St. Petersburg's past is surrounded by unusually tenacious legends and myths. A columnist for the weekly "Itogi" tried to understand how much they correspond to historical truth.
In European history, there are not many examples when the date of foundation of a major city or even a capital is known for certain. St. Petersburg was luckier. It is generally accepted that the starting point of the city's history can be both the laying of the fortress on Hare Island on May 27 (May 16, old style), and the construction on May 24-26 (old style) of the first residential building on Birch Island. Then soldiers in record time built for the tsar chambers in the form of a Russian izba, later called Peter's Cabin. Both in May 1803 and in May 1903, townspeople celebrated the round date of the city's birth in full accordance with the approved anniversary canon. Only once, in the year of Stalin's death, was the tradition broken: the 250th anniversary of the city was celebrated four years later, in 1957. And yet, the mysteries associated with the birth of St. Petersburg remain.
Tsar or Saint?
The official celebrations of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg will take place from May 23 to June 1. It is not excluded that the length of the celebration was influenced by the vague reference points of the historical date, since it is not easy to figure out which day to celebrate the anniversary. Some consider May 23 as the date of the city's foundation, other historians believe that the birthday should be celebrated somewhere between May 24 and 26. A number of researchers suggest not rushing the anniversary until at least the 27th. Finally, some reference books convincingly recommend focusing on the 29th. Be that as it may, most experts are unanimous: Peter the Great founded Piter no later than May 1703.
Meanwhile, in the almost only surviving documentary evidence of an eyewitness, dedicated to the "newly built city," nothing is said about May as the month of foundation. In a letter from the close boyar Fyodor Golovin, there is a clear indication of a completely different moment of the city's founding - St. Peter's Day. And moreover - of a different name: Petropolis. St. Peter's Day, let us recall, is celebrated on July 12 (June 29, old style). On this day three centuries ago, in the presence of the tsar and the clergy, the laying of a church in the name of the holy apostles Peter and Paul took place in the fortress on Hare Island, which later received the name of Peter and Paul Fortress. For Golovin and, presumably, for many other contemporaries, it was this official event that became the date of the birth of the capital of the empire.
Why do many generations count from the laying of the fortress or the construction of the tsar's izba, and not from the beginning of the construction of the Peter and Paul Cathedral on July 12? There are several reasons, but the main one, perhaps, is connected with the origin of the city's name. On the one hand, the answer would seem obvious: the city was named after St. Peter, and therefore came to be called St. Petersburg. The version according to which the city's birthday coincides with St. Peter's Day seems convincing. On the other hand, a significant part of researchers is inclined to believe that the city was named after the tsar. Proponents of this hypothesis have one iron argument. In the newspaper "Vedomosti" of October 4, 1703, it was directly pointed to the sovereign to whom the city actually owes its name.
However, in the latter case, it is unlikely that it was without hoaxes. It is clear that from the point of view of historical political correctness, the tsar, who was legendary even during his lifetime, cutting a "window to Europe," could not ignore the ideologically important moment of the first swing of the ax - that is, either the construction of the tsar's izba or the fortress. According to the folk legend retold by many authors, which also formed the basis of the canonical version of the founding of the Northern capital, on the day of the Holy Trinity, May 27, "Peter I cut out two sods and laid them crosswise... After that, the tsar covered the box with a stone slab with the inscription: 'The reigning city of St. Petersburg was founded by the great sovereign.' An eagle soaring over the island at that time descended from the heights." So that the tsar's version would not have opponents, the tsar's associates retroactively not only gave official status to this event, calling as "witnesses" the feathered symbol of autocracy, but also "ensured the presence" of Peter himself there. The cult of Peter's personality simply would not have endured any other scenario of historical events. Most researchers, however, believe that the tsar was neither at the site of the laying of his first residence nor during the laying of the fortress. Peter was on Ladoga those days.
The discussion about the date of the city's birth would be more productive if we knew exactly what the settlement was called 300 years ago, where the fortress was laid in May, the tsar's izba was erected in June, and the cathedral in July. But there is a mystery here as well. It turned out that the problem of changing geographical names, characteristic of the 20th century, was familiar to the first residents of the city on the Neva. In addition to the name Petropolis, the city was also called S. Petropolis and Petropol. In 1704, Pyotr Alekseevich himself called the city Peterburkh. And only a few years after its foundation did it begin to be more or less regularly called in the Dutch manner - Sankt-Piterburkh.
