After all I heard in Slovakia, Hungary and Estonia about what they suffered under Soviet occupation, it was with very mixed feelings that I set foot in St Petersburg, just one day after our tour of Tallinn.
We were there for two days. The shore excursions for St Petersburg were booked by just about everyone on the ship, mainly because you could not set foot in Russia unless you had a Russian visa or were on a formal shore excursion arranged by the ship. And we had to pass through a stringent set of controls: we had to show our passport and our shore excursion ticket, and then had to have all our bags X-rayed. I had selected the most demanding of the shore excursions - two successive 10-hour excursions, starting at 7 am each day. Thirteen coach-loads of passengers chose the same! I have never seen any shore excursion on any ship that was as popular as this!
Anyhow, I decided that you cannot judge a people by the actions of their politicians. Thank goodness! And the two guides for our coach were genuinely delightful young women of about 30 years of age, who spoke very good English and looked after our needs very well.
The first place we visited was Youssupov Palace, where the monk Rasputin was murdered. When poison failed to kill him, in the end he was shot. And here was a tale of a queen desperate to save her teenage son’s life, a monk with a very powerful personality who seemed to successfully treat his haemophilia, and relatives who were jealous of and concerned by his hold over the queen and increasing power. In fact, over the two days we spent in St Petersberg, we heard story after story of political intrigue, corruption, greed, obscene excesses, murders and suspicious deaths, and finally the murder of the last remaining Romanov family, including the children.
And then you have the legacy of all the violence perpetrated by Stalin and others. Is it any wonder that this is a society that very badly needs peace, reconciliation and healing?
The guide for my half of the coach group was a bubbly, vivacious girl who has a university degree, has always loved learning languages and studying history, and whose grandparents took her when she was a child to so many of the places we visited and told her their stories, inspiring her interest. She must be one of countless Russians who deserve to live in a peaceful, free and nurturing society. I hope and pray that will happen for them, as has happened for Estonians, Slovakians and Hungarians.
The following photos were taken in the basement of the palace, where the sordid story is shown using wax models. The first staging of the story, shown in photos 1-3, represents the plotting that took place upstairs, after Rasputin had been lured to the palace. As he was of peasant stock, Rasputin could not be invited to the dining table upstairs. He was secretly taken to the basement to receive a meal. The difference in setting in the basement is evident in photos 4-5. The last photo shows the actual death certificate after Rasputin's body was found floating in one of the canals, and a photo of his face. The plotters had forgotten to weigh down his body! The name of the shooter is still a matter of speculation.
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