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Over 300 years ago, with newly seized Swedish territory near the Baltic, Peter the Great sets out to create a city in the marshes of the River Neva. He sends Danish-born Vitus Bering on the expedition that discovers what is now known as the Bering Strait. Peter’s city grows to become a Venice of the North. A flamboyant high society entertains itself with lavish balls in the city’s fabled palaces during Russia’s Belle Epoque. When an assault on the Winter Palace launches the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the city’s elite, along with two million inhabitants, flee to the West.