“20 October, 1894. My God! My God! What a day! The Lord has called our adored, precious, fiercely beloved Papa to Him. My head is spinning. Don’t want to believe it. It seems so unlikely, this terrible reality! We spent all morning around him. At about half past 2 he took Communion. Oh, Lord! I stood at the head of his bed for more than an hour holding his head. The death of a saint….
“21 October. In our deep sadness, the Lord gives us quiet, luminous joy. At 10 my Alix was consecrated. There was an office of the dead, and then the other.… The expression on precious Papa’s face was marvelous, as if he were about to laugh. It was cold and the sea howled.
“There was a fuss about where to celebrate my wedding. Mama and I feel it would be better to do it here, while dear Papa is under our roof, but all the uncles are against it, they say I have to do this in Peter[sburg].”
The uncles won out. No sooner had Alexander died than their voice was heard.
As always, the ascent to the throne was attended by rumors. According to one version, the dowager empress wanted to replace Nicholas with her favorite son, Michael, and tried to force Nicholas to abdicate.
But that was only a rumor. The renowned minister of her husband and, now, her son, Sergei Witte, recorded in his Memoirs his conversation with her about Nicholas before Alexander’s death:
“You mean to say that the sovereign does not have the character of an emperor?”
“That is correct,” replied Marie Feodorovna. “In the event that anything should happen, Misha must take his place, although actually he has less will and character.”
Very soon something did happen. Alexander was younger than fifty when he died. This giant had seemed immortal, and when Nicholas suddenly learned about his father’s illness, he was overcome with fright. His friend Sandro recorded Nicholas’s exclamations of panic in his memoirs. So that, evidently, another rumor that emerged from inside the walls of the Livadia Palace was true: Nicholas begged to be allowed to abdicate. But Alexander was unbending: the law of succession must be observed. Nicholas must take the throne. And to his great joy, to strengthen his resolve, Nicholas was allowed to take the Hessian princess for his wife.
Petersburg, a gloomy autumn day. The funeral train arrived at the platform of Nikolaevsky Station.
Witte was among those meeting Alexander’s coffin.
“The new emperor arrived in Petersburg with his fiancée, the future empress, whom they say he loves,” wrote Witte.
Alix’s general forebodings were beginning to take specific form: she rode into Petersburg behind a coffin.
The funeral lasted a long time. While the metropolitan was speaking, the dowager empress collapsed in a fit of hysterics, crying: “Enough! Enough! Enough!”
She buried the emperor in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. A year of mourning was proclaimed in the country, but the wedding had to take place within a week—on the dowager empress’s birthday. Before the wedding they lived apart: she with her sister Ella, at the palace of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; he at his dear Anichkov with his mother.
“My wedding was the continuation of the funeral, only I was dressed in white,” Alix would say later.
——
“13 November, 1894. Anichkov. At 11 we went to mass in our dear church. It was both sad and painful to stand there … knowing that one place would always remain empty. Words cannot express how hard it was and how sorry I feel for dear Mama!… Saw my dear Alix at tea. Then said goodbye to her at 8. We are not to see each other anymore! Until the wedding! It still seems as if all this were leading up to someone else’s wedding. Odd under these circumstances to think about one’s own marriage.”
But why were they in such a hurry with the wedding? Why were they not even waiting out the usual forty days after his father’s death?
November 14 was the last day before the start of a fast that would continue until the beginning of January. So otherwise they would have had to postpone the wedding for quite some time.
“14 November. My wedding day. After coffee with the others went to dress. Put on my hussar’s uniform and at 11.30 went with Misha to the Winter Palace. Troops all along Nevsky. Mama and Alix. We all waited while they completed her toilette in the Hall of Malachite.”
Finally she appeared: she wore a silver dress and a diamond necklace, and over her shoulders lay an ermine-lined, gold brocade mantle with a long train. On her head rested a tiara blazing with diamonds. The new empress.
“At 10 minutes after 12 the entrance into the Great Church began, whence I returned a married man.… We were presented with an enormous silver swan from the family. Alix and I changed clothes, got into a Russian carriage, and went to Kazan Cathedral. A sea of people in the streets.… An honor guard from the Uhlan Life Guard Regiment was waiting in the Anichkov courtyard when we arrived. Mama welcomed us with bread and salt.… All evening we answered telegrams.… Collapsed into bed early, since her [Alix’s] head had begun to pound.”
This rather crude, guardsmanly “collapsed into bed” concealed his embarrassment and fear before the mystery of her virginity. And she? It is no accident that he noted her headache. On her wedding night she decided to write of her happiness in his diary, but strange words appeared in her entry: “When this life ends, we shall meet again in another world and remain together always.” She was tormented by the same sadness and odd fear. The young empress tried to explain it away by the recent funeral ceremonies—by this wedding mixed with grief.
“ALL IS FULL OF PEACE AND JOY”
The dowager empress did all she could to keep them with her: at first they lived in Anichkov Palace.
“15 November. So, a married man….
“16 November. All morning saw dear Alix only for one hour. We went for a ride.… Strange sitting beside her in Peter[sburg].
“17 November. Am inexpressibly happy with Alix. It is a shame my duties take up so much time, which I would prefer to spend exclusively with her.”
She was embarrassed by her poor Russian, and her active nature was tortured by the fact that she could only look on as the dowager empress and ministers managed her Nicky. But her voice was heard more and more frequently in his diary. She wrote admonitions: “First your duty, then rest and relaxation.” “Do not fear danger, the Lord is near and protects you.” The harmony of their union, his softness and her firmness. She thirsted to be at his side in everything. At his side—that is, to rule him. As yet she did so only in his diary.
A year of mourning: no balls or entertainments; they were left to themselves. He, after his duties, which “take up so much time”; she, all day long. At three o’clock, free after ministers’ reports and other state duties, they would leave Anichkov and ride down Nevsky, then on to the Winter Palace, where their apartment was being readied, and then back to Anichkov Palace—and again they were together. In the evening, he read aloud to her, as his father used to do. When the first snow fell, they went to Tsarskoe Selo, and there for the first time they spent an entire week alone.
On the last day of the year they wrote in his diary.
He: “Along with this irreparable woe, the Lord has rewarded me with unimaginable happiness by giving me Alix.”
She: “The last day of the old year. What happiness to spend it together. My love has grown so deep, so strong, so pure—it knows no bounds. May the Lord bless you and keep you.” And a verse from Lermontov: “Transparent twilight, icon lamp. Bowed head and cross—symbol of holiness. All is full of peace and joy.”
