1708 and it burned down in 1963. It is believed to be the forerunner of the famous Kizhi Pogost . Old Ladoga Canal , built in the first half of the 18th century, is a water transport route along the shore of Lake Ladoga which

4730-528: The German words Sankt and Burg . In March 1917, during the February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov dynastic rule . On 7 November [ O.S. 25 October] 1917, the Bolsheviks , led by Vladimir Lenin , stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as

4840-596: The Leningrad Oblast. They include the fortress Oreshek , which was built in 1323 on the Orekhovy Island at the source of Neva River, south-west of the Petrokrepost Bay, near the city of Shlisselburg . The waterfront of Schlisselburg has a monument of Peter I. In the city, there are Blagoveshchensky Cathedral (1764–95) and a still functioning Orthodox church of St. Nicholas, built in 1739. On the river bank stands

4950-553: The Neva River runs from late April to November. To the west of Shlisselburg, an oil pipeline runs under the river. The pipeline is part of the Baltic Pipeline System , which provides oil from Timan-Pechora plate, West Siberia , Ural , Kazakhstan and Primorsk to the Gulf of Finland. The 774-metre (2,539 ft) long pipeline lies 7 to 9 metres (23 to 30 ft) below the river bottom and delivers about 42 million tonnes of oil

5060-496: The Neva River, and a seaport on the Baltic. The names of Saints Peter and Paul , bestowed upon the original city's citadel and its cathedral (from 1725 – a burial vault of Russian emperors) coincidentally were the names of the first two assassinated Russian emperors, Peter III (1762, supposedly killed in a conspiracy led by his wife, Catherine the Great ) and Paul I (1801, Nikolay Alexandrovich Zubov and other conspirators who brought to power Alexander I ,

5170-410: The Neva are the Mga, Slavyanka, Ohta, and Chernaya. Hundreds of factories pour wastewater into the Neva within St. Petersburg, and petroleum is regularly transported along the river. The annual influx of pollutants is 80,000 tonnes, and the heaviest polluters are Power-and-heating Plant 2 ( Russian : ТЭЦ-2 ), "Plastpolymer" and " Obukhov State Plant ". The biggest polluters in the Leningrad Oblast are

5280-549: The Soviet era, many historic architectural monuments of the previous centuries were destroyed by the new regime for ideological reasons. While that mainly concerned churches and cathedrals, some other buildings were also demolished. On 1 December 1934, Sergey Kirov , the Bolshevik leader of Leningrad, was assassinated under suspicious circumstances, which became the pretext for the Great Purge . In Leningrad, approximately 40,000 were executed during Stalin's purges. During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following

5390-504: The Soviet–Finnish border moved northwards. Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Square maintained the functions and the role of a city centre. In December 1931, Leningrad was administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast . At that time it included the Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District , Krasnoselsky District , Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944). During

5500-400: The Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s–1780s, the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments. However, it was not until 1850 that the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Annunciation Bridge , was allowed to open. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769–1833) became

5610-508: The acting mayor Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov, and all their deputies; overall 23 leaders were sentenced to the death penalty, 181 to prison or exile (rehabilitated in 1954). About 2,000 ranking officials across the USSR were expelled from the party and the Komsomol and removed from leadership positions. The Leningrad Metro underground rapid transit system , designed before the war, opened in 1955 with its first eight stations decorated with marble and bronze . However, after Stalin's death in 1953,

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5720-400: The area are the Finnic people . The word Neva is widespread in Finnic languages , having quite cognate meanings. In Finnish it means poor fen , in Karelian : watercourse and in Estonian (as nõva ): waterway. It has been postulated the name could derive from Indo-European adjective newā which means new – the river began its flow some time between 2000 BC and 1250 BC. However,

5830-412: The area. At the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great, who was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, wanted Russia to gain a seaport to trade with the rest of Europe. He needed a better seaport than the country's main one at the time, Arkhangelsk , which was on the White Sea in the far north and closed to shipping during the winter. On 12 May [ O.S. 1 May] 1703, during

