Kotlin Island, an island 32 kilometres west of Saint Petersburg, was taken from Sweden in 1703 by Peter the Great, who then founded Kronstadt and left Pushkin's great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal, the main character in Pushkin's unfinished book, Peter the Great's Negro, to oversee the construction. Kronstadt was also the birth place of Pyotr Kapitsa, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.
Source: tatoeba (3484557)