She had calmed down. Love filled her, and she longed to proclaim it. With him.
——
When he ascended to the throne, so much was expected of him. Russia’s unfailing expectation of a good new tsar! His image had already been created: as heir he had tried to slip out of the palace to have a good time (he thirsted for freedom); he had been in love with a Jewess (he would not oppress national minorities); he had put a police chief in the guardhouse for twenty-four hours (an end to police tyranny). These hopes produced endless requests from local elected councils for all manner of reform.
Pobedonostsev decided it was time to put a halt to all of this. Nicholas had to deliver an appropriate speech (written for the tsar by Pobedonostsev himself).
On January 17 (!), 1895, the young emperor and the new empress (who was baptized in St. Feodor’s Cathedral, becoming Alexandra Feodorovna) showed themselves to the country for the first time.
Representatives of the local councils, the cities, and the Cossacks gathered at Anichkov Palace. The sight of this multitude of people, who Pobedonostsev asserted harbored treason and whom Nicholas must now put in check, threw the timid Nicholas into confusion. The speech lay in the emperor’s lambskin cap.
He begins reading too loudly, in a breaking falsetto: “Recently at certain meetings of local councils we have heard the voices of people carried away by senseless dreams.” Out of his confusion and tenseness, he suddenly shouts this last sentence while staring at the representative of the Tver nobility. The tsar’s shout startles the old man, so that the gold platter with bread and salt which, according to ancient custom, members of the local councils prepared to offer the new sovereign flies from his hands.
The platter rolls across the floor, clanging, the bread falls off, and the gold salt cellar embedded in it rolls behind the platter. The impeccably well bred tsar does what any young man should do when something falls from an old man’s hands: Nicholas tries to pick the platter up, which embarrasses everyone dreadfully. The minister of the court, old Vorontsov-Dashkov, hastily chases after the platter, which is caught.
Aficionados of omens sigh grievously, anticipating sadness in the coming reign.
From the diary of Vladimir Nikolaevich Lamsdorf, a statesman who would become a minister to the tsar:
“January 19, 1895. In town they are directing harsh attacks against the emperor’s speech of the day before yesterday, which made the most distressing impression.… They are also blaming the empress for holding herself as if she had swallowed a yardstick and for not bowing to the deputations.”
Alix was just as shy as her spouse. She fended off embarrassment with her regal bearing.
“A DAUGHTER SENT BY GOD”
In the summer they went south, to the Crimea, to the Livadia Palace, where the dead emperor had so recently sat in his armchair. The dowager empress, Nicky’s brother Misha, his childhood comrade Sandro, and Sandro’s wife, Nicky’s sister Xenia.
Both Xenia and Alix were pregnant.
“31 July, 1895. After tea I was busy when suddenly I learned that a daughter, Irina, had been born to dear Xenia. Alix and I flew to the farm immediately. We saw Xenia and my little niece. Praise God, it all ended for the best.”
This Irina crying in her cradle would become the wife of Felix Yusupov, Grigory Rasputin’s chief assassin.
In the fall they returned to Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. From 1895 until the end of his reign, Tsarskoe Selo would be his family’s principal residence—“that charming, dear, precious place.” In the park, set among small artificial lakes, not far from the opulent Catherine Palace, stood the smaller Alexander Palace half hidden by trees. Here they lived. On the night of November 3, the dowager empress was summoned there from Gatchina.
“3 November. Friday. A day forever memorable for me, during which I suffered much! At 1 in the morning dear Alix began having pains that would not let her sleep. All day she lay in bed in great torment, poor thing. I could not watch her calmly. At about 2 in the morning dear Mama arrived from Gatchina. The three of us—she, Ella, and I—were with Alix constantly. At exactly 9 we heard a child’s squawk, and we all breathed freely! A daughter sent by God, in prayer we named her Olga….
“6 November. In the morning admired our enchanting little girl. She doesn’t seem like a newborn at all because she’s such a large child and her little head is covered with hair.”
The Russian nanny (the assistant to the English nanny) said that “a head covered with hair” was a definite token of the little girl’s future happiness.
In 1918 she would be lucky. She would be standing next to her mother in that half-cellar room. “The tsaritsa and Olga tried to shield themselves with the sign of the cross, but could not do so. Shots rang out” (from the testimony of one of the sharpshooters in the guard, A. Strekotin).
The little girl grew up. A photograph he took: Alix and, next to her mother, on spindly little legs, tiny Olga.
Childishly (to his death he would be sweetly infantile), he kept comparing her with his sister’s daughter.
“21 March, 1896. After mass we brought our daughters to Holy Communion. Ours was perfectly calm, but Irina cried a little….
“1 April. Xenia brought Irina to our little one’s bath. They weigh the same, 20 pounds, but our little girl is chubbier.”
The birth coincided with the end of the mourning period. A brilliant ball is held at the Winter Palace: thousands of guests, the orchestra plays a polonaise, the master of ceremonies strikes his staff three times, Arabs in white turbans throw the doors open wide, the brilliant hall bows—and Nicholas and Alexandra make their entrance.
Alix still spoke Russian poorly, and being among people was quite a task for her. In any case, she was completely taken up with her infant; Alix ruled the nest at Tsarskoe Selo.
Nicholas’s mother and her people ruled the country. There was a story about the flower that righted itself: crushed by her husband’s iron will, the power-loving mother finally righted herself, and so on. In fact, it was all much more tragic and simple. The dowager empress (Aunt Minnie, as she was called in the Romanov family) knew her own son all too well. She feared that someone must inevitably come to influence the good Nicky (at that time she was not thinking of Alix)—perhaps Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, an out-and-out retrograde, or the dead tsar’s other brother Vladimir, as charming as he was stupid. Or Alexander’s dear but foolish third brother, Paul. Any of them could be fatal for the empire. This pragmatic woman believed in herself; she had learned a great deal from Alexander III. Witte’s diaries contain a colorful description of this period: “Ask my mother”—that was Nicholas’s response to Witte on the subject of naming another minister. And elsewhere, again in a difficult moment: “I shall ask my mother.”
Marie Feodorovna demonstrated perspicacity by setting Nicky up with Sergei Yulievich Witte, her husband’s minister of finance. Witte constituted an entire era in himself: a supporter of reforms, a liberal—or, rather, a conservative liberal, as he would have to be after the frost that raged under Alexander. Witte knew that in Russia one cannot change the temperature too quickly.
At first the empress-mother tried to appear everywhere at her son’s side.
