Romanov Tercentenary

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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'.^[1] 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.^[2] In the celebrations, the symbols of the tsar were in the centre, with all symbols of the state pushed far into the background.^[3]