FA+
Shop
Russia: Day Two (Hermitage, Tsar Aleksandr, and My Avatar)
10 years ago
Day Two:
-Hermitage
-Pirozhki lunch
-Pushkin Museum
-Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood
-Baku, Azeri Restaurant for Dinner
By my second day in Saint-Petersburg, or Petrograd as I prefer, I felt quite a ways more at ease with the city. I am of course still learning more about it every day, but now that I have walked its streets and learned of its history, it is a place with which I feel quite comfortable. I feel the need to say that Saint-Petersburg is a city which I tended to have less interest in than Moskva. And though I have not yet visited Moscow and been able to make up my mind about my preference, I realize now that I sold this charming and respectable city short. Saint-Petersburg has a great sense of history to it, and nearly everywhere one goes, one sees reminders of it.
'Twas fitting, then, that yesterday was the day of our Hermitage visit. The Hermitage is not only a museum, as it is commonly regarded, but it was in fact also the famous Winter Palace of Tsarist times: the seat of the Romanov Dynasty in Saint-Petersburg, a city that was itself raised along the Baltic by Peter the Great, one of only two Tsars in Russian history to be given that title (the other being Katharine the Great, another of Russia's most well-known monarchs). So the Hermitage is at once a museum and a historical monument of its own right to the bygone era of the Romanov Dynasty. It houses an impressive collection of art of all kinds: sculpture, portraiture, and famous paintings by a wide variety of artists (including the esteemed Rembrandt) and from a wide variety of cultural traditions, including both the Classical civilizations of Greece and Ancient Egypt.
I am a fan of art and artwork, but to me the greatest treasures were those of the Romanovs, certain artifacts of their rule including the throne in the Winter Palace. But what to me was more poignant still was the torn coat of Tsar Alexander II, known to history as the Tsar Liberator. In 1861, four years before the 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed the slaves of the United States, Alexander II issued a decree of his own that declared serfdom at an end throughout the entire Russian Empire. A brutal institution not altogether different or far-removed from the awful chattel slavery that was practiced in the Western Hemisphere (most notably by the United States and Brazil), serfdom was a particularly extreme form of longstanding feudal traditions in Russia. Whereas feudal patterns of landholding faded and eventually died out in much of Western Europe, it remained entrenched in most of Central and Eastern Europe, and more so in Russia than anywhere else thanks to the bountiful, fertile land of the Eurasian plains. The Tsar's Emancipation Decree ended serfdom immediately in Russia, even though the bitter consequences of such an institution outlived serfdom in Russia by decades. The unresolved status of the emancipated peasants in Russia proved to be a troubling legacy of a wonderful reform. But that would not be the end of Alexander II's troubles.
Russia has always had a tradition of radical political movements. But in the 1880's, long before Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin became notable figures in Russian history, an organization known as the Narodnaya Volya "People's Will" was one of many such underground movements that actually thrived despite existing on the political margins of a deeply-repressive and conservative society. The Narodnaya Volya, lead by a woman named Sofia Perovskaya, had a severe mindset that perhaps anticipated future generations of Russian radicals, it believed that revolutionary violence was the only means of achieving political change in Russia. In an autocratic system where representative democracy and parliamentary rule did not exist, their beliefs were shared by many radical Russian political organizations. However, the Narodnaya Volya was distinguished (and infamous) for its efforts to murder Russia's leading reformer: Tsar Alexander II.
The People's Will attempted on many occasions to assassinate Tsar Alexander: blowing up his train, attempted shootings, and even setting off a bomb at a palace he was known to be dining at. All of these attempts on the Tsar's life failed. The Tsar was a hunted man, hounded through the streets and places of Saint-Petersburg like a beast. But these failures taught the Narodnaya Volya the need for preparation. In 1881, they tried again: an assassin with a bomb detonated the device near the Tsar's carriage. Several bystanders were wounded, but the carriage, a gift from Napoleon III of France that had been reinforced to protect the Tsar, allowed Alexander to escape unscathed. But he then made a fatal error: he stepped out of his carriage to check on the people wounded by the attempt on his life. As he did so, a second assassin with a second bomb approached the Tsar and detonate his device. Tsar Alexander's legs were shattered to pieces. Later that day, within the confines of the Winter Palace, the Tsar Liberator bled to death. One of the greatest reformers in the history of the Russian Empire and his legacy of forward-thinking measures died that day, and Russia lost one of the few Tsars to ever truly advocate measures such as a legislature to share his own power. His coat, ravaged by the explosion, now sits in the Hermitage, a silent memorial to so awful a crime.
