Talk:Saint Petersburg

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The recent addition by 62.78.138.226 from May 3, 2003 is the automatically translated text from Russian Wikipedia. Meanwhile I shall not attempt merging it with the original text of the article, only rewrite it in more or less readable English. Iorsh 22:08 23 May 2003 (UTC)

I think this page should, like Rome, Paris and Athens, be mainly about the Russian city. jheijmans

I agree - in fact the "link" to the Russian Saint Petersburg doesn't even work

It is not all that obvious that "Saint Petersburg" means the one in Russia to most people. The one in Florida is probably nearly as commonly meant, or even MORE commonly meant.

How perfectly ridiculous. I don't think anyone outside the US would so mean unless they had a vacation home in Florida. The one in Russia is a great home of the arts, seat of the Hermitage and longtime capital of Imperial Russia. As well say that the most famous Frankfurt is in Kentucky. (Yes, I know it's spelt differently.) user:Montrealais

Also, the most famous Cairo is in Georgia, and you say it KAY-row.

An aside: I live in Florida, and I've always seen Saint Petersburg, Florida written St. Petersburg, Florida instead.

I for one was not particularly aware there was a S(ain)t Petersburg in Florida. (The only non-Russian one that comes to mind is the one in Missouri, which is fictional.) --Brion

If you're talking to me, I was being heavily ironic.  :-)

For 70 Years, the Russian city wasn't even called "St. Petersburg." It was "Leningrad"! I just did a Google search on "Saint Petersburg" and of the first 10 hits (thus the most popular ones) 5 referred to the one in Florida and 5 to the one in Russia. We should note that the audience for Wikipedia is English-speakers, and in the English speaking world there are far more Americans and Canadians (yes, a lot of Canadians vacation in Florida) than Europeans. (I'm not sure what "St. Petersburg" unmodified would mean to Australians, the only other major English-speaking group in the world!) To consider St. Petersburg in Russia as THE "St. Petersburg" is about of a piece as considering Boston, England or Memphis, Egypt as THE "Boston" or "Memphis" (How many people even know there ARE such places as Boston in England or Memphis in Egypt? But yes, they were there first!) -- BRG

Clearly we need some way to distinguish between:

• Leningrad, the St. Petersburg in Russia
• Saint Petersburg, Florida
• and the fictional place in Hucklebury Finn.

The question is: is one of these usages of such primacy that it should get the best spot? Or should Saint Petersburg be a disambiguation page that shows the differences and requires the reader to click again for the one they wanted? --Ed Poor

Americans are not the only people in the world, BRG. Saint Petersburg in Russia is simply of greater historical and international significance than St. Petersburg, FL. - user:Montrealais

I honestly hope North Americans aren't as ignorant of geography and history as BRG suggests, but if they are, well, shouldn't an encyclopedia attempt to educate them instead of reinforcing their regionalism? I think Saint Petersburg, Russia should get the lead spot, due to both historical and current international significance. Wesley

I am an American, and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want a raw link to Saint Petersburg to go to some town in Florida whose sole claim to fame appears to be a Salvador Dali museum. Russia it is. --Brion 18:16 Sep 13, 2002 (UTC)

Map and administrative regions

It seems I have got incomplete information about St. Petersburg administrative regions (raions). Many places state that St. Petersburg has 21 administrative regions and those 13 are just the urban ones, for instance here: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/saint_petersburg_russia.htm

I used tourist maps and tourist guide information and drew a map with administrative districts on it, similar to my Shanghai map. If someone has a definite knowledge about administrative regions in StPb, please let me know. Otherwise I will visit local library this week and complete the maps and fill up the rest of the districts using the information I have available. I apology for the incomplete data, but lets hope I get it corrected very soon.

I will add a new link clarifying (problemizing) the administrative districts in St. Petersburg: http://www.leontief.ru/rnsc/eng/nwregions/nwr4.htm -- this says 21 "raions" (or independent settlements) and 111 administrative municipalities. The administrative system gets complicated. I am going to focus on those 21 "raions", since I have no information source for those 111 municipalities whatsoever.

Per OKATO, there are 20 administrative districts in the city. I made the corrections to the article. If you need information on lesser municipalities, leave me a note on my talk page. Or, I can write the Administrative division of Saint Petersburg modeled after similar articles (e.g., Administrative division of Dagestan). Let me know if you need assistance. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 16:45, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

St. Petersburg district map is now in the Administrative division of Saint Petersburg article.

