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This book examines a critical phase in the city's history. Founded
by Peter the Great a mere sixty years before Catherine II ascended
Russia's throne, St. Petersburg became one of the leading economic
and political centers of Europe during her reign. Previous books on
St. Petersburg have focused on its foundation and earliest years,
or on the nineteenth century, when its cultural dominance within
Russia was well established, or on the twentieth century, when the
city was cradle to revolutions and subsequently lost its role as
capital to Moscow. Catherine's reign has been largely overlooked,
despite the fact that much of the city's image in Russian culture
was established in that epoch. The Most Intentional City is based
extensively on unused archival sources from central archives in St.
Petersburg and Moscow as well as regional archives and manuscript
collections. These are flavored with published accounts by Russians
as well as foreign residents and visitors from a number of
countries, including Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy,
and various German states. The rich secondary literature,
especially that produced by Russian and Soviet scholars, adds to
the interpretation. It is said that the first wife of Peter the
Great once placed a curse on Peter's new city: "May Petersburg be
empty!" The city's detractors over the centuries have enumerated
many reasons why the city never should have been established and
why it should not have grown. Yet grow it did. No other city in the
world situated so far north (almost on the sixtieth parallel) is
more than a fifth its size. In Catherine's reign the city assumed
the vitality, the social and economic strength, and the identity in
myth and legend that assured that the curse pronounced against it
would remain unfulfilled. The Most Intentional City reveals how it
all took place.
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