The St. Petersburg Connection. Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

      Washington, D.C., c. 1803, showing a pastoral view with the President’s House, Gales’ House, and the Old Patent Office (later the New Post Office & Blodget’s Hotel) in the foreground.

       Nicholas King, 1771–1812. Watercolour. Library of Congress.

      Congress, however, was strongly divided over George Washington’s choice of site. As Thomas Jefferson observed, “This measure produced the most bitter and angry contests ever known in Congress, before or since the union of States.… The Eastern [New England] members threatened a secession and dissolution.” The northern states felt the location was too far south and the southern states deemed it too far north. Eventually, however, through Jefferson’s forceful persuasion, the legislators acquiesced and the bill creating the new capital was approved.

      At the centre of the diamond-shaped territory, called the District of Columbia, plans for the nascent metropolis of Washington were laid out. To chart a municipal plan for the site, Washington called on Major Pierre L’Enfant, a Frenchman who during the revolutionary years had served in the colonial army as an engineer. Jefferson, a self-taught city planner from his earlier days in Europe, lent a guiding hand. L’Enfant drew up an elaborate plan, one that took its inspiration from the magnificent garden layout of Louis XIV’s Versailles. He envisioned broad avenues and a maze of geometrically designed streets intersecting one another at circles, where elaborate fountains and statuaries would be found.

      When John Adams, the second president of the United States, took up residence in the nation’s capital in 1801, it bore no resemblance to L’Enfant’s plan. He and his beloved wife Abigail found the place primitive to say the least — full of tree stumps, shabby shacks, unfinished construction, and clouds of mosquitoes. The settlement numbered 3,210 inhabitants, excluding slaves.[1] Ringing the Capitol building was a handful of shops and boarding houses. In these establishments, “together around the common mess-table, kindred spirits” from the same section of country gathered — in caucus, really — to consider the bills of the day. Vice-President Jefferson moved into one such lodging and there he “lived in perfect equality with his fellow boarders and ate from a common table … always placing himself at the lowest and coldest end of the table at which a company of more than thirty sat down.”

      From the Capitol, a muddy roadway ran through a thicket of trees, joining up to the White House: Pennsylvania Avenue. “The presidential palace,” reported an English visitor in 1803, “is without fence but a few broken rails upon which hang his excellency’s stockings and shirts to dry and his maid’s blue petticoat.” The residence stood in isolation, neighboured only by the Treasury, which housed various government departments. In a letter to her daughter, the first lady wrote,

      Woods are all you see, from Baltimore until you reach the city, which is only so in name.… The river which runs up to Alexandria is in full view of my window and I see vessels as they pass and re-pass.

      The House is on a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments.… There is not a single apartment finished.… We have not the least fence, yard or other convenience, without, and the great unfinished audience-room, I make a drying room of, to hang up the clothes.[2]

      In addition to the river traffic, Abigail Adams delighted in observing the grazing cattle and the occasional partridge that chanced by.[3]

      A hundred years earlier in Russia, Peter the Great, journeyed to the western edge of his empire — to the mouth of the Neva River at the shores of the Baltic Sea, a flat, wild, and swampy area with a network of islands among the river’s tributaries and feeding streams. But what he found pleased him. He ordered that a fortress be erected at the spot, a citadel that eventually would serve as the centrepiece of his empire’s new capital. If his tradition-bound Slavophile countrymen were to be dragged into Europe, ancient Moscow would have to be forsaken in favour of a new capital, one with access to the oceans — “a window to the west.” The new capital was a singularly unlikely place, in winter freezing winds blew in from the Gulf of Finland, and in spring the Neva backed up, often causing untoward floods. Thick mists habitually enshrouded the region and in summer, mosquitoes plagued the area. And to top it all off, it was uncertain whether the selected spot actually belonged to Russia or to Sweden. But none of this concerned the tsar. After all, he was “master of his country … he creates what he wills.” And so, it was done.

      On May 16, 1703, Peter the Great turned the first shovel of excavation, heralding the start of the ambitious enterprise. A phalanx of carpenters and workmen scurried about to build the tsar’s quarters — the fortress would follow. Within three days, a three-room log cabin, fifty-five by twenty feet, stood ready for occupancy and Peter moved in. Five months later, the massive earth, timber, and stone fortress was well under construction. To finance the grandiose scheme, Peter not too subtly persuaded a half dozen of his closest, wealthiest friends to assume the cost and the supervision of building the six massive, grim bastions that form the basis of the fortification, today’s Peter and Paul Fortress.

      Whereas the birthing of the U.S. capital was a painfully drawn out affair, the new Russian capital grew quickly. The fortress sprung up rapidly, and around it spread the city. That Peter’s capital was located at the edge of the empire, far from the country’s centre bothered him little. What mattered was its saltwater location. Within a decade, St. Petersburg had become a full-fledged city with wide boulevards and aristocratic mansions. Its population had sprung from nothing to one hundred thousand. But to develop this unique undertaking the cost by way of human suffering and loss of lives was horrendous. Scores of thousands of peasant labourers and craftsmen were conscripted from all parts of the country to work on St. Petersburg. The conditions under which they toiled were appalling and thousands died, not only from the physical hardships of their labours but also from malaria, dysentery, and scurvy. The actual number of deaths is unknown, but some have it as high as one hundred thousand. Truly, this was “a city built on bones.”

      Washington and St. Petersburg — national capitals founded by two strong-willed heads of state, one answerable to the people through an elected congress, the other beholden to no one. One city endured a protracted birthing; the other became an “overnight wonder” — glaring contrasts in operational modes of democracy and autocracy.

      No sooner had American independence been won than the Continental Congress set out to woo foreign states for diplomatic recognition of the newly formed nation. The first such state was Russia. In 1781, Francis Dana was dispatched to St. Petersburg to persuade Catherine — that “wise and virtuous Princess” — to recognize the republic. The Boston lawyer-turned-diplomat was at the time in Paris serving as secretary to John Adams, then the American envoy. An austere and puritanical individual, Dana possessed intelligence and was fervently dedicated to the advancement of his country. To accompany the envoy, Adams seconded his fourteen-year-old son, John Quincy Adams (forty years later, the sixth president of the United States). Not only was the charming, dark-eyed boy handsome and intelligent, but he was also uncommonly mature for his age. “A delightful child,” beamed Abigail Adams. “Master Johnny” was fluent in French, an essential skill that Dana lacked. It was a judicious appointment and the youngster acquitted himself with aplomb in the diplomatic discussions that later took place. The unlikely couple travelled the 1,200-mile distance in a modest post-chaise to St. Petersburg, a place few Americans had ever visited. The journey took over a month.