St. Petersburg
Russia
Peter the Great's "window to Europe," built on marshland to modernize Russia. A city of palaces, ballet, and literature that witnessed the revolutions of 1917.
Associated figures
Catherine the Great
Born a minor Prussian princess, Catherine seized the Russian throne in a 1762 coup and ruled for thirty-four years, transforming Russia into one of the great powers of Europe. An enlightened despot who corresponded with Voltaire and expanded Russia's territory, she oversaw a cultural golden age and the founding of institutions that endure to this day.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist who plumbed the darkest depths of the human psyche with unmatched intensity. Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot are among the most profound explorations of guilt, faith, freedom, and suffering in world literature.
Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist whose War and Peace and Anna Karenina are widely considered the greatest novels ever written. In later life he became a moral philosopher and advocate of nonviolent resistance whose ideas influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.