Editing Peter and Paul Fortress (section)

==History==
===From foundation until 1917===
[[File:Peter and Paul Fortress.JPG|thumb|Peter and Paul Fortress]]
The fortress was established by [[Peter I of Russia|Peter the Great]] on {{OldStyleDate|May 27|1703|May 16}}, on small [[Hare Island (Saint Petersburg)|Hare Island]] by the north bank of the [[Neva River]]. From around 1720, the fort served as a base for the city garrison and also as a prison for high-ranking or [[political prisoner]]s.

===Russian Revolution and beyond===
[[File:Palace bridge.JPG|thumb|[[Palace Bridge]] and 'Peter and Paul' fortress]]

During the [[February Revolution]] of 1917, it was attacked by mutinous soldiers of the [[Pavlovsky Life Guards Regiment]] on February 27&nbsp;(O.S.) and the prisoners were freed. Under the [[Russian Provisional Government|Provisional Government]], hundreds of Tsarist officials were held in the Fortress.

The tsar was threatened with being incarcerated at the fortress on his return from [[Mogilev]] to [[Tsarskoye Selo]] on March 8&nbsp;(O.S.); but he was placed under house arrest. On July 4&nbsp;(O.S.) during the [[July Days]] demonstrations, the fortress garrison of 8,000 men declared for the [[Bolsheviks]]. They surrendered to government forces without a struggle on July 6&nbsp;(O.S.).

On October 25&nbsp;(O.S.), the fortress quickly fell into Bolshevik hands. Following the ultimatum from the [[Petrograd Soviet]] to the Provisional Government ministers in the [[Winter Palace]], after the blank salvo of the cruiser [[Russian cruiser Aurora|''Aurora'']] at 21.00, the guns of the fortress fired 30 or so shells at the Winter Palace. Just two hit, inflicting only minor damage, and the defenders refused to surrender at that time. At 02.10 on the morning of October 26&nbsp;(O.S.), the Winter Palace was taken by forces under [[Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko]]; the captured ministers were taken to the fortress as prisoners. On 28 January 1919, four grand dukes from the [[House of Romanov]] were shot within the walls of the fortress on the orders of the Presidium of the [[Cheka]] under [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]], [[Yakov Peters]], [[Martin Latsis]], and [[Ivan Ksenofontov]].

The structure suffered heavy damage during the bombardment of the city during [[World War II]] by the [[Luftwaffe]] who were laying siege to the city. It has been restored post-war and is a tourist attraction.<ref name="spenc"/>

===Public perception===
{{refimprove section|date=October 2018}}
In the years before and after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Peter and Paul Fortress was portrayed by Bolshevik propaganda as a hellish, torturous place, where thousands of prisoners suffered endlessly in filthy, cramped, and grossly overcrowded dungeons amid frequent torture and malnutrition. Such legends had the effect of turning the prison into a symbol of government oppression in the minds of the common folk. In reality, conditions in the fortress were far less brutal than believed; no more than one hundred prisoners were ever kept in the prison at a time, and most prisoners had access to such luxuries as tobacco, writing paper, and literature (including subversive books such as [[Karl Marx]]'s ''[[Capital: Critique of Political Economy|Das Kapital]]'').

Despite their ultimate falsehood, stories about the prison were vital to the spread of Bolshevik revolutionary sentiment. The legends served to portray the government as cruel and indiscriminate in the administration of justice, helping to turn the common mind against Tsarist rule. Many inmates, after being released, wrote chilling and increasingly exaggerated accounts of life there that solidified the structure's horrible image in the public mind and pushed the people further towards dissent. Writers often purposely exaggerated their experiences to garner more hatred for the government; as writer and former Peter and Paul inmate [[Maksim Gorky]] would later state, "Every Russian who had ever sat in jail as a 'political' prisoner considered it his holy duty to bestow on Russia his memoirs of how he had suffered."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Figes|first1=Orlando|title=A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution|publisher=Viking|isbn=0-670-85916-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestragedyhi00fige}}</ref>