Identifier: russia00dobsrich (find matches)
Title: Russia;
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Dobson, George Grove, Henry M Stewart, Hugh, 1884-1934 Haenen, F. de
Subjects: Soviet Union -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. and C. Black
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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d to compulsory measures tobring back the deserters. In 1729 an Imperialdecree ordered all merchants, artisans, and drivers,with their families, to be sent back at once, underpain of severe punishment. Then came an epi-demic of incendiarism, from which it was evidentthat many of those obHged against their will toremain in this detested city were determined torevenge themselves by trying to burn it down tothe ground. In one case a number of men werehanged at the four corners of a block of buildingsto which they had set light only a few hours before.In 1737 over 1,000 houses were destroyed by fire,and many hundred persons perished. Neverthe-less, and in spite of popular aversion, arson, floods,and disease, the Russian nation was forced by theiron will of autocracy to conquer its dislike of St.Petersburg. Finally, from being an object of theutmost repulsion it gradually became a place ofthe greatest attraction, and estates in the provinceswere kept going only for the purpose of providing
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A DRosnK^■ nnivERs tea-stai.l IMPERIAL ST. PETERSBURG 81 money to be squandered by their owners in thedissipations of the new Uiissian capital. The real successor to Peter the Great, as far asconcerns the continuation of his work on the Neva,was Catherine II., during whose reign the citymade great progress. Many handsome buildingsand useful institutions established under that greatEmpress are still among its finest embellishments.Succeeding monarchs also exercised their in-flexible wills upon it in such a way that no othercountry possesses a capital the rise of which hasbeen to the same extent the result of the wantsand wislies of its Sovereigns and their relatives. IfVienna is a real Kaiserstadt, as the Austrians wereproudly wont to call it, there is far more reason toapply the title of Imperial City to St. Peters-burg, which in the very nature of things Russianhas been so completely identified with the Em-perors and Empresses of Russia from its very in-ception. It never could have

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