ABSTRACT
The majestic city of St. Petersburg was the capital of the Russian Empire from 1712 to 1918. Built on the shores on the Neva River, it owes itsexistence to the will of Tsar Peter I, Russia’s visionary ruler, who saw it as his“window to the West”—an outlet to the Baltic Sea and to Europe. It is an architectural treasure paying tribute to Peter’s imperial imagination-a truly magnificent city, romantically situated on a series of islands crisscrossed by rivers and canals, with stunning palaces, theaters, and churches. Yet it is also a reminder of the Russian state’s penchant for pursuing its goals regardless of the human cost. The site chosen for the city was marshy, damp swampland, situated on the sixtieth parallel, the same as southern Alaska. The area proved to be pestilential and prone to bitterly cold winds, frequent ice storms, and periodic flooding. It exacted a high death toll from the very beginning. Peter conscripted hundreds of thousands of peasants to build the city from scratch, and over two hundred thousand died from disease, exposure, and starvation.