Vera Leonidovna:
“At that time the dowager empress suddenly seemed astonishingly young. All Petersburg was intrigued by this puzzle. People said that this stunning woman had decided to undergo an operation in Paris. She had heard about this operation from the future English Queen Alexandra—that is to say, she saw its fruits. Despite her age, Alexandra literally stunned everyone with her youthfulness.… It is a hideous operation: first the epidermis is removed from the face with a sharp spoon and the face is transformed into one great wound. The wound is moisturized and treated and a clear lacquer is applied to the face. This new, tender, pure face has to be treated very carefully so as not to spoil the lacquer. What comes next is even more painful: widening the hair follicles to insert long eyelashes. The entire operation demands heroism.”
The poor woman had to reconcile herself to this pain: the young emperor must have a young mother by his side.
“ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED … SEEMS A DREAM”
Russian sovereigns were crowned in the ancient Assumption Cathedral in Moscow.
On May 6 the imperial train, with the entire large Romanov family aboard, departed for Moscow.
“6 May, 1896. For the first time since our wedding we have had to sleep apart. Very tiresome. Arose at 9. After coffee answered telegrams. Even on the railway they do not leave me in peace. Met in Klin by Uncle Sergei [his former superior, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who had become governor-general of Moscow]. Arrived in Moscow at 5, in dreadful weather: rain, wind, cold.”
——
According to custom, before the ceremonial entry into Moscow for the coronation, the sovereigns had to stay in the old Petrovsky Palace located outside the Tver gate, at that time a verst (less than a mile) from Moscow. Here they spent three days in the castle with Gothic windows and romantic turrets that Catherine the Great had built to commemorate the victory over the Turks.
“7 May. Awoke to the same grim weather.… Received Henry’s [the brother of Emperor Wilhelm] enormous suite, and the princes—of Baden, Wurtemberg, and Japan.”
Royal Europe and all the rest of the world were converging for the coronation of the Russian autocrat.
On the day of the ceremonial entrance into Moscow, for the first time the sun came out, setting Moscow’s countless golden cupolas and churches on fire.
Early morning. The young empress, golden hair to her waist, was standing by a Gothic window, looking out at the towers of the Petrovsky Palace—the continuation of the same fairy tale!
The magnificent procession set out for the Kremlin.
“9 May. The first hard day for us—the day of our entrance into Moscow. By 12 an entire gang of princes had gathered, with whom we sat down to lunch. At 2.30 the procession began to move. I was riding on Norma, Mama was sitting in the first gold carriage and Alix in the second, also alone.”
There was one strange incident. They paid a visit to the holiest place in all of Russia: the Trinity-St. Sergius monastery. But when they got to the monastery, there was no one to meet them. No one remembered until the tsar had already set foot on the territory of the monastery. The mixup was due to poor coordination among those in charge of the coronation ceremonies; but some saw it as an omen: the most honored holy man in Russia, Sergii Radonezhsky, had not greeted the new tsar.
“13 May. Settled in the Kremlin.… We had to receive an entire army of suites of arriving princes. May the merciful Lord help us, may He strengthen us tomorrow and bless us for a peaceful life of work.”
He followed his note with three exclamation points and a cross. The coronation, his marriage to Russia—for the religious Nicholas this was one of the greatest days in his life.
May 14, 1896. The procession from the Kremlin to Assumption Cathedral. The empress-mother wore a small diamond crown, and four generals bore her purple. Then, to cries of “Hurrah,” they entered the cathedral—Nicholas and Alexandra.
“14 May, 1896. A great day, a triumphant day, but for Alix, Mama, and me, difficult in the moral sense.
“We were on our feet since 8 in the morning. The weather, happily, was marvelous. The Red Staircase presented a shining prospect. It all took place in Assumption Cathedral, though it seems a dream, I shall not forget it my whole life long.”
Candles burned … the cherubic song a cappella.… He took the large crown from the metropolitan’s hands and put it on his own head. She went down on her knees before him. He removed the crown and touched the crown of Empire to her head. And again the crown was on his head. A small diamond crown already sparkled on her golden hair. Four ladies-in-waiting fastened it with gold pins. Nicholas and Alexandra took their thrones in the ancient cathedral, and the empress-mother kissed Nicky four times. Then the former empress brushed Alix’s cheek with two kisses.
How young, how happy they were.
They made three deep bows to the people from the Red Staircase.
“At 3 we went to the table in the Hall of Facets.… We had dinner with Mama, who bore up to this entire long trial excellently. At 9 we went to the upper balcony, where Alix lit the lamp on Ivan the Great. Then, afterward, the towers and walls of the Kremlin were illuminated.”
The Hessian princess looked out on the golden cupola of the great cathedral: the capital of half the world, the lights of the ancient capital of Europe and Asia, sparkled.
The empress-mother did indeed bear up to this whole long trial excellently. Her endurance would stand her in good stead the next day as well.
“17 May.… At 1.15 we went to congratulate the ladies. We began with the grand duchesses, then the ladies-in-waiting, the ladies of the town.… My legs ached occasionally….
“We went to the Bolshoi for the ceremonial performance. As usual, they were giving the first and last act of Life for the Tsar and a beautiful new ballet, The Pearl.” This “beautiful new ballet” was the very one in which, to the public’s amazement, Kschessinska appeared onstage.
The empress looked at the stage, at the detested Little K., and longed for revenge.
——
The next morning, on May 18, she wiped both the ill-starred ballet and triumphant Mathilde from her memory. May 18 became one of the most awful days in her son’s reign.
According to custom, after a coronation there was an outdoor fête for the people, where free food, candies, cookies, and so on were given out. As if the tsar were feeding his people. A site for the fête was chosen outside the city limits on Khodynka Meadow. The ancient “bread and circuses”—Caesar and his people.
Gaudy tents had been set up with sweets on Khodynka Meadow. Mugs were to be given out as well, coronation mugs with seals—and all for free. But forgotten ditches lay between the tents and the crowd that had gathered on the evening of the 17th (the number 17 again!). Forgotten thanks to the sloppiness of those in charge. Many were those who had come for the free refreshments; at least half a million crowded around—the crush was so great a bullet could not have slipped through. Everyone was waiting for the present-giving to commence. Then shouts rang out—people were suffocating in the crowd. Someone thought the dainties were being passed out! They pressed in. As this mass of bodies began to move, they fell into the trenches, and the crowd trampled over their heads, crushed their rib cages.
At dawn the broken corpses were carted out.
Twenty-two years later, also at dawn, also in carts, the corpses of Nicholas and his family would also be carried away.
