T
he concept of the main City as the center of an imperial power and the legend of its founding both played considerable roles in Russian political myths. Saint Petersburg, built by Peter I in 1703, symbolically designated a new period in Russian history:almost immediately, the new capital tended to forge new frontiers in Russian culture. Relocating the capital to the shores of the Neva, in fact, brought the history of the kingdom of Muscovy to a close and ushered in the age of the Russian Empire. Saint Petersburg, as soon as it had risen above its ”quagmire of swamps,” brutally abolished all Muscovite cultural values, as well as Moscow’s legal claim to be the center of power. Moscow had been called a stronghold of schismatic religious beliefs, stagnated cultural tastes, and backward types of everyday life. The new capital declared its pro-Western orientation in this sense, which could be understood as mythological.
The main feature of this orientation, besides superficial and incoherent economic and social reforms, consisted of an appropriation of the Western “imperial idea.” At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the nascent Russian capital on the Neva River hastily arrogated traditional symbols and emblems of imperial authority. Rome, the Eternal City, which for subsequent generations embodied the idea of Empire combined with Christianity, became an inexhaustible source of allegories and metaphors for European empires, and finally, for the newborn Russian empire.
Peter I looked upon Rome as the fullest and most permanent expression of the existing doctrine of Empire, and, at the same time,
as the perfect pattern of a classical, universal culture that stood for the ideal of unity as opposed to national self-determination on the part of “barbaric” peoples. Peter I not only actively introduced Roman emblemata to Russia, but also strove to outdo their grandiosity. Pagan or Christian, these symbols and allegories were often appropriated from discrete historical periods. His main creation, Saint Petersburg, the city of Saint Peter, had clear pretensions to the title of a ”new Rome” that would replace a conservative and hated Moscow, as well as dissolve Moscow’s earlier claims to be “the third Rome.”1
In rejecting the old Russian capital, Peter I drew a distinct border between “civilization” and “barbarity.” The founding of the city in spite of the obstacles posed by nature and indigenous peoples, as well as the subsequent transfer of the capital to a newly occupied place, clearly manifested the traditional paradigms of translatio imperii. Through these means, Russia not only asserted her right to be considered the rising dominion among the old and already decaying empires, but also attempted to secure her status as a sacred charismatic power, the most Christian nation among all others. At the same time, the fact that the city was built on the country’s northern frontier clearly indicated the main direction of Russia’s geopolitical aspirations.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the Muscovite kingdom gradually evolved into the Russian Empire, the concept of Saint Petersburg also underwent some considerable changes. Little by little, Saint Petersburg lost its association with Saint Peter, acquiring instead a strong and enduring link to its founder, Peter I. Both his contemporaries and their successors connected the City of Saint Petersburg only to Peter the Great, who, in his turn, began to replace his sacred predecessor. A tremendous sacralization of power and the personality of the emperor paradoxically coincided
1 On the earliest perceptions of the Saint Petersburg’s myth, see Iu. M. Lotman, B. A. Uspenskii, “Otzvuki kontseptsii ‘Moskva — tretii Rim’ v ideologii Petra Pervogo: K probleme srednevekovoi traditsii v kul’ture barokko,” in Iu. M. Lotman, Izbrannye stat’i v trekh tomakh, III, 201–212; G. V. Vilinbakhov,
“Osnovanie Peterburga i imperskaia emblematika,” in Semiotika goroda i gorodskoi kul’tury: Peterburg. Trudy po znakovym sistemam. XVIII (Tartu, 1984), 46–55; G. Z. Kaganov, Peterburg v kontekste barokko (Saint Petersburg, 2001), 155–207.
