Dramatic images of St Petersburg’s ransacked Winter Palace after the Bolshevik Revolution are going on show in London for one weekend only. Calvert 22 Foundation, which supports contemporary art from Russia and Eastern Europe, is exhibiting around 20 photographs (enlarged reproductions of the original prints) from the archives of the State Hermitage Museum, which has occupied the Baroque former residence of the Russian tsars since October 1917. The partnership underpins a year-long season of events marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The display traces the rapid evolution of the palace from the centre of celebrations for the ruling Romanov dynasty’s 300th anniversary in 1913 to a symbol of the destruction of the old regime. The still-new medium of photography captured the meeting of Russia’s moderate interim government in the library of Tsar Nicholas II after the February Revolution, the preparation of works of art for evacuation and the all-female battalion that defended the palace against Lenin’s Bolsheviks. A number of the prints only entered the Hermitage archives in the 1990s as a gift from the widow of the author P.F. Gubchevsky, who wrote the museum’s historic guidebook.
- Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna leaving the Winter Palace on 21 February 1913 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
- The personal guard of Alexander Kerensky, leader of the interim government after the February Revolution, stationed outside the door of his office in the Winter Palace (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
- Alexander Kerensky (second from right), the leader of the interim government after the February Revolution, meets with his war council in the tsar's library (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
- The evacuation of imperial works of art (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
- Soldiers of the women's battalion, the Winter Palace's last line of defence against the Bolsheviks (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
- Karl Kubesh's photograph of the cabinet of Tsar Nicholas II after the storming of the palace in October 1917 (Photo: Yuri Molodkovets © The State Hermitage Museum)
The Museum After the Revolution opens today (until Sunday 30 April) as a visual counterpoint to a conference of the same name co-organised by the foundation and the Hermitage (28-29 April). With a keynote address by the museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, and panel discussions on topics such as the legacy of the imperial jeweller Carl Fabergé, Soviet museum policy in the 1920s and the collective silence around the Prague Spring in 1968, the event explores the impact of the Russian Revolution on museum collections across the former Soviet bloc.