When Minister Witte got into his coach that afternoon to attend the continuation of the festivities, he had already been informed about the two thousand dead on Khodynka Meadow. But by the time the brilliant carriages approached Khodynka everything had already been carefully cleared away—there was no trace of the catastrophe. The sun was shining, all of Europe’s aristocracy was in the pavilion, and a large orchestra was performing a cantata in honor of the coronation. The bedecked public milled around on the field. The sovereign was present as well. Constantly at his side was the governor-general of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, organizer of the coronation ceremonies.
Nicholas was embarrassed and distressed. Everyone noticed.
——
“18 May, 1896. Until now all has gone smoothly, but today a great sin occurred: the crowd that spent the night on Khodynka Meadow waiting for the food and mugs began to press on the structures and there was a terrible crush, and I must add terribly that about 1,300 people were trampled. Learned of this at 10.30.… The news left a repellent impression. At 12.30 we had lunch, then left for Khodynka, to attend this ‘sad national holiday.’
“From the pavilion we watched the crowd surrounding the stage, where they kept playing a hymn and ‘Be praised.’
“We moved on to Petrovsky [Palace], where we received several deputations at the gates.… I had to give a speech.… Dined with Mama. Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”
Meanwhile, the empress-mother had a very clear understanding of what had caused the Khodynka catastrophe. She had mastered her husband’s principles of rule. A command system (autocracy) functions only when the pyramid is crowned by Fear. With the death of the strong emperor, Fear had begun to wane. And just as an organism declares its illness with a high temperature, so with this terrible catastrophe the system had declared what was for her most ruinous: Fear had waned. Nicholas was a weak tsar.
His mother decided that Fear must return. The punishment must be harsh. Was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, her husband’s own brother, guilty? All the better. It was he who must be punished as an example. Then Fear would return.
She demanded the immediate creation of a commission of inquiry and punishment for the guilty parties. Nicholas agreed. One other thing she demanded: the cancellation of all entertainments, including the evening ball being given by the French Ambassador Montebello.
This is the conversation concealed in his note “Dined with Mama.”
“We left Mama’s.”
For the first time, Alix took a stand against his mother. She would not allow the husband of her beloved sister to be fed to the wolves. She would not allow the entertainments canceled. Sergei Alexandrovich was right: everything should go on as if nothing had happened. A coronation occurs once in a lifetime, the ball must take place. (In the depths of her soul she tried to drive out this new, bloody presentiment: first a wedding in the wake of a funeral, now these corpses on Khodynka Meadow. She hoped that the ball and the music and these triumphs would wipe them from her memory.) And again Nicholas consented.
“Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”
Yes, to the horror of the new emperor’s friends, Nicholas and Alix danced at this ball.
As before, constantly at Nicholas’s side was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich: Moscow had already dubbed him the Duke of Khodynka.
Then, on the following days:
“19 May. At 2 went with Alix to Old St. Catherine’s Hospital and toured all the barracks and wards where the unlucky victims from yesterday lay….
“20 May.… At 3 went with Alix to St. Mary’s Hospital, where we saw the second largest group of injured.”
He contributed generously for the victims. But the country noticed only one thing: “Went to the ball at Montebello’s.” His mother had been right.
There is a concept: a tsarlike nature is the sum of qualities that produces the impression of a powerful will. Nicholas did not possess those qualities. “Irresolute compassion,” “paralysis of will”—this is what some said about him. Others objected: he was crafty. In actual fact, he was stubborn. His tragedy was that, although he was stubborn, he was also unable to say a clear no to a petitioner’s face. He was too delicate and well bred to be crudely determinate. He preferred silence to rejection, and as a rule the petitioner took his silence for consent. Nicholas was merely waiting for someone to turn up with his point of view.
When he did, then Nicholas immediately made his decision. As a consequence, the first petitioner, who had taken silence for agreement, cursed the sovereign’s perfidy and spinelessness. That is precisely what happened with Kschessinska. When his mother and the minister crossed the ballerina’s name off the coronation program, he held his tongue—he could not insult his mother. But he waited. When his Uncle Vladimir came to intercede for Mathilde, Nicholas agreed on the spot.
It was the same with Khodynka. He was the one, understanding Alix’s state, who decided to go on with the celebration, but he did not have the nerve to oppose his mother. Then, as if yielding to the demands of Sergei Alexandrovich.… But the legend about his spinelessness had been created, and it would run through his entire life. From the very beginning, his image was merged with an “un-tsarlike nature.”
He appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Count Pahlen, the dowager empress’s protégé. At this point, however, a counterblow followed. Vladimir and Paul, the tsar’s uncles, announced that they would quit the court immediately if Sergei Alexandrovich suffered as a result of the investigation.
It was a risk-free ultimatum. They knew they would not have to back down. Alix stood behind them.
Delicate Nicky was nodding tirelessly in opposite directions, trying to reconcile everyone: Pahlen’s report disappeared into the bowels of the archives. But the Moscow police chief, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich’s man, was dismissed. And to his mother’s horror, Nicholas set off for the estate of the Duke of Khodynka—Ilinskoe.
He had not wanted to be tsar, he had not wanted to distress his mother, he had not wanted anyone to be killed, he had not wanted Alix to be sad. Yet all those things had come to pass. That was what it meant to be tsar.
FEAST FOR THE SLAIN
Even now, outside Moscow, that broad allée with centuries-old trees leading up to the famous estate Ilinskoe is there. The plane trees, a hundred years old then, still stand in the park, as does the ancient church.
“3 June, 1896. The wedding anniversary of Uncle Sergei and Ella.”
This day was celebrated noisily at Ilinskoe. Children ran around the estate: the new generation of the Romanov family.
The nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the sets for the terrible new century were being invisibly raised—and the cast was coming out onstage, the Romanovs who would live in the twentieth century.
Here was a five-year-old boy in velvet pants. This was Dmitry, son of the youngest brother of Nicholas’s father, Grand Duke Paul. Dmitry was born here at Ilinskoe and he killed his own mother.
It happened in Ilinskoe before Nicholas’s marriage to Alix.
Today, too, this path descends from the top of the hill to the Moscow River. At the river’s edge you can find half-ruined wooden piers. It was here, in the hot summer of 1891, enjoying the sun and the morning, that the young woman, the Greek Princess Alexandra, the wife of Grand Duke Paul, ran down to the pier.
As she was getting into a boat she went into premature labor. Soon after, the dead Alexandra’s body was laid out at the estate. But the boy came into the world and survived. He was called Dmitry.
