Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Russia, grade: 1,4, University of Vaasa, course: Excursion to St. Petersburg, 0 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "St. Petersburg - Russian's window to Europe" you can read in almost every information about the city. But besides being the biggest city in western Russia and an important access to the Baltic sea it has also some important 'personal' relations to Europe or e.g. Germany: Peter I the Great and Vladimir Putin. One, the famous founder of St. Petersburg in 1703, who moved the capital from Moscow to his new preferred location and thereby opened whole Russia to deeper relations to the West. The second one, the current Russian president who aims to lead his country with his immense power more and more to become one of the big global players in other/more aspects than in former times. So both have close biographical relationships to Europe or European countries and through their power as heads of the country, this in turn has been influencing Russian culture, politics and business. On the basis of these St.Petersburg characters I would like to identify some hints for a 'Westernization' of Russia (through St.Petersburg) in Detail. But simultaneously important separating factors shall be mentioned which causes still more reluctant behaviour from companies towards Russia. After all I have to add something crucial about the resources I used. It was surprisingly for me to discover that there are only sparely reliable information about Russian topics in the internet available. So I had to reduce my sources mainly to Wikipedia and my St.Petersburg Travel guide Vis- -Vis2.3 I tried at least to re-check the information in e.g. comparing the articles of Wikipedia between different languages and other links I found. But still there is perhaps a lack of the scientifically demanded variance and acceptance of used sources.

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - Region: Russia, grade: 1,4, University of Vaasa, course: Excursion to St. Petersburg, language: English, abstract: “St. Petersburg – Russian’s window to Europe” you can read in almost every information about the city. But besides being the biggest city in western Russia and an important access to the Baltic sea it has also some important ‘personal’ relations to Europe or e.g. Germany: Peter I the Great and Vladimir Putin. One, the famous founder of St. Petersburg in 1703, who moved the capital from Moscow to his new preferred location and thereby opened whole Russia to deeper relations to the West. The second one, the current Russian president who aims to lead his country with his immense power more and more to become one of the big global players in other/more aspects than in former times. So both have close biographical relationships to Europe or European countries and through their power as heads of the country, this in turn has been influencing Russian culture, politics and business. On the basis of these St.Petersburg characters I would like to identify some hints for a ‘Westernization’ of Russia (through St.Petersburg) in Detail. But simultaneously important separating factors shall be mentioned which causes still more reluctant behaviour from companies towards Russia. After all I have to add something crucial about the resources I used. It was surprisingly for me to discover that there are only sparely reliable information about Russian topics in the internet available. So I had to reduce my sources mainly to Wikipedia and my St.Petersburg Travel guide Vis-à-Vis2.3 I tried at least to re-check the information in e.g. comparing the articles of Wikipedia between different languages and other links I found. But still there is perhaps a lack of the scientifically demanded variance and acceptance of used sources.

Twentieth-century Europe, especially Central Eastern Europe, has been largely defined by Russia and Germany. In this century, cultural and economic exchanges between the two countries were as active as the fires of hatred intense. The smaller states in between, with their unstable borders and internal minorities, suffered from the powers' alliances and their antagonisms. This volume of new research in political and cultural history examines the two powers' turbulent relationship, including the pre-1914 era of exchange and cooperation; the projects of modernity in post-revolutionary Russia and Weimar Germany; the struggle for dominance over Central Europe in World War II; and mutual views of Germans and Russians after 1945. In the wake of the crucial events of 1989 and the transformation of German-Russian relations, it asks whether the configuration of Russian-German relations that once dominated twentieth-century Europe has now dissolved, leaving us to find new ways of cooperation between 'New Russia' and 'New Europe'.

