Old Sanct-Peterbourg and Ingria

This thread is inspired by Fenno-Ugrian component in ethnic Russians-thread. While I was reading some books about Russia's history I constantly came up with some old tribal names, such as Vatja, Inkerikko and so on. These people were the autochtons of land called Ingria. Ingria is located southeast from Finland and northeast from Estonia, at the gulf of Finland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingria

Baltic Finns have lived there allready during the times of Kiovan Rus' and even prior that. Region was first part of Novgorod Republic, after that Kingdom of Sweden and finally part of Muscowitia and Russia. People living there remained even when the borders changed.

Peter The Great won the region from Sweden and builded his new capital there. At the same spot there was old small fort and fishing town, Nyenskans in Swedish and Nevanlinna in Finnish.

New capital of Russia was builded up in completely non-Russian land, surroundings remained non-Russian uptil 1930's. Old Sanct-Peterbourg was very multinational city and had the look&feel of western European city. "Leningradisation" finally change all of this and obviously the Soviet destruction of autochtonous people surrounding the city made it even more final.

When looking into this issue I found this site

http://www.geocities.com/s_petropol/Start-A.html

There is an interesting claim, which is not necessarely wrong at all, that right after Peter The Great changed capital into Sanct-Peterbourg we should talk about Peterbourgian Empire rather than Russian.

According to this logic Sanct-Peterbourgians, including the nobility, did not really have any other connection than language&faith with true ethnic Russian lands (true Muscowia). Ethnic Russians in Sanct-Peterbourg were seasonal workers, and left back home after the job was done. Locals were amalgamation of Russians, Finns, Swedes, Dutch, Lithuanians, Poles, Jews and so on. All speaking in Russian but not livin' it.

I'm especially interested about Russian views on the matter. Was there Peterbourgian Empire ? Did western elements "highjack" the power ?

 

Originally posted by Reginmund How would they "live Russian" though? Grow long beards and take up farming? By the time St. Petersburg was founded Russian elite culture was European elite culture. And what constitutes an "ethnic Russian" really? I can't see "Russian" as any more than a linguistic group, as the Russian state was a Slavicised multiethnic construct from the outset.

Athmosphear was different from Moscow, mentality was different and so on. I do understand the difficulty of the pure ethnoses, as no such thing never existed.

What I ment was that St. Petersburg was builded on different principles than Moscow. It was much more "multicultural" than Moscow back in the day. You are over simplifying Russian history "any more than linguistic group..multiethnic construct", certainly people developped ethnic identities and distinct cultural habits during the centuries. Moscow was central place, sort of identity generator, for hundreds of years.

St. Petersburg was different from the beginning, starting with the fact that it was build on non-Russian land. People did not speak Russian (but Finnish and Swedish) , they were mostly Lutheran, instead of Orthodox. Peter the Great invited engineers and architects all over Europe to build his new city. It was actually pretty insane thing to do, build a new capital from the scratch. Old elites in Moscow hated him, no doubt about that.

I don't see any need to adopt such an awkward term as "the Peterbourgian Empire". Even if it was the capital and the Russian elite was heavily Europeanised it should suffice to say that the Russian Empire was cosmopolitan.

Most of Russia was far from cosmopolitan those days. Elite and Peterbourgians were cosmopolitan, most of Russia, not.

I don't think that argument makes any sense at all.