Leningrad Oblast

• 1. Introduction

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  Leningrad Oblast surrounds a city that no longer carries its name. In 1991, the city of Leningrad voted to become Saint Petersburg again. The oblast around it kept the Soviet name. The region covers 84,500 square kilometers and counted 2,000,997 residents in the 2021 census, up from 1,716,868 in 2010. Its administrative center is not Saint Petersburg at all, but Gatchina, the oblast's largest city. How did a region end up governed from a city other than the metropolis at its heart? And why does it still answer to a name the city beside it gave up? The answer runs through an old Varangian trade route, a tsar's new capital, a vanished ethnic majority, and a siege that nearly erased the region.

• 2. A Land Shaped By Water

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  Leningrad Oblast sits around the Gulf of Finland, just south of two of the region's largest freshwater lakes, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. It also includes the Karelian Isthmus and a scatter of islands, among them Gogland in the Gulf of Finland and Konevets in Lake Ladoga.

  The Neva River drains nearly all of this land, and it is the only outflow from Lake Ladoga. Saint Petersburg sits in the Neva's river delta, where it meets the Gulf of Finland. The Neva's basin is unusually large, reaching back to include Lake Onega and Lake Ilmen. The Svir River carries water from Lake Onega to Lake Ladoga, and the Volkhov River does the same from Lake Ilmen. Other tributaries feeding Lake Ladoga include the Vuoksi and the Syas. In the west, the Luga and the Narva are the oblast's two largest rivers, and the Narva forms the border with Estonia. A small eastern corner drains instead into the Chagodoshcha and the Suda, tributaries within the Volga river system. A ridge in Tikhvinsky District marks the divide between the Baltic and Caspian Sea drainage basins.

  The Karelian Isthmus breaks an otherwise flat landscape of forest and swamp, rising into a rocky lake district. Its biggest lakes are Vuoksa, Sukhodolskoye and Otradnoye. The Vepsian Upland rises in a similar way farther east.

  Two federally protected areas guard what remains of this wetland landscape: the Nizhnesvirsky Nature Reserve and the Mshinskoye Boloto Zakaznik, both set aside to protect forest and swamp habitats typical of northwestern Russia.

  Among plants, the Asteraceae, Cyperaceae, Poaceae and Rosaceae families show the greatest diversity here, and the sedge genus Carex alone accounts for 68 species. No plant found in the oblast is unique to it, but ten species, including Cypripedium calceolus and Orchis militaris, are listed in Russia's red data book.

  Long before roads or rail reached this terrain, a river route already carried Varangian traders toward the Greeks.

• 3. Ingria's Crossroads

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  The Weichselian glaciation's retreat let people resettle this land, leaving archaeological remains that still turn up across the oblast today. Merchants also carried goods here along the Volga trade route. Staraya Ladoga, founded in the 8th or 9th century on the Volkhov River, served as the first capital of the legendary Rurik.

  Between the 12th and 15th centuries, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Novgorod Republic split this territory between them, fighting a series of Swedish-Novgorodian Wars over it. Baltic Finn peoples settled it unevenly: Karelians in the northwest, Izhorians and Votes in the west, and Vepsians in the east, alongside Ilmen Slavs from Novgorod in the south. Further Russo-Swedish wars, fought across the 15th to 17th centuries, kept pushing that border back and forth.

  The Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617 handed most of this land, historically known as Ingria or the land of Izhora, to Sweden. Finnish Lutheran settlers poured in afterward from Finnish Karelia, including the Karelian Isthmus, and from Savonia. Facing pressure from Lutheran pastors and Swedish authorities, the local Orthodox population, both Russian and Finnic, fled Ingria for other Russian provinces in large numbers. Ingrian Finns soon became the dominant ethnic group in the land they left behind.

  That Finnish Lutheran majority would hold the land for less than a century, until a Russian tsar came to take it back by force.

• 4. Peter's New Capital

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  During the Great Northern War, fought from 1700 to 1721, Russian forces under Peter the Great seized this territory from Sweden. In 1703, Peter founded Saint Petersburg amid the reclaimed land, and the city soon became capital of the Russian Empire.

  In 1708, Governor General Alexander Menshikov organized most of the territory into the Ingermanland Governorate. It was renamed Saint Petersburg Governorate in 1710, though its borders reached far beyond today's oblast, into land now belonging to Novgorod, Pskov and Vologda Oblasts. The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 confirmed Sweden's loss of the territory for good.

  Workers dug the Ladoga Canal between the Svir and Neva Rivers from 1719 to 1810, building a bypass around Lake Ladoga's stormy waters as part of the Volga-Baltic waterway. Proximity to the imperial capital reshaped the surrounding countryside, turning it into a growing market for farm goods and a source of minerals and timber. Once rail transport arrived in the late 19th century, the land near Saint Petersburg became a popular summer retreat, dotted with dachas. Saint Petersburg itself had been mostly Russian from the start, but the villages around it were not fully Russified until the 20th century.

