Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / The Romanovs' Obsession: Building St. Petersburg on Bones
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Peter the Great's reforms — the Table of Ranks, the Holy Synod, the navy. But there's one project that really sums up Peter's whole approach: the building of Saint Petersburg from scratch on a swamp. Luna: On a swamp? Lucas: Literally. The Neva River delta was a marshy, mosquito-infested wasteland. When Peter captured the area from Sweden in 1703 during the Great Northern War, he decided to build a brand new capital there. He wanted a 'window to the West,' a port city that would connect Russia to Europe. And he didn't care how many people died to make it happen. Luna: How many did die? Lucas: Estimates range from thirty thousand to a hundred thousand serfs over the first decade. Laborers were conscripted from all over Russia — tens of thousands each year. They worked in horrific conditions: hacking through forests, draining marshes, hauling stones. Many drowned, many more died of disease or starvation. Contemporary accounts talk about the stench of bodies in the summer heat. Luna: That's brutal. So the city really was built on bones. Lucas: It's not just a legend — it's documented. Peter was ruthless. He banned stone construction anywhere else in Russia to force all masons to Saint Petersburg. He ordered nobles to move there and build stone houses, or lose their estates. The first structures were the Peter and Paul Fortress, which was a star-shaped fortification on Zayachy Island, and Peter's modest Summer Palace — a small Dutch-style house he could actually live in while supervising construction. Luna: Why did he choose that specific spot, though? It seems strategically terrible — marshy, flood-prone. Lucas: Strategically, it was brilliant. It gave Russia a warm-water port on the Baltic, control over trade routes, and a direct challenge to Sweden's dominance. And symbolically, it was a total rejection of Moscow — the old Kremlin, the boyar traditions, the stifling Orthodoxy. Peter hated Moscow. He literally built a new capital to break with the past. He even imposed a 'beard tax' — nobles who wanted to keep their beards had to pay a fee and carry a special token. It sounds petty, but it was part of a deliberate campaign to Westernize the elite. Luna: A beard tax? That's incredible. Lucas: There was even a handbook for nobles on how to behave in society — the 'Honourable Mirror of Youth.' It told them not to spit on the floor, not to slurp their soup, not to scratch themselves at the table. Peter was micromanaging Russian culture down to table manners. Luna: I guess if you're forcing nobles to shave and move to a swamp, you've already gone all in. Lucas: Exactly. And the city itself was an engineering nightmare. The Neva floods regularly. Peter hired Dutch engineers to build canals and embankments — he wanted a second Amsterdam. The early buildings were mostly wood and wattle and daub, but they kept burning down. So Peter mandated brick and stone facades. The Winter Palace, the Admiralty, the Kunstkamera museum — all started in his lifetime. Luna: What about the workers' living conditions? Did they have any say? Lucas: None. They were serfs, essentially state property. They lived in dugouts and shacks along the riverbanks. Malnutrition was rampant. Desertion was punished by death. Peter famously executed his own son, Alexei, for opposing his policies — though that was later. The message was clear: resistance was futile. Luna: And yet the city survived, and became one of the most beautiful in the world. Lucas: That's the paradox of Peter. He was a tyrant, but he dragged Russia into modernity. By the time of his death in 1725, Saint Petersburg had about forty thousand permanent residents. The Admiralty was building ships, the Academy of Sciences was attracting scholars, and the city was already a bustling port. But the cost in human life was staggering. It's a reminder that great monuments are often built on great suffering. Luna: So when people say Saint Petersburg is the 'Venice of the North,' they're forgetting the bones under the canals. Lucas: Exactly. But Peter would say it was worth it. He believed Russia had to modernize or be conquered. And in a way, he was right — within a century, Russia was a major European power. But the price was paid by millions of anonymous serfs whose names we'll never know. Luna: It's interesting how the city's founding story echoes the Romanov dynasty itself — grandeur built on violence. Lucas: That's a perfect way to put it. And that's the thread we keep coming back to in this series: the Romanovs were brilliant, brutal, and contradictory. Saint Petersburg is the stone embodiment of that contradiction.