Russia entries are highlighted in RED;xNLx;;xNLx;Fabergé and Sandringham entries are highlighted in GREEN;xNLx;;xNLx;British/ world contextual events are highlighted in BLUE
He receives tuition from goldsmiths in Germany, France and England, and savours the art treasures of renowned museums and galleries across Europe.
Tsar Alexander II oversees a series of liberal reforms aimed at modernising Russia. The most significant reform saw the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. A period of major social, political and economic upheaval ensues
Albert Edward (Bertie), Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria’s eldest son marries Princess Alexandra of Denmark (Alix to her family). They begin life at Sandringham Hall in Norfolk.
Danish Princesses Alexandra and Dagmar, who will become the British and Russian consorts, will be enemies of the new German state
Returning to St. Petersburg, Carl joins the family jewellery firm.
Prussia wages war on Denmark, making major territorial gains in the first of the conflicts leading to German unification in 1871
Princess Dagmar of Denmark (Minny to her family) marries the Russian Tsarevich, the future Tsar Alexander III..
Tsar Alexander III, as a result of his father’s assassination by political terrorists, accedes to the Russian throne and sets about returning Russia to absolutist rule.
Alexander III orders the first Fabergé Easter egg for his wife Maria Feodorovna (formerly Princess Dagmar). They will continue until his death in 1894. Tsar Nicholas II then doubles the commission, with one egg for his mother and another for his wife.
Alexandra of Hesse (Victoria’s grand-daughter) becomes empress consort.
In Britain, the Labour Party is founded.
Widespread migration leads to Moscow and St. Petersburg accommodating populations of over one million people, placing them Europe’s ten most populous cities.
His display – including flowers for the first time - wins the gold medal for work ‘reaching the extreme limits of perfection’.
Queen Victoria dies and the nine year reign of King Edward VII (Bertie) begins. Nicholas II gives the Basket of Flowers egg to his wife Alexandra as an Easter gift
Novelist and intellectual Leo Tolstoy is excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church, after sympathising with anarchism, pacifism and alternative religions.
A Fabergé branch opens in London, the only one outside the Russian empire.
The Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) causes Fabergé to suspend production of imperial Easter eggs for two years
After a humiliating military defeat to Japan and widespread popular revolt, the Tsarist regime is forced into political concessions – including the establishment of the Duma (Russia’s first parliament) and the creation of basic civil rights.
The Liberal Party wins an election landslide with a radical welfare programme that includes old age pensions and national insurance
The London Fabergé branch receives its biggest commission - to model animals on Edward VII and Alexandra’s beloved Sandringham estate in Norfolk
Four years after Edward VII’s personal initiative to form a defensive alliance, Britain, France and Russia enter into a series of bilateral agreements which indirectly create the Triple Entente. This leaves Germany surrounded.
The Liberal Government announce a ‘People’s Budget’, which is initially blocked by the House of Lords, a move which leads to its powers being reduced in the Parliament Act of 1911.
King George V accedes to the throne.
The Romanov dynasty celebrates its tercentenary. Public events across the empire are greeted with apparent enthusiasm.
Alexandra and Maria Feodorovna are together at Sandringham when war breaks out. With Russia and Britain joining forces against Germany, the dowager empress says, “My life’s work is complete”.
Britain and Russia enter the First World War against Germany and Austria-Hungary in August. Russia performs poorly, despite popular support.
In Russia, the firm turns to war production in base metals (pots, dishes, bullets and hand grenades). The Sandringham estate is hit in the first zeppelin raids. The Sandringham Company, a volunteer force in the Norfolk Regiment, is devastated at Gallipoli.
Russia continues to struggle on the battlefield, losing much of its western borderlands. As a result, Nicholas II takes over as Commander in Chief of the Russian armies.
Kazimir Malevich issues his artistic manifesto, From Cubism to Suprematism, and displays Black Square at the 'Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting (0.10)' in Petrograd (the renamed capital city).
In December, the key Romanov confidant Grigorii Rasputin is murdered in Petrograd by nobles concerned about his influence.
The February revolution sees demonstrations in the capital turn into open revolt, forcing the abdication of Nicholas II. A self-appointed Provisional Government takes power, but Russia continues fighting in the war. Exiled opponents of the Tsarist regime, including Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, return to Russia.
Weakened by rapid inflation, political opposition and war losses, the Provisional Government narrowly survives a military coup in August. Lenin orchestrates the seizure of critical centres of power on October 25th by armed Bolsheviks in what they proclaim as the October Revolution.
In November, Russians vote for the Constituent Assembly, the democratic Parliament promised by the Provisional Government. Lenin orders its suppression in favour of a Bolshevik dictatorship after his party fail to win a majority .
The new Bolshevik government signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, securing Russia’s exit from the war at the expense of vast territorial concessions .
The newly created People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment lends state support to radical artists who saw the revolution as an opportunity to further artistic visions and build a new proletarian culture .
Civil War erupts between the Bolsheviks’ Red Army (led by Leon Trotsky) and their opponents, the Whites, a loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces scattered across Russia. In July, Nicholas II, his wife and children are murdered in Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks.
The House of Fabergé is closed and Carl Fabergé’s property is confiscated. He escapes on the last diplomatic train to leave revolutionary Petrograd for Riga. When revolution reaches Latvia in November, he flees to Germany. Most of the family reunite in Switzerland, where Carl dies in 1920
In November, an armistice between the Allies and Germany ends the First World War.
In December, suffrage is extended to all adult men and to women over 30 in Britain .
Vladimir Tatlin designs a 400 metre high tower intended for the headquarters of the Communist International movement in Petrograd, but it is never built.
George V sends the warship HMS Marlborough to the Crimea on to rescue Maria Feodorovna. She recuperates at Sandringham .
The New Economic Policy restores elements of a free market in order to contain unrest and promote economic revival. In the Russian Civil War, White forces begin to disintegrate, leading a Red Army victory the following year.
After two years of failing health, Lenin dies. Petrograd will be renamed in Leningrad in his honour. Lenin’s death leads to a prolonged struggle for the Party leadership.
In Britain, the first Labour government is formed.
In Britain, the Trades Union Congress calls a General Strike in May in a dispute over wage cuts and worsening working conditions.
Joseph Stalin emerges as the clear leader of the Soviet Union by outmanoeuvring rivals Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, and identifying himself as Lenin’s true heir.
Stalin vows to build ‘socialism in one country’ without the need for revolution or external support. Stalin implements a Five Year Plan of rapid industrialization and agricultural collectivization.
Maria Feodorovna dies in Denmark
Four years after the beginning of Stalin’s cultural revolution (a campaign against intellectual opposition), Socialist Realism becomes the dominant art form in the Soviet Union. Artistic independence ends.
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