Ganin inauspiciously enters the Mikhailov Officer Cadet school in December, 1916; in the following summer, “in the year of the revolution,” 1917, he has his final meeting with Mary. The February and October revolutions of that year led to deposing of Czar Nicholas II and the tsarist government, and the installation of the Bolshevik Party and a communist government, led by Vladimir Lenin.
False Azure: A reading blog of Nabokov's novels
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the window pane"