Main entry:

Lincoln, W. Bruce, author.

Title & Author:

Sunlight at midnight : St. Petersburg and the rise of modern Russia / W. Bruce Lincoln.

Edition:

First edition

Publication:

New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 2000
©2000

Description:

viii, 419 pages, 40 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- Window on the West (1703-1796): The Builders ; Lords of the Realm ; The Shadow of the Winter Palace -- Imperial Colossus (1796-1855): The Hub of Empire ; Nevskii Prospekt -- Cradle of Revolution (1856-1941): Modernity's Challenge ; The Peter and Paul Fortress ; On the Eve ; Comrades -- "Hero City" (1941-1991): Nine Hundred Days ; Together in Step ; Past and Present -- Notes -- Index.
"Bathed in sunlight at midnight in the summer, it brooded in darkness at noon in the winter, and its canals froze solid at least five months of every year. St. Petersburg was closer to London, Paris, and Vienna than to Russia's far-off eastern lands, but it quickly became the political, cultural, and economic center of an empire that stretched across more than a dozen time zones and over three continents. A European capital of an Asiatic nation, St. Petersburg eventually became a model of what Russia ought to become, and the Russians embraced everything it represented. Not since the Roman Empire has a city stood so completely for the realm it ruled. Lincoln's epic history of St. Petersburg is, inevitably, also a history of modern Russia. Sunlight at Midnight is a tale of men and women struggling against the awesome forces of nature, backwardness, and repression to create the triumphs in politics, culture, and science that make up the 300-year history of St. Petersburg. Lincoln peoples his brilliant look at St. Petersburg with revolutionaries and laborers who brush shoulders with tsars, and with builders, soldiers, and statesmen who share a sense of place with poets. By depicting the entire historical experience of this magnificent and mysterious city--the power, the heroism, the fortitude--Lincoln reveals the wealth of human and natural forces that shaped its history and that of the Russia it once ruled."--from the inside front and back flaps.
In English.

Summary:

Covers the politics, culture, and science that make up the 300-year history of the city that once ruled Russia.
"The city of St. Petersburg has encompassed all that Russians are and all that they hope to become. Home to Peter and Catherine the Great, it provided creative sustenance to Dostoevskii, Rimskii-Korsakov, Pavlova and Nizhinskii, Fabergé, Gogol, and even Joseph Brodsky. Although St. Petersburg has played a role in many histories of Russia, until now there has been no definitive history of the city and all its elements. In this stunning and lavish biography of St. Petersburg, W. Bruce Lincoln captures all of the city's opulence and artistic brilliance, blended with images of power, suffering and monumental heroism. Climate and comfort were not what Peter the Great had in mind when he decided to build a new capital in the muddy marshes of the Neva River delta in the spring of 1703. Barely 500 miles below the Arctic Circle and easily submerged by the tides that flowed upriver from the Gulf of Finland, the region saw snow as early as September and as late as May. Its foul weather, bad water, and low-lying, sodden soil made it so unattractive that only a handful of Finnish fisherman had ever bothered to settle there. Yet to the Tsar, the place he named Sankt Pieter Burkh had the makings of a 'paradise.' And like Russia itself, Peter's new capital became a place of startling contrasts."

Resources:
Table of contents

ISBN:

0465083234
9780465083237
0465083242
9780465083244
1903985005
9781903985007

Subject:

15.70 history of Europe.
Steden.
Saint Petersburg (Russia) History.
Saint-Pétersbourg (Russie) Histoire.
Russia (Federation) Saint Petersburg
Sankt Petersburg

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 220694
Call No.: DK552 .L5 2000
Status: Available