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'. 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. In the celebrations, the symbols of the tsar were in the centre, with all symbols of the state pushed far into the background.
