St Petersburg

choi

St Petersburg l White Nights, Dark History. Economist, July 29, 2017
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... had-no-regard-human
(book review on Jonathan Miles, St Petersburg; Three centuries of murderous desire. Random House, 2017)

Note:
(a)
(i) The "white nights" in the title alludes to summertime, due to the city's high-latitude location.
(ii) Regarding the author's last name. The English surname Miles (of Norman origin): "via Old French from the Germanic personal name Milo, of unknown etymology."

(b) "the city's 'spiders' webs of tramlines' * * * The windswept city built on the mouth of the Neva is prone to flooding, as is vividly described in Pushkin's 'The Bronze Horseman,' the greatest literary tribute to Peter the Great's austere and splendid creation."
(i) trams in Saint Petersburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Saint_Petersburg
(a major mode of public transit)
(ii) Neva River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neva_River
(iii) Bronze Horseman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Horseman
( The name comes from an 1833 poem of the same name by Aleksander Pushkin)

(c) "At the end of the 17th century Peter travelled to several European capitals, including Riga and London."
(i) Riga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riga
("With 639,630 inhabitants (2016), Riga[, capital of Latvia,] is the largest city in the Baltic states")
(ii) The air distance between St Petersburg and Riga is 306 miles.

(d) "Between 1917 and the early 1920s, as Lenin moved the government back to Moscow, the population of the city, now renamed Petrograd, fell from 2.5m to 740,000 as food became scarce and violence and killing spread as a result of the revolution and the ensuing civil war. * * * [When Hitler invaded Soviet Union,] it was a base for the Baltic Sea fleet and one of the most important industrial centres in the Soviet Union. The 900-day siege [Sept 8, 1941 - Jan 27, 1944 -- 872 days: Wikipedia] * * * The city where Shostakovich composed his famous 'Leningrad Symphony'
(i) Symphony No 7 (Shostakovich)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Shostakovich)
(ii) Shostakovich
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Shostakovich
(pronunciation)