History of Russia: “The February Revolution – Time of Alternatives” exhibition kicks off in St. Petersburg

On February 29th 2012 the Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg is launching a new exhibition “The February Revolution – Time of Alternatives”.

The year 2012 sees 95th anniversary of the February Revolution of 1917. The museum’s exhibition “February 1917 – Time of Alternatives” – is an attempt to look at events of 1917 in their complex diversity, cast light on the revolution both in the front line, and in the capital city. Authors of the show have focused on unique items from the museum’s collection, like orders of the Provisional Government (which do not bear images of tsarist regalia or mottos) and a forged letter (to a soldier in the front from kith and kin about the revolution in Petrograd with an appeal not to shed his blood in vain), which was put secretly to Russian trenches by the Germans in early March 1917.

Visitors can feel the atmosphere of those revolutionary days through leaflets of different parties on elections to the Constituent Assembly, collected orders concerning the armies of the South-Western Front, copy of the Order № 1 of the Petrograd Soviet, the first after the victory of the February Revolution of 1917.

Photographs of February events will help visitors of the exhibition discover that central moment of the Russian history. Besides, the exhibition showcases graphic portraits and photographs of several figures of the revolution, whose names are closely related to events of February 1917 – “unaccomplished Emperor” of Grand Duke Mikhael Alexandrovich of Russia and an active participant of the February Revolution general N. V. Ruzsky, who had played an important role in the abdication of Nikolai II, general F. A. Keller, one of the two high commanders who remained loyal to the sovereign in February 1917, and a sergeant major T. I. Kirpichnikov, who initiated the protest action of Petrograd garrison in February 1917.