PROLOGUE
A Tale of Three Cities
There have been five periods in Russian history and each provides a different picture. They are: the Russia of Kiev; Russia in the days of the Tartar yoke; the Russia of Moscow; the Russia of Peter the Great; and Soviet Russia. The Moscow period was the worst in Russian history, the most stifling, of a particularly Asiatic and Tartar type, and those lovers of freedom, the Slavophils, have idealized it in terms of their own misunderstanding of it.
NIKOLAI BERDYAEV1
St Petersburg has often been considered a stranger in its own land, an unnatural aberration situated on the far edge of the nation - not really Russian. St Petersburg is indeed unique, but Russia's three previous major cities - Novgorod, Kiev, and Moscow - have also lived separate and distinctive lives. In fact, St Petersburg, Novgorod, and Kiev enjoy many similarities, while in important respects Muscovite civilization is the anomaly, particularly if viewed in terms of world history. Most major world cities, including capitals, lay either on the coast or not far up navigable rivers, because this facilitates trade, prosperity, and interaction with other nations, and stimulates culture. Novgorod, Kiev, and St Petersburg followed this norm, while due to historical accident (the Mongols) Muscovy arose deep inland with no ready access to the sea. This had pernicious consequences that eventually had to be redressed.
Peter the Great's reforms and St Petersburg itself should be understood not as unnatural aberrations but as logical and natural responses to the inevitable seventeenth-century crisis of Muscovite civilization. Later, in the twentieth century, the rise and staying power of Soviet Communism can be understood as a reassertion and embracing of old Muscovite traditions and values, and a rejection of those of St Petersburg. The crisis of the Soviet system that led to its downfall has parallels to the crisis in seventeenth-century Muscovy. Many of the ideas and values required for Russia's post-Soviet revival and entry into the modern world of nations can be found in the history of St Petersburg, beginning with its founder, Peter the Great. The city's history and meaning holds lessons for Russia's future and can help guide it.
It is thus important to begin the story of Petersburg by examining how Novgorod, Kiev, and Moscow have each bequeathed their unique traditions to Russia and St Petersburg and enriched the city's life. Events and personalities from their histories appear in Petersburg's art, music, opera, ballet, literature, and poetry, as well as in political and intellectual controversies. Their histories help explain why St Petersburg was founded and provide the context to give the city its meaning and interpret its development.
One can summarize the historical interplay between these three cities only by illustrating its complexity. There was no uniform historical line of succession or influence among them, and in many ways their civilizations were rival. Novgorod spawned Kiev, but Kiev grew close to Byzantium and adopted its religion, and then violently imposed it on Novgorod. Muscovy grew up largely outside the Kievan state but embraced and developed its religion. It matured under the Mongol yoke without meaningful contact with Constantinople or the West, becoming the dominant force in Russia in part because its princes represented the Khan in dealings with other Russian princes and nobles. Kiev fell to the Mongols in 1240, but when the Mongols were repelled, Kiev and what would become Ukraine were absorbed into the Polish-Lithuanian state. When Ukraine rejoined Russia four centuries later on the eve of the founding of St Petersburg, the culture and learning that it had acquired while outside Muscovy's influence inspired fundamental departures from Muscovite culture and thinking, influenced Peter the Great's reforms, and contributed to the intellectual, religious, and political life of the new capital. For its part, Novgorod, previously part of the Kievan state, remained an absent, independent republic in the north with its own traditions. Muscovy not only drew little from it, but it became Muscovy's commercial and political rival, and Muscovy eventually decided to crush it.
Novgorod
Novgorod's initial contribution to Russian civilization was political and economic and came early. According to the Primary Chronicle, the tribes of the region constantly quarrelled, and social and political disorder reigned in the land. Tradition held that the tribal leaders, unhappy with this state of affairs, invited a Viking prince, Rurik, who founded Novgorod ('New City') around 860 and ruled as its prince. His descendants and relatives, most notably Oleg, Sviatoslav, Vladimir, and Yaroslav the Wise, later ruled in Kiev and presided over its Golden Age. The Rurikid line of princes continued through most of the Muscovite period, until the death of Tsar Fedor (the son of Ivan the Terrible) in 1598.
