What is in the center of the picture - the number "13" or the letter "B", depends on the chosen point of view, which is often why completely logical conclusions about the subject of discussion turn out to be diametrically opposite. This is a completely opaque hint that in the previous article “Stupid Petersburg” we looked at the logic of its foundation from the side of the earth with the eyes of workers and peasants in the style of “what has grown there on the edge of the earth and why does this unfinished crap consider itself our capital?”
Now we will change our point of view and will consider the logic of the founding of St. Petersburg from the side of the sea. Before reading further, it is useful to read the article “It's all about point of view. Part 2. Pskov stone “. For the lazy, we summarize its content. On the left - a photograph of a slab found in the Pskov region, which at first was “deciphered” with great stretch as an inscription in the archaic Old Slavic language. On the right is the same photograph, but turned "from head to feet" and on it the standard gravestone inscription in Hebrew dating from 1920 can be read completely freely:
So, to consider the reasons for the formation of St. Petersburg from the point of view of a resident of the central part of Russia is similar to decoding the Pskov stone upside down - we get vague pseudo-Slavic letters with different stretches due to the fact that Peter-1 got smoked on something there in Amsterdam, he was stuck, he climbed into swamp of the Neva delta and decided to found a new capital there in order to be closer to his beloved Amsterdam, without which he could no longer live. The Swede was threatened, but he didn’t think to make the fortress walls around the city, and he didn’t even remember about the wonderful port of Riga, which would be closer to Amsterdam. In short, he seemed to have fled from Russia to make it easier to ride abroad. And how can you manage something if the ruler is always away?
On this map of the European part of Russia in 1914, the most suitable cities for the capital in terms of the available communication routes in the 18th century are marked in green (from left to right: Kiev, Smolensk, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan). As you can see, all of them are located close to the geographic center of the rest of the cities and are most convenient for the capital's administrative and economic communications:
Port cities are marked in red. Top left to right Riga, Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, below - Kherson and Rostov-on-Don (one could also add the notorious Azov). Well, why is Petersburg better than the rest? Not as a port, let it be, but as a capital?
Promotional video:
Who needs him, this Peter, located somewhere on the edge of Russia, in the appendix of the Gulf of Finland? Russian peasants? They feed and support themselves, except that one imported ax is required for a lifetime. Landlords? To get a whistle for a barge of oil bread, an iPhone, overseas crap like a pair of silk stockings? So for this and other ports are fine.
Now we put everything upside down and look at the Pskov stone Petersburg from the sea. From this point of view, instead of pseudo-Slavic nonsense, inscriptions in Hebrew are clearly visible, the economic interests of the Oldenburg dynasty.
In St. Petersburg, until 1917, the Holstein-Gotorp branch of the Romanov-Oldenburg dynasty ruled (by the way, their ancestral nest, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, by a strange coincidence, existed until 1918), and the cards are in their hands:
The arrows indicate the main directions of actions of the Oldenburg dynasty, which in each area mimicked their own: in Sweden - like all Karls and Adolphs, in St. Petersburg - Petra and Alexandra, in Greece - Alexandros and Constantinos.
The approximate position of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg (where the black triangle is on the map), which included the Principality of Lubeck (all arrows start from it), is circled in red. The city of Lubeck is small (only 2 sq. Km), but remote, one of the three main cities of the famous Hansa, sometimes they write that it was the capital of the Hanseatic League. The rulers in Lubeck were also representatives of the Holstein-Gottorp branch of the Oldenburgs, the same one that also ruled in St. Petersburg under other names.
St. Petersburg is essentially one of the many Hanseatic or "Oldenburg" cities on the Baltic Sea, the location of which was naturally tailored for the convenience of water communications, therefore they were located on sea and river islands and peninsulas. All port cities in the Baltic performed their functions: Copenhagen fed from the control of the Danish straits of Skagerrak and Kattegat, Stockholm - from iron mines on the mainland, Riga - from resources flowing from the entire basin of the Western Dvina (Daugava).
The Romanovs-Oldenburgs needed Petersburg primarily to provide ship timber and build new ships. In principle, Kronstadt on the Kotlin Island, the Petersburg fortress on the Zayachy Island and several shipyards of the Admiralteyskaya, Lodeynopolskaya, etc. are quite enough for this. As at first it actually was.
