Naval gazing

Kronstadt is a fortress on Kotlin Island, west of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1704 to guard his new capital city which he also founded a year earlier. The modern Russian Navy began in Kronstadt and was the home base of the Baltic Fleet. The Neo-Byzantine style St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral dominates Anchor Square in the southeast of the island, the Wild West Wildlife Refuge occupies the northwestern tip. There are monuments to Arctic explorer Piotr Pakhtusov, Antarctica explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov. The parks are spacious, gardens opulent and highways tree-lined.

As you’d expect from a military municipality, it also harbours a secretive, turbulent and at times, horrific past. There were several mutinies around 1905, an uprising in 1917 and a rebellion in March 1921 by sailors, soldiers and civilians against the Bolshevik government of the Russian