St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire, stands at the head of the Gulf of Finland, in 59° 56' N. lat. and 39° 19' E. long., at the mouth of the Neva. The flat and low marshy ground upon which the city is built only recently emerged from the sea, and even in historical times the hills of Pulkova and Duderhof, which are now at a distance of 9 miles from the shore, stood close by the sea. Before entering the sea the mighty Neva, which flows 36 miles from Lake Ladoga, subdivides into many branches, thus giving origin to no less than 100 islands of various sizes, the surfaces of which rapidly increase. Nearly 600 acres of land have thus been added to the area of St Petersburg during the last 150 years. When a strong wind is blowing from the sea its level rises by several feet, and the poorer parts of St Petersburg are inundated every year; but when the overflow exceeds 10 feet nearly the whole of the city is inundated too. Such was the case in 1777 and 1824, when the Neva rose 13.8 feet above its average level. In August 1891 it rose again for a few hours full 10 feet above the average. The country round St Petersburg being covered with morainic deposits, peat bog, and marshes, is of a poor aspect and so thinly peopled that the government of St Petersburg has only thirty-three inhabitants per square mile. The almost uninhabited wildernesses of Karelia, Olonetz, and Vologda, beginning at the very gates of the capital, stretch towards the north and east, while the lake-depression (see RUSSIA) and the very thinly peopled tracts of the Valdai plateau separate St Petersburg from the Russian cities of Tver, Yaroslav, and Moscow (400 miles). Within a radius of 120 miles there is not one single town worth naming, the towns nearest to the Russian capital being the now decaying Novgorod, the Finnish cities of Viborg and Helsingfors (263 miles), and the Baltic cities of Reval and Riga (449 miles). Nevertheless the mouth of the Neva was from an early period coveted by the Novgorod merchants. In the 15th century they already had their factories at the head of the delta of the Neva; so that Peter I. only followed the tradition of the Novgorodians when he took possession of the Swedish forts at the head and at the mouth of the Neva, laid the first foundations of his capital (in 1702) on one of the islands of the delta, and dreamed to make of it a new Amsterdam. His dream was realised to some extent, but St Petersburg still remains isolated from the rest of the empire. One single line of railway connects it with the head of the Volga and Moscow; another with Poland and western Europe; a third with the Baltic provinces; and a fourth with Finland. The real connection between Russia and its capital was established through the Neva, which since it was connected by canals with the upper Volga, became the real mouth of the immense basin of the chief river of Russia and its numberless tributaries. Owing to this connection St Petersburg became, and has remained for more than 150 years, the chief port of Russia for the export of raw produce and the import of manufactured goods. Foreign trade and the centralisation of all administration in the residence of the emperor have made of St Petersburg a populous city with more than a million inhabitants and covering 42 sq. m., on the banks of the Neva and the islands formed by its branches—the Great Neva, the Little Neva, the Great Nevka, the Little Nevka, and scores of others.
The Great Neva, the chief branch, which has within the city itself a width of from 400 to 700 yards, and carries every second 1,750,000 cubic feet of very pure water, is a most beautiful river. It is so deep that large ships can lie alongside its granite embankments. But it is rather shallow at the mouth, with a narrow and sinuous channel across the bar, so that Cronstadt, built on an island 16 miles to the west of St Petersburg, remains both the fortress and the port of the capital. Since 1885 a ship-canal, 22 feet deep, admits ships to the Galernaya Harbour in the south-west corner of St Petersburg, and two-thirds of the foreign vessels unload within the city itself. The main body of the city, containing more than one-half of its inhabitants as well as all the chief streets, stands on the mainland, on the left bank of the Neva; and a beautiful granite quay, with a long series of palaces and mansions, stretches for 2½ miles from the timber-yards in the east to the New Admiralty in the west. Only two permanent bridges cross the Neva; the other two, built on boats, are removed in autumn and spring, as well as when the ice of Lake Ladoga comes down the Neva in the beginning of May. The island Vasilievsky, between the Great and Little Nevas, has at its head the Stock Exchange, surrounded by spacious storehouses, and a row of scientific institutions, all facing the Neva—the Academy of Sciences, the University, the Philological Institute, the Academy of Arts, and various schools and colleges. On the Peterburgskiy Island, between the Little Neva and the Great Neva, stands the old fortress of St Peter and St Paul, facing the Winter Palace, and containing the Mint and the cathedral wherein the members of the imperial family are buried; its old-fashioned casemates are used as political prisons. It has behind it the arsenal, and a series of wide streets bordered by small, mostly wooden houses, chiefly occupied by the poorer civil service functionaries. Farther up the mainland on the right bank of the Neva is covered by the poorer parts of the city, but contains some public buildings and a great number of factories. Numerous islands, separated from each other by the small branches into which both Nevkas subdivide, and connected together by a great number of wooden bridges, are covered with beautiful parks and summer-houses, to which most of the wealthier and middle-class population repair in the summer. The main part of St Petersburg has for its centre the Old Admiralty; its lofty gilded spire and the gilded dome of St Isaac's Cathedral are among the first sights caught on approaching St Petersburg by sea. Three streets radiate from it, east-south-east, south-east, and south; the first of them the famous Nevskiy Prospect; while four canals describe irregular half-circles which intersect these three streets at right angles. The street architecture, with its huge brick houses covered with stucco and mostly painted gray, is rigid and military in aspect. But the canals and the bridges which span them, the width of the chief streets, and an occasional glimpse of the Neva or of some broad square break the monotony.
