Aurora is most famous for her actions during the October Revolution where she reportedly fired the shot, that signaled the beginning of the attack on the Winter Palace.

[6] After refitting, Aurora was ordered back to Port Arthur as part of the Russian Baltic Fleet[7][8] Aurora sailed as part of Admiral Oskar Enkvist's Cruiser Squadron whose flagship would be the protected cruiser Oleg, an element of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Baltic Fleet.

[9] On the way to the Far East, Aurora received five hits, sustaining light damage from confused friendly fire, which killed the ship's chaplain and a sailor, in the Dogger Bank incident.

[15] By late 1916, when Aurora arrived in Petrograd, conditions in the capital had deteriorated and the city was lawless and suffering from a cold winter and food shortages.

The crew captured the ship's captain, Mikhail Nikolsky, and ordered that he carry a red flag as a symbol of support for the Bolshevik cause.

After carrying out that assignment, the ship fired the famous blank shot that, according to Russian lore, was the signal to begin the assault on the Winter Palace.

[20][18][19] In 1918 Aurora was relocated to the naval dockyard at Kronstadt and her new 6-inch guns were removed and installed on floating batteries to be used by the Bolsheviks during the civil war.

The cut off lower hull section was towed into the Gulf of Finland to the decommissioned Ruchi Naval Base [ru], and sunk near the shore.

[29] Due to the honoring of the ship with high state awards, the flag flown at the stern is a special version of the main Naval Ensign.

This tradition dates back to 1927, when the aurora was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and lasted until the end of Soviet Navy and was then resumed after returning from a major overhaul in 2016.