Natasha's Dance - worth reading.

. Well researched and told like a series of sketches and stories of people, events and lives. "On a misty spring in 1703, a dozen Russian horsemen rode across the bleak and barren marshlands where the Neva River runs into the Baltic sea. They were looking for a site to build a fort against Sweden, then at war with Russia and the owners of this long abandoned swamps. But the vision of the wide and bending river, flowing to the sea was full of hope and promise to the Tsar of landlocked Russia, riding at the head of his scouting troupes. As they approached the coast, he dismounted from the horse. With his bayonet he cut two stripes of peat and arranged them in a cross on the marshy ground. Then Peter said: Here shall be a town'. That is how the story of St Petersberg began....