Finland Station

Finlyandsky Rail Terminal (Russian: Финля́ндский вокза́л, Finlyandsky vokzal), also known as the Finland Station, is a railway station in St. Petersburg, Russia handling transportation to northern destinations including Helsinki and Vyborg.

Trains from Helsinki arrive at the terminal, except for a transit train to Moscow which runs through Ladoga Rail Terminal. The terminal is also a part of high speed rail line between Saint Petersburg and Helsinki (see Karelian Trains).

The main entrance to the metro station Ploshchad Lenina is in the main building of Finland Station.

History

The station was built by Finnish State Railways as the eastern terminus of the Riihimäki-Saint Petersburg railroad. It was designed by Swedish architects and opened in 1870. The terminal formerly contained a special pavilion for Russian royalty.

The station was owned and operated by Finnish railways until early 1918, when the last train, carrying station personnel and equipment, as well as some of the last Finns escaping revolutionary Russia, left for Finland. Later, ownership of the station was exchanged for Russian property in Finland, including the Alexander Theatre in Helsinki.

The station is famously known for the arrival of Vladimir Lenin by train from Germany on 3 April 1917 to start the October Revolution. The event is commemorated by the Soviet statue of Lenin dominating the square in front of the station. This event is also referred to in the title of Edmund Wilson's book To the Finland Station (1940), a well-known study of revolutionary thought.

After the turmoil of the July Days, when workers and soldiers in the capital clashed with government troops, Lenin had to flee to Finland for safety, to avoid arrest. Lenin secretly returned from Finland disguised as a railway worker and protected by Eino Rahja and Alexander Shotman on 9 August 1917. Both times Lenin crossed the Russian-Finnish border on the engine #293 driven by Finnish engineer Hugo Jalava (Гуго Эрикович Ялава). The steam locomotive was decades later donated by Finland to the Soviet Union, and is now installed as a permanent exhibit at the station.^[1]

During the Siege of Leningrad in 1941-43, the Finland Station was the only Leningrad rail terminus that remained in use. The railway would connect Leningrad with a station near the western shore of Lake Ladoga, to which supplies from the non-occupied parts of the Soviet Union would arrive from across the lake, by boat or over the lake ice, via the so-called Road of Life.

In the 1950s, the old station building was demolished and replaced with a new one, inaugurated in 1960. The turreted building is decorated with sculptures glorifying the October Revolution and incorporates a portico preserved from the original 1870 edifice.

Before Dawn on Wednesday 1 April 2009 a bomb exploded in the statue of Lenin, creating a 80 cm-100 cm hole in the back of the statue.^[2]

Trains and destinations

Long distance

Other destinations

High-speed rail

Suburban destinations

Suburban commuter trains (elektrichka) connect Finlyandsky Rail Terminal with towns of Sestroretsk, Zelenogorsk, Primorsk and Vyborg.

See also

• Saint Petersburg-Hiitola railroad
• Riihimäki-Saint Petersburg railroad
• To the Finland Station

References

External links

Media related to Finlyandsky Rail Terminal at Wikimedia Commons