His son and heir, Alexander III, who was crowned shortly after his father's death, rejected many of his father's calls for limitations on the monarchy. Under Alexander III, the absolute power of the monarchy was to be an unquestioned and indisputable fact of politics. To honor his slain father, Alexander III raised upon the place of his assassination a truly magnificent feat of Russian architecture: the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Aesthetically quite similar to St. Basil's Cathedral in Moskva, the Church of the Savior was built on the exact spot that Alexander II was murdered. The Narodnaya Volya had truly and genuinely sought and hoped that the blood of the slain Tsar would instigate change and liberation in Russia. Instead, they replaced a conservative but reform-minded man with an even more absolutist successor. Sofia Perovskaya and her accomplices would not live long to see the results of their crime: the new Tsar rounded up the Narodnaya Volya and had them hanged. They had sought to bring an end to Tsarist autocracy. They had only made it stronger.
This fascinating saga of Russian history is why that humble, mangled coat was to me the highlight of my visit to The Hermitage: which housed an impressive and magnificent collection of art and historical works. As an aside, before I visited the Hermitage, I ran across an image of my FA avatar: none other than the late, great Felix Dzerzhinsky himself, it's always fun to see a firsthand account.
We finished the day's fun with a visit to a museum devoted to the life and experiences of Aleksandr Pushkin, arguably Russia's most famous and cherished author. Sadly I have no pictures from that, as photography of any kind was strictly forbidden. The tour itself I found to be fairly unremarkable: many Russian museums and attractions are very insistent on maintaining organized tour groups and do not tend to deviate from that. I did, however, manage to catch a good long look at Pushkin's death mask, and even a lock of his hair that had been clipped from his head by a servant. To me, that reminder of a long-dead poet was a great and poignant reminder that this was not merely a distant, near-mythical figure from history, but a living, breathing man with hopes and dreams, a fact that is not always easy to remember when discussing the great men and women of world history.
We finished with a sumptuous meal at an Azeri restaurant named Baku (fittingly enough): kebab, eggplant, and good rich yoghurt and bread were enjoyed in abundance in a meal very noticeably similar to the lavish Georgian feast we had eaten the night before (as Azerbaijan and Georgia are both Caucasian nations, this is no surprise). The meal was finished with a good refreshing cup of black tea (the stuff is omnipresent in Russia, Russians drink more tea than vodka).
Pictures:
http://imgur.com/VXjRH8O
http://imgur.com/edhqvZO
http://imgur.com/laD1bgK
http://imgur.com/CZYCHA6
http://imgur.com/N2ED6HB
http://imgur.com/jbbOAaS
http://imgur.com/K8WQEIP
http://imgur.com/xIiGPVQ
http://imgur.com/UVFXeTr
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood:
http://imgur.com/J58i5gz
http://imgur.com/sTptPWb
-Hermitage
-Pirozhki lunch
-Pushkin Museum
-Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood
-Baku, Azeri Restaurant for Dinner
By my second day in Saint-Petersburg, or Petrograd as I prefer, I felt quite a ways more at ease with the city. I am of course still learning more about it every day, but now that I have walked its streets and learned of its history, it is a place with which I feel quite comfortable. I feel the need to say that Saint-Petersburg is a city which I tended to have less interest in than Moskva. And though I have not yet visited Moscow and been able to make up my mind about my preference, I realize now that I sold this charming and respectable city short. Saint-Petersburg has a great sense of history to it, and nearly everywhere one goes, one sees reminders of it.
'Twas fitting, then, that yesterday was the day of our Hermitage visit. The Hermitage is not only a museum, as it is commonly regarded, but it was in fact also the famous Winter Palace of Tsarist times: the seat of the Romanov Dynasty in Saint-Petersburg, a city that was itself raised along the Baltic by Peter the Great, one of only two Tsars in Russian history to be given that title (the other being Katharine the Great, another of Russia's most well-known monarchs). So the Hermitage is at once a museum and a historical monument of its own right to the bygone era of the Romanov Dynasty. It houses an impressive collection of art of all kinds: sculpture, portraiture, and famous paintings by a wide variety of artists (including the esteemed Rembrandt) and from a wide variety of cultural traditions, including both the Classical civilizations of Greece and Ancient Egypt.
I am a fan of art and artwork, but to me the greatest treasures were those of the Romanovs, certain artifacts of their rule including the throne in the Winter Palace. But what to me was more poignant still was the torn coat of Tsar Alexander II, known to history as the Tsar Liberator. In 1861, four years before the 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed the slaves of the United States, Alexander II issued a decree of his own that declared serfdom at an end throughout the entire Russian Empire. A brutal institution not altogether different or far-removed from the awful chattel slavery that was practiced in the Western Hemisphere (most notably by the United States and Brazil), serfdom was a particularly extreme form of longstanding feudal traditions in Russia. Whereas feudal patterns of landholding faded and eventually died out in much of Western Europe, it remained entrenched in most of Central and Eastern Europe, and more so in Russia than anywhere else thanks to the bountiful, fertile land of the Eurasian plains. The Tsar's Emancipation Decree ended serfdom immediately in Russia, even though the bitter consequences of such an institution outlived serfdom in Russia by decades. The unresolved status of the emancipated peasants in Russia proved to be a troubling legacy of a wonderful reform. But that would not be the end of Alexander II's troubles.