5940-443: The capital of Ingria was Nyen, a city near the Nyenschantz fortress. Because of financial and religious oppression, much of the Orthodox population left the Neva region, emptying 60 percent of the villages by 1620. The abandoned areas became populated by people from the Karelian Isthmus and Savonia . As a result of the Great Northern War of 1700–21, the valley of Neva River became part of Russian Empire . On 16 May 1703,

6050-476: The cities of Shlisselburg, Kirovsk and Otradnoye, as well as the Kirov thermal power station . More than 40 oil spills are registered on the river every year. In 2008, the Federal Service of St. Petersburg announced that no beach of the Neva was fit for swimming. Cleaning of wastewater in Saint Petersburg started in 1979; by 1997, about 74% was purified. This rose to 85% in 2005, to 91.7% by 2008, and Feliks Karamzinov expected it to reach almost 100% by 2011 with

6160-426: The city Menshikov is maybe also the author of the first nickname of Petersburg which he called Петри ( Petri ). It took some years until the known Russian spelling of this name finally settled. In 1740s Mikhail Lomonosov uses a derivative of Greek: Πετρόπολις (Петрополис, Petropolis ) in a Russified form Petropol ' (Петрополь). A combo Piterpol (Питерпол) also appears at this time. In any case, eventually

6270-514: The city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences , University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great. In 1725, Peter died at age fifty-two. His endeavors to modernize Russia had been opposed by the Russian nobility . There were several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his son. In 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia , Saint Petersburg

6380-400: The city authorities arranged for the mayoral elections and a referendum upon the city's name, when the original name Saint Petersburg was restored. The turnout was 65%; 66.13% of the total count of votes went to Anatoly Sobchak , who became the first directly elected mayor of the city . Meanwhile, economic conditions started to deteriorate as the country tried to adapt to major changes. For

6490-496: The city authorities until December 2010, when after the statement of President Dmitry Medvedev , the city decided to find a more appropriate location for this project. In the same year, the new location for the project was relocated to Lakhta , a historical area northwest of the city centre, and the new project would be named Lakhta Center . Construction was approved by Gazprom and the city administration and commenced in 2012. The 462 m (1,516 ft) high Lakhta Center has become

6600-407: The city during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace . In the 1760s, Baroque architecture was succeeded by neoclassical architecture . Established in 1762, the Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg ruled that no structure in the city could be higher than

6710-459: The city of St. Petersburg was founded in the mouth of Neva and became capital of Russia in 1712. Neva became the central part of the city. It was cleaned, intersected with canals and enclosed with embankments. In 1715, construction began of the first wooden embankment between the Admiralty building and the Summer Garden . In the early 1760s works started to cover it in granite and to build bridges across Neva and its canals and tributaries, such as

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6820-415: The city was renamed Leningrad in January 1924. The referendum on restoring the historic name was held on 12 June 1991, with 55% of voters supporting " Saint Petersburg " and 43% supporting " Leningrad ". The turnout was 65% . Renaming the city Petrograd was not an option. This change officially took effect on 6 September 1991. Meanwhile, the oblast whose administrative center is also in Saint Petersburg

6930-477: The completion of the expansion of the main sewerage plant. Many sites of ancient people, up to nine thousand years old, were found within the territory of the Neva basin. It is believed that around twelve thousand years BC, Finnic people ( Votes and Izhorians ) moved to this area from the Ural Mountains . In the 8th and 9th centuries AD, the area was inhabited by the East Slavs who were mainly engaged in slash and burn agriculture, hunting and fishing. From

7040-406: The confluence of the river Tosna, and near the island Fabrinchny near the source. The average depth is 8 to 11 metres (26 to 36 ft); the maximum of 24 metres (79 ft) is reached above the Liteyny Bridge , and the minimum of 4.0 to 4.5 metres (13 to 15 ft) is in Ivanovskye rapids. In the Neva basin, rainfall greatly exceeds evaporation; the latter accounts for only 37.7 percent of

