Pushkin

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Pushkin, Leningrad/Russia Saari, Sarskoye Selo, Tsarskoye Selo, Detskoye Selo The settlement was captured from the Finns in 1708 when its original Finnish name meant ‘Island’, here to mean raised ground within an area of lower lying terrain. It was renamed ‘Island Village’, an adaptation from the Finnish saari and the Russian selo ‘village’. As a result of its development as a royal palace after Peter I the Great^† had given it to his wife Catherine, it became known locally as the ‘Tsar's Village’, thus Tsarskoye Selo from c.1728. Following the merger of Tsarskoye and Sofiya in 1808 the village's name was officially recognized as Tsarskoye Selo ‘Tsar's Village’. To the Bolsheviks it represented a despised symbol of Tsarist autocracy and so a month after their revolution in October 1917 and the removal of the imperial family, the palace was taken over as a holiday camp for children and workers' families; the name was changed to Detskoye Selo ‘Children's Village’. In 1937 it was changed again to mark the centenary of the death of Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), Russia's greatest poet, who was a student at the Lyceum here. There are towns called Pushkino in Moscow and Saratov Provinces, and one called Pushkinskiye Gory ‘Pushkin Hills’, where Pushkin is buried, in Pskov Province.

Pushkin , city (1989 pop. 95,000), NW European Russia, a residential and resort suburb of St. Petersburg. It produces road-building equipment and has an important botanical institute. Founded in 1708 under Peter I on the site of a Finnish village, it was first called Tsarskoye Selo [czar's village] and was renamed Detskoye Selo [children's village] after the Bolshevik Revolution. Pushkin served as a royal residence from 1725, with the huge baroque style summer palace of Catherine II (built 1748-62) and that of Alexander I (built 1792-96) in the classical mode. The vast park at Pushkin had innumerable rococo style grottoes, pavilions, canals, lakes, and bridges. The school where the poet Pushkin studied was opened is now a museum. In 1837 the city was joined with St. Petersburg by Russia's first railroad. Heavily damaged during World War II, Pushkin and its palaces have since been restored.

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