Petersburg was originally destined to be a port and a regional center at the level of Arkhangelsk, Helsingfors (Helsinki) or Tallinn, it would have remained so in the future, but the Oldenburgs, in order to expand their zone of economic influence, set a strategic task to completely seize the basin of the great Russian Volga River, which was completely isolated from the seas (the Caspian Sea is not a part of the World Ocean, but the largest saline drainless lake and is traditionally called the sea):
Based on the waterways available before the beginning of the 19th century, the Volga basin is more accessible from the Black and Azov Seas along the Dnieper, Don, Tsimla (now the Tsimlyansk reservoir). From here, the territory of the Volga basin was controlled by the one who dominated the Black and Azov seas.
First of all, the Romanov-Oldenburgs needed to block competitors' access to central Russia from the Black Sea, which, in fact, explains the endless wars of St. Petersburg with Turkey (the Ottoman Port, the Ottoman Empire).
In addition, the Oldenburgs needed to create direct waterways from the Baltic to the Volga basin, which was done in about 15 years.
The direction of movement of the Oldenburgs in the Baltic is marked in red. Blue - the main rivers of the European part of Russia. Green - straight waterways formed after the construction of water systems by the St. Petersburg Oldenburgs (Romanovs) (from left to right, from bottom to top): Berezinskaya, Vyshnevolotskaya, Tikhvinskaya, Mariinskaya:
Then, quite naturally, the military invasion of the Romanovs took place, known in history as the “war of 1812 in Russia”.
Now we have all the data to make out in detail why St. Petersburg from all the Baltic ports of the Oldenburgs was chosen by them as the “capital of the Russian Empire”, from where the administration of the occupied territories of the Volga basin and the upper reaches of the Dnieper was carried out.
Riga is not suitable due to the fact that it was very difficult to get to the Volga basin along the Western Dvina - first by dragging to the Dnieper, and from there by dragging to the Oka basin. The first obstacle disappeared with the construction of the Berezinskaya water system, and the second remained so.
Narva and Ivangorod are located on the Narva River, from the basin of which there are also no direct waterways to the Volga basin:
To the possible ports-candidates for the title of the capital of the Russian Empire, we add Arkhangelsk, which has a big drawback - it is not in the Baltic, but on the White Sea, but from there it was also possible to get to the Volga basin along the Northern Dvina. At the same time, we note that the two rivers were named the same Dvina, clearly not by the inhabitants of the land, they usually don't care where the west is, and where the north is.
By the way, the Novodvinskaya fortress was founded on June 12, 1701, two years earlier than the Peter and Paul fortress. The long-existing port city of Arkhangelsk was initially given no less importance than the future Petersburg.
Plan of the Novodvinsk Fortress:
To our time, the Novodvinsk fortress is very poorly preserved:
The first construction of St. Petersburg is considered to be the wood-earthen Peter and Paul Fortress, founded on May 16 (27), 1703. Actually, it was called "St. Petersburg", later this name spread to the entire city, and the fortress began to be called by the name of the Cathedral of Peter and Paul located in it.
For all its shortcomings in the form of shallow waters of the Gulf of Finland, floods, etc. at that time there was no alternative to Petersburg, since the hydrological situation on land was in its favor - only from the Neva it was possible to make three waterways to the Volga at once: the water systems Vyshnevolotskaya to Tver, Mariinsky and Tikhvinsky to Rybinsk, and besides, through Ladoga and Onega he was connected with Arkhangelsk (then the White Sea-Baltic Canal was laid there). More varied cargoes from central Russia went along three waterways through St. Petersburg to the Baltic Sea, which were heavily dragged by barge haulers.
The insular position of Petersburg during the rule of water transport was not a disadvantage, but an absolutely necessary condition so that the same Oldenburgs could travel by ship directly from their home in Lubeck to the palace in Copenhagen and from there to the fortress of Kronstadt and Petersburg. All these cities must be viewed from the side of the water, and then the logic of the initial urban planning will be clear.
Already in the second half of the 19th century, at a time when it was necessary to intensively develop the continent, horses, carts, stagecoaches, horse trams, railways, etc. Then the former advantages of the island location of Petersburg became disadvantages - it was necessary to fill up the canals, make bridges and roads. But nowhere to go. Where they planted it, it grew up there.
In the 19th century, Petersburg was spoken of as “the most non-Russian of all Russian” cities, but in reality it turned out to be the opposite: Petersburg is the most Russian of all non-Russian cities.