As now, the century then was living out its last years. And as now, old people felt a sadness that what was coming, which promised mankind the flowering of science and serene well-being, had nothing to do with them. Young people, though, were living with a presentiment of what was to be.
The two happiest of young people, Nicky and Alix, in love, joined in marriage, and rulers of one-sixth of the world, were also living this happy future. The day of their coronation, set for 1896, promised to be the prologue to the even happier life that awaited them in the new century.
May 14, 1896. Moscow, the Kremlin. In ancient Assumption Cathedral, the sacred coronation rite was in progress. Candles burned … cherubic singing a cappella…. He took the large crown from the metropolitan’s hands and placed it on his own head. She went down on her knees before him…. A small diamond crown already sparkled on her golden hair.
July 17, 1918. Ekaterinburg. “The bodies were put in the hole and the faces and all the bodies generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn’t be recognized and to prevent any stink from them rotting [it was not a deep hole]. We scattered it with dirt and lime, put boards on top, and rode over it several times—no trace of the hole remained; The secret was kept” (from the Note of Yakov Yurovsky, who directed the execution of the last tsar and his family).
“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”
The last tsaritsa from the house of Romanov read these words from the prophet Obadiah (1:4) to her daughter in the Ipatiev house. On the family’s last day of life.
The progenitor of the Romanov clan was Andrei Ivanovich Kobyla, a distinguished émigré from the land of Prussia, where, in the fourteenth century, a long and fruitful line that included many of Russia’s most distinguished families began with Kobyla and his brother Feodor. Kobyla’s great-great-granddaughter Anastasia became wife and tsaritsa to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Thus Andrei Kobyla’s descendants allied themselves with the ancient dynasty of Muscovite tsars.
The tsaritsa’s brother, Nikita Romanovich, was particularly close to the cruel tsar. But Ivan the Terrible died, and in his will and testament he appointed Nikita Romanovich guardian and councilor to his son, the new tsar, Feodor.
The struggle for power commenced.
Slandered by the all-powerful Boris Godunov, Tsar Feodor’s brother-in-law, the eldest of Nikita Romanovich’s sons was forced to take monastic vows under the name Filaret.
With the death of Tsar Feodor in 1598 Rurik’s ancient dynasty came to an end, whereupon ensued a period of unprecedented turbulence for old Russia—the Time of Troubles. Selected to be tsar was Boris Godunov, whom the people suspected of having murdered the infant Dmitry, heir to the throne. In the midst of unimaginable famine and death, Godunov died and the Poles invaded Russia, putting a tsar-pretender, the False Dmitry, on the Russian throne. Russia suffered widespread impoverishment, cannibalism, brigandage.
It was then, during the Time of Troubles, that Filaret Romanov was returned from exile and made metropolitan of Rostov.
The Poles were driven from Moscow, and the false tsar perished. And at last, in 1613, the Assembly of the Land put an end to the terrible interregnum.
The son of Metropolitan Filaret, Michael Romanov, who was at that moment at Kostroma’s Ipatiev monastery, was unanimously elected tsar by the Assembly of the Land on February 21, 1613. Thus began the three-hundred-year history of the house of Romanov.
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The mysticism of history: the monastery whence the first Romanov was called upon to rule was the Ipatiev; the house where the last ruling Romanov, Nicholas II, parted with his life was the Ipatiev house, named after the building’s owner, the engineer N. N. Ipatiev.
A Michael was the first tsar from the house of Romanov; a Michael was also the last, in whose favor Nicholas II tried unsuccessfully to abdicate the throne.