7150-418: The development of Saint Petersburg through its entire history. When it was founded in 1703, the area was low and swampy and required construction of canals and ponds for drainage. The earth excavated during their construction was used to raise the city. At the end of the 19th century, the delta of Neva consisted of 48 rivers and canals and 101 islands. The most significant distributaries of the delta are listed in

7260-420: The diversity of fish species in Neva is small. Permanent residents include such undemanding to environment species as perch , ruffe and roaches . Many fish species are transitory, of which commercial value have smelt , vendace and partly salmon . Floods in St. Petersburg are usually caused by the overflow of the delta of Neva and by surging water in the eastern part of Neva Bay . They are registered when

7370-507: The drinking water with ultraviolet light, abandoning the use of chlorine for disinfection. The Neva also has developed fishery, both commercial and recreational. Leningrad Oblast : St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg, Neva delta Construction of the Novo-Admiralteisky Bridge , a movable drawbridge across the river, has been approved, but will not commence before 2011. Whereas most tourist attractions of Neva are located within St. Petersburg, there are several historical places upstream, in

7480-454: The dynamite they brought with them to blast the ship free and take it back out to sea. Exploring the vessel, Sasha finds her grandfather's cabin, in which a picture of her as a child rests upon his desk, frozen in place. As the credits roll, a montage of still images play out: the Davaï ' s return to St. Petersburg, Tomsky's humiliation as Sasha is proven correct, and Sasha's reunion with her father. A post-credits scene also plays, in which

7590-433: The family. Denied a position as the ambassador to Rome because of Tomsky's deception, Sasha's father blames his daughter for the family's fall from grace. Sasha runs away from home, traveling by what means she can to the coast, where she locates a vessel – the Norge – with a reinforced hull , which indicates that it is built for travel to the icy Northern seas where Sasha wishes to go. After negotiating passage with Larson,

7700-556: The fires and cutting for technical needs. Extensive damage was caused during World War II : in Saint Petersburg, the forests were reduced completely, and in the upper reaches down to 40 to 50 percent. Forest were replanted after the war with spruce, pine, cedar , Siberian larch , oak , Norway maple , elm , America, ash , apple tree, mountain ash and other species. The shrubs include barberry , lilac , jasmine , hazel , honeysuckle , hawthorn , rose hip , viburnum , juniper , elder , shadbush and many others. Nowadays,

7810-407: The first tallest skyscraper in Russia and Europe outside of Moscow. Neva The Neva ( / ˈ n iː v ə / NEE -və , UK also / ˈ n eɪ v ə / NAY -və ; Russian : Нева́ , IPA: [nʲɪˈva] ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria ) to

7920-531: The first time since the 1940s, food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. This dramatic time was depicted in photographic series of Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko . Economic conditions began to improve only at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1995, a northern section of the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line of the Saint Petersburg Metro

8030-549: The flag planted by Oloukine at the North Pole is blown away by the Arctic wind. Long Way North was released theatrically in the US by Shout! Factory on September 30, 2016, and on DVD and Blu-ray on January 17, 2017. Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg , formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad , is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow . It is situated on

8140-467: The head of the city administration . The title of the city head was changed from "mayor" to "governor". In 2000, Yakovlev won re-election. His second term expired in 2004; the long-awaited restoration of the broken subway connection was expected to finish by that time. But in 2003 Yakovlev suddenly resigned, leaving the governor's office to Valentina Matviyenko . The law on election of the City Governor

8250-401: The ice-locked Davaï because of his obsessive quest to reach the North Pole, forcing him to go forth alone across the ice, where he claims to have reached the North Pole, but, weakened by hunger, sat down in the snow to better appreciate the harsh beauty of his surroundings, where he is found two years later by Sasha. Sasha uses the coordinates in the logbook to find the Davaï , and the crew use

8360-420: The lake froze. More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. There were incidents of cannibalism, with around 2,000 residents arrested for eating other people. Many others escaped or were evacuated, so the city became largely depopulated. On 1 May 1945 Joseph Stalin , in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad , Sevastopol , and Odesa , hero cities of

