The Winter Palace

When Vavara, a young Polish orphan, arrives at the glittering, dangerous court of the Empress Elizabeth in St Petersburg, she is schooled in skills ranging from lock-picking to love-making, learning above all else to stay silent - and listen. Then Sophie, a vulnerable young princess, arrives from Prussia as a prospective bride for the Empress's heir. Set to spy on her, Vavara soon becomes her friend and confidante, and helps her navigate the illicit liaisons and the treacherous shifting allegiances of the court. But Sophie's destiny is to become the notorious Catherine the Great. Are her ambitions more lofty and far-reaching than anyone suspected, and will she stop at nothing to achieve absolute power?

St. Petersburg's Winter Palace was once the supreme architectural symbol of Russia's autocratic government. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became the architectural symbol of St. Petersburg itself. The story of the palace illuminates the changing relationship between monarchs and their capital city during the last century and a half of Russian monarchy. In The Winter Palace and the People, Susan McCaffray examines interactions among those who helped to stage the ceremonial drama of monarchy, those who consumed the spectacle, and the monarchs themselves. In the face of a changing social landscape in their rapidly growing nineteenth-century capital, Russian monarchs reoriented their display of imperial and national representation away from courtiers and toward the urban public. When attacked at mid-century, monarchs retreated from the palace. As they receded, the public claimed the square and the artistic treasures in the Imperial Hermitage before claiming the palace itself. By 1917, the Winter Palace had come to be the essential stage for representing not just monarchy, but the civic life of the empire-nation. What was cataclysmic for the monarchy presented to those who staffed the palace and Hermitage not a disaster, but a new mission, as a public space created jointly by monarch and city passed from the one to the other. This insightful study will appeal to scholars of Russia and general readers interested in Russian history.

Tsar Nicholas I commissioned 128 delightful watercolors depicting views and interiors of the private and state apartments of the Winter Palace, the main imperial residence of Saint Petersburg. These watercolors together make up one of the jewels of the collections of the Hermitage Museum. Of immense documentary value, they are also - with their crystalline clarity and their irresistible elegance - dazzling examples of the graphic art of the nineteenth century. Immortalizing as they do the splendor of the first palace of the Russian sovereigns, they are of immeasurably greater interest than other works of decorative art of this type. In a technical tour de force, these artists contrived to depict space in such a way that their paintings present a broader perspective than could normally be taken in by the naked eye.

Exactly 175 years ago, on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, a failed uprising ignited a process that would, one red October, finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement—the century of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other unforgettable characters—and provides a riveting, sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present"(Atlantic Monthly).

"In 1920, the third anniversary of the October Revolution, The Storming of the Winter Palace was performed with a cast of 10,000. The mass spectacle, directed by Nikolai Evreinov, was a kind of false, deceptive reenactment. It was intended to recall something--the storming of the Winter Palace as the beginning of the revolution--that it itself produced as a theatrical medium. This volume reconstructs the event with texts, photographs, and drawings, and shows how not only in the Soviet Union did the photograph of the theatrical "storming" became a historical document of the October Revolution."--Page 4 of cover.

A stunning volume presenting the history of the Winter Palace. The Winter Palace is connected with the life of Russia and Saint Petersburg for more than 250 years. Externally the Palace has remained true to the original design, however its interior has been updated numerous times for the royal family members'needs, status, and artistic tastes. These changes are reflected in splendid illustrations, primarily from the State Hermitage collection. This richly illustrated book will let you both walk along the halls of bygone epochs and become acquainted with the Palace's modern life and it's magnificent art collection

From the author of The Winter Palace comes Eve Stachniak’s first novel about the discovery of secrets and lies that stitch together empires and individual lives. Winner of the 2000 Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Prize Necessary Lies tells the story of the discovery of secrets and lies that stitch together empires and individual lives. What are the lies we tell ourselves and others that get us through our lives? In the summer of 1981 Anna is suddenly offered the opportunity to study English at McGill University in Montreal. She jumps at the chance, leaving behind her job, her husband, and her country – Poland. She meets William, a music professor, and falls in love. Back home, martial law is declared. After almost ten years of marriage, William dies suddenly of a heart attack, and Anna is left to pick up the pieces. In the midst of grieving, she discovers more pieces than expected: for the length of their lives together, William carried on a long-distance affair with a woman journalist in Germany. In search of truth, Anna returns to a dramatically changed Europe, where Communism has fallen, the Berlin Wall has been torn down, and where, once again, history will have to be rewritten. Probing the depths of betrayal and forgiveness, she confronts her own past and the motives that drove her away from Poland; she sees herself through the eyes of her mother, her ex-husband, and most importantly, William’s German lover, Ursula.

Behind every great ruler lies a betrayal. Eva Stachniak's novel sweeps readers into the passionate, intimate, and treacherous world of Catherine the Great, revealing Russia's greatest matriarch from her earliest days in court, where the most valuable currency was the secrets of nobility and the most dangerous weapon to wield was ambition. Two young women, caught in the landscape of shifting allegiances, navigate the treacherous waters of palace intrigue. Barbara is a servant who will become one of Russia's most cunning royal spies. Sophia is a pretty, naive German duchess who will become Catherine the Great. For readers of superb historical fiction, Eva Stachniak captures in glorious detail the opulence of royalty and the perilous loyalties of the Russian court.