Romanov Tercentenary
Event
The Romanov Tercentenary (Russian: Трёхсотле́тие до́ма Рома́новых, romanized: Trokhsotlétiye dóma Románovykh, lit. 'Tercentenary of the House of Romanov') was a country-wide celebration, marked in the Russian Empire from February 1913, in celebration of the ruling House of Romanov. After a grand display of wealth and power in St. Petersburg, and a week of receptions at the Winter Palace, the imperial family embarked on a tour following Mikhail I Romanov's route after he was elected tsar by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, a sort of pilgrimage to the towns of ancient Muscovy associated with the Romanov dynasty, in May.
It has been described as an 'extravaganza of pageantry' and a tremendous propaganda exercise; but among its principal goals were to 'inspire reverence and popular support for the principle of autocracy', and also a reinvention of the past, 'to recount the epic of the "popular tsar", so as to invest the monarchy with a historical legitimacy and an image of enduring permanence at this anxious time when its right to rule was being challenged by Russia's emerging democracy', a retreat 'to the past, hoping it would save them from the future'. Throughout the jubilee, the leitmotiv as it were was the cult of seventeenth century Muscovy, with its patrimonialism (with the tsar owning Russia as a private fiefdom), personal rule with the tsar a representation of God on earth, and the concept of a mystical union between the 'Little Father Tsar' and his Orthodox subjects, who revered and adored him. In the celebrations, the symbols of the tsar were in the centre, with all symbols of the state pushed far into the background.
History
The tercentenary kicked off in the imperial capital Saint Petersburg on a rainy February morning. The event had been on everyone's lips for several weeks leading up the actual date, and dignitaries from across the empire had gathered in the capital's grand hotels: princes from the Baltic and Poland, high-priests from Armenia and Georgia in the Caucasus, and mullahs and tribal chiefs from Central Asia alongside the Khan of Khiva and the Emir of Bukhara. Additionally there was a large group of visitors from the provinces as well as workers, leaving the usual well-dressed promenaders of the Winter Palace outnumbered. The city bustled with these visitors, and Nevsky Prospect experienced among the worst traffic jams in history due to the converging of cars, carriages and trams.
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