The article discusses historical stages of development of Societal (Human) Geography as a branch of geography at St. Petersburg University. The first stage, the political-geographical-statistical, was associated with the emergence of political geography as a comprehensive description of states in 1730s in the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Academic University thanks to the works of the German geographers at the Russian service G. V. Kraft and H.-N. Wunzheim. Simultaneously there was the emergence of statistics, organized qualitative and quantitative characteristics of states. In 1819 the first predominantly socio-geographical Department of Geography and Statistics was created. Other key scientists included M. Lomonosov, E. Zyablovskiy, K. Arseniev. The second, antropogeographical phase lasted from the 1880s to the 1920s. Its main feature is the creation of a university Department of geography and ethnography (1884) with societal-geographical country studies on the base of antropogeography (regional studies of Russia, Eurasia, the World, «scientific» political geography). E. Petry, V. Lamanskiy, P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, A. Voeykov, D. Mendeleev, V. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. Th ird, economicogeographical stage (1920s-the last quarter of 20th) is associated with the emergence of such societal-geographical areas as economic geography ("branch-statistical" and "regional"); political geography and geopolitical representations, geography of population; theory of economic geography. Since 1925 Geographical-EconomicInstitute, Geographical faculty and Department of Economic Geography became new organizational forms of societal-geographical science and education at the University. Key scientists: V. Den, V. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, G. Mebus, V. Chetyrkin, B. Semevskiy, L. Gumilev. Fourth, the societal-geographical stage (the last quarter of 20th to the present) is associated with accelerated diff erentiation of economic geography. New areas of research and education step to the fore, such as ethnogeography, geopolitics and geopolitical thought, social geography, socio-geographical problems of indigenous people of the Arctic, regional policy, spatial planning, geoglobalistics, socio-geographical problems of post-Soviet space, recreational geography and tourism, land use management, geo-urbanistics, geo-economics, the theory of societal geography. Two new Departments were created; of regional geography and international tourism and of regional policy and political geography. Key scientists: S. Lavrov, L. Gumilev, A. Anohin, V. Lachininskiy, A. Chistobaev, N. Kaledin, K. Aksenov, D. Sevastiynov, A. Alekseev, K. Klokov, S. Khruschev. In conclusion actual directions and forms of further development of societal geography discussed. Refs 42.