Dmitry’s father, Grand Duke Paul, would be exiled from Russia. After his wife’s death he had a scandalous affair with the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir’s adjutant. Paul decided to marry her, but the dowager empress was implacable, and Paul’s brothers, Sergei and Vladimir, were forced to take her side. This was the first scandal in the Romanov family that poor Nicky had to referee. Nicholas was forced to send “dear Uncle Paul” out of Russia. But Dmitry remained in Russia and with his sister was raised in the family of Sergei Alexandrovich and Ella.
Unable to have their own children, Ella and Sergei Alexandrovich showered all their kindness on Dmitry and his sister.
During the revolution of 1905, the Socialist Revolutionary Kalyaev appeared with a bomb by the Bolshoi Theater. It had all been carefully calculated: as soon as the bright lanterns of the grand duke’s carriage turned on in the storm, Kalyaev threw himself in front of the carriage—and saw Ella and the children in the carriage along with Sergei Alexandrovich. Kalyaev did not dare throw his bomb. An idealistic terrorist of the idealistic nineteenth century! The next time Sergei Alexandrovich went alone, however, Kalyaev did not miss.
After the murder of her husband, Ella devoted herself to the creation of a cloister, and Dmitry lived with his Uncle Nicky. “Papa and Mama”—that was what he called Nicholas and Alix.
Ella had been one of the most captivating women of that time long past. The French ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paléologue, recalled fondly:
“I remember dining with her in Paris … in about 1891. I can still see her as she was then: tall, stern, with shining blue, naive eyes, her tender mouth, the soft features of her face and her straight slender nose … the charming rhythm of her carriage and movements. In her conversation one intuited a marvelous feminine mind—natural, serious, and full of hidden goodness.”
They were having a good time at Ilinskoe. Ioann and Konstantin, the Romanov sons of the poet Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (K.R.), were running through the meadow with Dmitry. The infant Igor, K.R.’s youngest son, was crawling by Grand Duke Paul.
Upstairs, in the house, Ella was singing K.R.’s “Lullaby” as her husband turned pages.
Downstairs, Nicky was watching the sporting children benignly; Alix, greedily. Oh, how Alix dreamt of a son.
At the bottom of a mine shaft, Ella would have the strength to tie a handkerchief around Ioann’s smashed head. Konstantin and Igor would perish in the mine shaft too. And, by the way, Uncle Paul would be shot dead a few months later.
Their carefree life continued. They traveled.
Austria—a visit to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph, then visited Nicky’s grandmother and grandfather (the Danish king and queen), and from there to England to another grandmother, Queen Victoria. The circuit of royal names ended in a republic—France.
Khodynka, which later would be held up to him so many times in Russia, had made no impression on Europe. In France he was received ecstatically: the beautiful empress, the young sovereign, and the enchanting little girl in the open carriage. This was the first visit to Paris of a Russian tsar since his grandfather’s unfortunate visit, when the Pole Berezowski shot at him—in revenge for the oppression of Poland.
No one was shooting now. On the contrary: Nicholas was greeted by enthusiastic crowds and ovations. Only a free republic can get so excited about a monarch.
“On September 25, a bridge named after my papa was laid. We sat in a large tent.… Then the three of us went to Versailles. Crowds of people stood along the entire route from Paris to Versailles. My hand nearly dried up [he was in uniform and kept touching his hand to the brim of his cap].
“We arrived at 4.30 and took a ride around the beautiful park, viewing the fountains.… There truly is a similarity to Peterhof. The halls and rooms of the palace are interesting in this historical aspect.”
He was stunned by the similarity to Peterhof, the tsars summer palace on the Gulf of Finland, and by the “historical aspect.” She stood on the balcony of the palace where during the Revolution the people had burst into Versailles and forced the royal couple out.
In Paris Alix was told about the former site of the pit where all those guillotined had been brought. She and Nicky pictured them together in the dark filth: Danton, Robespierre, the Girondists. They had dared execute their own king. Well, God punished them with madness, and they killed each other. She never forgot all this. Twenty years later, when she heard of Nicky’s abdication, she repeated in French, “abdiqué” (“he has abdicated”).… The secret recesses of the soul.
The year 1896 was coming to an end. Alix was expecting a child, and she believed it would be a boy. How she longed for that boy.
“29 May, 1897. The second happiest day in our family’s life.… At 10 in the morning the Lord blessed us with a little girl, Tatiana. She weighs 8½ pounds and is 54 centimeters long. Read and wrote telegrams.”
THE IMPRACTICABILITY OF DREAMS
He was still ruling on the strength of his dead father, but an unseen volcano was already smoldering: upheaval in the army (which was not written about in the press; the army was always supposed to be loyal) and the terrible famine of 1898 (which was written about a great deal). But their carefree happiness continued. During those years he hunted a lot.
“20 September [1898]. Total game killed: 100 deer, 56 goats, 50 boar, 10 foxes, 27 hares—253 in 11 days.”
Such was the tsar’s hunt. But another hunt had already begun in his country—a hunt in which the trophies would be much more serious: a hunt for people.
It began as soon as the twentieth century was under way. In February 1901 the minister of education was killed by a former student. The student explained that Moscow University was dissatisfied with the minister’s reactionary views. A year later Sipyagin, the minister of internal affairs, was killed. The Finnish governor-general perished, and then Nicholas’s new minister of internal affairs, Vyacheslav Plehve. Thus the Socialist Revolutionaries’ terrorist organization began its operations.
The young tsar was behaving rather strangely. He scarcely mourned. It was as if he immediately forgot about his dead ministers.
The solution to the riddle was in his diary: “We must endure the trials the Lord sends us for our good with humility and steadfastness” (after the murder of Sipyagin).
“Thus is His sacred will” (after the murder of Plehve).
One and the same principal feature in his outlook: God determines everything in this world, the fate of nations and men. It is not for us to guess at God’s intent or the good that each of His actions conceals.
This belief helped Nicholas reconcile himself to the strange impracticability of all his beginnings. He was already getting the feeling that no matter what he did, no matter what he undertook, no matter how good his intentions, it would all either come to naught, turn into its opposite, or simply go to rack and ruin.
As his father had instructed, immediately after his ascent to the throne Nicholas passed a law against drunkenness. Drunkenness—the “Russian disease,” as it was called in Europe. The law was good, but drunkenness did not disappear. People simply paid more for vodka. They continued to drink and ruin themselves as before. The next law was proposed by the irrepressible Witte, who put the Russian ruble on the gold standard so that Russian currency would rise to a level with European currencies (which it did). Now rich Russians created a furor in Europe, losing their fortunes and squandering their estates in Parisian restaurants: “Russian beluga began to spawn gold.” But as a result, many people of good birth, scions of the best families, were ruined. And those same gold coins on which Nicholas’s profile was stamped came to rule his country more and more.
