Transcript Document

Headlands School:
History Visit to Russia 2004
Heathrow airport
View from window of Hotel in St Petersburg:
St Petersburg
Moscow
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:
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
Monument to Peter built in 1782
The Rostral Columns, 32 metres high to
commemorate naval victories
Egyptian Sphinxes on the University
Embankment, brought in 1732
The Winter Palace, home of the Tsars and scene of the 1905
Revolution and 1917 Revolutions
Nicholas II. Last Tsar of Russia
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.
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.
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!!
The Winter Palace and Hermitage Museum
Scene of speech from Lenin
demanding “Peace, bread and
land” in 1917
Revolutionary Square
Ambassadors
staircase in Winter
Palace.
Battleship Aurora, launched in
1903, served in the RussoJapanese 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.
Kerensky
Room where the Provisional
Government was arrested in
November 1917. The clock
was stopped at that moment
Saint Isaac's Church, commissioned by
Alexander I in 1818 and the first sight which can
be seen by ships arriving in St. Petersburg
Edward VI:
Hermitage art: statue of
communist worker
Van
Gogh:
Coronation Chariot of the Tsars
Statue of
Nietzsche
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
Burial place of the
Communist
leaders including
Josef Stalin and
Leonid Breznev
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.
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
Hotel Ukraine: build in the Stalin era
Memorial Park to
Battle of Moscow.
The images to the
right are representing
the million Russian
jews killed during the
holocaust
Bolshoy Theatre: opened in 1780
Memorial to Karl Marx, founder
of communist ideology
IMAGES OF
MOSCOW
13th century Russian armour
Uniform of Alexis,
son of the Tsar.
Memorial to the war hero, Marshal
Zhukov, built in 1995 to celebrate 50th
anniversary of World War II
His haemophilia
brought Rasputin
into the lives of
the Tsar and
Tsarina. He was
murdered in 1918
in Ekaterinberg
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!
INSIDE THE
KREMLIN
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.
The Lubyanka, home of the
dreaded KGB
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.