Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Focusing on the colourful characters of the imperial period and the dra-
matic events leading up to the revolution, D Bruce Lincoln's Sunlight at
Midnight is a definitive history of the period as well as being highly read-
able and academically rigorous.
By now the 'people' were becoming less abstract. Political movements that claimed
to better understand and represent them were sprouting up. On a Sunday morning in
March 1881, several young student members of the Peoples' Will radical sect waited
nervously by Kanal Griboyedov as the tsar's procession passed. Their homemade
bombs hardly dented the royal armoured coach, but badly wounded scores of spectat-
ors and fatally shredded the reforming monarch when he insisted on leaving his car-
riage to investigate. On the hallowed site, the magnificent and melancholy Church on
the Spilled Blood ( CLICK HERE ) was constructed, its twisting onion domes trying to
steady St Petersburg's uncertain present with Russia's enduring past.
Competition between Russia and Europe's other great powers compelled a state-
directed campaign of economic development. St Petersburg became the centre of a ro-
bust military-industrial economy, established to fight the wars of the modern age. A
ring of ugly sooty smokestacks grew up around the still-handsome city centre. Tough
times in the rural villages and job opportunities in the new factories hastened a human
flood into the capital. By the 1880s, the population climbed past a million, with hun-
dreds of thousands cramped into slummy suburban squalor. Public health was be-
fouled, public manner was debased. The gap between high society and the lower
depths had long been manageable, but now they kept running into each other. The
people had arrived.
CHECK YOUR CALENDAR
For hundreds of years, Russia was out of sync with the West. Until 1700 Russia
dated its years from 'creation', which was determined to be approximately 5508
years before the birth of Christ. So at that time the year 1700 was considered
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