8470-729: The late 19th century to park unused ships. Neva is part of the major Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea – Baltic Canal , however it has relatively low transport capacity because of its width, depth and bridges. Neva is available for vessels with capacity below 5,000 tonnes. Major transported goods include timber from Arkhangelsk and Vologda ; apatite , granite and diabase from Kola Peninsula ; cast iron and steel from Cherepovets ; coal from Donetsk and Kuznetsk ; pyrite from Ural; potassium chloride from Solikamsk ; oil from Volga region. There are also many passenger routes to Moscow , Astrakhan , Rostov , Perm , Nizhny Novgorod , Valaam and other destinations. Navigation season on

8580-527: The local place names with such influence coincide with Scandinavian traders and Slavs' first main settlement in the region, in the 8th century AD. In the Paleozoic , 300–400 million years ago, all the delta region was covered by a sea. Modern relief, eminences, were formed by glacial scouring. Its retreat formed the Littorina Sea , the level of which was 7 to 9 metres (23 to 30 ft) higher than its successor

8690-578: The mouth. There are three sharp turns: the Ivanovskye rapids, at Nevsky Forest Park of the Ust-Slavyanka region (the so-called "Crooked Knee"), and near the Smolny Institute , below the mouth of the river Okhta . The river declines 4.27 metres (14.0 ft) in elevation between source and mouth. At one point the river crosses a moraine ridge and forms the Ivanovskye rapids. There, at the beginning of

8800-466: The original name, Sankt-Peterburg , was returned by citywide referendum. Today, in English the city is known as Saint Petersburg . Local residents often refer to the city by its shortened nickname, Piter (Russian: Питер , IPA: [ˈpʲitʲɪr] ). After the October Revolution the name Red Petrograd (Красный Петроград, Krasny Petrograd ) was often used in newspapers and other prints until

8910-484: The perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. From the 1960s to the 1980s many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts; while the functionalist apartment blocks were nearly identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre to live in separate apartments. On 12 June 1991 , simultaneously with the first Russian SFSR presidential elections ,

9020-421: The post-war decades, partially according to pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan for Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. In 1953, Pavlovsky District in Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory, including Pavlovsk, merged with Leningrad. In 1954, the settlements Levashovo , Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad. Leningrad gave its name to

9130-594: The preservation of its historical and architectural environment became controversial. After 2005, the demolition of older buildings in the historical centre was permitted. In 2006, Gazprom announced an ambitious project to erect a 403 m (1,322 ft) skyscraper (the Okhta Center ) opposite to Smolny , which could result in the loss of the unique line of Petersburg landscape. Urgent protests by citizens and prominent public figures of Russia against this project were not considered by Governor Valentina Matviyenko and

9240-418: The rapids, is the narrowest part of the river: 210 metres (690 ft). The average flow rate in the rapids is about 0.8–1.1 metres per second (2.6–3.6 ft/s). The average width along the river is 400 to 600 metres (1,300 to 2,000 ft). The widest places, at 1,000 to 1,250 metres (3,280 to 4,100 ft), are in the delta, near the gates of the marine trading port, at the end of the Ivanovskye rapids near

9350-427: The river, this sometimes causes upstream floods. Of the total ice volume of Lake Ladoga, 10.6 cubic kilometres (2.5 cu mi), less than 5 percent enters the Neva. The average summer water temperature is 17 to 20 °C (63 to 68 °F), and the swimming season lasts only about 1.5 months. The water is fresh, with medium turbidity; the average salinity is 61.3 mg/L and the calcium bicarbonate content

9460-594: The small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress , while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк ( Sanktpetersburk ), emulating German Sankt Petersburg , and Сантпитербурх ( Santpiterburkh ), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh , as Peter

9570-649: The son of their victim). The third emperor's assassination took place in Saint Petersburg in 1881 when Alexander II was murdered by terrorists (see the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood ). The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. On 1 September 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, the Imperial government renamed the city Petrograd , meaning "Peter's City", to remove

9680-455: The source of the Neva, near Shlisselburg, there are the two small islands of Orekhovy and Fabrichny. Island Glavryba lies up the river, above the town of Otradnoye . There is almost no aquatic vegetation in Neva. The river banks mostly consist of sand, podsol , gleysols , peat , and boggy peat soils. Several centuries ago, the whole territory of the Neva lowland was covered by pine and spruce mossy forests. They were gradually reduced by

