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Rh 194 ST PETERSBURG 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 arts are well represented at the museum of the academy of arts. Besides these there are many other museums pedagogical, medical, engin- 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 ana scientific works, after having developed rapidly in 1859-69, is now greatly on the decrease owing to the oppressive measures of the censorship. In the development of the Russian drama St Petersburg has played a far less important part than Moscow, and the stage 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. No exact statistics of the internal trade 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, raw and 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 Novgorod 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 : Corn and flour. Firewood. All kinds of wares. Xeva 11,061,000 20,891,000 59,331,000 Baltic Railway 811,000 301,000 3 532 000 Moscow Railway 12,558,000 482000 21,056 000 Warsaw Railway 812,000 157,000 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, 13'7s.(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 denned 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 ami 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 in the 13th and 14th centuries they built the forts of Koporye (in the present district of Peterhof), Yam (now Yamburg), and Oryeshek (now Schliisselburg) 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 Okb ta 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 MOSCOAV was compelled to cede it to Sweden, which erected a fortress (Nyb'uschanz) 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 Nyb'nschanz. 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 "600 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 I., 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 cast. To the south it has the very thinly peopled regions of Pskoff and Novgorod, the marshy and woody tracts of the Valdai 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 of 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- tury of development of international traffic. Ruled by the idea of creating a new Amsterdam that is, a meeting-place for traders of all nationalities and a great export market for Russia, Peter I. could 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 might indeed have been the Black Sea ; but the rivers to the southward are either interrupted by rapids like the Dnieper, or are shallow like the Don ; while their months and the entire coast-region remained till the end of the 18th century in the hands of Turkey. As for the Caspian, it faced Asia, and not Europe. The commercial outlet of the central plateau was thus the reverse of the physical. From the earliest years of Russian history trade had taken this northern direction. Novgorod owed its wealth to this fact ; and as far back as the 12th century the Russians had their forts on Lake Ladoga and the Neva. . In the 14th and 15th centuries they already ex changed their wares with the Dantzic merchants at Nu or Nii,