In the 16th century, however, Novgorod was subdued by Moscow and the lands of the Neva became part of Muscovite Russia. Then in the 17th century, a series of periods of unrest in Russia after the last Tsar of the Riurik dynasty, Feodor Ianovich, died without leaving an heir, led to the Swedes occupying a significant portion of Northen Russia. The Stolbov treaty of 1617 set a new border, with Russia giving away the lands of the Neva. However, Peter the Great fought and beat the Swedish garrison in May 1703 and he built the Peter and Paul fortress at the mouth of the Neva, thus founding the city of St. Petersburg.
The emperor himself led the way in advocating greater diversity in his city by marrying a woman of foreign origin. Born Marta Skavronskaya, she was the daughter of a Lithuanian peasant. Earlier on, she had married a Swedish dragoon and lived in Marienburg. When it fell to Russian forces, she was widowed and captured by Count Sheremetev and was passed on to Prince Menshikov, who in turn introduced her and they later wed.
After Peter died, his wife, now known as Ekaterina, succeeded him on the throne. Being of foreign origin herself, she continued Peter’s policies on foreigners throughout her reign. Peter II, grandson of the Peter the Great, son of the Danish princess Sofia Charlotta of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, succeeded her. After Peter II came Anna Ivanova. She surrounded herself with German grandees and power lay in the hands of her favorite, Count Biron. She initiated the trend of German influence in the Romanov dynasty. Clearly the Imperial family was an interesting blend of different cultures and ethnic origins, and they were pacesetters for their subjects. The St. Petersburg nobility, likewise, was actively involved in inter-marriages with nobles of other western European nations as a way of consolidating power by building contacts.
Meanwhile, in the arts, the Romanovs actively encouraged a cultural interchange. Throughout most of Russia's early Romanov history, art, music, and literature were tied either to folk art or to the Orthodox Church. The reason for this is that during the Renaissance, Russia was hegemony of the Mongol-Tatar Empire and thus missed the rebirth of the arts that swept Western Europe. Peter I and Catherine II changed all that in the 18th century with the secularisation of Russian culture in the 18th century. They recruited western artists to lead this movement to secularisation. At first, however, there was great dependence on European art and styles, but Russian art soon developed its own western consistent unique style.
The pre-Muscovite history of the ethnic diversity of the inhabitants of the Neva that had began and maintained itself in the days of the principality of Novgorod was further nourished by Peter; and like wildfire, the trend caught on enhancing this quality for years to come. By 1750, the city consisted mostly of the descendants of the eastern Slavs, but with significant components of western Slavs like Swedes, Finns and Czechs, and an interesting but small group of non-Slavic foreigners who had made a home for themselves in St. Petersburg.