Front View of Smolny, Comintern Congress, Petrograd, 19 July 1920

1We are now in the Smolny grounds.

2The Smolny building was another imperial landmark (a pioneer in women’s education, even if only for ladies of the nobility) turned into a revolutionary shrine, since it was the meeting place of the Second Congress of Soviets that established the new Soviet government in October 1917.

3On each side of the gate, we see “Fraternal Greetings to the II Congress of the III Communist International” in German and Russian. A statue of Karl Marx stands in the central garden (although the imperial double eagle does not seem to have been removed from the top of the building!).

4Mikhail Kalinin, the former leader of the streetcar workers’ union but now the official Soviet head of state who had driven the delegates here in a streetcar informed them of the sacred significance of Smolny: “Comrade delegates, since you come from distant lands, this hall is perhaps not as familiar, not as dear to your hearts as it is to us Russian workers and peasants, and especially to the members of the Communist Party of Russia … It was in this building, in this hall, that the course of action of the Russian Soviet government was determined and confirmed. All that this government is accomplishing now is but the realization of the tasks, the guidelines, set in this hall … For the entire world, for all Communists, this hall will represent the eternal shrine where the oppressed and toiling masses took power for the first time.”