>>39664
>Who's the horseman?

Alexander Nevsky. Place called "Alexander Nevsky square", and it is also a starting point of Nevsky prospect. But Nevsky prospect named after river, not him as person.

>I assume even as Leningrad they made effort of preservation of old tsarist buildings. Btw how about the Smolniy?

SPb had less extensive buildup than Moscow in Soviet times, so most of historical center remains same. At least from outside, because internals of houses often completely changed. Smolny still exists as governor residence.

>That 2017 bronze, Sun(?) wheel thing? What's that?

Some kind of mark with different historical names of that street (Rozhdestvenskaya, Sovetskaya, Karetnaya). Street was reconstructed as pedestrian walk zone, there is also a statue of carriage (Kareta means carriage, coach) nearby.

>Yeah, it's square dedicated to the revolution I can tell. Complex task dealing with the past for Russia and the other Soviet successor states. They have to reconcile periods clashing with each other.

Soviet propaganda was pretty effective, so most of people ok with stars and hammer-and-sickles today, and there is pretty small amount of people who really care about anti-bolshevik movement. I guess it is less controversial thing than in Baltic states or Eastern Europe, where all these things were forced from "outside".