  The name of the city at the heart of this land would change twice more over the next two centuries, as war and revolution reached its gates.

• 5. Renamed By Revolution

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  In 1914, at the start of World War I, Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd, and its governorate took the new name too. After the Russian Revolution in 1918, the Soviet government moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow, farther from the country's borders.

  In 1919, during the Russian Civil War, the Northwestern White Army under Nikolai Yudenich advanced from Estonia and reached Petrograd's southern outskirts. Its attack on the Red Army, commanded by Leon Trotsky, ultimately failed, and Yudenich retreated.

  The Treaty of Tartu in 1920 fixed the border between Russia and Estonia. That same period, Finland-backed Ingrian Finns in North Ingria tried to secede but were brought back under a separate Russian-Finnish Treaty of Tartu, which settled the border between Finland and Soviet Russia. In 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad, and its governorate followed.

  Three years later, that governorate would be dissolved into something entirely new.

• 6. Carving Out The Oblast

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  On the 1st of August 1927, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee established Leningrad Oblast, merging the Cherepovets, Leningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod and Pskov Governorates. The two founding resolutions were titled "On the Establishment of Leningrad Oblast" and "On the Borders and Composition of the Okrugs of Leningrad Oblast." At 360,400 square kilometers, the new oblast was more than four times the size it is today. It briefly included the future Novgorod and Pskov Oblasts, most of Murmansk Oblast, part of Vologda Oblast, and Saint Petersburg itself. Administrators divided it into nine okrugs: Borovichi, Cherepovets, Leningrad, Lodeynoye Pole, Luga, Murmansk, Novgorod, Pskov and Velikiye Luki.

  Sergey Mironovich Kirov led the oblast's Communist Party committee as first secretary from 1927 until 1934, when he was assassinated. The oblast kept losing ground through those same years. Velikiye Luki Okrug went to the new Western Oblast in 1929. Leningrad was administratively separated from the oblast in December 1931. Five southern districts were reassigned to Kalinin Oblast in 1935. In 1936, part of Leningrad's suburban district returned to the oblast, split into Vsevolozhsky, Krasnoselsky, Pargolovsky and Slutsky Districts; Slutsky was renamed Pavlovsky in 1944. Vologda Oblast was then carved from the oblast's easternmost districts, the former Cherepovets Governorate, in 1937, and Murmansk Oblast split away in 1938.

  By the late 1930s, the oblast that remained bordered Finland and Estonia directly, and Soviet authorities were already treating that frontier as a threat.

• 7. Zone Of Suspicion And Siege

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  In the autumn of 1934, Soviet authorities established the Forbidden Border Zone along the oblast's western frontier, where no one could enter without permission from the NKVD. It was officially just 7.5 kilometers deep at first, though along the Estonian border it stretched as far as 90 kilometers. The zone was meant to be cleared of Finnic and other peoples the regime deemed politically unreliable. Starting in 1929, Soviet authorities carried out mass deportations of the Ingrian Finnish population, once the majority in many rural areas. They sent deportees east and replaced them with people from elsewhere in the Soviet Union.

  On the 30th of November 1939, the Soviet Union launched the Winter War against Finland. The Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940 handed the Soviets new territory, including the Karelian Isthmus. Its Karelian population was hastily evacuated to inner Finland and replaced by people from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Only a small part of the gained land, the municipalities of Kanneljärvi, Koivisto and Rautu, was folded into Leningrad Oblast; the rest went to the new Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic.

  Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and the oblast became the site of the Battle of Leningrad. The Wehrmacht captured the oblast's southwestern part and pushed as far as Tikhvin in the east. Finnish troops retook the ceded Karelian Isthmus in the Continuation War, encircling Leningrad by land. Soviet offensives in 1944 finally expelled the Wehrmacht and pressured Finland into ceding the Karelian Isthmus again. This time the cession came under the Moscow Armistice of the 19th of September 1944. The newly won territory there, organized into Vyborgsky and Priozersky Districts, was folded into Leningrad Oblast, and the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 confirmed the gains. Novgorod and Pskov Oblasts were formed from the oblast's southern territory that same year, 1944. In January 1945, a small part of the Estonian SSR east of the Narva River was transferred to the Russian SFSR and Leningrad Oblast. It included the town of Jaanilinn, now called Ivangorod.

