Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Peter the Great and the Founding of Saint Petersburg
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked about Peter the Great's Grand Embassy and his war with Sweden, but one of the most audacious things he did — and it's almost unbelievable — was to build an entirely new capital from scratch on a swamp. Luna: Saint Petersburg, right? The famous 'window to the West'. Lucas: Exactly. The city's full name in Russian is Sankt-Peterburg, and it was founded in 1703 on the marshy delta of the Neva River, right where it empties into the Baltic Sea. At the time, this was Swedish territory — Ingria — and Peter had only just managed to capture it during the Great Northern War. Lucas: But here's the thing: the location was strategically perfect. It gave Russia direct access to the Baltic, bypassing the need to go through the White Sea or the Gulf of Finland. But it was also a terrible place to build a city — swampy, flood-prone, cold, and remote. Luna: So why there? Couldn't he have picked somewhere more practical? Lucas: That's a great question. Peter had a vision: he wanted Russia to be a European power, not just a landlocked empire. And a capital on the Baltic would symbolise that shift. Moscow, for him, was too old, too conservative, too connected to the boyars and the old ways. Petersburg would be a blank slate — a rational, modern, planned city that embodied the Enlightenment ideals he admired. Lucas: He even issued a decree forcing nobles, merchants, and artisans to move there. If you were wealthy, you had to build a stone house — in a city where stone was scarce and had to be brought from hundreds of miles away. And the human cost was staggering. Luna: I've read that tens of thousands of serfs died during the construction. Lucas: That's right. Estimates vary wildly, but some say up to 100,000 people died over the first decade. They were drafted from across the empire to work in horrendous conditions — digging canals, driving piles into the marsh, hauling stone. Many died from malaria, dysentery, scurvy, or just exhaustion. The city was literally built on bones. Lucas: But Peter was relentless. He even personally oversaw the work, sometimes swinging a shovel or a hammer alongside the labourers. He wasn't just a distant tyrant; he was hands-on, almost manic in his drive. Luna: Did the Swedes try to stop him? I mean, they were still at war. Lucas: They did. In 1703, there was a skirmish at the mouth of the Neva, but really, the decisive battle came later — the Battle of Poltava in 1709, where Peter crushed Charles XII's Swedish army. After that, Russia held the Baltic coast securely. The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 officially ceded the territory to Russia. Lucas: And even while the war was ongoing, Peter was already building his capital. The first structure was the Peter and Paul Fortress, on an island in the Neva, which was meant to protect the city from Swedish attack. That fortress later became the burial place for most of the Romanov tsars. Luna: So the city was both a military outpost and a symbolic statement. Lucas: Exactly. And Peter brought in architects from Italy, France, and Germany to design it. The most famous was Domenico Trezzini, a Swiss-Italian who designed the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Twelve Collegia building. The city's layout was ordered and rational — wide straight boulevards, canals, and a grid pattern that was very un-Russian at the time. Lucas: Everything about Petersburg was meant to be different from Moscow. Even the dress code was Europeanised — Peter famously forced the nobility to shave their beards and wear Western-style clothes. The city became a stage for his reforms. Luna: But it must have felt alien to most Russians. I mean, it was built by serfs, far from the heartland, in a climate that was miserable for half the year. Lucas: It did. Many saw it as a foreign city on Russian soil. And the contrast between the glittering palaces and the muddy, flood-prone streets where ordinary people lived was stark. But that was kind of the point — Peter was creating an elite culture that looked to Europe, not to old Muscovy. Lucas: And he succeeded. By the time of his death in 1725, Saint Petersburg had about 40,000 inhabitants. Within a century, it would be one of the most beautiful and influential cities in Europe. But the cost — both human and cultural — was enormous. Luna: It's interesting to think how different Russian history might have been if he had chosen a different location. Lucas: Absolutely. And speaking of choices — one of the things that made this show possible is that we don't have to worry about commercial breaks or ad reads, because a small group of listeners supports us directly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep these deep dives ad-free, and we're really grateful to those who chip in. Luna: Yeah, it's a great model. It means we can spend a whole episode on a single topic like the founding of Petersburg without cutting corners. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the city — after Peter's death, Petersburg became the capital of the Russian Empire for over 200 years, until the Bolsheviks moved the capital back to Moscow in 1918. But that's a story for another episode. Luna: And it's a story with a lot of layers. I never realised how much of the city's identity was shaped by Peter's personal obsession. Lucas: It really was his project — his 'paradise', as he called it, even though it was built through forced labour. And that tension — between visionary ambition and brutal reality — is a thread that runs through the entire Romanov story.