On Notable/Famous people

The section should be dropped or moved off to a separate page. Pretty much every notable Russian, who lived in 18th and 19th century is related to SPb. SPb was a capital. It's a city now with nearly 5 million people, like a small country. There are way too many notable/famous residents. Such lists can work for small towns but for large cities/capitals they simply pollute the artile with a list nearly the same as the List of Russians. --Gene s 06:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC) Besides, the Category system can address such lists much cleaner than the "lists". --Gene s 06:14, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Translation_into_English#German-to-English

I've just taken on a request to translate and merge in extra information from the German article into the English Saint Petersburg, and have started the first paragraph where there's nothing to add (I will soon translate and merge in the second paragraph though) except I'm puzzled by the differing population figures. The German article states a population almost 700 thousand lower, while as far as I can make out from Babelising (I can't read Russian) the :ru: article:

Population of 4436,7 thousand inhabitants (5003,8 thousand inhabitants,
including the populated areas, subordinated to city hall)

but no date is given.

Other sources give:

• http://www.bartleby.com/61/22/S0032200.html Population: 4,328,851.
• MSN Encarta has (2001 estimate) 4,627,800.
• http://www.travelspb.com/ (2004 assumed) has 4.8 million
• ru: states 4436,7 thousand but no date
• http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main_e.pl?Region=piter 2000-2004 has 4728 thousand

Even the historical population charts in both languages vary for 2002: 4,700,000 versus 4,159,635 in the German article. Could the larger number be including the suburbs? -Wikibob | Talk 23:54, 2005 Feb 13 (UTC)

According to 2002 Census, the population of St. Petersburg is 4,661,219. This includes the population of all of the administrative districts under the city jurisdiction. The "suburbs" population (by which, I believe, you mean the population of Leningrad Oblast) is not included. I woul recommend using Census data as they are used across all of the Russian federal subjects to create a basis for proper stats comparison.

If you need detailed stats by administrative districts, let me know.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 21:41, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I've used the 2002 census data as you suggest.

I've also added some more images, and translated and merged in a couple of paragraphs. A rough summary and details can be seen in User:Wikibob/Saint Petersburg if anyone cares to check and improve. My translating is slow and somewhat weak in places.

The German article structure is somewhat different from that of this article, here is an English translation of the German one:

1 The Name of the City
2 Geography
3 History
 3.1 The city in the swamp
 3.2 The blooming of the city
 3.3 Rebellions, assassination attempts, revolutions  
 3.4 Leningrad
 3.5 After the fall of the Soviet Union
4 Politics
5 Population
 5.1 Population growth
6 Culture
 6.1 Literature
  6.1.1 The "Petersburger Text"
 6.2 The Hermitage
 6.3 Architecture
  6.3.1 Building and monument conservation
  6.3.2 Building style
  6.3.3 Tour of the city
 6.4 Petersburg in Film
7 Education
8 Economy (Industry?) and Transportation
 8.1 Economy
 8.2 Transportation
9 Twin towns
10 Personages
11 Literature
 11.1 English
 11.2 Literature by Petersburgers
12 Weblinks

Contrast this with the English article that starts like a tourist guide and is missing certain sections I would consider important. Before making such a drastic change, what are the views of others? Should we relocate the sections to mirror the German structure, or mirror one of these: London, Berlin, or leave it as it is? -Wikibob | Talk 03:33, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

Information that's present in the German article and missing from the English article is quite interesting and important. I do not see why anyone would complain if you translate it and add to the English article. I do not believe the article on St. Petersburg is a part of any series with a rigidly defined structure, so no matter in which (more or less logical) order you add sections, it should work fine. I would guess that eventually the articles on all Russian cities, St. Pete included, will conform to a standard template/layout, but currently it is not the case.

This is strictly my personal opinion, of course. If any one has any complaints, I assume they will voice them here.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 16:33, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

from the section Population

As for religions, 10 per cent of the inhabitants are atheist, Russian Orthodox.

This makes no sense. Does it mean 10 are athiest, the rest are russian orthodox, or that the two positions have 10% each? Sabine's Sunbird 03:58, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Was religious affiliation even asked in the 2002 census? This paragraph right below the census numbers at least gives the impression, but the first links I found with google make me believe it was not, like Russian census will not survey religious affiliation (http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/0208a.html) (at the bottom of page), "Both the patriarchate and the state committee agree that confessional identification is a private matter of the citizen and the inclusion of such a question in the census would constitute infringement on freedom of conscience."

Any numbers from after 1937 I found were vague and coming from religious communities. Considering this, and if I'm not interpreting the assumed percentages completely wrong, would it be safe to say, "Although there are no exact numbers from any census since 1937, a majority of inhabitants is believed to be Orthodox Christians, a significant percentage atheist, and (..)"? --Nikai 09:18, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)