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The spring of 2013 was unusually significant for devotees of the Romanov dynasty. Though there was little international recognition of the fact, the season marked the 400th anniversary of the accession of Russia's first Romanov tsar. Historically, the story was a most dramatic one, for Mikhail Fedorovich had not seized Russia's crown in battle, nor had he merely inherited it. Instead, the 16-year-old had been elected, at the end of a decade of civil war, by an assembly of Russian citizens. The delegation that travelled from Moscow to the Volga town of Kostroma to invite him to rule had found their hero less than eager to accept the throne, but his subsequent coronation marked the end of an era that Russians still think of as their archetypal Time of Troubles.
The twenty-first-century Romanovs have an official website, and in 2013 this declared Mikhail Fedorovich's election to have been la great deed by Russia's long-suffering people,' placing emphasis on the collective genius of the nation itself.1 In the same tone, Grand Princess Maria Vladimirovna, the self-styled head of the imperial house, appealed to Russia's faithful to remember martyred rulers of more recent times by giving money to the poor. Plans to renovate a string of tsarist-era monuments were hastily approved. The celebrations also gave a welcome boost to tourism in Kostroma and several other Volga towns around what Russians call the Golden Ring.
Jubilees say far more about the societies in which they are staged than they do about historical events. The celebrations of 2013 were generally low-key, their flavour markedly commercial. Crucially, too, there was no tsar to play the leading role; the latest tale of Mikhail Fedorovich, like every reference to the Romanovs since 1918, was haunted by the bloodstained images of his murdered successors, their bodies riddled with bullets. The contrast with the 1913 jubilee, then, could scarcely have been starker. A hundred years ago, a group around Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, seized on the Romanov tercentenary as an opportunity to foster patriotic unity in a country troubled by rapid change and deep social division. Unaware how murderous the future was about to be, however, neither tsar nor people played their parts with any real grace. Far from bringing citizens together, the...