Skip to main content
01.09.2022

Uniting Russia: From the Tsarskoe Selo Railway to the Great Siberian Way is the title of a travelling exhibition project initiated by the Tsarskoe Selo Museum, run together with the Russian Railway Museum and Russia's State Archive, and mainly sponsored by Russian Railways.

Commemorating the 185th anniversary of Russia's first railway of Tsarskoe Selo and the 130th anniversary of the Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR, originally called the Great Siberian Way), the exhibition was launched on 31 August in Vladivostok whose historical railway terminal is remarkably close in style to Emperor's Tsarskoe Selo Station (awaiting restoration since WWII). 

The exhibition follows the route the future Nicholas II took on the way back from his East Asia trip in 1891: Vladivostok - Irkutsk - Novosibirsk - Chelyabinsk. The project will run for nine months until July 2023.

Over 100 artifacts from the collections of Tsarskoe Selo, the Russian Railway Museum and the Lenfilm Movie Studio are now showcased at the Primorye Art Gallery in Vladivostok. On display are paintings, graphics, photographs, documents (including those with marginal notes handwritten by Nicholas), uniforms, commemorative signs, applied arts objects related to imperial trips, railway construction and work materials, as well as models of trains and rail cars.

Especially noteworthy is Nicholas' aide-de-camp uniform of 1882 pattern, which he wore laying the foundation stone of TSR in Vladivostok on 19 May 1891. That was Russia's last pre-revolutionary railway whose construction was controlled personally by Nicholas II from his residence at Tsarskoe Selo.