A spacious square, planted with trees, encloses the Old Admiralty on three sides. To the east of it rise the huge and magnificent mass of the Winter Palace, the Hermitage Gallery of Art, and the semicircular buildings of the general staff, which surround a square facing the palace, and adorned by the Alexandra column, a shaft of red granite 84 feet high. To the west of the Admiralty is the Petrovskiy Square, where prances the well-known statue of Peter I.—the work of Falconet—on an immense block of granite brought from Finland. The cathedral of St Isaac of Dalmatia, in the south of it, is an almost cubic building (330 feet long, 290 broad, and 310 high), surmounted by one large and lofty and four small gilded domes. This church, erected by Nicholas I., is devoid of architectural beauty, but its peristyles of immense red granite monoliths give it a character of rude majesty. Its interior decorations are very rich, and it contains pictures painted by the best representatives of Russian art during the last half century. A somewhat stiff monument to Nicholas I. by Baron Clodt stands on a large square to the south of the cathedral.
The Nevskiy Prospect is one of the finest streets of the world, not so much for its houses—they are of a very mixed and mostly vulgar architecture—as for its immense width and length, the crowds which overflow its broad trottoirs, and the vehicles which glide over its wooden pavement. It runs for 3200 yards, with a width of 130 feet, from the Admiralty to the Moscow railway station, and thence with a slow bend towards the south for another 1650 yards, to reach again the Neva near the Smolnyi convent. About midway in its first part it passes by the Kazan cathedral, the Gostinoi Dvor—a two-storied building containing numerous shops—the public library, the square of Catharine II. adorned with a gorgeous but tasteless statue of the empress, and the Anitchkoff Palace. It crosses the Fontanka on a broad bridge adorned by four groups in bronze of wild horses with their tamers.
The climate is less severe than might be expected, but it is unhealthy and very changeable on the whole. The average temperatures are 15.4° F. in January, 64° in July, and 38.6° for the year. Still, the Neva remains frozen for an average of 147 days every year. A short but hot summer is followed by a damp autumn and very changeable winter, severe frosts being followed by rainy days in the midst of winter, and returning in April and May after the first warm days of the spring.
The population has rapidly increased during the 19th century, and attained, with the suburbs, 1,267,023 in December 1897, as against 918,016 in 1881. But it decreases very much during the summer (849,315 in July 1889), chiefly because masses of peasants who come to work in the factories in winter time return to their villages in summer. Thus in July 1889 the population of the city proper was 724,102; in December, 924,466; in July 1890, 731,336; in December 1890, 956,226. The sanitary arrangements being very imperfect, typhoid fever and European cholera are endemic, and their attacks are especially severe upon newcomers. The mortality is high: from 31 to 39 per thousand before 1885, but since only 28. The birth-rate has for many years been 31.2 to 31.6 per thousand. Before 1885 the deaths exceeded the births. The great majority of the population belong to the orthodox Greek Church; about 10 per cent. are Protestant, chiefly Germans and Finns; 3 per cent. Roman Catholics; and 2 per cent. Jews.
As a manufacturing centre St Petersburg has not the importance of Moscow, the total yearly production of its factories (cottons, various textiles, metals, leather, sugar, guns, porcelain goods, &c.) not exceeding £20,000,000. There are many large factories in the surrounding country, but the industrial establishments of the capital itself are chiefly small, with an average of ten workers each. In addition to the four main lines of railway already mentioned, St Petersburg has three local lines which connect it with Lake Ladoga and suburban towns. The opening of the new deep-water dock in 1895 adds considerably to its facilities as a port for ships of large tonnage. The trade of St Petersburg is very considerable. Every year no less than 12,000 to 13,000 boats and nearly as many rafts, loaded with corn, hemp, flax, linseed, leather, fuel-wood, and building materials, representing a total of nearly 3,000,000 tons, reach St Petersburg via the Neva. At the same time about 1,260,000 tons of various goods, including 500,000 tons of corn, come in by rail, chiefly from the upper Volga. The exports of corn alone from St Petersburg attained 862,000 tons in 1888, that is, one-third of the total export of corn from the Baltic ports, and one-fifth of the total export from Russia. Large quantities of hemp, flax, linseed, leather, crude petroleum, &c. must be added to the above—the total value of the exports being from £8,000,000 to £10,000,000; the imports, chiefly of coal, machinery, groceries, and manufactured goods, reach about the same value. The port is visited every year by about 1800 ships.
The great number and variety of scientific, literary, artistic, and technical institutions, and of institutions for higher education, which are concentrated in the capital, as well as the development of the press, render life at St Petersburg especially attractive, the more so as the provincial towns of Russia decidedly suffer from a lack of such. Even Moscow, which down to 1848 was the intellectual centre of Russia, has largely fallen from that position. The St Petersburg University, and the numerous academies, medical, technological, engineering, naval, military, &c., as well as the Ladies' University, number several thousands of students, both male and female. The scientific societies are very numerous: the Academy of Sciences and its branches are well known to European scientists. Great facilities for work in all branches of art are afforded by the Academy of Arts; and St Petersburg is on the whole a very musical city, with an excellent conservatoire. The public libraries are numerous. Besides the Imperial Public Library (1,200,000 volumes and 40,000 MSS.), there are the libraries of the Academy of Sciences, the University, the Council of State, as well as those of the scientific societies, some of which are very rich in their special branches. There are besides rich museums of art in the Hermitage (Flemish, Russian, and early Italian schools well represented, and priceless collections of Greek and Scythian antiquities), in the Academy of Arts, and in several private collections; while the scientific museums of the Academy of Sciences, the Mining Institute, the Asiatic Museum, &c. enjoy a high repute in the scientific world. The press is represented by nearly 120 periodicals, and the greatest part of the Russian publishing trade is concentrated at St Petersburg.