9790-631: The southern limit of the city. The most prominent neoclassical and Empire-style architects in Saint Petersburg included: In 1810, Alexander I established the first engineering higher education , the Saint Petersburg Main military engineering School in Saint Petersburg. Many monuments commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 , including the Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and

9900-525: The supervision of Alexander Menshikov . Tens of thousands of serfs died while building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate . Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war. He referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital (or seat of government) as early as 1704. While the city

10010-844: The table. Before construction of the Obvodny Canal , the left tributary of that area was the Volkovka; its part at the confluence is now called Monastyrka. The Ladoga Canal starts at the root of Neva and connects it along the southern coast of Lake Ladoga with the Volkhov . Some canals of the delta were filled over time, so that only 42 islands remained by 1972, all within the city limits of St. Petersburg. The largest islands are Vasilyevsky at 1,050 hectares (2,600 acres), Petrogradsky at 570 hectares (1,400 acres), Krestovsky at 420 hectares (1,000 acres), and Dekabristov at 410 hectares (1,000 acres); others include Zayachy , Yelagin and Kamenny Islands . At

10120-408: The uniform water flow from Lake Ladoga to the Neva over the whole year, there are almost no floods and corresponding water rise in the spring. The Neva freezes throughout from early December to early April. The ice thickness is 0.3 to 0.4 metres (1.0 to 1.3 ft) within Saint Petersburg and 0.5 to 0.6 metres (1.6 to 2.0 ft) in other areas. Ice congestion may form in winter in the upper reaches of

10230-573: The upper regions of the river are dominated by birch and pine-birch grass-shrub forests and in the middle regions there are swampy pine forests. In St. Petersburg, along the Neva, there are many gardens and parks, including the Summer Garden , Field of Mars , Rumyantsev, Smolny , Alexander Gardens , Garden of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and many others. Because of the rapid flow, cold water and lack of quiet pools and aquatic vegetation

10340-449: The usage of prefix " Sankt- " ceased except for the formal official documents, where a three-letter abbreviation "СПб" ( SPb ) was very widely used as well. In the 1830s Alexander Pushkin translated the "foreign" city name of "Saint Petersburg" to the more Russian Petrograd (Russian: Петроград , IPA: [pʲɪtrɐˈgrat] ) in one of his poems. However, it was only on 31 August [ O.S. 18 August] 1914, after

10450-554: The war with Germany had begun, that Tsar Nicholas II renamed the city Petrograd in order to expunge the German words Sankt and Burg . Since the prefix "Saint" was omitted, this act also changed the eponym and the "patron" of the city from Saint Peter to Peter the Great, its founder. On 26 January 1924, shortly after the death of Vladimir Lenin , it was renamed to Leningrad (Russian: Ленинград , IPA: [lʲɪnʲɪnˈgrat] ), meaning 'Lenin City'. On 6 September 1991,

10560-686: The war. A law acknowledging the honorary title of "Hero City" passed on 8 May 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era . The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Leningrad as a Hero City the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal "for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege". The Hero-City Obelisk bearing

10670-417: The water consumption from the Neva and the remaining 62.3 percent is water runoff. Since 1859, the largest volume of 116 cubic kilometres (28  cu mi ) was observed in 1924 and the lowest in 1900 at 40.2 cubic kilometres (9.6 cu mi). The average annual discharge is 78.9 cubic kilometres (18.9 cu mi) or 2,500 cubic metres per second (88,000 cu ft/s) on average. Due to

10780-478: The water rises above 160 centimetres (63 in) with respect to a gauge at the Mining Institute . More than 300 floods occurred after the city was founded in 1703. Three of them were catastrophic: on 7 November 1824, when water rose to 421 centimetres (166 in); on 23 September 1924 when it reached 369 centimetres (145 in), and 10 September 1777 when it rose to 321 centimetres (126 in). However,

