NORTH-WESTERN FEDERAL OKRUG

St Petersburg (Sankt-Peterburg) is a seaport at the mouth of the River Neva, which drains into the easternmost part of the Gulf of Finland (part of the Baltic Sea). St Petersburg is in the North-Western Federal Okrug and the North-Western Economic Area. The territory, including a total of 42 islands in the Neva delta, occupies an area of 1,399 sq km (540 sq miles) and, in addition to St Petersburg itself, includes several other urban settlements and countryside. According to official estimates, at January 2012 the city’s population was 4,953,219, and the population density 3,540.5 per sq km. Of those resident in the city who stated their ethnicity at the 2010 census, 92.5% were Russian and 1.5% were Ukrainian. St Petersburg is in the time zone GMT+4.

St Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter (Petr) I ‘the Great’ in 1703, as a ‘window on the West’, and became the Russian capital in 1712. In 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. Following the fall of the Tsar and the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1918 the Russian capital was moved back to Moscow. A revolt at the naval base of Kronstadt, west of mainland Petrograd, in March 1921 presented one of the most serious challenges to the nascent Bolshevik authorities, as the island had hitherto been renowned as a stronghold of support for the Bolsheviks; the rebels, who were protesting against the steady centralization of powers, were quashed by troops led by Trotskii (Lev Bronstein), and several thousand deaths resulted on both sides. In 1924 the city was renamed Leningrad. During the Second World War it was besieged by German troops betweenNovember 1941 and January 1944. In June 1991 a supporter of economic reform, Anatolii Sobchak, was elected Mayor, and in October the city name reverted to St Petersburg, in response to a referendum held concurrently with the mayoral election. In 1994-96 the future President, Vladimir Putin, was First Deputy Governor of the City Government. In May 1996 a liberal, the hitherto First Deputy Mayor, Vladimir Yakovlev, was elected Governor (as the office of Mayor had been redesignated), defeating Sobchak. In the mid-1990s the reformist Yabloko bloc was the dominant political force in the

city. Yakovlev was re-elected as Mayor on 14May 2000, obtaining 72.7% of the votes cast, having secured the support of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and nationalist elements. At the municipal legislative elections held in December 2002, some 38 of the 50

incumbent deputies were re-elected to the Assembly; the rate of participation in the elections was only 29.4%. Some 31 of the 50 deputies in the new Assembly held no party allegiance. Yakovlev’s political position was weakened by the formation of an opposition majority in the new legislature and by the appointment of a close ally of Putin, Valentina Matviyenko, as Presidential Representative to the North-Western Federal Okrug in March 2003. On 16 June Putin appointed Yakovlev as a Deputy Chairman of the federal Government, necessitating his resignation as Mayor. Shortly afterwards Matviyenko announced her candidacy for the forthcoming gubernatorial elections (the title of Governor having replaced that of Mayor), which was supported by President Putin to an extent that was unprecedented for a candidate in regional elections. Despite the support of United Russia (UR), the pro-market Union of Rightist Forces, the liberal Yabloko party and the CPRF, as well as of Yakovlev, Matviyenko failed to obtain an absolute majority of votes cast in the first round of voting, and was required to proceed to a ‘run-off’ election against Yakovlev’s formerDeputyGovernor, Anna Markova, on 5 October, when Matviyenko was elected Governor, receiving 63.2% of the votes cast. The rate of participation in both rounds was less than 30%. In December 2006 Putin nominated Matviyenko for a second term as Mayor; the Legislative Assembly endorsed this proposal on 22 December. The decision, formally announced inDecember 2006 and completed inMay 2008, to transfer the headquarters of the federal Constitutional Court from Moscow to St Petersburg was perceived as a significant boost to the status of the city, and this was further aided by work on numerous prestigious and large-scale construction and infrastructural projects endorsed by Matviyenko. In March 2007, shortly before the holding of municipal legislative elections, a mass

rallywas organized in St Petersburg byAnother Russia, an informal coalition of groups opposing President Putin. Members of the Legislative Assembly subsequently pro-