THE RUSSIAN TSAR GOES TO THE PEOPLE
It was at this time that Alix developed her mistrust for the rich. Then, on the threshold of the century, he had an idea: “the tsar and the people—and no one between them.” On the threshold of the century his strange preoccupation with truth seeking first manifested itself.
One day in conversation with one of the grand dukes he learned of an impoverished Novgorod landowner with a very funny name, Klopov—“Bedbugson.” This Klopov was always writing the grand duke eloquent letters about the embezzlement of public funds in the flour milling business. These first letters naturally did not reach Nicholas, but the indefatigable truth seeker continued to write. Nicholas told Alix about him, and they read the letters aloud, amazed at the purity of this unknown, simple man. Perhaps he wasfound, the man of the people, perhaps he had come to them himself? The people and the tsar—and no one between them!
The titular councilor was brought to the tsar. The quiet, shy little Klopov, with his gentle eyes, was very much like the not very tall, shy man who met him in his office. Indeed, they were alike—the pathetic titular councilor and the ruler of one-sixth of the world.
Nicholas sent Klopov on a secret mission, giving him broad, confidential authorities. Klopov was going to inspect Russia. He was to understand the reasons for the crop failures, clarify officials’ abuses, and bring the tsar back the truth. Moreover, not the “governor’s truth”—the truth of the bureaucracy—but the genuine, popular truth they were hiding from the tsar. So Klopov went.
“In Russia, everything is a secret but there is no secrecy.” Very soon afterward the whole country knew about the mysterious Klopov. Crowds of people besieged the tsar’s emissary with petitions.
But Klopov was after all merely a minor landowner who knew the flour milling business. High officials chatted courteously with him and promised to see to all the problems in the flour milling business. Klopov, deeply moved, brought back to his patron this truth from the depths of Russia: “Minister of Internal Affairs Plehve and his entire ministry are instilled with the very best intentions.”
Thus began Nicholas’s perilous truth seeking. After Klopov’s truth he could tell himself yet again: the impracticability of dreams….
So it was in everything. His fearsome father had aptly been called the “Peacemaker” because he was adept at avoiding war. Nicholas ascended to the throne with the same intention. At the turn of the century he read the essays of I. Bloch, an industrialist and philosopher who wrote about the impossibility of waging a limited war in the new Europe. War in the twentieth century, if it happened, must necessarily become global. “The victor will be unable to avert the most dreadful havoc; therefore every government that is now preparing for war must prepare too for social catastrophe.” Bloch predicted that war could be a graveyard for the great European monarchies. Nicholas received Bloch, and their conversation made an impression on him.
It was then that Nicholas’s “Appeal to the Rulers” was conceived. Nicholas proposed to Europe a universal peace.
Witte wrote about the basic idea for the “Appeal” in his Memoirs: “All of Europe will be united and peaceful, Europe will not be spending great sums on the rivalry between the various countries; it will not represent an armed camp, as it does now. Europe is deteriorating under the weight of mutual enmity and international wars … soon the other nations of America and Japan may be treating Europe with respect, but the kind of respect … due an aging beauty.”
The idea of universal peace would soon end, however, in war with Japan.
In 1899 a third daughter, Marie, was born. They still did not have their long-awaited son. The tsar’s family entered the twentieth century with three daughters. In 1899 Nicholas’s brother George died of tuberculosis, and now his youngest brother, Michael, became heir to the throne.
SORCERERS AND SAINTS
In the fall of 1900 Nicholas fell seriously ill in the Crimea. It was typhus.
He was dying. The question had already been raised as to who would inherit the throne, a strange question for Alix: their oldest daughter, Olga, naturally. As in England, where her grandmother, Queen Victoria, ruled. If you thought about it, the Russians themselves had had quite a few empresses. But Witte explained that Michael must rule. Such was Paul I’s law on succession, which embodied all of Paul’s hatred for his mother, Empress Catherine the Great: a woman must not occupy the Russian throne. A delicate point arose, however: Alix was pregnant, and this time she was certain a son would be born. The law, though, did not care. Whoever was heir to the throne at the moment of the monarch’s death would rule.
Witte was now a daily guest at the Livadia Palace. The ministers took up residence in a Yalta hotel. They shuttled between Yalta and Livadia, like crows anticipating their spoils, it seemed to Alix.
But Nicholas recovered—cheating death a third time. After his illness the dream of a son consumed Alix’s entire being. It was at this moment that the Montenegrin princesses appeared.
The daughters of the prince of Montenegro had been educated in Russia at the famous Smolny Institute for Well-Bred Young Ladies.
Militsa and Stana, those were the Montenegrins’ names (although at court they were sarcastically referred to as Montenegrin No. 1—Stana—and Montenegrin No. 2—Militsa). Both married grand dukes: Militsa the weak-chested Peter Nikolaevich and Stana his brother. Nicholas Nikolaevich, or Nikolasha, as he was called in the large Romanov family. Nicholas the Long, as he was called in the army and at court, ironically by some, admiringly by others. Big, shrill, the army’s favorite: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich.
With the Montenegrins Alix felt like a tsaritsa. They showed her deference and admiration instead of the icy civility of the court. The Montenegrins surrounded her with deft servility. When she was stricken with a stomach ailment, they tended her like the lowliest of servants.
From their mysterious homeland the Montenegrins brought an unshakable belief in the supernatural. Witches and sorcerers had always lived there, in the high mountains grown up in wild forest, and some people there could talk with the dead and predict the fates of the living. All this was new to the granddaughter of the skeptical Queen Victoria; this mysterious new world intrigued her. But the main thing was that the Montenegrins promised the fulfillment of a dream. Alix longed for an heir? Nothing could be easier. It was merely a matter of finding the right person, someone who possessed the power. Alix, the exalted romantic, was drawn into the new game with all her being. The dark blood of Mary Stuart had stirred. They began with a foreigner, someone less exotic to the Hessian princess: a certain Monsieur Philippe from Lyons, who was famed in France for his miracles (the Montenegrins had learned about him in Paris from the military attaché at the Russian embassy).
It was Alix’s nature: if she believed in something, then she believed with all her heart, without reservation. She believed that this was the way she would get her wished-for son.
