St. Petersburg is a major Russian port. The city was founded by tsar? [Peter the Great]? after conquering the land from Sweden in 1703, and named after the apostle St. Peter. It was built in the location of the former Swedish fortress of Nöteborg, in the marshlands where the river Neva drains into the Gulf of Finland. It was the national capital of Russia under the tsars. During the World War I, the name St. Petersburg was seen to be too German and the city was renamed Petrograd. In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution broke out in Petrograd. The nearby German armies forced a move of the capital to Moscow, which has been the capital of Russia ever since.
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