Petrograd is a modern European city, built by Peter the Great in the early part of the eighteenth century and by Catherine II, also called “the Great,” in the latter half of the same century. Peter, who would have been a master man in any century and in any country, whether born in a palace or a farmhouse, was all the more a marvel because he was a Russian, born at a time when the Russian people were still medieval and still oriental. Peter didn’t allow the fact that he was heir to an oriental autocracy to interfere with his ambitions or his activities. He left the golden palace in the Kremlin, left Moscow, the capital, and sacred heart of the empire, left Russia altogether, and went off to become a day laborer in the shipyards of England and Holland. Peter learned what he could in a short time and went back to establish western civilization in Russia. He chose the site of his new capital much as the United States Steel Company chose the site of Gary, Ind., for its nearness to a good harbor, its easy access to trade routes and its fine front view of the best commercial centers. Peter called his city “a window toward Europe.” Petersburg, as it was styled by the half German Peter, was a more stupendous piece of engineering than Gary, Ind., although the steel town is one of the greatest triumphs of engineering this country can boast. It was built on a marsh which nowhere rose above the muddy waters of the Neva more than two or three feet, and in most places was partially or wholly submerged. That marsh never has been completely drained. When, in 1765, St. Isaac’s Cathedral was built to replace a small wooden church of Peter’s time, they first had to drive over twelve hundred huge piles into the soft ground. Of the 40,000 workmen who toiled under Peter’s direction to create the first Petrograd a majority died from exposure and cold, and of fevers bred in the miasmas of the bogs. Catherine, who became czarina a little more than half a century later, vastly improved the city. She enlarged it, erecting many splendid palaces and public buildings, and bringing in a vast amount of western culture in the way of libraries, art galleries and theatres. The monuments of Peter and Catherine are the most conspicuous objects in the capital. The ghosts of Catherine and Peter may be said to walk in every street in Petrograd. But the Russians, for all their admiration for their greatest monarchs, have little real love for the city they built.