Tour guide sparks fury in St Petersburg with Victory Day talk reportedly praising ‘talented’ Hitler & slamming Soviet ‘pedophiles’

For millions of Russians, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender is a celebration of their forefathers’ heroism in the fight over fascism. But one tour guide in the country’s second city apparently has a different view.

In a viral post on the popular VKontakte social network, blogger Alyona Zvyagintseva claimed that people who booked onto a WWII-themed tour in St. Petersburg on Sunday got a more controversial version of its wartime history than they had expected. The outing, which cost around $20 to join, was billed as an insight into the ‘Road of Life’ connecting residents of besieged Leningrad, as the city was then known, to supplies and troops defending the area from the Third Reich.

Organizers of the event said attendees would “find out why Leningrad was cut off so quickly, why a city with a population in the millions was left without food, as well as what the role was of Leningrad’s leadership and the military command in managing defense and economic activities.”

However, according to Zvyagintseva, the group’s guide, a renowned local historian and curator of a museum on the history of war, came up with some rather unconventional answers to these questions. She claims the researcher gave a glowing review of Adolf Hitler’s “talented” plans to invade the Soviet Union.

She alleged that in the same breath, he singled out for extensive discussion “Jewish Bolsheviks” among the leadership of the USSR, as well as insisting that a number of “pedophiles” were active within its ranks.

Even stranger, the blogger claims, was the guide’s penchant for Nazi style. At the museum dedicated to the Road of Life, he reportedly gushed over a German soldier’s uniform, exclaiming, “This is Hugo Boss – this is chic, you know!” Soviet uniforms were reportedly of minimal interest.

Local journalists have since attempted to contact the company that organized the excursion for comment but, according to Znak.com, it has so far declined to offer up its version of events.

Russia marked Victory Day on May 9 with a colossal military parade across Moscow’s Red Square, while other cities and former Soviet republics held similar, smaller-scale events.

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