Detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks from top to bottom include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, and the Mariyinsky Theater.
St Petersburg (Petrograd); Neva River, Peter and Paul Fortress; Nevski Prospect, Mariyinsky Theater
"By the afternoon of Saturday, 25 February the two mile length of the Nevsky from the Admiralty right along to Znamenskaya Square and the Moscow Station was a solid, black river of people. The trams were no longer running, and passengers arriving at the head of this grim procession at the Moscow Station suddenly found their way blocked; with no cabs or trams, they were going nowhere. Later that afternoon, a crowd of well-dressed shoppers had been forced off the Nevsky onto Mikhail Street, running for their lives to escape a hail of bullets from machine-gun nests which had been posted by the police on various rooftops. In the confusion a car ran over a woman and a sledge overturned, killing the driver. All around people were huddling in doorways and alleys to shelter from the constant deadly barrage. Some lay dead in the snow. Along the Nevsky the more dedicated police squads still saw it as their duty to select the more prominent demonstrators from the crowd and make arrests. Yet when they tried to hold prisoners temporarily in houses along the street, the crowds soon discovered where they were and broke in, releasing the captives."
February 25, 1917 (Old Style, March 10 New Style) marked the third consecutive day of increasingly large demonstrations in Petrograd, Russia's capital. In the previous two days Cossacks, traditional suppressors of protests and demonstrations, had both ridden peacefully among the demonstrators, and charged the protestors, killing some. On March 10, signs called for an end to the Government and the war.
1917: Russia's Year of Revolution by Roy Bainton, page 68, copyright © Roy Bainton 2005, publisher: Carroll and Graf Publishers, publication date: 2005
1917-03-10, 1917, March, Petrograd, Liteïny
