Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, wrote the American journalist John Reed.
His eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ten Days That Shook The World, told the gripping story of the Bolshevik revolt against the tyranny of the ruling Tsars.
Lenin and Trotsky, the leaders of the uprising, were committed to creating a brave new world via brave new art. As Lenin once remarked: ‘Art is the most powerful means of political propaganda for the triumph of the socialist cause.’ That art is the subject of a new exhibition of the avant-garde, Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at London’s Royal Academy (until April 17).
Toppled tsars: The Winter Palace was one of the key scenes of the Russian Revolution
Many of these works by artists such as Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev and Pavel Filonov have not been seen in Britain before.
The show marks 100 years since the demonstrations in February in St Petersburg that led to the toppling of the Romanov family and their later execution.
But if you don’t know your Marx from your Engels and you’re wondering why the corpse of Rasputin, the Tsarina’s favourite, ended up in the river Neva, don’t worry — you’re not alone.
One way to brush up your history — and full Marx to you for effort — is on location in St Petersburg. Now is a perfect time to visit the old imperial capital that gave birth to Bolshevism.
During the ‘white nights’ of summer, the city teems; but in the ‘white days’ of frozen winter, it’s delightfully uncrowded.
Treasure chamber: It would take six years to view all of the Hermitage’s three million artefacts
Take warm layers and a furry hat with ear flaps (ushanka), and you’ll survive. Besides, as one local reassures us: ‘It never really gets cold. Well, not much below minus 12.’ It’s possible to manage the sights (and that dastardly Cyrillic alphabet) without a guide. But once I meet Alexei, an art historian, I can throw away my stuffy old history books.
He whisks me through the Hermitage, the complex of buildings that houses the Winter Palace, the former home of the Romanovs, to the spot where it all began. It was in the palace’s Small Dining Room that the Red Guard overpowered the provisional government on the night of October 25, 1917.
The clock on the mantelpiece has been stopped at 2.10am, the moment Russia became a communist state. And, without Alexei, I might have missed the significance of St George’s Hall where Nicholas II ceded power.
It was his ancestor, Peter the Great, who chose the marshes on the Gulf of Finland to build his new Western-style capital in the 18th century, excavating canals and throwing up grand palaces for the aristocracy.
With more than three million artefacts, it would take a visitor six years to see all the treasures of the Hermitage. So we make do with a few masterpieces by Da Vinci, Titian and Rembrandt before heading across Palace Square for coffee and cream cakes in the General Staff Building. An extension of the Hermitage, it opened three years ago and houses much of the Impressionist art that Lenin confiscated from private collectors.
Stalin disliked the avant-garde, favouring realistic painting that told a simple story. After he came to power in 1924, these works by masters such as Matisse and Chagall were hidden away, until his death in 1953 when they were displayed once more.
Avant-garde: The Bolshevik by Boris Kustodiev, from 1920, is on display at the Royal Academy
When the sunlight plays on the marble facades and the golden domes, St Petersburg dazzles in pink and gold. Of course, there is so much more to this city than bling on the Baltic: my front row seat for Don Quixote at the world’s most famous ballet company, the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov), cost just £67.
And there are welcoming restaurants such as Gogol (restaurant-gogol.ru) and the Russian Vodka Room No. 1 (vodkaroom.ru), where you can always find salmon caviare, hearty beef stew and warming vodka.
There’s more bling on view in the Faberge museum, which displays the extravagant jewelled eggs and knick-knacks the royal family exchanged as their subjects starved. As you press your nose against the display cases, your inner conscience will scream: ‘Those Romanovs had it coming!’