Museums of Russia: The exhibition "Tsarskoye Selo. 1917. The day before… "

In the Museum-Reserve "Tsarskoye Selo" was opened an exhibition "Tsarskoe Selo. 1917. The day before…". The exposition was located in the Cameron Gallery. The exhibition reflects the turning points: the life of the family of the last Russian emperor under arrest in the Alexander Palace, the creation of a museum in the imperial residence.

The exhibition tells about the life of the Tsarskoye Selo residence in February-October 1917, in the period between the two revolutions. The residence in Tsarskoye Selo still exists, but has already lost its imperial status. In the Alexander Palace, the last Russian emperor and his family still live, but already as citizen Romanov, who was arrested by the Provisional Government. Since the spring of 1917, the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoye Selo has been running an Artistic and Historical Commission, organized to inventory the nationalized property and create a museum in the former residence.

The exposition presents materials from the Kunsthistoricheskaya Komissiya, photographs, works of art and decoration items from the Catherine and Alexander Palaces, witnesses of the events of 1917, as well as the memorial items of the imperial family.

In the section dedicated to Imperial Russia, one can see the ceremonial costumes of the crowned owners of Tsarskoye Selo, uniforms, personal belongings and letters, as well as newsreels of the early XX century, in which one of the private cameramen of Nicholas II, Alexander Yagelsky, depicted significant events in the life of the Court.

The tragic pages of the abdication of Nicholas II and the arrest of the imperial family will illustrate unique materials from the collection of the State Archives of the Russian Federation - acts of denials, a magazine of meetings of the Provisional Government (the exhibition is presented in digital format). A block of photographs, also included in the exposition, tells about the life of the family during the arrest in the Alexander Palace.

Already in May 1917, an order was issued for the creation of art and historical commissions for work in suburban palaces "for the reception, registration and systematization of both the artistic and the economic aspects of all movable and immovable property of the former Palace Administrations." The main task of the commission is the compilation of new inventories (on the basis of similar documents of the 1860s and 1910s), which in fact became the first museum inventory books and catalogs. An important component of this large-scale and extremely time-consuming work was the creation of photographs of the most valuable items and interiors of the palace. In 1917 the photographer Andrey Zest made color photographs of the interiors of the Catherine Palace, and after the departure of the family of Nicholas II into exile - the private rooms of the former crowned owners in the Alexander Palace.

Visitors will see how the new inventories and inventory cards, designed by the Historical and Art Commission, looked; autochromes of Andrew Zeest; drawings showing the arrangement of furniture and objects on the residential half of the Alexander Palace.

One of the sections is devoted to the evacuation of museum valuables to Moscow in the autumn of 1917. In connection with the offensive of the German troops on Petrograd on the orders of the Provisional Government, the most significant items from the Tsarskoye Selo collection in September-October 1917 were sent to the Moscow Kremlin, where they were stored for five years.

The work carried out by the commission under the leadership of George Lukomsky allowed June 9, 1918 to open the Catherine Palace for visitors, on June 23 - the ceremonial halls of the Alexander Palace and simultaneously the pavilions "The Hermitage", "Admiralty", "Concert Hall", "Arsenal" and others. Former imperial residences became museums.