THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

The October Revolution

Is something to remember

But the Russians don’t

Celebrate it until November

I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT RUSSIA

 

I don’t know much about Russia

And I haven’t been there yet

But I do know one thing for sure

You mustn’t get the Kremlin wet

STATE SANCTIONED ASSASSINATION

 

State sanctioned assassination

Of a foreign émigré

But Polonium poisoning

Seems a preposterous way

To assassinate anyone

Whatever anyone might say

VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV

 

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Was over in London, visiting

When Trotsky knocked the door

And asked “Is Len in?”

MY CHAUFFEUR IS A RUSSIAN

 

My chauffeur is a Russian

From a city called Rostov

He’s very good at his job

His name is Pikup Andropov

ROWS OF RUSSIAN DOLLS

 

Rows of Russian Dolls

Were lined up on the shelves

I really hate Russian dolls

They’re so full of themselves

INSIDE EVERY SINGLE RUSSIAN DOLL

 

Inside every single Russian Doll

There are even more Russian Dolls

If you listen you can hear them shout

As they scream in unison to be let out

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

The October Revolution

Is something to remember

But the Russians don’t

Celebrate it until November 

I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT RUSSIA

 

I don’t know much about Russia

And I haven’t been there yet

But I do know one thing for sure

You mustn’t get the Kremlin wet

INSIDE EVERY RUSSIAN DOLL

 

Inside every Russian Doll

There’s another Russian Doll

And yet more without doubt

All of them screaming to get out

MY GIRL IS TEACHING ME A LANGUAGE

 

My girl is teaching me a language

Natalia is from Russia you see

But it is not going very well at all

She tried with simple things for me

Asking the Russian word for napkin

Soviette is not the answer apparently

THE AMBER ROOM OF TSARSKOYE SELO

 

It was in 1701 that King Friedrich the 1^st, King of Prussia decided he wanted to have made, as was the fashion amongst the well to do, some kind of curiosity.

Something he would be able to show off to others of the nobility and visiting royalty and other foreign dignitaries.

What King Friedrich chose was an Amber room, which was as the name suggests a room with walls covered with amber panels from floor to ceiling.

Amber is an unusual material and although not in itself a gem It is used very often in jewellery, but it is in fact petrified tree sap and often has insect and plant life trapped within it.

The project to create the Amber Room was given in to the hands of Hamburg born architect and interior designer from Gdansk, Andreas Schluter.

Schluter had been working in Berlin since 1694 but this was by far his grandest commission and he invited a master Amber craftsman from Copenhagen Gottfried Wolfram to work with him.

Over the next six years Wolfram painstakingly prepared the Amber coverings for one wall.

Then King Friedrich the 1^st decided to dismiss Schluter and Wolfram and then he employed a new royal designer.

The new man was called Eosander von Goethe and he very quickly employed two master craftsmen and put them immediately to work.

The two master craftsmen were Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht and they were both brought from Gdansk as was Schluter.

As the elaborate Amber panels were completed, they were taken to the Royal Palace at Charlottenburg.

Twelve years after work first commenced Friedrich’s dream had almost come to fruition when in 1713 with the project almost complete King Friedrich the 1^st died.

After his death his heir Friedrich Wilhelm the 1^st immediately ordered the work to stop, and ordered all the completed parts to be packed into wooden crates and moved into Berlin’s Armoury.

Friedrich Wilhelm the 1^st who had always considered the Amber room project with disdain had to wait four years before he could finally be rid of it.

It was in 1717 that he presented, in the form of a diplomatic gift, all the finished parts of the room to the Russian Emperor Peter the 1^st perhaps better known as Peter the Great.

It seemed that this incredible piece of vision and craftsmanship was destined to spend its entire life in wooden boxes as it was to remain so until 1743.

It was Empress Elisabeth the 1st who commissioned the renowned Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to assemble the amber panels in one of the many rooms of the St. Petersburg Winter Palace.

Over the next three years Rastrelli modified the Room to take on the Rococo style and the Amber Room was first opened at the Winter Palace in 1746.

And there it remained until 1755 when in that year that it was moved to the summer residence of the Russian Emperors at Tsarskoye Selo.
The interior of the summer palace had larger rooms so only three sides were decorated with Amber and the fourth wall was completed  by using mirrors and mosaics made up of decorative Caucasian stones along with stone from the Ural’s.

The room’s ceiling was decorously painted while the floor was a fine mosaic of the most prized and expensive wood’s available in the eighteenth century.

At Tsarskoye Selo during the Amber Room’s second construction, five master amber craftsmen were employed from Koenigsberg in Prussia.

Friedrich Roggenbucke, Johann Roggenbucke, Johann Welpendorf, Clemens Friede and Heinrich Wilhelm Friede created the most lavish room Russia had ever seen.

The Amber Room’s installation was finally completed in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century and it remained undisturbed, apart from routine maintenance and minor restorations, until 1942.

It was in 1942 the German invaders came to Russia and looted everything they could find, the Amber room being one of them.

They took the prized Amber Room from Tsarskoye Selo and returned with it to Prussia where it was installed at Koenigsberg castle.

It remained in place at the castle until the summer of 1944 when the Germans fearful of it being damaged by allied bombing raids dismantled the Amber room and it was again packed into wooden crates.

The Germans maintain that the treasured amber was still being stored at Koenigsberg castle in April of 1945 when it was destroyed by a fierce fire.

An extensive search was carried out but despite the best efforts of investigators no trace of the missing treasure has ever been found.

Many rumours abound that it was hidden in what was then Czechoslovakia or even that the Nazi’s have it stashed in Brazil.

Some of the masterpieces in the room’s furnishings created by the eighteenth-century master craftsmen are now part of the collection at the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

They are the only parts of the magnificent Amber Room known to have survived the Second World War.

However, in the 1970’s and despite a lack of funding and a deficiency of parts an ambitious restoration project was begun at Tsarskoye Selo, now renamed Pushkin, to recreate the magnificent room and return it to its former glory once again.