The villages and towns that surrounded St. Petersburg were mostly inhabited by Ingrian Finns, Izhorians and other closely related Finno-Ugrian groups up to the 1930-s and 1940-s, when Stalin repressions touched upon them and they were exiled to northern Siberia.
Ingrian Finns originate from the territory of the present-day Finland – from there they were relocated by Swedes in the 17th century to populate the lands around St. Petersburg more densely. Ingrian Finns are Lutherans.
On the other hand, Izhorians and other groups lived there since time immemorial and they, under the influence of the Novgorodians, professed Orthodox Christianity.
During the World War Two most villages to the south of St. Petersburg were wiped off the face of the Earth during bloody battles, half of those villages have not been rebuilt after the war. Ingrians and Izhorians from these villages were partly evacuated with the Finnish army to Finland. Those who stayed, suffered huge losses, just like the Russian-speaking population of those villages.
After the war, most Ingrian and Izhorian families who returned from Finland to the Soviet Union were sent to central Russia and only in the 1950-s, after the death of Stalin, some of them could come back to their lands. Nevertheless, the descendants of these ethnical groups still constitute an important part of the population of St. Petersburg and its surroundings.