The Russian church condemned such perilous escapades with wizards and sorcerers, but the Montenegrins explained: “Monsieur Philippe is not a sorcerer. A sorcerer is a renegade from God, he is dangerous, he does not make the sign of the cross, he does not go to church. Through him the devil reveals his power. But a znakhar is something altogether different. A znakhar is a Christian. So he creates from God, not himself.” No one in the court could speak out against this not-so-innocent lie. Philippe arrived in Petersburg. Despite his dubious education and the warnings from the French authorities, Philippe received the title of doctor of medicine and the rank of full state councilor. At court an amusing story went around: Monsieur Philippe had moved into the tsar’s bedroom, ostensibly to hasten the birth of an heir with his prayers. The empress-mother was forced to have a talk with Nicky and demand that the Frenchman be sent away. As always, Nicky agreed, but Philippe remained. He could not deprive his beloved Alix of hope. Philippe continued to play doctor.
And joy: Alix felt she was pregnant. She did not want to see the doctors for fear of breaking Monsieur Philippe’s spells. But the pregnancy was proceeding so oddly that she had to consult the doctors. It turned out to be a false pregnancy: she was pregnant with her dream. So much did she long for a son! But then, finally! And the doctors confirmed it: she was pregnant. Philippe predicted a boy.
On June 5, 1901, she gave birth to a fourth daughter, Anastasia. The Frenchman declared that this was a special sign: the birth of a daughter instead of a son, which the stars had promised, only proved the girl’s unusual destiny.
But the Frenchman was too civilized. The Montenegrins understood they needed something more mysterious and strange.
Mitka the Fool was brought to court. The Montenegrins explained to Alix: “fools for Christ’s love” existed only in this country. Feigning insanity, they engaged at times in indecent conduct and went around in rags and even naked to mock the pathetic visible world and extract alms from people. They revealed the contradiction between God’s profound truth and worldly, superficial common sense. One was to seek the word of God on their lips, in their indecipherable speech. They were blessed, given to prophecy and miracle working. But Alix had not yet been made over into a Muscovite tsarevna: she found Mitka’s incoherent speech irksome.
Daria Osipova appeared.
Vera Leonidovna:
“At that time everyone lived for miracles. This mystical feeling is probably common at the end of a century. Perhaps it was a premonition of Atlantis’s collapse.… We adored séances, we sniffed cocaine.… At that time we had taken up with Daria Osipova.… This Osipova writhed on the floor—and then exclaimed her prophecies. We wrote down her exclamations; I still have them somewhere.… Swimming in the river ‘during a storm and the new moon’—that was her recipe for conception.… She also talked about how to prepare a potion to turn into a witch and fly at night. I remember the simple, ordinary way she talked about this: ‘Ramson … thorn apple … witch’s grass.’ …
“By the way, it was she who predicted that under the last three Russian tsars Russian history would take a sharp turn every twelve years. Judge for yourself, my friend: 1894, Nicholas ascended to the throne; in the twelfth year of his reign the constitution of October 17, 1905, put an end to Russian autocracy; and another twelve years later, in 1917, the empire came to an end. Another twelve years later, in 1929, a new tsar came to power at last: Stalin. In 1941, the war began. In 1953, Stalin died and Khrushchev came to power. How interesting it would be for me to live long enough to find out what happens to us twelve years after that.”
Vera Leonidovna did not live that long. Twelve years later Khrushchev was overthrown and Brezhnev came to power, but he was not a tsar. He was a parody, a puppet. And with him, evidently, the twelve-year rule of the last Russian tsars ceased to apply.
Revelations stretching back into pagan Russia. The weighty mutterings of a znakhar would teach Alix to find meaning later on in the mutterings of Rasputin, and the vague stories about fools’ indecent conduct would become the justification for Rasputin’s debauch. All these magicians were preparing her for the coming of the “Holy Devil.”
The whole pernicious game alarmed Ioann of Kronstadt.
Father Ioann of Kronstadt told them about a true saint and his miracle working, about Serafim of Sarov, whose posthumous glory was already thundering across Russia.
Serafim was a holy man who died in 1833 in the Sarov wilderness. “Fortifying himself in devout thought, in ceaseless incantations of God, and in readings of holy books, Serafim was granted many spiritual visions,” Ioann wrote. “He healed and prophesied.”
At age eighteen, Serafim (at that time he was still Prokhor Moshnin; he became Serafim after he entered the cloister) left his home and went to worship in the great city of Kiev, at the Holy Monastery of the Caves. Afterward he lived for a long time in the Sarov wilderness under a vow of silence. He taught: “The soul must be given the Word of God—the bread of angels. It is this that nourishes the soul.”
The holy man was meek and filled with light and joy.
“The soul replete with despair goes mad; he who conquers passion conquers despair as well.” Sadness and despair are sinful.
Serafim went about surrounded by nuns, those happy brides of Christ.
But there were rumors about Serafim and the nuns. The secular authorities grew concerned and instructed the spiritual authorities to question Serafim—and the mystery of holiness became the object of a police investigation. Soon after, the case was put on hold for lack of evidence, but Serafim apparently said at that point: “This event signifies that the end of my life is near.” He quietly passed away.
This is how, in connection with the investigation, Father Serafim’s prophecies found their way to the Department of Police.
Alix believed immediately: Serafim the holy man, standing by God’s throne, would intercede for them, and Holy Russia would get its heir. Meek Serafim had entered their life.
Alix did everything in her power to get him canonized. She succeeded, and it was decided that the entire family would travel to Sarov for the canonization ceremony. How Alix believed in that trip! She would bow to the powers of the saint and pray for a son, for the continuation of the line.
On July 16, 1903, the imperial train pulled into the Arzamas station, and from there the family set out for the Sarov wilderness and the monastery.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, under Minister Plehve, had been preparing for this trip for a long time. As usual in Russia, the secret police turned everything into a gigantic farce. Orders were issued to the inhabitants of the settlements along the tsarist family’s route: “Decorate the entrances to the settlement with arches, your houses with flags, line up along both sides of the road to greet … and so on.” Huts were immediately painted, covered with boards and even iron. The strictest security measures were taken. Even the welcome had been carefully conceived. During the formal ceremony at the station, a loaded revolver “accidentally” fell out of Minister Plehve’s coat, which his servant was carrying, and a shot rang out. The scheming Plehve had played it exactly right. The sound of the shot was supposed to evoke terrible memories, so that the tsar would properly appreciate the precautionary measures undertaken by the concerned minister.
The police games went right past the imperial couple, though. They saw only the ecstatic crowds lining the road and the sea of people—150,000—who had gathered at the monastery. These people were not driven away. The people who had come to worship Serafim were inclined to be especially devoted to Nicholas. He saw the enthusiasm of the immense crowd that greeted him.
