The Inkling Volume 2

Traditionally, it started on the night of 25 th October when an armed group of
Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace whilst a navy ship, the Aurora, fired
volley after volley of shells to cover their assault. The Winter Palace still
stands today and is home to one of the world’s largest collections of art - it
supposedly takes three days just to get round to see it all - while Russian
guides dressed as Soviet Sailors will happily take you on a guide of the
cruiser ship Aurora (with an extra cost for pictures!). This event was later
made into a propaganda film by the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, for
the communists to show the spirit and struggle that they had supposedly
gone through. However, the reality was much different. On the night of 25 th
October, the palace itself was guarded by a force of around one hundred
soldiers of the infamous Women’s Battalion: most of the regular soldiers
were still fighting at the front in WW1. Although the Aurora did indeed fire on
this evening, it was only one shot (and this was a blank!).
Around the centre of the city, many places of former Russian nobility still
stand as do many Orthodox cathedrals. One of these palaces that I visited
was that of Prince Yusupov. This is the place where the monk Grigory
Rasputin was murdered - an event that traumatic was (and still is)
unbelievable. Rasputin was poisoned with cyanide and then shot when the
poison failed to work. As the conspirators were lifting him into the palace
yard he suddenly began moving. After beating him for several minutes with
iron bars and shooting him again, his body was pushed under the ice of the
River Neva.
With stories like this, I still wonder… why would you consider anywhere else
for your honeymoon?