From Russia With Love

With the ongoing Football World Cup in Russia, St Petersburg is what we have on our minds.

St Petersburg was the city of the tsars, the royal rulers of a vast Russian Empire. The scale of the tsars’ imperial might is reflected in the architectural landmark of the jade-green Winter Palace, but their legacy is apparent everywhere in St Petersburg.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought an end to tsarist rule, creating the world’s first communist state. The leaders of the newly-formed Soviet Union were keen to distance themselves from imperial Russia, and planned a new centre for St Petersburg – renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924 – in the Moskovsky District. At its heart was the House of Soviets. Built as the city’s administrative offices and decorated with friezes of muscular workers and the Soviet crest, this was Stalin’s rival to the Winter Palace. This hulking Neoclassical building faces Moscow Square where, in the summer months, people paddle in fountains and eat ice creams from carts, and students play poker under a giant statue of Lenin, hand raised in salute. Nearby stands the lavish Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Clustered beneath its kaleidoscopic domes today are stalls of souvenirs.

Further up Moskovsky Avenue is the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, a memorial intended to remind citizens of their hard-won freedom. Figurative bronzes show the anguish of those caught in the Nazis’ 900-day Siege of Leningrad, during which 800,000 people starved to death. The emaciated statues stand in sharp contrast to the visitors.

EXPERIENCE

BALLET AT THE CITY’S BEST THEATRE