Publication in Russian on the Zen blog
https://dzen.ru/a/Z6H7MVn1jEBwGHRw
Do you know who Peter Demens is and how he is connected with St. Petersburg?
Anyone who thought that the story would be about a foreigner and the Russian city of St. Petersburg did not think correctly...
Because Peter Demens is Peter Alekseevich Dementiev. He built railroads and sawmills in the jungles of Florida, from the city of Sanford to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, went broke, got back to work, helped emigrants, was mayor of Longwood, translated many works of his favorite poet Mikhail Lermontov into English, published Sovremennik magazine in America. He was a regular contributor to the journal Vestnik Evropy, where he published numerous essays on America under the pseudonym Tverskaya: "Essays on the North American United States", "Essays on the History of the United States of America" and much more.
But that's not the most interesting thing, well, for me personally. The most interesting thing is that in 1886, he and John S. Williams from Detroit founded a city on the shores of Tampa Bay, and it is rumored that the founders of the city cast lots to decide who would come up with a name for a new settlement. Dementiev won and this city is still called Saint Petersburg (a city in Pinellas County, Florida, USA).
How did he get to America, you may ask. He was an oppositionist at the time, and in 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II and accusations of links with the People's Will, he decided to leave for the United States. In 1893, he became an American citizen under the name Demens.
Dementiev died on January 21, 1919, at his Alta loma estate. The next day, an obituary appeared in the Los Angeles Times, which said: ”Captain Peter Demens, a famous Russian patriot and writer, as well as a famous financier and railroad builder, died yesterday in his possession. Captain Demens was widely known and revered as a Democrat of the aristocracy. He was an expert in both Russian and American affairs. He communicated with hundreds of people connected with the financial world of the USA. His talents and brilliant abilities attracted hundreds of people to him. Peter Alekseevich himself highly respected his belonging to the Russian nation.”
And yet the picture will be incomplete if I do not mention the fact that he addressed Emperor Nicholas 2 through a publication in Sovremennik magazine, published in London, in May 1897.:
"Your Majesty! I am one of those Russians who believe that you are building your state structure on sand, and therefore it is doomed... My heartache is for the Russian people, who will have to pay for all these future bills not only with blood, but also with the happiness and well–being of entire generations who will be destroyed by this heavy burden. <...> But he, these people, will not endure forever, he will finally wake up, come to his senses and, with all his inherent might, free himself from the bonds of the spider that lured him into his web."
This appeal still sounds relevant today!
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Girls of Tik Tok Violetta Wennman
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