History UsefulNotes / TheCityFormerlyKnownAs

->''"I'll take the first train to St. Petersburg,\\
there's nowhere else I'd rather be."''
-->-- '''Music/HavalinaRailCo''', "Red and Blue (in St. Petersburg)"

St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. Formerly Leningrad. Before that, Petrograd. Before that, St. Petersburg. Before that, ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Nyenskans]]''.

The second city of Russia, ''Sankt Peterburg'' was actually the capital of the country until shortly after UsefulNotes/RedOctober. Both revolutions centred around here. The Russian Navy cruiser ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Aurora Aurora]]'' fired the first shots of Red October and is now preserved in Saint Petersburg as both a museum ship and [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRustingRockets the ceremonial flagship of the Russian Navy]].

Contains quite a few palaces.

Also contains the Mariinsky (or Kirov) Ballet, regarded as one of (if not ''the'') premier classical ballet companies in the world. Also resident in the city is its associated school, the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet; founded in 1738 as the Imperial Ballet School, the Mariinsky and its school remain the heart of the Russian ballet tradition to this day.

Also home to the Leningrad Optical Manufacturing Organization, or LOMO, famous for rescuing film-based photography from extinction, and for (at least formerly) producing some of the finest high-end precision optical instruments, ranging all sizes, in the world. Directly neighboring the LOMO factory is a hospital owned by LOMO, where they hired Russia's best medical doctors in each specialty, to get direct feedback from them on their prototype medical optical instruments. For this reason, throughout the history of the Soviet Union, the city of Leningrad's name was synonymous with top-of-the-line medical care. LOMO also used to make telescopes which were highly sought-after on '''both''' sides of the Iron Curtain. Sadly their quality control of late has declined, somewhat.

Note that several other major cities (and probably many smaller ones) have reverted to their pre-revolutionary names. Gorkiy became Nizhniy ("Lower") Novgorod and Sverdlovsk became Ekaterinburg. Volgograd, however, has not become Tsaritsyn again, and some people want to go back to Stalingrad. The only major city to retain its communist name is Kaliningrad, in the exclave of the same name. This is because the area (North-Eastern Prussia) and the city (Königsberg) were part of Germany until the Second World War and all towns and villages there were given Russian and Soviet names even when they had West Slavic (usually Polish) or (more commonly) Lithuanian names before. There actually is a Russian law to prevent the post-1945 Soviet names from being changed. There has been a real debate about changing Kaliningrad's name back or to something else, nevertheless, and it is often called "Kyonig" informally.

See PleaseSelectNewCityName for particulars.
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!!St. Petersburg in fiction:

* Features heavily in many 19th Century Russian classics: ''Literature/AnnaKarenina, Literature/CrimeAndPunishment, Literature/TheIdiot'' as well as many stories and poems by Creator/NikolaiGogol stories (''The Overcoat, Nevsky Prospect, Diary of a Madman'') and Creator/AleksandrPushkin (''The Queen of Spades, The Bronze Horseman''). The novel ''Petersburg'' by Andrei Bely considered by Creator/VladimirNabokov to be the greatest Russian novel of the 20th Century is also set in the titular city.
* Seen it a million times in Soviet/Russian cinema. Its representations in Russian fiction can be divided into several categories:
** [[PeriodPiece Period pieces]] set in UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, including adaptations of classical novels.
** Dramas about the UsefulNotes/RedOctober and the early years of Soviet Russia.
** UsefulNotes/WorldWarII films, focusing on the battles around Leningrad and the 900-day siege.
** Films set in Soviet Leningrad after the war, either playing with its Second City/Cultural Capital status, or painting a DarkerAndEdgier picture of urban Soviet life and the countercultures that emerge as a result of it. The latter kind is more typical of TheEighties.
** Films and TV shows set in TheNineties. In UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia, St. Petersburg acquired the moniker [[ViceCity "the Criminal Capital of Russia,"]] and most of those films and shows [[CopShow portray]] [[PoliceProcedural it]] [[CriminalProcedural accordingly]]. On the other side of the law, the CultClassic ''Film/{{Brother}}'', as perhaps the most authentic depiction of the "wild '90s" spirit in Russian film, is also set in St. Petersburg.
** By TheNewTens, the "Criminal Capital" image has pretty much become a DeadHorseTrope, unless it was a DeadUnicornTrope to begin with -- while there was a lot of [[TheMafiya organised crime]]-related violence in the city in the nineties, the city itself was more of a strategically important piece of "property" than a country-wide criminal control centre.
* Bond [[RuleOfCool drives]] a [[TankGoodness tank]] through the place in ''Film/{{GoldenEye}}.''
* The first third of ''WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}'' takes place in the city. Which mostly gets it completely wrong; for example, both the exterior and interior of the Winter Palace bear almost no resemblance to the real thing.
* ''A Dangerous Climate'', one of ChelseaQuinnYarbro's Saint-Germain novels
* ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts 2''
* Most of the action in ''Face of the Dark Palmira,'' Vladimir Vasilyev's contribution to Sergei Lukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatchSeries'', takes place in St. Petersburg. The city in the novel is [[CityNoir so]] [[{{Mordor}} Dark]] that even the [[DarkIsNotEvil Dark-sided protagonists]] from other cities feel uneasy about going there.
** In Lukyanenko's ''Literature/TheStarsAreColdToys'', St. Petersburg is once again the capital of Russia. We're never told why, only that Moscow is now seen by most as a dying city, with the elite seeking to move to St. Petersburg or other cities.
* A recurring and somewhat major location in ''VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin.''
* The protagonist of ''VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney'' visits an abandoned lab once run by a NebulousCriminalConspiracy supposedly near St. Petersburg in 2219 CE. However, there are few to no references to real-world local landmarks (except maybe some generic grim Soviet-looking colors), so the lab could just as well have been anywhere else on the planet.
* Classic 1976 Soviet film ''Film/TheIronyOfFate'', in which a drunken New Year's Eve reveler winds up, through a series of odd events, flying to Leningrad and going to the wrong apartment, where he falls in love with the woman who lives there. Followed by a 2007 sequel, ''The Irony of Fate 2'', in which events are paralleled with the children of the protagonists of the first film.
* ''ComicBook/NikolaiDante'' portrays it as the capital of the empire. Since the strip is Tsarist Russia [[RecycledInSpace in the far future]], this makes a lot of sense.
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* Most of the action in ''Face of the Dark Palmira,'' Vladimir Vasilyev's contribution to Sergei Lukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatch'' series, takes place in St. Petersburg. The city in the novel is [[CityNoir so]] [[{{Mordor}} Dark]] that even the [[DarkIsNotEvil Dark-sided protagonists]] from other cities feel uneasy about going there.

