History of Saint Petersburg Timeline

The Revolution of 1905 initiated in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces, marking the first major challenge to Tsarist rule and foreshadowing the upheavals to come.

Image source: Russian Revolution of 1905

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the name Petersburg was changed to Petrograd, a Slavic translation adopted to avoid the German sound of the original name during wartime anti-German sentiment.

Image source: Saint Petersburg

Between 1917 and the 1930s, about two million people fled the city, including hundreds of thousands of educated intellectuals and aristocracy who emigrated to Europe and America, transforming the city's population.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was arrested and the Tsar's government was replaced by two opposing centers of political power: the 'pro-democracy' Provisional Government and the 'pro-communist' Petrograd Soviet.

Image source: February Revolution

1917 saw the next stages of the Russian Revolution and the re-emergence of the Communist party led by Lenin, who declared 'guns give us the power' and 'all power to the Soviets!', seizing power in Petrograd.

Image source: October Revolution

The city's proximity to anti-Soviet armies forced communist leader Vladimir Lenin to move his government to Moscow on 5 March 1918, ending Saint Petersburg's long tenure as the capital of Russia.

On 24 January 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. The original name had been given as Petrograd in 1914 to avoid the German sound of Petersburg.

In 1931, Leningrad was administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast, becoming an independent administrative unit within the Soviet Union.

In 1934, the popular governor of Leningrad, Kirov, was assassinated, apparently because Stalin had become increasingly paranoid about the growth of Kirov's popularity. His death marked the beginning of Stalin's Great Purge.

Image source: Sergei Kirov

During World War II, Leningrad was surrounded and besieged by the German Wehrmacht from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, a total of 29 months, one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history.

Image source: Siege of Leningrad

A secret instruction dated 23 September 1941 stated: 'the Führer is determined to eliminate the city of Petersburg from the face of earth.' By Hitler's order, the Wehrmacht shelled and bombed the city constantly and systematically isolated it from supplies, causing over one million civilian deaths; starting in early 1942, Ingria was included in Generalplan Ost annexation plans as a 'German settlement area'.

During the siege, the only ways to supply the city were by aircraft or cars crossing the frozen Lake Ladoga. On 20 November 1941, bread rations were reduced to 250 and 125 grams, leaving residents on the brink of starvation.

The situation in the city was especially horrible in the winter of 1941–1942. In December 1941 alone some 53,000 people died of starvation, and many corpses were scattered in the streets all over the city; 650,000 people died in 1942 overall.

On 27 January 1944, the Siege of Leningrad was finally lifted after 29 months, ending one of the deadliest sieges in human history, which had claimed more than one million civilian lives.

For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the siege, Leningrad became the first city to receive the Hero City title, awarded in 1945.

In 1950, the Kirov Stadium opened and soon set a record when 110,000 fans attended a football match, symbolizing the city's post-war recovery and revival of public life.

In 1955, the Leningrad Metro, the second underground rapid transit system in the country, opened with its first stations decorated with marble and bronze. Designed before the war in the 1930s to serve as an underground shelter, it was completed after the war.

Image source: Saint Petersburg Metro

On 12 June 1991, the day of the first Russian presidential election, 54% of Leningrad voters chose in a referendum to restore 'the original name, Saint Petersburg', which took effect on 6 September 1991.

In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected the head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration, and changed his title from mayor to governor, reshaping the leadership structure of the city.

In 2003, Vladimir Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired, bringing his seven-year tenure as governor of Saint Petersburg to an early end.

In January 2004, the 60th anniversary of the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944 was officially celebrated in Saint Petersburg on 27 January, honoring the memory of those who endured the blockade.