From 1700 to 1721, Peter the Great battled against the Swedish Empire during the Great Northern War. In 1703, he captured Nyenskans, an early 17th century Swedish fort at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Neva River. He ordered the citadel to be rebuilt along with this one. Peter and Paul Fortress was constructed on Hare Island. Both were designed to protect his planned capital city, today’s Saint Petersburg. The Swedes never attacked the fort. A year before Peter I became Russia’s first Emperor in 1721, the fortress was converted into a prison. It maintained that role for nearly 200 years until it was liberated during the February Revolution in 1917. One month after this political uprising, the Russian Empire collapsed and its last emperor, Nicholas II, was executed. By the end of 1917, the Soviet Republic was proclaimed and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was the leader.
