Pioneers

In Saint Petersburg, there is currently a huge, red and yellow brick building that is obviously falling apart. It used to be a factory, for female workers only; and it was the first jobs that women had in Saint Petersburg, if I recall correctly. Just down the street from this factory, however, lived many, many noblemen, and they would have children with these women.

When the Russian Revolution came, there was the war between the Reds and the Whites-- essentially, these noblemen and these workers. The children of the workers got between the lines, and (if I understood my host mother correctly) begged the noblemen to stop fighting. Many of them were killed. Because of it, they were called the first Pioneers-- it's essentially the Russian version of Boy Scouts-- and there was an entire street named for them, complete with its own memorial for the fallen children:

The entire area is pretty run-down, to be frank. It's very bizarre; there are all these old buildings, and then suddenly they're building new glass buildings. My host mom is very up-in-arms about it, calls it an ecological disaster and says that it's from corruption and a building mafia. They're taking out all these areas that used to be parks and building these new buildings, while leaving the old buildings to rot. The contrast is insane:

As you can see, there is literally a new building in front of an old building, and although they're doing renovations on the old building, you can see the level of disrepair as compared to the new building.



Oh, one last interesting place: This was the place where the first case of HIV was diagnosed in Russia:

Unassuming building, right? Apparently, a Russian prostitute came into the building feeling quite ill, and the doctor misdiagnosed her illness as simply being the flu. It was only postmortem that they realized it was the first case of HIV in Russia, and there was a whole big uproar because of it. I only found this out because apparently, this also happens to be my host mother's doctor's office.