Petrozavodsk

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Petrozavodsk (Russian: Петрозаводск; Karelian/Finnish: Petroskoi or Aanislinna) is the capital of the Republic of Karelia, Russia. It stretches along the western shore of the Lake Onega for 27 km. The city is served by Besovets Airport.

 

The city was founded on September 11, 1703 as Petrovskaya sloboda (Петровская слобода) by Prince Menshikov at the behest of Peter the Great who needed a new iron foundry for manufacturing cannons and anchors for the Baltic Fleet at the time of the Great Northern War..

 

During Catherine's municipal reform of 1777, Petrovskaya sloboda was incorporated as a town, whereupon its name was changed to Petrozavodsk. A new neoclassical city centre was then built, focused on the newly-planned Round Square. In 1784, Petrozavodsk was large enough to supplant Olonets as the administrative centre of the region. Although Emperor Paul abolished the Olonets Governorate, it was revived as a separate guberniya in 1801, with Petrozavodsk as its centre.

 

During the Finnish occupation of East Karelia in the Continuation War (1941-1944), the occupier chose to style the city Ддnislinna (or Ддneslinna), rather than the traditional Petroskoi. The new name was a literal translation of Onegaborg, the name of a settlement marked on a 17th century Swedish map near the present-day city, Ддninen being the Finnish toponym for Lake Onega. In an effort to ethnically cleans the city the Russian speaking part of the population were transported to a concentration camp that opened on October 24 1941. The city was occupied by Finnish troops for nearly three years before it was retaken by Soviet forces on June 28 1944.

Petrozavodsk is distinguished among other towns of North Russia by its Neoclassical architectural heritage, which includes the Round Square (1775, reconstructed in 1789 and 1839) and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (consecrated in 1832). Among the town's landmarks are the outdoor statues of Peter I (bronze and granite, Ippolit Monighetti, 1873) and Gavrila Derzhavin (a Russian poet who was the governor of Olonets in the 18th century).

 

The city has a fine frontage on the Gulf of Petrozavodsk. The modern embankment, inaugurated in 1994, displays an assortment of Karelian granites and marbles. It is lined with extravagant postmodernist sculptures presented by sister cities of Petrozavodsk from around the world. There is also a birch copse, where the first church of

Petrozavodsk was built in 1703.

 

Petrozavodsk is home to the Karelian Musical Theatre (1955, statuary by Sergei Konenkov), Public Library of Karelia (1959), Finnish Theatre of Drama (1965), a university named after Otto Kuusinen, a conservatory, a city museum founded in 1871, and a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.