Saint Petersburg Governorate

The Saint Petersburg Governorate was a governorate (a guberniya) of the Russian Empire, with its administrative centre in Saint Petersburg. The governorate was composed of of area and 2,112,033 inhabitants. The Saint Petersburg Governorate was bordered by the Estonian and Livonian Governorates to the west, the Pskov Governorate to the south, the Novgorod Governorate to the east, the Olonets Governorate to the northeast, and the Vyborg Governorate of the Grand Duchy of Finland to the north. The governorate covered most of the areas of modern Leningrad Oblast and Ida-Viru, Jõgeva, Tartu, Põlva, and Võru counties of Estonia. Establishment Ingermanland Governorate (, Ingermanlandskaya guberniya) was created from the territories reconquered from the Swedish Empire in the Great Northern War. In 1704 prince Alexander Menshikov was appointed as its first governor, and in 1706 it was first Russian region designated as a Governorate. According to the Tsar Peter the Great's edict as on , 1708, the whole Russia was split into eight Governorates. In the same year Ingermanland Governorate was further expanded to encompass the regions of Pskov, Novgorod and other towns of Western Russia. As with the rest of the governorates, neither the borders nor internal subdivisions of Ingermanland Governorate were defined; instead, the territory was defined as a set of cities and the lands adjacent to those cities. By another edict on June 3, 1710, the governorate was renamed St. Petersburg Governorate after the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg, and in 1721 the former Swedish Duchy of Ingria, and parts of the County of Kexholm and the County of Viborg and Nyslott were formally ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Nystad. After the Treaty of Åbo in 1743, the parts of Kexholm and Viborg were joined with new territorial gains from Sweden into the Governorate of Vyborg.