page_title: Romanov Tercentenary
section_title: Symbolism
hierarchical_section_title: Romanov Tercentenary / Symbolism
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Памятник Михаилу Фёдоровичу и Ивану Сусанину в Костроме. Снесён в 1917 году
context_page_description: The Romanov Tercentenary 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 in 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'.
context_section_description: The communion between the Tsar and his Orthodox subjects was the central theme of the celebrations. Central to this was the cult of Russian peasant Ivan Susanin, which was to show that the 'simple' Russian people loved the Tsar. Susanin had lived on the Kostroma Romanov estate, and according to legend he misled the Poles looking to kill Mikhail Romanov on the eve of his ascension to the throne, at the cost of his own life. Performances of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar was staged throughout Russia by schools, regiments and amateur companies. Pamphlets and the penny press printed the story of Susanin ad nauseam, and one newspaper told how Susanin had showed each and every soldier how to fulfil his oath to the sovereign. The image of the seventeenth-century peasant therefore featured prominently in the tercentenary; one example is the Romanov Monument in Kostroma, where a female personification of Russia gave blessings to a kneeled Susanin. In Kostroma Nicholas II was presented with a group of peasants from Potemkin who claimed to be descendants of Susanin.
  Jubilee propaganda claimed that the election of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 had been a 'crucial moment of national awakening', and the first real act of the national state of Russia. It was said that the entire country had participated in the election, and that through it, the Romanovs had come to embody the will of the people. This was reflected among other places in the words of one propagandist who wrote that 'The spirit of Russia is incarnate in her Tsar', 'The Tsar stands to the people as their highest conception of the destiny and ideals of the nation.' This in practice meant that Russia and the Romanov dynasty was one and the same, and Nicholas II was presented as Russia incarnate during the anniversary. The newspaper Novoe vremia wrote of this saying that 'In every soul there is something Romanov. Something from the soul and spirit of the House that has reigned for 300 years.' 
  The religious status of the Tsar in the public's consciousness also figured heavily, and his role as Tsar Batiushka ("Father Tsar"), a god on earth. The myth of the good Tsar was something the courts propagandists increasingly relied on as the revolutionary crisis grew. The Tsar was depicted as a man of modest lifestyle and simple tastes, 'intimately acquainted' with each peasant, and 'carrying for their every need.' For the jubilee a biography – the first ever made for a living Tsar – was published, which depicted him as an overlooking father of his people, keeping a compassionate and earnest watch over their needs. It also wrote that he devoted special care to the development of the peasantry, and that he often visited their huts to 'partake their milk and black bread', that he would talk 'genially' with the peasants at official functions, whereafter the peasants would cross themselves and feel happier the rest of their life. It wrote of the 'thousands of invisible threads centr[ing] in the Tsar's heart, and these threads stretch to the huts of the poor to the palaces of the rich.' He was also depicted as wearing peasant robes, eating peasant food like borscht and blinies, and sharing their habits. During the tercentenary, pictures were taken of him acting symbolic homages to the peasantry, tasting the rations of soldiers or inspecting new types of ploughs. All of this was to give the impression that the Tsar, no matter how trivial something was, came under his attention, and that his influence was omnipresent.
  Throughout the jubilee the cult of seventeenth century Muscovy, with its patrimonialism (with the Tsar owning Russia as a private fiefdom, votchina), personal rule with the Tsar an embodiment of God on earth, and the concept of a 'mystical union' between the 'Father Tsar' and his Orthodox subjects, who revered and adored him as both father and God, had played a central role as the leitmotiv of the celebrations. In the celebrations, the symbols of the Tsar was in the centre, with all symbols of the state pushed far into the background.
caption: Monument to Michael I and Ivan Susanin in Kostroma 
  (demolished 1917).
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