  In October 1946, Leningrad absorbed a strip of former Finnish territory along the northern Gulf coast, the first of several boundary adjustments over the following decades. The land was split into Sestroretsky and Kurortny Districts and included the town of Terijoki. Pavlovsky District was abolished in 1953, sending Pavlovsk to the city, and Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny followed in 1954. Boksitogorsky District gained a small piece of Novgorod Oblast in 1956. The city then absorbed Uritsk in 1963, Krasnoye Selo and nearby settlements in 1973, and Lomonosov in 1978.

  A new Charter, adopted on the 27th of October 1994, would soon lay out how the postwar oblast governed itself.

• 8. The Oblast Today

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  Aleksandr Yuryevich Drozdenko has served as governor since being appointed on the 28th of May 2012, but three others held the post before him. Alexander Semyonovich Belyakov led as head of the administration, appointed, from 1991 to 1996. Vadim Anatolyevich Gustov followed as the first elected governor, serving from 1996 to 1998. Valery Pavlovich Serdyukov then held the office from 1998 to 2012, first elected and later appointed. On the 13th of June 1996, Leningrad Oblast joined Tver Oblast and Saint Petersburg in signing a power-sharing agreement with the federal government. That agreement was abolished on the 18th of April 2002. Communist-era rule was harsher on its leaders: two later first secretaries, Alexey Kuznetsov and Pyotr Popkov, were each later executed. Today's Legislative Assembly seats 50 deputies elected for five-year terms. After the 2016 election, United Russia held 40 of those seats, with the remaining ten split among three smaller parties. Sergei Bebenin became chairman.

  Podporozhsky District, at 7,706 square kilometers, is the largest of the oblast's seventeen districts. Lomonosovsky District, at just 1,919 square kilometers, is the smallest. Lomonosovsky is also the only district in Russia whose administrative center sits in a different federal subject: the town of Lomonosov itself lies within the city of Saint Petersburg.

  In 2024, the oblast recorded 11,840 births and 22,300 deaths, a gap reflected in a total fertility rate of just 0.89 children per woman. Life expectancy in 2021 averaged 70.17 years overall, 65.43 for men and 74.94 for women. In the 2021 census, Russians made up 93.7% of the population, or 1,642,897 people. Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Belarusians, Tatars and Armenians each accounted for roughly half a percent. A 2012 survey found 55.1% of residents adhering to Russian Orthodoxy, while 20% called themselves spiritual but not religious and 8% identified as atheist.

  An oil refinery at Kirishi anchors heavy industry near Saint Petersburg. Vsevolozhsk hosts a Ford car assembly plant, a Hyundai Russia assembly plant, and a Rexam PLC beverage can packaging plant. Paper mills operate at Syssstroy and at Vyborg, where a plant also builds oil platforms, alongside the Tikhvin industrial site. Agriculture here centers on cattle for meat and milk plus poultry, concentrated mainly in the east and southwest of the oblast.

  Every railway into Saint Petersburg also crosses Leningrad Oblast. These lines link the city to Moscow, to Helsinki via Vyborg, to Murmansk via Petrozavodsk, and to several other regional centers. The M10 highway splits into European route E18 toward Finland and E105 toward Moscow, and other highways reach Murmansk, Ivangorod and Tallinn, Pskov, and Vologda. Cargo barges still use the Luga, Svir, Volkhov and Neva Rivers. The Ust-Luga, Vyborg, Vysotsk and Primorsk terminals handle sea traffic on the Gulf of Finland. Pulkovo Airport, in Saint Petersburg, is the only airport in the area offering scheduled or international flights. The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant sits in Sosnovy Bor, which also hosts the Research Institute of Optical and Electronic Devices. Four hydroelectric stations supply power too. The Volkhov Hydroelectric Station, built in 1921, was the first major hydropower station in the Soviet Union. The Upper and Lower Svir stations and the Narva station round out the four.

  Staraya Ladoga preserves two of Russia's roughly two dozen standing pre-Mongol churches, both built in the 1160s. The Oreshek Fortress in Shlisselburg and the Koporye Fortress, both raised in the 14th century, stand alongside the Ivangorod Fortress, originally built in 1492. Podporozhsky District holds the finest wooden church architecture in the oblast, a group known as the Podporozhye Ring. It includes the Resurrection Church in Vazhiny, the Saint Nicholas Church in Soginitsy, and the Sts Peter and Paul Chapel in Zaozerye. A fourth, the Saint Athanasy chapel, stands in Posad. Two more wooden churches stand near Onega Lake, in Gimreka and Shcheleyki. Vyborg's town center still holds medieval Swedish architecture found nowhere else in Russia. Aristocratic estates soon rose around the new capital. Several, in places such as Gostilitsy, Ropsha and Taytsy, now form part of the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg World Heritage site.

  On the Karelian Isthmus, interwar Finnish buildings survive too. The best known is the Viipuri Municipal Library, designed by Alvar Aalto before the war redrew this frontier. It still stands today, a trace of the borders that once ran through this land.