In the same year that Kiev fell to the Mongols (1240), Prince Alexander led Novgorod to victory over the Swedes on the banks of the Neva near the future St Petersburg, for which he acquired the sobriquet Nevsky. Two years later he defeated the Teutonic Knights on the ice of Lake Chud (now Peipus), thereby eliminating military threats from the north and west. Security thus assured, and essentially free of the Mongol yoke, Novgorod went on to prosper through trade and contact with the West, particularly with the Hanseatic League, of which it became a member. Novgorod was on the axis of the great north-south trade route between the Vikings and the Greeks, and was also a centre of trade with the East via the Volga river. The northern section of the route ran from the mouth of the Neva (where St Petersburg was later founded), along the length of the Neva, through Lake Ladoga, and down the navigable river Volkhov which connected Ladoga to Novgorod and Lake Ilmen just south of Novgorod. So long as Novgorod controlled these territories, it grew and prospered, but when it lost them to Sweden the city declined. To regain its position in international commerce, develop its national economy, and maintain effective contact with the West, Russia needed access to the Baltic, but this was not re-established until the reign of Peter the Great.
As a cosmopolitan urban trading centre not unlike Venice or other progressive medieval Western European city-states, Novgorod developed an urban civilization unique in Russia, as well as democratic and tolerant political and cultural traditions. It used a Germanic monetary system, a large community of foreigners lived unhindered in the city, its citizens travelled and established communities abroad, and its princes and leading citizens often married foreigners. Women were generally treated as the equals of men and participated in civic affairs. Wealth was sufficiently high to maintain education and high literacy, and to support art and architecture. Unlike Muscovy, in Novgorod most wealth and power lay with a powerful merchant class, which kept the ruling prince and the Church in check. Whereas Moscow's Grand Princes gained power by 'gathering' the Russian lands as their own and administering them as their patrimony, in Novgorod property and sovereignty were understood as separate, and institutions were created to curb and control the exercise of political power and protect property and citizens' rights in it. Novgorod's prince was selected and hired by the people, and he functioned pursuant to a contract setting forth his powers and the restrictions on them; if the people grew dissatisfied, he could be replaced. All major decisions were made by democratic public assemblies called a veche, which met on both a city-wide and district level, and at which each free householder had a vote. An advanced legal code was developed, criminal punishments were generally humane with an emphasis on fines, and human life and the individual were held in high regard. Thus, a reciprocal relationship between the state and society was recognized, whereby the vital activity within the state lay with its citizens, who created their government to protect their rights and property, and provide security. This anticipated Western political thought by centuries and was fundamentally different from the idea of a divinely ordained monarch prevalent in Muscovy and the Old Regime in Western Europe.
Out of this economic, political, and cultural milieu grew a tradition of civic and individual independence (even irreverence), vigour, tolerance, and imagination. It stands in stark contrast to the worldview of the rest of Russia during and after the Mongol period, until St Petersburg. A poignant example was the fresco of the Saviour in the main cupola of St Sophia Cathedral in the city's kremlin: his hand was portrayed not, as is usual in Moscow, partly open and relaxed as when crossing oneself, but as a fist symbolizing strength and independence, even defiance. Even the Orthodox monastery constructed on Perun hill outside town where pre-Christian pagan rites were held was named Our Lady of Perun, after the pagan god. This would have been unthinkable in Moscow. Before Moscow conquered Novgorod, the city's seal consisted of a flight of steps representing the veche tribune and a T-shaped pole representing the city's sovereignty and independence. Under Muscovite rule, the steps assumed the shape of the Tsarist throne, and the pole that of the Tsar's sceptre.2
Feeling commercial competition, needing tax revenues, and demanding political subservience, Muscovy under Ivan III conquered Novgorod in...
