Vasileostrovsky, Saint Petersburg, Russia

🇷🇺 Vasileostrovsky District is a district of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Geography The district occupies the territories of Vasilyevsky and Dekabristov Islands and includes a smaller Serny Island.

History The district was one of the first established in Petrograd in 1917.

Municipal divisions Vasileostrovsky District comprises the following five municipal okrugs: • #7 • Ostrov Dekabristov • Gavan • Morskoy • Vasilyevsky.

Transport Vasilievsky island is connected to the mainland by 6 bridges, 2 bridge of the Western Rapid Diameter and 4 other bridges built before. Also on Vasilevsky island there are 3 underground stations, which are on the green line they are the Primorskaya and Vasileostrovskaya, and the purple line station Sportivnaya. Three more stations were also built on the orange line.

Science and education Vasilyevsky island's learning facilities have included the Imperial Academy of Sciences with its copious library, Saint Petersburg State University (including their Russian Language and Culture Institute), the 1st Army Cadet Corps (later the Military Academy of Supplies and Logistics) and the Naval Cadet Corps, and (among newer bodies) the Civil Service Academy (now termed the North-West Institute of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). Many of these entities occupy historically significant buildings (for example the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute).

The Russian Academy of Sciences with its branches has always had many of its research institutions in its cradle - on the island. They include the institutes of: soils study, zoology, optics, aerial photography, Precambrian and general geology, polymers, world ethnography and anthropology, physiology, chemistry of silicate and fireproof compounds. Possibly best-known of the institutes, the Institute of Russian Literature (known as Pushkin House) holds manuscripts and archives of Russian prominent writers of the past and of the present.

A number of institutions maintain museums, some of them open to the general public. Several require neither obligatory pre-booking nor pre-arranging groups-only visits (like Kunstkamera and the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Others require pre-organised visits, like the Literary Museum at Pushkin House or the Soils Study Museum of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Industries Vasilyevsky island, like many other areas located around the city centre, has had a number of well-developed industries and factories, ranging from shipbuilding to making pianos and to industrial bread baking.

Now, in a supposedly post-industrial era, a number of buildings of former factories have been converted to other usages, like the former Jacob Becker's Piano Factory.

Energy supply to many industrial facilities and housing in the island is provided by a cogeneration thermal power station.

One of three biggest Saint Petersburg shipyards is Baltiysky Zavod (Балтийский завод - Rus. for Baltic Shipyard). Having had in recent years some financial difficulties, now it is recovering. There are private developers' plans to relocate the factory to Kronshtadt to make way for housing development schemes.

Another redevelopment spot is claimed to change part or all of the site of former Steel-rolling Plant (Staleprokatniy zavod - Rus. Сталепрокатный завод), presently known as Saint Petersburg Precision Alloys Foundry (Peterburgskiy zavod pretsezionnykh splavov).

Until recently, all of Saint Petersburg Metro escalators as well as those for all the underground railroad systems of the former Soviet Union were made since the 1950s at a local facility called Zavod "Eskalator", now known as LATRES (Rus. abbr. ЛАТРЭС). Now they produce moving staircases for shopping malls around Russia as well.

A major producer of electric power and signal cables is Sevkabel (Rus. for North(ern) Cable (Factory)). Traditionally a branch of metal-processing, this industry now also includes production of optic fibre.

Marine and consumer electronics have been designed produced at a number facilities in the island (see e.g. Russian Institute for Power Radioengineering:), one of them being a nationalized Siemens & Halske plant that was known in the Soviet times as (Nikolay) Kozitsky Plant making Raduga (Rus. for rainbow) colour television sets. Now it is a Raduga group company.

Like every other district of Saint Petersburg in the Soviet times, the island has had its own industrial bakery (Rus. khlebozavod хлебозавод) - Vasileostrovskiy khlebozavod, now a subsidiary of Fazer Group.