Page 47 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - St. Petersburg

Soviet Landmarks ❮❮ 45

Avtovo station, one of the city’s attractive metro stations
Cruiser Aurora
7 War never ended – the stations’ walls
still bear hammers and sickles, and
The cruiser Aurora is famed
as the ship that fired a blank shot to slogans extolling the achievements
signal the storming of the Winter of the Soviet system (see pp48–9).
Palace, which then began the 1917
Monument to the Heroic
Revolution. Today it is open to the 0
public, and the famous gun, along Defenders of Leningrad
with the crew’s quarters, can be Erected in 1975 to mark the 30th
viewed (see p95). anniversary of the end of World War II,
the Monument to the Heroic Defenders
Kirov Museum
8 of Leningrad commemo rates the
victims of the siege – it features
This museum is located in the
one-time flat of Sergey Kirov, a sculptures of grieving mothers and
Stalin-era politician. Charis matic defiant Soviet sol diers. A Memorial
Kirov reportedly enjoyed grassroots Hall at the com plex has exhibits
popularity, leading Stalin to fear him about life during the siege (see p103).
as a rival. Most histo rians believe
that Stalin arranged Kirov’s Monument to the Heroic Defenders
assassination, and then used of Leningrad
it as an excuse to launch a
series of purges to punish
the “guilty” (see p95).
The Metro
9
Designed as
monuments to the
working class, the
city’s pre-perestroika
metro stations are
socialist palaces,
comp lete with
chandeliers, marble
columns, mosaics and
murals. It is as if the
USSR never ceased to
exist and the Cold

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