HeadlanHeadlandsds School School: : HistoryHistory Visit to Russia Visit to Russia

20042004

Heathrow airport

View from window of Hotel in St View from window of Hotel in St Petersburg:Petersburg:

St Petersburg replaced Moscow as the Russian capital in 1712. It was founded by Tsar Peter the Great and averages 30 days of sun a year! The average January temperature is –17. His aim was to make Russia a truly European State and defeated Sweden in the Northern War to gain the land of swamp and trees around the river Neva

St Petersburg

Moscow

St Petersburg: St Petersburg:

The river Neva, into

which Rasputin would be thrown!

View of the Peter and Paul fortress, it was built to protect the city on the order of Peter the Great. It holds the graves of many Tsars including Alexander II “The Tsar Liberator”, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Nicholas II. Prisoners at the fortress remarked “t is the only place in St Petersburg that you can see Siberia” (meaning they would end up there!) The prison held Lenin’s brother Alexander (shot) Leon Trotsky and Maxim Gorky.

The spire is 122m high

Peter and Paul Cathedral interior

The Rostral Columns, 32 metres high to commemorate naval victories

Monument to Peter built in 1782

The Winter Palace, home of the Tsars and scene of the 1905 Revolution and 1917 Revolutions

Nicholas II. Last Tsar of Russia

Egyptian Sphinxes on the University Embankment,

brought in 1732

The Astoria Hotel. During the siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg renamed in 1924 following Lenin’s death) in which 1 million Russians starved to death (more than we lost in the whole war) Hitler planned a dinner menu for the day he would capture the city, it only lacked an actual date. The German Operation (Barbarossa) got within 20 miles of the city but no further, by 1944 the Russian Red Army had thrown the Germanys out of the country, Russia remembers the war as the “Great Fatherland War”. The siege lasted for 872 days and temperatures of –30 led to famine, disease, starvation and cannibalism.

Church of the Spilled-Blood: built on the sight where Alexander II (The Tsar Liberator) was murdered by revolutionaries. He was the Tsar who freed the serfs in 1861 but clearly the 63 year old Emperor had not gone far enough!!

St Nicholas Cathedral: built during the reign of Peter the Great became a centre of prayers for sailors lost in the Russo-Japanese War 1904-5. Ironically it is now 100 years since the Russian navy mistakenly fired upon the Hull fishing fleet in the North Sea, killing 2 sailors, and almost starting a war with Britain.

Scene of speech from Lenin demanding

“Peace, bread and land” in 1917

Battleship Aurora, launched in 1903, served in the Russo-Japanese War and played a major role in the Bolshevik Revolution by firing a blank shot over the Winter Palace to signal the start of the Revolution (9.40pm Nov 7th 1917) It was scuttled during the siege of Leningrad to avoid damage from the German bombs, it was relocated 950 days later.

Ambassadors staircase in

Winter Palace.

The Winter Palace and Hermitage Museum

Revolutionary Square

Kerensky

Saint Isaac's Church, commissioned by Alexander I in 1818 and the first sight which can be seen by ships

arriving in St. Petersburg

Coronation Chariot of the Tsars

Hermitage art: statue of communist worker

Statue of Nietzsche

Room where the Provisional Government

was arrested in November 1917. The clock was stopped at

that moment

Edward VI:

Van Gogh:

Tsar’s throne. Cultural show in St Petersburg including Cossack dancers

Walls of the Kremlin

Lenin’s Mausoleum: after his death in 1924 he was embalmed and put on display. This was despite his

wife (Krupskaya) saying “Do not raise monuments to him, or palaces to his name, do not organize

pompous ceremonies in his memory”

Lenin lives!! The background is Red Square Museum of Modern History

St Basil’s Cathedral: built on the orders of Ivan the Terrible. When he saw the church he ordered that something so beautiful should not be repeated elsewhere. He ordered the designer to be blinded.

Burial place of the Communist

leaders including Josef

Stalin and Leonid Breznev

Christ Saviour Cathedral: build to celebrate victory over Napoleon in Byzantium style

Novodevichiy Convent: burial sight of Nikita Khruschev, the first wife of Peter

the Great, Chekov, Eisenstien and Riaisa Gorbachev

Moscow Olympic Stadium

Film set in

Moscow

Memorial Park to Battle of Moscow.

The images to the right are

representing the million Russian

jews killed during the holocaust

Hotel Ukraine: build in the Stalin era

IMAGES OF MOSCOW

Uniform of Alexis, son of

the Tsar.

His haemophilia

brought Rasputin into

the lives of the Tsar and

Tsarina. He was murdered

in 1918 in Ekaterinberg

Memorial to the war hero, Marshal Zhukov, built in 1995 to celebrate 50th anniversary of World War II

Bolshoy Theatre: opened in 1780

Memorial to Karl Marx, founder of communist

ideology

13th century Russian armour

INSIDE THE KREMLIN

Eternal flame to the unknown soldier: unveiled in 1967 with the inscription“Your name is unknown, your deeds

immortal”

The Tsar’s cannon, never fired!

Built in the 1470s by Ivan the Great, it includes the throne of the Tsarina and is

the place where Emperors were christened, Crowned and Buried.

The Lubyanka, home of the dreaded KGB

The Tsar Bell: built for the Church of Assumption, it is the

largest Bell in the world and weighs 200 tonnes. In 1737 a fire in the Kremlin led the people to douse water on the bell causing a 7 tonne section to brake off.