The Imperial Life Guards Regiment during the uprising of December 14th 1825 Senate Square. (19th Century). Vasily Timm (1820 -1895).The Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. ‘The historical value of revolutions depends upon three conditions: upon what they destroy, upon what they create and upon the legend that they leave behind…The Decembrists have not destroyed anything or […]
Tag: Small Acts of Kindness
‘I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls’*
Recently, ‘Peterskaya Uslada’ (Petersburg Delight) posted pictures on Twitter of the extraordinary marble hall that can be found in the Palace that was owned from 1830 onward by the Kushelev-Bezborodko family (see image above). Although the interior was remodelled in the middle of the 19th century by the son of the first owner, Count Nikolay […]
Dusk approaches…
We are now moving deeper into December, and it is dark a little after 4 p.m. It was a little earlier, just after 3 p.m. in St Petersburg on December 14th 1825(Old Style) when Nicholas Pavlovich, newly created Emperor of Russia, ordered guns to be fired to scatter 3000 rebel troops. The soldiers had stood […]
Travellers’ Tales
Two weeks ago, I was very pleased to be invited to speak at the CamRuSS Russian/Ukrainian summer school held at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. I devoted part of my talk to looking at the sources I used when researching my novel, Small Acts of Kindness, A Tale of the First Russian Revolution. Being students of Russian […]