Russia has always had a tradition of radical political movements. But in the 1880's, long before Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin became notable figures in Russian history, an organization known as the Narodnaya Volya "People's Will" was one of many such underground movements that actually thrived despite existing on the political margins of a deeply-repressive and conservative society. The Narodnaya Volya, lead by a woman named Sofia Perovskaya, had a severe mindset that perhaps anticipated future generations of Russian radicals, it believed that revolutionary violence was the only means of achieving political change in Russia. In an autocratic system where representative democracy and parliamentary rule did not exist, their beliefs were shared by many radical Russian political organizations. However, the Narodnaya Volya was distinguished (and infamous) for its efforts to murder Russia's leading reformer: Tsar Alexander II.
The People's Will attempted on many occasions to assassinate Tsar Alexander: blowing up his train, attempted shootings, and even setting off a bomb at a palace he was known to be dining at. All of these attempts on the Tsar's life failed. The Tsar was a hunted man, hounded through the streets and places of Saint-Petersburg like a beast. But these failures taught the Narodnaya Volya the need for preparation. In 1881, they tried again: an assassin with a bomb detonated the device near the Tsar's carriage. Several bystanders were wounded, but the carriage, a gift from Napoleon III of France that had been reinforced to protect the Tsar, allowed Alexander to escape unscathed. But he then made a fatal error: he stepped out of his carriage to check on the people wounded by the attempt on his life. As he did so, a second assassin with a second bomb approached the Tsar and detonate his device. Tsar Alexander's legs were shattered to pieces. Later that day, within the confines of the Winter Palace, the Tsar Liberator bled to death. One of the greatest reformers in the history of the Russian Empire and his legacy of forward-thinking measures died that day, and Russia lost one of the few Tsars to ever truly advocate measures such as a legislature to share his own power. His coat, ravaged by the explosion, now sits in the Hermitage, a silent memorial to so awful a crime.
His son and heir, Alexander III, who was crowned shortly after his father's death, rejected many of his father's calls for limitations on the monarchy. Under Alexander III, the absolute power of the monarchy was to be an unquestioned and indisputable fact of politics. To honor his slain father, Alexander III raised upon the place of his assassination a truly magnificent feat of Russian architecture: the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Aesthetically quite similar to St. Basil's Cathedral in Moskva, the Church of the Savior was built on the exact spot that Alexander II was murdered. The Narodnaya Volya had truly and genuinely sought and hoped that the blood of the slain Tsar would instigate change and liberation in Russia. Instead, they replaced a conservative but reform-minded man with an even more absolutist successor. Sofia Perovskaya and her accomplices would not live long to see the results of their crime: the new Tsar rounded up the Narodnaya Volya and had them hanged. They had sought to bring an end to Tsarist autocracy. They had only made it stronger.
This fascinating saga of Russian history is why that humble, mangled coat was to me the highlight of my visit to The Hermitage: which housed an impressive and magnificent collection of art and historical works. As an aside, before I visited the Hermitage, I ran across an image of my FA avatar: none other than the late, great Felix Dzerzhinsky himself, it's always fun to see a firsthand account.
We finished the day's fun with a visit to a museum devoted to the life and experiences of Aleksandr Pushkin, arguably Russia's most famous and cherished author. Sadly I have no pictures from that, as photography of any kind was strictly forbidden. The tour itself I found to be fairly unremarkable: many Russian museums and attractions are very insistent on maintaining organized tour groups and do not tend to deviate from that. I did, however, manage to catch a good long look at Pushkin's death mask, and even a lock of his hair that had been clipped from his head by a servant. To me, that reminder of a long-dead poet was a great and poignant reminder that this was not merely a distant, near-mythical figure from history, but a living, breathing man with hopes and dreams, a fact that is not always easy to remember when discussing the great men and women of world history.
We finished with a sumptuous meal at an Azeri restaurant named Baku (fittingly enough): kebab, eggplant, and good rich yoghurt and bread were enjoyed in abundance in a meal very noticeably similar to the lavish Georgian feast we had eaten the night before (as Azerbaijan and Georgia are both Caucasian nations, this is no surprise). The meal was finished with a good refreshing cup of black tea (the stuff is omnipresent in Russia, Russians drink more tea than vodka).
Pictures:
http://imgur.com/VXjRH8O
http://imgur.com/edhqvZO
http://imgur.com/laD1bgK
http://imgur.com/CZYCHA6
http://imgur.com/N2ED6HB
http://imgur.com/jbbOAaS
http://imgur.com/K8WQEIP
http://imgur.com/xIiGPVQ
http://imgur.com/UVFXeTr
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood:
http://imgur.com/J58i5gz
http://imgur.com/sTptPWb
Fraggerblats
~fraggerblats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvXaDxgNS0
Orenthes
~orenthes
OP
The crazy, harmonized laughter is awesome ahah.
Bardawolf
~timid-wolf
Very cool. I'm enjoying reading about your experiences and learning some history
