ST.PETERSBURG RUSSIA'S "WINDOW ON EUROPE BY AWAKE! WRITER IN RUSSIA

Endurance Despite Adversity

Little did Peter 's opponents realize what tenacity the Russians would hold on to their window on Europe. The book Peter the Great-His Life and World explains: "From the day that Peter the Great first set foot on the mouth of the Neva, the land and the city which arose there have always remained Russian."

Indeed, as the above-quoted book says, "through the centuries, none of the conquerors who subsequently entered Russia with great armies-Charles XII, Napoleon, Hitler, was able to capture Peter's Baltic port, although Nazi armies besieged the city for 900 days in World War II."  During that long siege,  some one million people in the city died. Many perished from cold and famine during the winter of 1941/42, when temperatures fell to 40 degrees below zero.  This temperature happens to be the point at which the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales  registered the same.

In 1914, when World War I began, the city's name was changed to Petrograd. When the first head of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, its name was changed to Leningrad. Finally, in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the city's original name St. Petersburg was restored. 

Next time: ST.PETERSBURG RUSSIA'S "WINDOW ON EUROPE" - Contributions to the World

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