work on the imperial palace. It is acknowledged as a masterpiece of Russian baroque. The stucco decorations of the facade of the immense palace were gilded so lavishly that, according to contemporaries, in sunlight one could not bear to look at the building directly. To correct this defect and reduce maintenance costs, the gilding was soon replaced by ochre paint. The contrast between the azure paint of the walls and the ochre color of the decorations continues to define the palace’s look. Further notable changes and additions were made during the reign of Empress Catherine II (1762-1796). Among them was the construction of the classicist Alexander Palace, commissioned by the empress to honor her favorite grandson and future monarch, Alexander I. Aside from the elaborate palaces decorated with impressive art works, Tsarskoye Selo also featured lavish parks and the quarters for various regiments of the imperial guard. In the words of the poet Nikolai Gu-milev, “barracks, parks, and palaces” defined the appearance of the town.
Numerous grand dukes lived in Tsarskoye Selo throughout its existence, but the town gained greater official stature after 1905, when Nicholas II made it his permanent residence. It was in Tsarskoye Selo that the last emperor of Russia was arrested by the Provisional Government during the February Revolution of 1917, and it was from there that he was exiled with his family to Siberia in July of that year.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
View of the Catherine Palace at Tsarkoye Selo, from an 1807 publication by Georg Reinbeck in which he describes his 1805 travels from St. Petersburg through Moscow and other Eastern European destinations to Germany in a series of letters. THE ART
The Lyceum, a school for the offspring of the nobility, opened in Tsarskoye Selo in 1811. The stated mission of this prestigious school was to train young men for service to the state. Between 1817 and 1895 the Lyceum produced fifty-one classes, shaping the cr?me de la cr?me of the empire’s political and cultural elite. The most famous graduate was the poet Alexander Pushkin, whose poetry featured repeated allusions to his alma mater and immortalized Tsarskoye Selo as a literary image. Among the numerous other prominent alumni were literary figures Anton Delvig, Lev Mei, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin; scholars Grigory Danilevsky, Yakov Grot, and Alexander Veselovsky; Decembrists Wilhelm K?chelbecker and Ivan Pushchin; and counselor Alexander Gorchakov.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the poets Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev, and Innokenty Annensky made Tsarskoye Selo their home. Numerous painters, attracted by the allure of the Russian Versailles, were also drawn to the town. Among them were Alexandre Benois, Mstislav Dobozhinsky, Alexander Golovin, Yevgeny Lansere, and Konstantin Somov.
During the Soviet period, Tsarskoye Selo was the subject of both passive neglect and active destruction. The town’s central church (St. Catherine’s Cathedral, erected in 1840, designed by Konstantin Ton) was detonated in 1939. A large statue of Lenin, erected in 1960, still stands in its place. During World War II, the town was captured and looted by the Nazis. Much of its artistic heritage was destroyed and only partially reconstructed in the postwar period. Despite all this, Tsarskoye Selo remains an important tourist destination. Retaining an aristocratic aura, the town constitutes a cultural preserve of literary and artistic traditions.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1579
See also: ARCHITECTURE; NICHOLAS II; PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH
Kurth, Peter. (1995). Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra. Boston: Little, Brown. Wortman, Richard S. (1995). Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Iskenderov, A. A., and Raleigh, Donald J., eds. (1996). The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1981). The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias. New York: Dial Press.
The term tsar and its variants derive from the Latin word caesar, or emperor. During the fifteenth century, Muscovite grand prince Ivan III began using the term to introduce an added level power and majesty to his rule. In 1547 his son, sixteen-year old prince Ivan IV, crowned himself tsar of all Russia. Indicating the increased significance of Orthodoxy, Ivan adopted other conventions from the Byzantine Empire at the same time, including a variety of court rituals and the double-headed eagle emblem. The eagle signified the uniting of eastern and western Christianity through Ivan III’s marriage to Sophia Paleologue, a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI.
Russian leaders continued to be tsars until 1721, when Peter the Great styled himself as “Emperor of All Russia.” Peter chose the more Western style because he wanted to reflect Russia’s observance of the rule of law and entry into the Age of Reason. However, the term tsar remained in common usage to designate the Russian ruler.
Tsar is used for the male sovereign; his consort is the tsarina. In the event of a female sovereign, such as Catherine the Great, she is crowned tsar-itsa. The heir to the throne is designated the tsare-vich a word derived from tsar plus the male patronymic suffix “evich.”
The term itself has outlived the Russian monarchy. Russian leaders who exhibit autocratic tendencies, most notably Boris Yeltsin, have been derided or lampooned as tsars (e.g., Tsar Boris). Even in the United States, individuals with considerable personal authority have been dubbed tsar. For example, the leader of U.S. drug policy was informally known as the drug tsar. See also: AUTOCRACY
1580
(1857-1935), Russian space technology expert.
Born in Izhevskoye, Tsiolkovsky was a pioneer of rocket technology and astronautics, known in Russia as cosmonautics. Tsiolkovsky might be termed the “Robert Goddard of Russia,” after the American rocket expert, who, like Tsiolkovsky, began testing rockets in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Tsiolkovsky is generally credited with deducing for the first time the laws of motion of a rocket as a body of a variable mass in space without gravity. This, in turn, demonstrated the possibility of using rockets for interplanetary exploration. He also investigated the effect of air drag on rocket motion. Such theories and research became subjects of his writings, which included Space Rocket Trains, published in 1929, which explored the theory of multistage rockets.
Among Tsiolkovsky’s major influences on future space flight, and in particular on the successful orbiting of the world’s first sputnik (in October 1957), was his work on liquid-propellant engines. In such research and writing he developed the specifications for rocket-engine design. Modern rocket engines still incorporate many of his basic ideas.
Much attention is given in Tsiolkovsky’s writings to problems of organizing interplanetary travel and its prospects. He argued that beginning with artificial earth satellites (sputniks), interplanetary stations and flights to the planets could become a way of establishing communities in outer space and adapting space for human needs.
With the advent of Soviet power in Russia, Tsiolkovsky’s work received the full support of the state. In 1918 he was elected to the Socialist Academy of Science. Later honors included membership
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