Peter's creation
Paradoxically, there is also no unambiguous answer to the question of who actually made the decision to build the city. Without questioning the merits of Peter I in designing the contours of the new capital, it is impossible to document whether "min hertz" himself proposed to start construction or someone prompted him to do so. Contrary to the widespread view of Peter's main role in the history of the founding of St. Petersburg, in fact the tsar initially remained in the shadows, limiting himself mainly to oral orders to his associates. That is quite understandable. First, the exhausting Northern War continued; second, because of his irrepressible temperament, Peter simply could not personally and on an ongoing basis manage routine construction processes: the "rough" work was in charge of the shrewd associate Menshikov. It is no coincidence that the outlines of the city's first coat of arms were borrowed from the personal coat of arms of the Most Serene Prince. Third, in Russia, as always, there was not enough money for a "great leap forward".
Nevertheless, as documents testify, Peter had many fantastic plans about the location and general features of the city's appearance. To what extent his personal building schemes were realized is difficult to judge, but many of them remained on paper, some he abandoned himself, and for others Peter simply did not have enough life. For example, seven years after the foundation of the Northern Palmyra, the tsar suddenly came to the idea that the construction of the "paradise" was going in not quite the right direction. It was decided to freeze projects on the Petersburg and Admiralty sides and throw all forces and resources - no more, no less - immediately to the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Perhaps to the most vulnerable place during floods - to the low-lying island of Kotlin (now the city of Kronstadt), almost 30 km from the main construction site. Less than two years later, the tsar suddenly cooled to the Kotlin idea, returning to the Neva variant. A year later, the chief architect of the state decided to place the city center on Vasilyevsky Island and, in the Amsterdam manner (a distinctive feature of Peter's plan was imitation of Dutch urban planning, ideal from his point of view), to place the future inhabitants of the city along the banks of canals. But this bold idea also remained unrealized.
A City on Bones
It is generally accepted that St. Petersburg was built on a rotten place, completely unsuitable for living. Meanwhile, at least 100 years before Peter Alekseevich's order to cut a "window to Europe", in this "wild swamp" (Batyushkov's expression) people lived normally and briskly traded with foreigners. Some historians believe that the first settlements in the upper reaches of the Neva appeared already in the 14th century. And the first written mention of the Neva town dates back to 1521. In Sweden it was called Nyen and nothing was additionally reported about the lost place. The Swedes themselves managed to build a powerful fortress, Nyenskans, in the center of the future "swamp".
The myth of the "wild swamp" is inextricably linked to another dark legend: about the city built on the bones of its builders. It is quite obvious that to satisfy his ambitious plans, Peter could easily neglect more than one hundred thousand lives. But rumors about a giant number of victims do not withstand the test of dry facts and figures. According to foreign travelers, in the first two or three Petrine five-year periods at the construction of the "paradise" no less than 100 thousand died, or even all 200 thousand. If we consider that for that time this figure is quite comparable to the population of Moscow, this evidence raises serious doubts. It is unclear who then managed to survive and populate the future capital? Apparently, it's all about the source of information: foreigners, of course, did not keep count of victims themselves, but relied on the "competent" opinion of the natives. The theory of the northern settlement with a cemetery ambience was actively promoted by opponents of moving the capital from Moscow. But they also did not bother with arithmetic calculations.
And 200 years after the founding of the city, Dmitry Merezhkovsky emotionally noted that Petersburg was surrounded by a "swamp cemetery with hummocks instead of graves and graves instead of hummocks". Despite illnesses and floods, the construction clearly did not resemble an apocalypse. Historians have calculated that in the first decade, from 20 to 30 thousand serfs were annually employed in the construction of the city. Human losses at the construction site did not differ from the average casualties during large-scale construction of those years. In this case, it could be a matter of the death of no more than 200-300 people per year. That is, about three thousand over the first ten years, which is completely inconsistent with the concept of mass mortality. This is just another - and far from the last - myth...