Walking the first mile of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, the visitor is struck by the sight of the Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, German, Armenian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches. These buildings reflect the religious, cultural, and social diversity that has been characteristic of the city since Tsar Peter the Great invited thousands of foreigners from all over Western Europe to build this settlement at the estuary of the Neva River. On the occasion of the third centenary of St. Petersburg (2003), historians and archivists from Russia as well as other European countries convened to study the history of the city’s foreign churches in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The resulting studies, published here, offer fascinating insights into the almost forgotten history of those churches and show how substantially they contributed to the religious, cultural, social, and economic history of St. Petersburg. Contributors include: Archpriest V. Fedorov, M. Fundaminski, P.N. Holtrop, B. Jangfeldt, E.E. Knyazeva, N.S. Krylov, T. Mägi, A. Must, E. Norberg, P.M. Peucker, K. Rundell, V.M. Shishkin, C.H. Slechte, A.R. Sokolov, Th.J.S. van Staalduine, T.I. Tatsenko, J.W. Veluwenkamp, and M.V. Shkarovskii.

For Russians, St. Petersburg has embodied power, heroism, and fortitude. It has encompassed all the things that the Russians are and that they hope to become. Opulence and artistic brilliance blended with images of suffering on a monumental scale make up the historic persona of the late W. Bruce Lincoln's lavish "biography" of this mysterious, complex city. Climate and comfort were not what Tsar Peter the Great had in mind when, in the spring of 1703, he decided to build a new capital in the muddy marshes of the Neva River delta. Located 500 miles below the Arctic Circle, this area, with its foul weather, bad water, and sodden soil, was so unattractive that only a handful of Finnish fisherman had ever settled there. Bathed in sunlight at midnight in the summer, it brooded in darkness at noon in the winter, and its canals froze solid at least five months out of every year. Yet to the Tsar, the place he named Sankt Pieter Burkh had the makings of a "paradise." His vision was soon borne out: though St. Petersburg was closer to London, Paris, and Vienna than to Russia's far-off eastern lands, it quickly became the political, cultural, and economic center of an empire that stretched across more than a dozen time zones and over three continents. In this book, revolutionaries and laborers brush shoulders with tsars, and builders, soldiers, and statesmen share pride of place with poets. For only the entire historical experience of this magnificent and mysterious city can reveal the wealth of human and natural forces that shaped the modern history of it and the nation it represents.

In the bookshops of present-day St. Petersburg, guidebooks abound. Both modern descriptions of Russia’s old imperial capital and lavish new editions of pre-Revolutionary texts sell well, primarily attracting an audience of local residents. Why do Russians read one- and two-hundred-year-old guidebooks to a city they already know well? In How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself, Emily Johnson traces the Russian fascination with local guides to the idea of kraevedenie. Kraevedenie (local studies) is a disciplinary tradition that in Russia dates back to the early twentieth century. Practitioners of kraevedenie investigate local areas, study the ways human society and the environment affect each other, and decipher the semiotics of space. They deconstruct urban myths, analyze the conventions governing the depiction of specific regions and towns in works of art and literature, and dissect both outsider and insider perceptions of local population groups. Practitioners of kraevedenie helped develop and popularize the Russian guidebook as a literary form. Johnson traces the history of kraevedenie, showing how St. Petersburg–based scholars and institutions have played a central role in the evolution of the discipline. Distinguished from obvious Western equivalents such as cultural geography and the German Heimatkunde by both its dramatic history and unique social significance, kraevedenie has, for close to a hundred years, served as a key forum for expressing concepts of regional and national identity within Russian culture. How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself is published in collaboration with the Harriman Institute at Columbia University as part of its Studies of the Harriman Institute series.

Featuring revised and extended coverage, the second edition of A History of Modern Germany offers an accessible and engagingly written account of German history from 1800 to the present. Provides readers with a long view of modern German history, revealing its continuities and changes Features updated and extended coverage of German social change and modernization, class, religion, and gender Includes more in depth coverage of the German Democratic Republic Examines Germany's social, political, and economic history Covers the unification of Germany, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, post-war division, the collapse of Communism, and developments since re-unification Addresses regional history rather than focusing on the dominant role of Prussia