Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

194
Italian, Spanish, and old French schools, and especially invaluable
treasures of Greek and Scythian antiquities, as also a good collection
of 200,000 engravings. The old Christian and old Russian aids are
-well represented at the museum of the academy of arts. Besides
these there are many other museums—pedagogical, medical, engxn-
eering, agricultural, forestry, marine, technical.
The press is represented by about 120 periodicals, including those
of the scientific societies ; the right of publishing political papers
is a monopoly in the hands of the very few editors who are able
to procure the necessary authorization. The publication of literary
and scientific works, after having developed rapidly m 1859-69, is
now greatly on the decrease owing to the oppressive measures ot
the censorship. In the development of the Russian drama bt
Petersburg has played a far less important part than Moscow, and
the stao-e at St Petersburg has never reached the same standard of
excellence as that of the older capital. On the other hand, St
Petersburg is the cradle of Russian opera and Russian music. There
are only four theatres of importance at St Petersburg—all imperial
two for the opera and ballet, one for the native drama, and one
for the French and German drama.
St Petersburg is much less of a manufacturing city than Moscow
or Berlin. The annual production of all the manufactures in the
government of St Petersburg, chiefly concentrated in or around
the capital, was in 1879 valued at £16,768,600 out of £110,294,900
for the empire, against £19,500,000 in the government of Moscow.
The chief manufactured goods are cottons (£3,073,000) and other
textile fabrics (altogether £3,762,500), machinery (£2,355,800), rails
(£1,342,300), tobacco and spirits (about £1,200,000 each)^ leather,
sugar, stearine candles, copper and gum wares (from £850,000 to
£450,000 each), and a variety of smaller articles. The minor trades
are greatly developed. FTo exact statistics of the internal tiade can
be given, except for the import and export of articles of food. In
1883 31,176,000 cwts. of grain and flour were imported by rail or
river, of which 18,680,450 were re-exported and 2,809,900 sent to
the interior. The exports in 1882 were valued at £1,864,980 from
St Petersburg and at £6,557,017 from Cronstadt, the aggregate thus
being £8,421,997, in which articles of food, chiefly corn, represented
£4,214,312, rawand half raw produce £4,009,446, and manufactured
wares £197,520. The value of the imports was—to St Petersburg
£8,616,383 and to Cronstadt £116,316. Among the total imports
articles of food were valued at £1,941,393, raw and half raw produce
at £4,009,090 (chiefly coal), and manufactured wares at £1,082,698.
Cronstadt and St Petersburg were visited in the same year by 2195
ships of 951,000 tons (730 ships, 152, 730 tons, from Great Britain).
The coasting trade was represented by 702 vessels (119,300 tons)
entered. The commercial fleet numbered only 43 steamers (14,000
tons) and 49 sailing vessels (8200 tons).
Six railways meet at St Petersburg. Two run westwards along
both banks of the Gulf of Finland to Hangoudd and to Port
Baltic ; two short lines connect Oranienbaum, opposite Cronstadt,
and Tsarskoye Selo (with Pavlovsk) with the capital; and two
great trunk-lines run south-west and south-east to Warsaw (with
branches to Riga and Smolensk) and to Moscow (with branches to
Xovgorod and Rybinsk). All are connected in the capital, except
the Finland Railway, which has its station on the right bank of
the Neva. Moreover, the Neva is the great channel for the trade
of St Petersburg with the rest of Russia, by means of the Volga
and its tributaries. The importance of the traffic may best be seen
from the following figures, showing in cwts. the amount imported
by different channels
ST PETERSBURG
Neva
Baltic Railway .
Moscow Railway
Warsaw Railway
Corn and flour.
11,061,000
311,000
12,558,000
312,000
Firewood.
20,891,000
301,000
482,000
157,000
All kinds
of wares.
59,331,000
3,532,000
21,056,000
2,353,000
No less than 1,162,230 pieces together with 7,337,000 cwts of
timber were supplied in the same year via the Neva. The aggre¬
gate exports by rail and the Neva amounted to 11,382,000 cwts.
The average income of the St Petersburg municipality was
£581,425 in 1880-82 (£577,856 in 1884),—that is, 137s. (6'84 roubles)
per inhabitant, as against 35'8s. at Berlin and 98’2s. at Paris. The
indirect taxes yield but Is. per inhabitant (57s. at Paris). The
average expenses for the same years reached £574,479 (£572,162 in
1884), distributed as follows :—20 per cent, of the whole for the
police (10 at Paris and 27'5 at Berlin), 8 for administration, 16
for paving, 7 for lighting, 5 for public instruction, 2'6 for charity,
and 3 for the debt (7 at Berlin and 37 at Paris). The municipal
affairs are in the hands of a municipality, elected by three categories
of electors (see Russia), and is practically a department of the chief
of the police. The city is under a separate governor-general, whose
authority, like that of the chief of police, is all the more unlimited
since it has not been accurately defined by law.
