Inside Tsarko Selo (Catherine the Great's Summer Palace):
The Dallas Beauty Queen at Tsarko Selo:
Inside Peter the Great's Summer Palace (St. Petersburg):
Behind Peter the Great's Summer Palace:
Behind Peter the Great's Summer Palace:
The Amber Room (Tsarko Selo):
If you read this blog, you’re probably at least 40 years old; so I’m sure you’re aware that prior to Boris Yeltsin and Russia’s conversion to capitalism, Russia was a Communist country. And prior to Lenin and the Communists, Russia was ruled by Tsars; all of whom were drawn from the royal family.
The last of the Russian royals was Tsar Nicholas Romanov and his drug-addict* wife Alexandria (*might want to fact-check that). I read a lot of books about Nicholas and Alexandria prior to my Russian visit--particularly about their family’s assassination by the Communists. After a tension-filled period where their fate was up-in-the-air, the family was eventually killed in a hail of bullets, their bodies thrown into a deep hole in the woods, then burned with acid for...whatever purpose that served.
Now, if you’re like me, you tend to root for the protagonist of the books you read or the movies you watch. Even when I watch old Nazi and Hitler documentaries, I (who many would refer to as Jewish) will sometimes find myself rooting for the Nazi’s in my lazier moments. Not because of self-hatred, but because most (if not all) the documentaries tell the story of the Nazi’s. They’re the subject. Rarely if ever are these documentaries entitled: The Great Allied Victory of WWII, or told from the perspective of the Allies. Rather, they’re almost always called: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; or The Rise of Adolph Hitler. Like it or not, Adolph’s got the star power and everyone else is just support.
In fairness, WWII has never been anything but entertainment for me. I was first born 20+ years after it ended; so until the release of recent colorized footage, the war only existed in that distant, nether-world of black and white film. I know the Nazi’s are gonna get their asses kicked in the end. I’ve watched their futile, twisted dream, born of a syphilis-infected mind and injured collective unconscious lead them down the path of death and regret a million times on TV and You Tube. You watch them proceed inexorably down their moronic road and in the back of your mind you’re like “Stop!--you can still turn back! You made great gains! Just kill Hitler and quit now!”
But it always plays out the same way, and of course thank God for it.
In regards to Tsar Nicholas, most of the books I read told his story, so I found myself feeling rather sympathetic toward him and the Royal Family. One book in particular displayed notes from Nicholas and his family’s personal diaries, which spelled-out in great detail the last, tragic days of the Royals’ lives. Taken on its own; without context, it certainly made you feel pity for the feeble, sensitive man who never had the temperament or constitution for leadership in a cold, crude place like Russia.
Course then I actually got to Russia and had the chance to see Tsarko Selo; The old Winter Palace (now The Hermitage); and Peter the Great’s Summer Palace. The huge estates in an ocean of poverty; the obscene palaces; the ridiculously gaudy Amber Room; the 150+ fountains crafted in French style; and everywhere gilded gold, handcrafted by slave labor and artisans. Room after room of the stuff, 'til much to my surprise I began to hear the distant movie-star voice of Catherine Zeta Jones saying, “Just shoot ‘em in the head.”
Behind the Summer Palace of Peter the Great:
* NOTE: All pics taken by Lodo Grdzak w/ the exception of the Russian Royal Family, which was swiped off Google Images. All rights reserved on my pics.
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