10890-518: The whole Mga valley and thus broke into the western valley (the valley of the Tosna/lower-Neva). The Ivanovo rapids of the modern Neva were created at the breakthrough. According to early books, the breakthrough may have been about 2000 BC, but according to more recent research, this happened at 1410–1250 BC, making the river rather young. The valley is lined with glacial and post-glacial sediments and has changed little over 2,500 years. The delta

11000-414: Was 1,130 kilometres (700 mi) long. Every winter from 1895 to 1910, electric tramways were laid on the ice of the river, connecting the Senate Square , Vasilievsky island , Palace Embankment and other parts of the city. The power was supplied through the rails and a top cable supported by wooden piles frozen into the ice. The service was highly successful and ran without major accidents except for

11110-574: Was again designated as the capital of the Russian Empire . It remained the seat of the Romanov dynasty and the Imperial Court of the Russian tsars , as well as the seat of the Russian government, for another 186 years until the communist revolution of 1917 . In 1736–1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. To rebuild the damaged boroughs, a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich commissioned

11220-576: Was being built, Peter lived in a three-room log cabin with his wife Catherine and their children. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan. By 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by

11330-631: Was built above the Volodarsky Bridge in 1970 which could accept 10 large ships at a time. Wastewater treatment plants were built in Krasnoselsk in 1978, on the Belyi Island in 1979–83, and in Olgino in 1987–94. The South-West Wastewater Treatment Plant was constructed in 2003–05. Neva has very few shoals and its banks are steep, making the river suited for navigation. Utkino Backwaters were constructed in

11440-524: Was changed, breaking the tradition of democratic election by universal suffrage that started in 1991. In 2006, the city legislature re-approved Matviyenko as governor. Residential building had intensified again; real-estate prices inflated greatly, which caused many new problems for the preservation of the historical part of the city. Although the central part of the city has a UNESCO designation (there are about 8,000 architectural monuments in Petersburg),

11550-400: Was cut off by underground flooding, creating a major obstacle to the city development for almost ten years. On 13 June 1996, Saint Petersburg, alongside Leningrad Oblast and Tver Oblast , signed a power-sharing agreement with the federal government, granting it autonomy. This agreement was abolished on 4 April 2002. In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev defeated Anatoly Sobchak in the elections for

11660-534: Was formed at that time, technically a pseudodelta, as not from accumulation of river material but by scouring past sediments. The Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg , flows through Neva's lowlands and discharges into the Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Finland . It has a length of 74 kilometres (46 mi), and the shortest distance from the source to the mouth is 45 kilometres (28 mi). The river banks are low and steep, on average about 3 to 6 metres (10 to 20 ft) and 2 to 3 metres (7 to 10 ft) at

11770-556: Was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург. A former spelling of the city's name in English was Saint Petersburgh . This spelling survives in the name of a street in the Bayswater district of London, near St Sophia's Cathedral , named after a visit by the Tsar to London in 1814. A 14 to 15-letter-long name, composed of the three roots , proved too cumbersome, and many shortened versions were used. The first General Governor of

11880-408: Was opened in 1850, and the second, Liteyny Bridge , came into operation in 1879. In 1858, a "Joint-stock company St. Petersburg water supply" was established, which built the first water supply network in the city. A two-stage water purification station was constructed in 1911. The development of the sewerage system began only in 1920, after the October Revolution , and by 1941, the sewerage network

11990-478: Was renamed Leningrad . Later many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly, with names in honour of communist figures replacing historic names given centuries before. The city has over 230 places associated with the life and activities of Lenin. Some of them were turned into museums, including the cruiser Aurora – a symbol of the October Revolution and the oldest ship in the Russian Navy . In

12100-441: Was scheduled to land at Moscow -Vnukovo ( VKO ). After liftoff, the crew noticed that the nose gear undercarriage did not retract, and the ground control diverted the flight to Leningrad ( LED ) because of fog at Tallinn. While circling above St. Petersburg at the altitude of 1,650 feet (500 m), under unclear circumstances (lack of fuel was one of the factors), both engines stalled. The crew performed an emergency landing on

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