In June, the town of Pushkin, located 24 kilometers from St. Petersburg, celebrated its tercentennial.
Peter I (“the Great”) gifted the land here to Alexander Menshikov in 1703. Previously, it had been a Swedish country village, named Saari mois. Then, in 1710, Peter gave some of Menshikov’s land to his wife, the future Empress Catherine I (appropriately so: it had been Menshikov who introduced Peter to his future wife).
Peter built the first royal palace here – more of a hunting lodge, actually – in 1715. By 1725 the settlement had become one of Russia’s largest summer imperial residences. In 1728, the town, which until then was commonly referred to as Saarskaya Myza, was renamed Tsarskoye Selo (“Royal Village”).* The beautiful baroque Catherine’s Palace and adjacent Catherine’s Garden was not begun until after Catherine I’s death, and did not attain its grandiose, ceremonial stature until a second reconstruction by Rastrelli in the 1750s, during the reign of Catherine’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth.
In 1796, Catherine II (“the Great”), who spent most all of her summers here, completed construction of the Alexander Palace for her favorite grandson Alexander (who would rule as Alexander I from 1801-1825). Catherine died that same year and her son Paul spurned the palace and town because of his hatred for his mother.
For the next century, with the exception of Paul I, the monarchs of Russia ruled from this imperial residence for six months a year. Russia’s first power plant was constructed here, and in 1837 Russia’s first train line opened between Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg for the conveyance of royalty and their entourages. From 1811 to 1843, the Imperial Lyceum was housed here, in a specially constructed wing of Catherine’s Palace.
But come the Revolution, history ceased being so kind to Pushkin.
In 1918, the Bolsheviks converted Catherine’s Palace and Alexander’s Palace into museums and turned other area mansions into schools and sanitariums. The community was briefly renamed Soldatskoye Selo (Soldier’s Village), then for the next two decades was dubbed Detskoye Selo (Children’s Village).
In 1937, on the 100th anniversary of the death of Alexander Pushkin, who had studied at the Imperial Lyceum, the community changed its name one final time, to Pushkin.
In 1939, those in power demolished Pushkin’s beautiful St. Catherine’s Cathedral, located in the town center. There were many proposals about what to place in its stead, but the area stood empty until 1960, when a nine-ton statue of Lenin was erected there. St. Catherine’s had been built in 1835-40 under the direction of architect Konstantin Ton, as the local representation of the mammoth Temple of Christ the Savior in Moscow, also designed by Ton in the early 1830s, but not consecrated until 1883 (it was exploded in 1931 and rebuilt from scratch and reconsecrated in 2000).
On September 18, 1941, less than three months after Germany invaded Russia, the German army and Gestapo took over Pushkin, setting up command centers in Catherine’s Palace and Alexander’s Palace and utilizing houses, schools, and sanitariums for barracks. Both palaces were completely looted, including, most famously, the Amber Room in Catherine’s Palace. Tank soldiers lived in the Lyceum, and aircraft gunners lived in the Hermitage. The ground floor of Alexander’s Palace was converted into a garage, the cellar into a prison.
The town was finally liberated on January 24, 1944, and over the last six decades most of Catherine’s Palace has been restored and is now visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Work continues on Alexander’s Palace, which is not quite ready for regular tour groups.
In April 2004, unknown persons toppled the larger-than-life statue of Lenin that had stood for four decades where St. Catherine’s once reigned. Talk soon began about construction of a completely new cathedral, and a foundation was laid in December 2006. On June 27, 2010, the closing day of Pushkin’s anniversary festival this summer, the new church was consecrated.
“St. Catherine’s Cathedral was the main church in Tsarskoye Selo. It was the spiritual symbol of the town,” said Nikolai Grebenyov, head of the city’s Council of Deputies. “One thinks it was a good idea to return it to the religious persons as a present for the 300th anniversary.”
The celebration began on June 23, with a prayer service at Znamenskaya Church in the Lyceum Garden, a special viewing of three staterooms in Alexander’s Palace, and a music festival at Catherine’s Palace. Over the next few days, there were historical exhibitions, a military march, the formal opening of the Hermitage pavilion in Catherine’s Park, concerts, a carnival, fireworks, a parade and a festival of sister cities – of which Pushkin has 24.
Sister city representatives were in attendance from Worcester, Massachusetts; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Cambrai, France; Istanbul, Turkey; and Shannon/Limerick, Ireland. “For more than 20 years, we have had friendship relations with other countries,” said Victor Afanasenko, director of the Pushkin Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Pushkin citizens, he said “are all very happy that people from other countries visit us. They invite them to visit their families. They drink a little bit, visit with friends, relax from the working days of the week, and meet friends from abroad and exchange with them. This is a special place. It is a great day.”
Alevtina Kupriyanchik, who has lived in Pushkin since she was five and was among the tens of thousands who passed through Catherine’s Palace on June 26, declared the celebration to be a “great event,” a time when “people are full of joy and love for each other in their hearts.” She pointed to people “wearing their finest clothes and smiling on their faces” just before a bride and groom walked by, apparently having been married that morning in the palace garden.
“There are people from many countries, and this is a time of peace and future,” Kupriyanchik continued. “When we sing a song and dance, we never want to be in conflict with each other.” RL
* Some sources say the town was called Sarskoye Selo from 1724-1780, and only in 1780 was named Tsarskoye Selo.
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