ABSTRACT
The city's population, at roughly 100,000, is five times what it was in Dmitriev's day. But in a sense Tobol'sk is now a smaller place. Then, it was an administrative capital, symbol of state power in Siberia, critical trade node in a largely agrarian empire; now, it is a minor city in a largely urban country. The Tobol'sko-centrism increasingly manifest in the city's physiognomy and scale was never more compelling than on August 30, 1782, the day of the ceremonial opening of the Tobol'sk Viceroyalty. Tobol'sk has been renovated to suit the tastes of a nostalgic post-Soviet present. Its refurbished complex of buildings atop Trinity Hill serves to make the city more legible for those distraught by its modern trajectory from stately Siberian capital to transit node on the margin of Western Siberia's oil and gas fields.
