Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
world, and in over 5,000 performances she
brought her art to new places in the Near East,
Australasia, the Pacific, South America, North
America, and the Far East. The choreography
and music that formed most of her repertory
was often banal, but the content of her program
was unimportant in light of her interpretations,
which gave life to the most uninspired material.
She did not restrict her performances to the large
cities and permanent theaters, believing, with
almost religious fervor, that it was her mission to
dance whenever and wherever people would
come to see her. Pavlova died in The Hague, the
Netherlands. She inspired a whole generation to
take up dance, including Frederick Ashton,
Robert Helpmann, and Alicia Markova, and even
today to the general public her name is synony-
mous with dancing.
bers of its Executive Committee, including Sofia
Perovskaya, Andrei Zheliabov, and Nikolai
KIBALCHICH
, who were executed by hanging on
April 3, 1881. What was left of the organization
managed to remain organized in small groups in
Russia or in emigration. In 1887 the St. Peters-
burg group, led by Alexander Ulianov (
LENIN
's
older brother), attempted the assassination of
Alexander III, for which Ulianov and others
were executed. Some of the younger People's
Will members carried their tradition into Russian
social democracy, later becoming
BOLSHEVIKS
,
but the majority remained populists and com-
bined with other groups to form in 1902 the
Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which
through its Fighting Organization continued the
People's Will tradition of terror.
Peredvizhniki
See
WANDERERS
.
People's Will
(Narodnaya Volya)
Populist revolutionary organization formed in
1879 after the split of the “Land and Liberty”
(Zemlia i Volya) organization. While the other
faction to emerge from the split, “Black Reparti-
tion,” rejected terrorism, People's Will broke
from mainstream
POPULISM
in its rejection of a
gradualist approach that emphasized education
of the peasantry. It also adhered to the “Jacobin”
idea of a seizure of power by a dedicated minor-
ity, while advocating violence and the use of ter-
ror against government officials. Among those
who joined People's Will were about 70 army
officers. People's Will also established cells among
workers in St. Petersburg,
MOSCOW
, Kharkov, and
Rostov-on-Don. In 1879, the Executive Commit-
tee of the group ordered the assassination of
ALEXANDER II
, which it finally succeeded in doing
on March 1, 1881, after several unsuccessful
attempts. The nationwide sympathy uprising
that they had expected to follow news of the
czar's death did not materialize. Instead, the
czar's son,
ALEXANDER III
, launched a ruthless
campaign against terrorists and revolutionaries
in general that practically destroyed People's
Will. Among those apprehended were five mem-
Peter and Paul Fortress
The first structure built on the future site of St.
Petersburg, the Peter and Paul Fortress was
intended to defend the city from naval attack but
was never used for that purpose. Construction of
the fortress began in May 1703 and was not
completed until 1740. By then the fortress was
delineated by massive stone walls 12 feet thick
and 40 feet high. Three hundred cannons were
mounted on the bastions of the fortress. In addi-
tion to the buildings connected with its military
role, the fortress contained the Mint, where Rus-
sia's currency was coined since 1724, and the
Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, with its ele-
gant slender golden spire, one of the city's land-
marks. Built between 1712 and 1733 by the
Italian architect Domenico Trezzini, the cathe-
dral became the final resting place of all czars
beginning with Peter the Great. Only
PETER II
,
who died in Moscow, and
NICHOLAS II
, who was
executed in the Urals town of Ekaterinburg by
the
BOLSHEVIKS
, were not buried in the cathedral
at the time of their death. The fortress was also
known to generations of revolutionaries as a jail
Search WWH ::
Custom Search