Before you is a collection of lectures by Lev Lurie, telling about how St. Petersburg lived in difficult pre-revolutionary times. The author describes the smallest details: where the guards drank, where local hooligans fought, how the life of ordinary people went. And Lev Lurie talks about how quickly and abruptly it all ended. The author tells how by 1914 St. Petersburg reached its heyday. The city is motley and multifaceted: the emperor and his family and other representatives of high society live here, beggars and prostitutes scurry about on the streets, workers run about their business, peasants flock from all over the area to earn extra money. And the city willingly accepts everyone, but only until the turning point - the February Revolution of 1917, which became one of the most important events of that time for all of Russia.