The Summer Palaces of the Romanovs

This is truly a beautiful book. A brilliant collection of photos depict the well-preserved collections of the Russian Tsars in perfect detail. The interiors of the summer palaces are decorated with the finest furniture, carpets, and artwork, rivalling Versailles in every way. But there’s a less positive side to what I see here. Mark Twain once described Russia as a vast expanse of nothing, and while the magnificence of these treasures should challenge such a notion, I think it proves it.

When Catherine the Great started building these palaces, she was really just spending the peoples’ money on them. She was an absolute monarch, and she could do anything she wanted. Most Russians were serfs and that made them property, nothing more. Whatever money she spent on her houses was at the expense of education, so while her magnificent palaces sprang up, the rest of the country was illiterate and starving. Keep in mind that Britain was starting the Industrial Revolution, and the German states were making great advances in science, medicine, and engineering. As for the palaces, they were (to paraphrase the famous saying by Prince Charles) a “minute diamond on the face of monstrous carbuncle.”

The Romanov’s summer palaces were indeed full of beautiful things, every inch a work of great craftsmanship. Furniture and décor mimics the finest British, Italian, and French masters, with fine china, gilding, chandeliers, and other bric-a-brac. But there’s nothing in there to celebrate anything about Russia. The vases depict Chinese people (whom the Romanovs didn’t like) and the statues are the usual gilded cherubs. Almost nothing in there depicts Russian folk tales, clothing, or history, except for miniature paintings of military parades. I expected to see huge paintings the size of a bus, depicting Alexander Nevsky hacking up the Teutonic Knights. Maybe there would be one of Peter the Great, standing proudly on the bow of a ship, bombarding Turkish forts on the Black Sea coast? But no, there was absolutely no celebration of Russian life or history. Was it modesty? Or were the Tsars deluded with grandeur?

My research shows that Russia was making strides by the late 1800’s. The army was becoming a more modern fighting force, and the empire was pushing into the Caucasus. Yet there’s no depiction of that in the palaces. Russia’s poets and musicians were becoming renowned in Europe, yet there were no paintings of Pushkin or Tchaikovsky in there. I even read of a Russian artist named Ivan Billibin who illustrated his country’s folk tales with his beautiful artwork, influenced by Japanese prints. Yet there was none of his artwork in the Tsar’s residence. You’d think Russia’s emperors would have been patrons of the country’s up and coming artists, but they weren’t. Perhaps the Tsar’s palaces are monuments to how ignorant they were as to what was going on?

There is one thing I really wonder about after reading this book, and that is why the palaces are so well preserved in the first place. You’d think the Soviets would have looted everything in there and turned the buildings into hospices for WWII veterans or something. What I suspect is that the Soviets were keeping everything intact in case they ever needed to sell it. Faberge eggs, for instance, were brought to the USA and sold to collectors in the early 1930’s in order to gain foreign currency, and perhaps Stalin figured he could always use the rest of the collections to barter with.

This truly is a great book, regardless of how these monuments came into being. The photographers did an excellent job at capturing the majesty of these palaces, and the writers describe the artwork perfectly.