State Museum Preserve Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg

Doct. Nikolai S. Tretiakov,
Director

State Museum Preserve Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg official site

Catherine the Great began to construct a palace at Pavlovsk for her eldest son, Pavel, later the Emperor Pavel. Unversed researchers often erroneously assume that Catherine did not love Pavel. This is not so. At this time, Pavel was twenty three years of age. He was short of stature and did not enjoy good health, but he was her legitimate son, her own flesh and blood. Pavel was at that time not much older than twenty, the age when young men are most susceptible to love. Ever since his childhood, however, he had been haunted by the legends surrounding his father's murder and the role that Grigory Orlov and Catherine had played in the episode. Back then, events in Russia had unfolded in a fashion remarkably similar to the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", with Pavel in the role of Hamlet, his mother as Gertrude and Orlov as Claudius.

Pavel was of course to receive the gift of the estate of Pavlovsk in 1777. He had found a site for romantic love and gave himself over to it completely. Pavel had of course never seen or possessed anything like it. His father had been murdered, his mother ruled the country and he himself had been raised by strangers. This did not, however, prevent him from acquiring a sound education. A good education was at that time regarded as an essential attribute of any aristocratic young man. Pavel was a diligent student and received a brilliant schooling in mathematics, engineering, shipbuilding and history. He could speak five languages and was deeply religious.

The appearance of her first grandson Alexander in 1777 prompted Catherine to present Pavel with one thousand acres of "woodlands, ploughed fields and two villages with peasants" lying along the bank of the river Slavianka, four miles from Tsarskoe Selo.

Pavel and Maria then asked Catherine for permission to travel abroad to Western Europe. In September 1781, under the pseudonyms of the Count and Countess Severny, the heir to the Russian throne and his wife set off on a journey that lasted fourteen months and took in Poland, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Pavel and Maria took in all the tourist sights, including palaces, fountains, parks, churches, educational and scientific establishments and gobelin, porcelain and furniture factories.

In every town that they stopped in, Pavel and Maria visited artists' studios and antique shops. When visiting the famous Sevres pottery, they acquired various porcelain goods for the astronomical sum of 300,000 livres.

The palace at Pavlovsk remained under the tender and loving care of Maria Feodorovna. Pavlovsk became the child of this clever, talented, purposeful and energetic princess, who gave it forty years of her life and all her strength and energy. Pavlovsk was, without a doubt, the greatest creation of this remarkable woman. Over her 67 years, she bore and raised Pavel ten children, surviving his tragic death and doing everything in her power so that the idyllic, Jean Jacques Rousseau-like Pavlovsk might grow into an important part of Russian cultural life.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government nationalized the palace and turned it into a museum.

In the summer of 1941, Nazi Germany attacked Russia.

When the German forces reached the outskirts of Leningrad (S.-Petersburg now), special Sonderkommanden entered Pavlovsk in order to search for works of art to be sent to Germany. Pavlovsk, like all the other palaces, was stripped of everything of value. More than 30,000 works of painting and applied art are now listed as missing and there are virtually no hopes of ever finding them again.

Pavlovsk was only retaken in January 1944 and presented a sorry sight to the liberating troops.

The government in Moscow, however, disagreed. It was its intervention that led to what later became known as the miracle of the twentieth century — the restoration of the suburban palace museums and parks lying outside Leningrad. Work began in the spring of 1944 and was headed by Anna Zelenova right up until 1978, when Pavlovsk became the first palace to rise again from the ashes.

The restoration of the Pavlovsk palace provided an excellent school of training for all the restorers and museum assistants of post-war Leningrad. And today the Pavlovsk ensemble occupies its previous place in the "diamond necklace" of palaces and parks adoring St Petersburg.