OCR Text |
Show Czar Founded Leningrad As 'Window to West' Leningrad is in northwestern Russia. Rus-sia. It is the second largest city in the Soviet Union. How many persons there are in Leningrad today would be hard to tell The best we can say is that the population last year was more than 3,000,000. Going back into history we find that the city was founded by the czar known as Peter the Great. Two hundred and thirty-eight years have passed since he ordered the work to begin. Peter the Great had been fighting a war with Sweden, and had captured cap-tured a fort at the mouth of the Neva river. This river flows into the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland. The czar said his new city would be "a window to the west." With a port in that location, Russian vessels ves-sels could sail out of the Gulf of Finland into the Baltic sea, then to the North sea. The spot chosen was not quite on the coast. It was where the Neva river branches into parts. Yet large ships could sail along the river branches to the sea. Forty thousand soldiers and farmers farm-ers were set to work in 1703. Many of them were Cossacks and Tartars. Later they were joined by Swedish prisoners and by 30,000 day laborers. Thousands of men fell sick and died as they labored on churches, palaces and other buildings which the czar ordered them to put up. The site of the city was in the midst of swamps and was not healthful. health-ful. We are told that everyone "hated "hat-ed the place" except Peter. The new city was named St. Petersburg, Pe-tersburg, in honor of the czar's patron pa-tron saint. |