Even though almost everyone immediately appreciated the more obvious virtues of Falconet’s monument, it is unlikely that the first viewers really understood they were present at the unveiling of one of the great European sculptures of the eighteenth century. And as they circled the statue of Peter, discovering ever new aspects of the emperor’s depiction—wise and determined lawmaker, fearless military leader, unbending monarch who would not be stopped—the gratified Petersburgers could not foresee that Falconet’s work would become the most important and most popular representation of their city, and that the tortuous process, fraught with cultural and political overtones, of elevating this statue to an enduring symbol would be started by a yet unborn Russian poet.
Senate Square was a most appropriate site for the monument, because the Senate itself had been decreed by Peter; the Admiralty stood nearby and the square was situated in the busiest part of the city. The monument was always surrounded by curious admirers. It was here that revolutionary guardsmen gathered in 1825 in an attempt to prevent Nicholas I from taking the throne. Since this took place on a morning in December, the rebels were called “Decembrists.”
A massive artillery round scattered the revolutionaries. “Between shots you could hear blood streaming along the street, melting the snow and then freezing, red on white,” one of them recalled later. By evening the hundreds of corpses had been cleared away and the blood covered with fresh snow. But the blood was never wiped away from the marmoreal face of Petersburg—the city’s history would continue as it had begun.
And yet what idyllic harmony had preceded it. By the early nineteenth century, in the reign of Alexander I, people managed to forget completely about the bones on which this Northern Palmyra had been built. They tried not to recall the grim interlude of 1796-1801, the reign of Catherine II’s extravagant son, the tyrant Paul I.
Paul’s own courtiers killed the “snubnosed villain” on a chilly March night. Unhappy with his unpredictable and sometimes bizarre edicts, they rushed into his bedroom in the new residence, the Mikhailovsky Palace, in the heart of Petersburg, just painted his favorite shade of red, and strangled their master. When the news reached the emperor’s son, Alexander, a sentimental dreamer who had known about the conspiracy, he burst into tears. His hysterics were swiftly cut short by one of the conspirators, who ordered, “Stop playing the child and go rule!”
The majestic Mikhailovsky Palace with its golden spire still stands as a haunting symbol of regicide—not the first or the last in Russian history. In 1838, a sixteen-year-old freshman named Fyodor Dostoyevsky would cross the doorstep of the castle, which by then had been converted to the engineering school. He didn’t excel as an engineer, but he did become one of the most visionary and influential builders of the Petersburg mythos.
The early years of the new emperor, Alexander I, blue-eyed and nearsighted (both literally and metaphorically), could be characterized by a single line from Pushkin’s poem—“The marvelous beginning of Alexander’s days”—a nostalgic line that would become extremely popular in early-twentieth-century Petersburg. The war of 1812 with Napoleon, called the Patriotic War in Russia, united the entire society—peasants, intelligentsia, nobility—around its liberal monarch in nationalistic fervor.
In 1814 the pensive tsar rode a white horse into Paris, accompanied by victorious Russian troops (among whom were the future Decembrists). Triumphant Petersburg celebrated this providential union of Russia and Europe in a brilliant new architectural style: the Russian Empire. Created with the participation of domestic masters, it was the refined apotheosis of neoclassicism. Petersburg’s main features, ordered and severe, took the shape we know today. St. Isaac’s Cathedral was begun; Palace Square was completed.
Educated Russians of the first decades of the nineteenth century regarded their capital with special love and attachment. It was a city that inspired wonder and admiration. For in Petersburg their enormous country, so backward a mere century ago, appeared ennobled, disciplined, and directed—under the enlightened leadership of Emperor Alexander—to become a rightful member of a common Europe.
For these poets, writers, artists, and patrons Petersburg was not simply the symbol of Russia’s political triumph and military ascension; it was also the embodiment of its flowering culture. Willpower had overcome savage nature, and refined Petersburgers enjoyed the fruits of civilization as did the inhabitants of other important European capitals.
The city was extolled in this manner—perhaps for the last time with such sincerity and harmony—by the impressionable and feckless poet Konstantin Batyushkov, later elevated to the rank of “Columbus of Russian Art Criticism,” in his article “A Stroll to the Academy of Arts” (1814):