St Petersburg is surrounded by several fine residences, mostly im¬
perial palaces with large and beautiful parks. Tsarskoye Selo, 16
miles to the south-east, and Peterhof, on the Gulf of Finland, are
summer residences of the emperor. Pavlovsk has a fine palace and
parks, open to the public, where summer concerts attract thousands
of people. Oranienbaum is now a rather neglected place. Pulkova
on a hill 5 miles from St Petersburg, is well known for its obser'-
vatory; while several villages north of the capital, such as Pargolovo
Murino, &c., are visited in summer by the less wealthy inhabitants!
History. —The region between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of
Finland was inhabited in the 9th century by Finns and some
Slavonians. Novgorod and Pskoff made efforts to retain their
dominion over this region, so important for their trade, and iu the
13th and 14th centuries they built the forts of Koporye (in the
present district of Peterhof), Yam (now Yamburg), and Oryeshek
(now Schlusselburg) at the point where the Neva issues from
Lake Ladoga. They found, however, powerful opponents in the
Swedes, who erected the fort of Landskrona at the junction of the
Okhta and the Neva, and in the Livonians, who had their fortress
at Narva. Novgorod and Moscow successively were able by con¬
tinuous fighting to maintain their supremacy over the region south
of the Neva throughout the 16th century ; but early in the 17th
century Moscow was compelled to cede it to Sweden, which erected
a fortress (Nyonschanz) on the Neva at the mouth of the Okhta.
In 1700 Peter I. began his wars with Sweden. Oryeshek was taken
in 1702, and next year Nybnschanz. Two months later (29th June
1703) Peter I. laid the foundations of a cathedral to St Peter and
St Paul, and of a fort which received his own name (in its Dutch
transcription, ‘ ‘ Piterburgh ”). Next year the fort of Cronslott was
erected on the island of Kotlin, as also the admiralty on the Neva,
opposite the fortress. The emperor took most severe and almost
barbarous measures for increasing his newborn city. Thousands
of people from all parts of Russia were removed thither and died in
erecting the fortress and building the houses. Great numbers of
artisans and workmen were brought to St Petersburg to form the
Myeshchanskaya villages, which raised the population to 100,000
inhabitants. All proprietors of more than “500 souls” were
ordered to build a house at St Petersburg and to stay there in the
winter. The construction of stone-houses throughout the rest of
Russia was prohibited, all masons having to be sent to St Peters¬
burg. After Peter I. ’s death the population of the capital rapidly
decreased ; but foreigners continued to settle there. Under Eliza¬
beth a new series of compulsory measures raised the population
to 150,000, which figure was nearly doubled during the reign of
Catherine II. Since the beginning of the present century the
population has steadily increased (364,000 in 1817, 468,600 in
1837, 491,000 in 1856, and 667,000 in 1869). The chief embellish¬
ments of St Petersburg were effected during the reigns of Alexander
I. (1801-25) and Nicholas I. (1825-55).
When Peter L, desirous of giving a “European” capital to his
empire, laid the first foundations of St Petersburg on the marshy
islands of the Neva, in land not fully conquered and remote from
the centres of Russian life, it is hardly possible that he could have
foreseen the rapid development it has since undergone : it has now
a population approaching a million and commands more than one-
sixth of the foreign trade and manufactures of Russia. In point
of fact, there is no capital in Europe so disadvantageously situated
with regard to its own country as St Petersburg. Desolate wilder¬
nesses begin at its very gates and extend for hundreds of miles
to the north and east. To the south it has the very thinly peopled
regions of Pskoff and Novgorod,—the marshy and woody tracts of
the Yaldai Heights. For 400 miles in each of these three directions
there is not a single city of any importance; and towards the
west, on both shores of the Gulf of Finland, are foreign peoples who
have their own centres of gravitation in cities on or nearer to the
Baltic. With the provinces of Russia the capital is connected
only by canals and railways, which have to traverse vast tracts ot
inhospitable country before reaching them. But St Petersburg
possesses, on the other hand, one immense advantage in its site,
which has proved of great moment, especially in the present cen-
tmy of development of international traffic. Ruled by the idea ot
creating a new Amsterdam—that is, a meeting-place for traders ot a
nationalities—and a great export market for Russia, Peter I. cou a
have selected no better place. St Petersburg has been for nearly
150 years the chief place of export for raw produce from the most
productive parts of Russia. The great central plateau which forms
the upper basins of all the chief Russian rivers had no other outlet
to the sea than the estuary of the Neva. The natural outlet mxg
indeed have been the Black Sea; but the rivers to the southwara
are either interrupted by rapids like the Dnieper, or are shallow U'
the Don ; while their mouths and the entire coast-region r61™11’!'.
till the end of the 18th century in the hands of Turkey. As tor tne
Caspian, it faced Asia, and not Europe. The commercial outlet o
the central plateau was thus the reverse of the physical, m
the earliest years of Russian history trade had taken tins nor
direction. Novgorod owed its wealth to this fact; and as iar
as the 12th century the Russians had their forts on Lake La o
and the Neva. In the 14th and 15th centuries they^ already ex¬
changed their wares with the Dantzic merchants at Nu or u,