Changing Landscapes and River Control

Unchannelized rivers are a dynamic environment where water and land constantly move. Living close to or even within riverine landscapes poses complex challenges. The river determines people’s lives to a great extent, shaping them spatially and temporally. In turn, societies have modified rivers considerably to secure their own needs and to overcome the risk of flooding. During the period of modernization in particular, new technologies offered unprecedented opportunities to change the nature of rivers. As important centers of technical expertise, Vienna and St. Petersburg eventually created almost new landscapes. This is particularly true for the history of the Viennese Danube. This section visualizes the changes in riverscapes essential to both capitals.

Switch between the Neva and Danube perspectives by clicking on the circles below.​

The original virtual exhibition includes the option to switch between the cities St. Petersburg and Vienna within the individual chapters.

Map of St. Petersburg water objects, eighteenth–nineteenth centuries.

Changing riverscape of the Neva at St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg could not develop without significant changes to the waterscape. At least 80 hydrological objects appeared, disappeared, or were significantly changed between the early eighteenth and late twentieth centuries. This work required thousands of working hands, and a significant number of the workers who came to the new capital each year were involved in the building of canals and embankments. These were initially made of wood and later of granite. (This enormous work continues to the present day and seems unlikely to ever be totally completed.)

As a result, the rivers became significantly narrower (the Neva lost between 50 and 250 meters of width). The shallows were finally replaced with almost vertical granite walls, which undoubtedly affected the fish population.

While there were several permanent projects to change the riverine network in St. Petersburg, none can be called a “decisive” or “turning” point in its story. We can only list the most important projects: the transformation of the River Krivusha into the Ekaterininski Canal (now the Griboyedova Canal) in 1764–1790; the construction of the Obvodnyi Canal (1769–1833); the permanent raising of the ground level in almost all of the city throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the construction of granite embankments on the Neva and the smaller rivers and canals (in the second half of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries); the construction and backfill of drainage canals and ponds; and the development of a network of bridges—made initially of wood and later of granite and steel.

The wooden bridges gradually disappeared in the nineteenth century and do not exist in the city anymore. Granite embankments appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century. Andrey Yefimovich Martynov, View of the Moika River by the Imperial Stables, 1809. Watercolour and Indian ink, 60 x 86 cm.

Water control in St. Petersburg required the skills of numerous experts and it was therefore one of the most important spheres of Russian-European technological transfers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dutch and Venetian engineers were invited in the early days of the city and Russian students were sent abroad for training. Later, many French and German hydroengineers worked in St. Petersburg, as well as the graduates of the technical institutes created in the city itself. By the early twentieth century, St. Petersburg had itself begun to export hydrotechnologies abroad.

 

 

Water transportation

Water routes, both natural and artificial, became the basis for St. Petersburg’s transportation system early on in the life of the city. Ground transportation was almost impossible due to the poor quality of the few available roads. Barges delivered food for workers and construction materials for buildings, as well as commodities for the growing commercial seaport. Water transportation very soon became an important branch of business in the city and throughout the imperial period: the Neva and its branches were dotted, from April to November, with

The original virtual exhibition includes an interactive gallery of images. View the images on the following pages.

private boats as well as big transportation vessels. In addition to the privately owned vessels, many city administrations possessed boats for their officials, and this was an important part of the urban transportation system, too.

In the nineteenth century, new technologies came to the city. In November 1815, the first steamboat, Elizaveta, initiated a new era in the history of St. Petersburg’s water transportation. From that moment until 1917, the smoke from numerous steamboats became a characteristic part of the city’s atmosphere. These vessels were built in the city and delivered to St. Petersburg from the shipyards of central Russia, as well as from abroad. Steamboat transportation expanded the borders of St. Petersburg and made certain territories easily accessible, which were otherwise quite remote in the eyes of eighteenth-century citizens.

Floods

The Neva floods constitute an important part of the St. Petersburg collective memory materialized in numerous heritage objects throughout the city. This stone tablet on the wall demonstrates the water level during the most catastrophic flood in the St. Petersburg history that took place in November 1824. These tablets are still quite visible in the central part of the city and therefore the space of urban memory is still very much shaped by the centuries of threat from the unpredictable stream. Photograph by BiOBER.

The Neva is quite a self-willed stream with very unstable water levels. The downstream is strongly affected by the Gulf of Finland. In autumn, low atmospheric pressure combines with stormy wind from the west to form cyclones. As a result, enormous masses of water enter the mouth of the Neva from the sea and the river floods the city. The most catastrophic flood took place on 7 November 1824, when the water level rose 4.21 meters above the norm. For centuries, floods have been an important part of local culture and identity, hanging over the city like the Sword of Damocles. To a great extent, the idea of flood protection has been the driving force behind waterscape changes since the eighteenth century. Engineers tried to develop canal networks in order to prevent water stagnation, which was considered to be the major reason for floods; however, it was only in the twenty-first century that a dam was built across the Neva inlet, radically changing the eastern part of the Gulf. The threat has thus been eliminated as no water can now enter the mouth of the river from downstream.

 

Switch between the Neva and Danube perspectives by clicking on the circles above.