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with a secularization of everyday life and habits. This process was completed in 1721 when Peter officially accepted honorary Roman titles, such as that of “Emperor,” ”Father of Fatherland” (Pater Patriae), and “The Great” (Maximus).For subsequent generations, in all cultural and literary traditions, the “city of Peter” symbolized a break with the past (that is, with an old and barbaric Muscovite Russia) as well as the westernization of life and thought, constantly associated with Peter the First alone.2
Peter accepted the title of Emperor without any ”confirmation”
of its legitimacy from European powers, the Pope or the Viennese court (the Austrian Emperor held the ancestral title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire).3 Peter’s claims purported to make Russia “equal” to the other main Christian powers, and included Peter in the honorable family of Rome’s “descendents.” This event contained both Christian and pagan elements that referred to the medieval symbolism of the Emperor as a Christian king and to the early Roman meaning of the Emperor as a military chief (thereby linking Peter’s title with Russia’s success in the Great Northern War in 1721). The controversy surrounding the situation took on some peculiar features when Peter began to be regarded as God by his followers and as the Antichrist by dissident groups.4 This duality made it possible to praise Peter as the Russian God or another
2 On the main concepts of Saint Petersburg’s text and its literary interpretations, see V. N. Toporov, “Peterburg i peterburgskii tekt russkoi literatury: vvedenie v temu,” in Semiotika goroda i gorodskoi kul’tury: Peterburg, 4–29; Iu. M.
Lotman, “Simvolika Peterburga i problemy semiotiki goroda,” Ibid, 30–45;
A. L. Ospovat, “K preniiam 1830-kh gg. O russkoi stolitse,” in Lotmanoskii sbornik 1 (Moscow, 1995), 476 -- 487; Evgeniia Kirichenko, “Sviashchennaia toponimika rossiiskikh stolits: vzaimosviaz’ i vzaimovliianie,” in Rossia/
Russia: Kul’turnye praktiki v ideologicheskoi perspective, 3 [11](Moscow — Venice, 1999), 20–35.
3 On a discussion of Peter I’ s title, see Isabel de Madariaga, “Tsar into emperor:
the title of Peter the Great,” in Isabel de Madariaga, Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Collected Essays (London and New York, 1998), 15–39; B. A. Uspenskii, Tsar’ i imperator: Pomazanie na tsarstvo i semantika monarshikh titulov (Moscow, 2000), 79.
4 E. Shmurlo, Peter Velikii v otsenke sovremennikov i potomstva, 1 (Saint Petersburg, 1912), 82–83. See also: Petr I v russkoi literature XVIII veka. Teksty i kommentarii.
Ed. S. I. Nikolaev (Saint Petersburg, 2006.)
Russian domestic deity. Notably, Mikhail Lomonosov wrote in his inscription to Peter I’s monument (designed by Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli and cast by Alessandro Martelli in 1745–1746):
In short, this is Peter, the Father of the Fatherland.
Russia praises the earthly God,
And lights as many altars in front of his visage, As there are hearts are devoted to him.5
Lomonosov’s draft of these verses contained a more expressive formula: instead of the “earthly God,” the poet called Peter I a “domestic deity” (“domashne bozhestvo”).6 Peter the First still kept his sacred charisma even through the end of Elizabeth’s rule. In 1760, Sumarokov could, in his translation into Russian of an inscription to Peter written by Nikolai Motonis in Latin, easily assert:
You, Peter, accomplished many good deeds, If, in ancient times,
A man like you had appeared,
Would the people have called you merely the Great?
You would have been called God.7
The cult of Peter I determined the specifics of Saint Petersburg’s myth: the initial symbolism of the city that was originally named after the Apostle Peter was replaced by a new mythology of Peter the First. By the end of the century, the city’s name and imagery were tightly associated with the Emperor Peter I. The formula “Peter’s city” implied not “Christian” connotations, but instead a whole spectrum of secular meanings reflecting Peter’s westernization of life and culture.8 It was significant that, decades after Peter’s death, the town continued to be perceived as its founder’s posthumous cloister, especially after the erection of a monument to him in 1782.
5 M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8, 284.
6 Ibid, 285.
7 A. P. Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 483.
8 Vera Proskurina, “Ot Afin k Ierusalimu”, in Lotmanovskii sbornik, 1, 488–502;
Andrew Kahn, Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman (London, 1998), 89–97.
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Already in Catherine II’s time, during a break in the Russo-Swedish War, the old enemies of Peter the Great (who had smashed the Swedish army near Poltava in 1709) attempted to take revenge on the Russians by attacking Saint Petersburg, storming the city and toppling the Bronze Horseman. The military campaign of Gustav III had to reverse Peter I’s previous deeds and history itself. Russian military intelligence informed Catherine II of Sweden’s plans: “<…>
Land in Krasnaia Gorka, burn down Kronstadt, go into Petersburg, and topple the statue to Peter I.”9