page_title: Saint Petersburg
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Petersburg / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: Идём на салют
context_page_description: Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd, then Leningrad, is a city situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. It is Russia's second-largest city after Moscow. With a population of roughly 5.4 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the northernmost metropolis in Europe and the world. As an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it is governed as a federal city.
  The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the subsequent Russian Empire from 1713 to 1918. After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.
  As one of the most important tourism centers in Russia, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018, and is considered an important economic, scientific and cultural centre of Russia.
context_section_description: Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. As of the 2017 Rosstat, the federal subject's population is 5,281,579 or 3.6% of the total population of Russia; up from 4,879,566 (3.4%) recorded in the 2010 Census, and up from 5,023,506 recorded in the 1989 Census.
  Vital statistics for 2016
  Births: 72 879 (13.9 per 1000)
  Deaths: 61 459 (11.7 per 1000)
  Total fertility rate:
  The 2010 Census recorded the ethnic composition as follows: Russian 80.1%, Ukrainian 1.3%, Belarusians 0.8%, Tatar 0.6%, Armenian 0.6%, Jewish 0.5%, Uzbek 0.4%, Tajik 0.3%, Azeri 0.3%, Georgian 0.2%, Moldovan 0.2%, Finns 0.1%, other – 1.3%. The ethnicity of the remaining 13.4% of the inhabitants was not specified.
  During the 20th century, the city experienced dramatic population changes. From 2.4 million residents in 1916, its population dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely transferred from Leningrad during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 600,000, as people died in battles, starved to death or were evacuated during the Siege of Leningrad. Some evacuees returned after the siege, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. Based on the 2010 census results the population is over 4.8 million. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000 and remained lower than the death rate (until 2012); people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Since 2012 the birth rate became higher than the death rate. But in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic caused a drop in birth rate, and the city population went down to  5 mln 395.2 thousand people.
  People in urban Saint Petersburg lived mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s–1980s, over half a million low-income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas.
caption: Saint Petersburg Metro passengers during a summer festival
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