** Films and TV shows set in TheNineties. In UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia, St. Petersburg acquired the moniker [[ViceCity "the Criminal Capital of Russia,"]] and most of those films and shows [[CopShow portray]] [[PoliceProcedural it]] [[CriminalProcedural accordingly]]. On the other side of the law, the CultClassic ''Film/{{Brother}}'', as perhaps the most authentic depiction of the 90s' spirit in film, is also set in St. Petersburg.
*** By now the "Criminal Capital" image has pretty much become a DeadHorseTrope, unless it was a DeadUnicornTrope to begin with -- while there was a lot of [[TheMafiya organised crime]]-related violence in the city in the nineties, the city itself was more of a strategically important piece of "property" than a country-wide criminal control centre.

''St. Petersburg in fiction''

Note that several other major cities (and probably many smaller ones) have reverted to their pre-revolutionary names. Gorkij became Nizjnyj ("Lower") Novgorod and Sverdlovsk became Ekaterinburg. Volgograd, however, has not become Tsaritsyn again, and some people want to go back to Stalingrad. The only major city to retain its communist name is Kaliningrad, in the exclave of the same name. This is because the area (Northern East Prussia) and the city (Königsberg) were part of Germany until the Second World War and all towns and villages there were given Russian and Soviet names even when they had West Slavic (usually Polish) or (more commonly) Lithuanian names before. There actually is a Russian law to prevent the post-1945 Soviet names from being changed. There has been a real debate about changing Kaliningrad's name back or to something else, nevertheless, and it is often called "Kyonig" informally.
See PleaseSelectNewCityName for particulars.

** Films and TV shows set in TheNineties. In UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia St. Petersburg acquired the moniker [[ViceCity "the Criminal Capital of Russia,"]] and most of those films and shows [[CopShow portray]] [[PoliceProcedural it]] [[CriminalProcedural accordingly]].
*** By now the "Criminal Capital" image has pretty much become a DeadHorseTrope, unless it was a DeadUnicornTrope to begin with - while there was a lot of [[TheMafiya organised crime]]-related violence in the city in the nineties, the city itself was more of a strategically important piece of "property" than a country-wide criminal control centre.

* Film/{{Brother}}

The second city of Russia, ''Sankt Peterburg'' was actually the capital of the country until shortly after RedOctober. Both revolutions centred around here. The Russian Navy cruiser ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Aurora Aurora]]'' fired the first shots of RedOctober and is now preserved in Saint Petersburg as both a museum ship and [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRustingRockets the ceremonial flagship of the Russian Navy]].

-->-- '''HavalinaRailCo''', "Red and Blue (in St. Petersburg)"

** Dramas about the RedOctober and the early years of Soviet Russia.
** WorldWarII films, focusing on the battles around Leningrad and the 900-day siege.

** Films and TV shows set in TheNineties. In TheNewRussia St. Petersburg acquired the moniker [[ViceCity "the Criminal Capital of Russia,"]] and most of those films and shows [[CopShow portray]] [[PoliceProcedural it]] [[CriminalProcedural accordingly]].

** Films and TV shows set in TheNineties. In TheNewRussia St. Petersburg acquired the monicker [[ViceCity "the Criminal Capital of Russia"]], and most of those films and shows [[CopShow portray]] [[PoliceProcedural it]] [[CriminalProcedural accordingly]].

* Bond [[RuleOfCool drives]] a [[TankGoodness tank]] through the place in ''Film/{{GoldenEye}}''.

* Most of the action in ''Face of the Dark Palmira'', Vladimir Vasilyev's contribution to Sergei Lukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatch'' series, takes place in St. Petersburg. The city in the novel is [[CityNoir so]] [[{{Mordor}} Dark]] that even the [[DarkIsNotEvil Dark-sided protagonists]] from other cities feel uneasy about going there.
* A recurring and somewhat major location in ''VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin''.

** [[PeriodPiece Period pieces]] set in TsaristRussia, including adaptations of classical novels.

The second city of Russia, ''Sankt Peterburg'' was actually the capital of the country until shortly after RedOctober. Both revolutions centred around here.