Memorable Dates of Russia: Exhibition project “Uniting Russia: from the Tsarskoye Selo Railway to the Great Siberian Route” marking the 185th anniversary of the railways of Russia presented in Irkutsk

The large-scale exhibition project Uniting Russia: from the Tsarskoye Selo Railway to the Great Siberian Route has opened in the Window to Asia Department of the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History. It marks the 185th anniversary since the opening of the first in Russia Tsarskoye Selo Railway and the 130th anniversary of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The exhibition has been initiated by the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve and is held together with the Russian Railway Museum and the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

The exposition repeats the route of the return from a trip to the East of the future Emperor Nicholas II in 1891: Vladivostok – Irkutsk – Novosibirsk – Chelyabinsk. The journey from the east to the west will continue for ten months – until July 2023. The project started at the end of August: over 3.5 thousand people viewed the exposition in the Primorye State Art Gallery.

The exhibition in Irkutsk (it will run until January 10) features over a hundred items from the collections of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve, Russian Railway Museum (St. Petersburg) and the Lenfilm Studio. They contain paintings, graphics, photographs, documents (including the marginalia of Nicholas II), memorial uniforms, examples of livery and uniform dresses, commemorative signs, objects of decorative arts associated with travels of the emperors, materials for construction and functioning of railways, models of trains and wagons.

The Muravyov-Amursky Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History has provided photographs and a guide for the exhibition, which are associated with Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandovich’s trip to the East, his return through Irkutsk, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway (the emperor led the construction from his residence in Tsarskoye Selo).

The exhibition sections are complemented by archival documents and photographs (in digital format – GARF, RGIA, Chelyabinsk Regional State Archive, RNB), as well as by multimedia projects (VR-journey on the imperial train, RZhD).

The exhibition tells about the role of the railways in the development of territories and fates of the citizens in various regions of the country. It also brigs attention to selected pages of history of the development of railways in Russia, associated with Russian emperors as the main customers of its construction and individual users of this type of transport.

The first “trial” railway was constructed by the will of Nicholas I. Despite the fact that it was considered to be an “entertainment” for the public, and the emperor himself often rode the “express train” for fun to his summer Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, it became an indisputable argument for the continuation of development of the railway sphere in Russia.

The last railway built in the pre-revolutionary Russia was the great Trans-Siberian Railway. It was constructed under the personal supervision of Nicholas II. From the very beginning, the emperor understood the significance of this road for the country’s development. The Trans-Siberian Railway still remains to be an unsurpassed engineering and technical structure in many parameters.

Next January, the exhibition will be relocated from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk, and then to Chelyabinsk. In each city, the exposition is supplemented by objects and documents that match the display’s theme.