——
The Sarov trip made an enormous impression on Nicholas and Alexandra.
They spent three days in prayer on the Sarov grounds.
At night the empress bathed in the holy pond, imploring Serafim for the birth of a son, while Nicholas sat on the bank. Her body was white in the silver water.
A sense of quiet well-being at the saint’s grave and these peaceful days in Sarov.
At Sarov Alix grasped the astounding concept of the “holy man.” A holy man is your intercessor before God. You entrust your will to him, your cunning reason, and he, sensing the continuous link with Him, guides you. The holy man is your guide; he delivers the bread of the angels to your soul. Serafim the holy man was at their side; they could sense his presence and hear his quiet voice speaking to them in his teachings: “Man corporeal is akin to a lighted candle: it must burn and he must die. But his soul is immortal, and our concern must be the soul, not the body.”
Venerable Serafim was proclaimed the protector of the tsar’s family.
They say when Serafim was dying he asked that his body be tossed out like carrion—for the wild animals to eat, so meek and humble was he.
In 1920 his relics were unearthed and confiscated. Thus after death, he, along with the entire Russian church, “accepted insult and humiliation.” The trail of his relics was hopelessly lost—they were believed to have been destroyed. Yet seventy years later, they were discovered in the cellar of the Museum of Atheism, which is housed in Kazan Cathedral, a once renowned Russian Orthodox church.
One museum worker noticed a large rectangular object encased in canvas standing in a corner heaped with tapestries. When they opened the canvas, under it they saw a wooden box, where under the gauze and cotton wool the astonished workers of the Museum of Atheism laid their eyes on unrotted relics. It was the complete frame of a man: the beard and hair were preserved, as were bits of muscle. On the skull was a monk’s cowl, on his chest a bronze cross, on his crossed arms satin gauntlets embroidered in gold: “Holy Father Serafim, pray God for us.”
Seventy years after his death Serafim was canonized.
Seventy years after his outrage, his relics were returned. And all this he had prophesied.
Prophecies.… In Sarov Nicholas learned several of the saint’s amazing prophecies. Witte recounted them in his Memoirs. When Witte was leaving to conclude the peace treaty with Japan in Portsmouth, an infuriating message was sent after him: he should not worry but know that Saint Serafim had prophesied that the peace treaty would be concluded.
The Department of Police, too, presented the tsar with Serafim’s prophecies.
Among them was one that stunned Nicholas. Here is what the amazing elder prophesied about Nicholas’s rule: “At the beginning of this monarch’s reign there will be national disasters, there will be an unsuccessful war, and great confusion will ensue within the government. Father will rise up against son and brother against brother. But the second half of his reign will be bright, and the sovereign’s life long.”
What did Nicholas feel when just a year later the prophecy began to come true: first an unsuccessful war, then great confusion. Was it because he knew the holy elder’s prophecy that the mystical tsar was so calm during the very worst calamities?
When did he cease to believe in the prophecy? And when did he understand that those last words had simply been added by the Department of Police for his benefit?
We do not know what Serafim of Sarov in truth prophesied for him—and we never will.
HIS FIRST WAR
His first war—the Russo-Japanese War—began in 1904. The Peacemaker’s son, who so hated war, found himself at war. Subsequently Witte recalled that Nicholas was pushed into seizing lands in Manchuria, having been assured that little Japan would not dare attack Russia.
Witte and his mother explained to him the risk involved. Nicholas agreed and instructed Witte to write a proposal for normalizing relations with Japan. The tsar left for Poland and his hunting lodge.
Witte wrote a memorandum that disappeared in the depths of the archives. The negotiations with Japan that his mother and Witte had fought for fell through.
Nicholas’s diary:
“26 January, 1904.… Went to the theater at 8—they were doing Rusalka. Very good. Returning home, received a telegram from Alexeyev with the news that that night Japanese torpedo boats had carried out an attack against the Tsesarevich, Pallada, etc., whichwere at anchor, and put holes in them. Is this undeclared war? Then may God help us!…
“27 January. This morning a telegram arrived about the bombardment of Port Arthur. Everywhere there are manifestations of a unanimous upsurge of spirit.”
Calm entries. He was assured that the Japanese did not know how to fight. His ministers argued over how many Japanese soldiers it took to equal one Russian soldier—two or one and a half.
Very soon, though, he was writing in his diary: “It is painful and hard.”
There followed unprecedented defeats for the Russian army and the destruction of the fleet.
CAMARILLA
So, Nicholas was pushed into seizing lands in Manchuria. But who stood behind this unattributed “push”?
When Minister of Interior Affairs Plehve (the Department of Police was part of his ministry) was killed by a bomb, in his archives were discovered copies of all the papers relating to the Far East. “To hold back revolution, we need a small, victorious war.” This, it turns out, was a statement Minister Plehve had made to one of his high officials on the eve of war.
“We need.” … But who were “we”?
In his Memoirs Witte recounted a curious episode: during his tenure as prime minister he struggled against Jewish pogroms. Naturally, he had to help the Department of Police, and he did. Witte was shocked to discover from a department official that while fighting against Jewish pogroms the Department of Police was simultaneously preparing proclamations inciting the population … to Jewish pogroms! These proclamations were sent secretly, in bundles, to the provinces. The terrible pogrom of Jews in Gomel had begun with these very proclamations. Forces existed whose actions even the prime minister was not given to control.
Here is an amazing story from Vera Leonidovna Yureneva:
“My friend at the time [her pronunciation of ‘friend’ was captivating, and she smiled at the ancient memory] … he was very close to Count Witte.… He tried to prove that many of the events that occurred during Nicholas’s reign were connected with the secret actions of the camarilla. This is a forgotten word now that Count Witte liked a lot.… a Spanish word referring to a group of influential court intriguers under the Spanish King Ferdinand. It became pejorative.… The camarilla in Russia involved distinguished but degenerate families.… They were afraid of losing their wealth and power and hated the new times—this incomprehensible capitalism. It was they who formed the inner circle, the court of Nicholas and Alexandra. My friend felt that in Russia, as in any country where age-old traditions of conservatism persist, a secret alliance had been formed a long time ago between the extreme right—that is, the camarilla—and the secret police. That is why when Alexander II was preparing the constitution the police failed to ‘keep an eye’ on him—and he was killed.… My friend used to talk about how back under Alexander III terrorists’ notes with threats against the tsar were always turning up at the carefully guarded Gatchina Palace. In this way they confirmed the tsar in his hatred for liberals, by planting these notes through the secret police.… My friend used to say that the Department of Police slipped the tsar’s leash at the end of the century, when the secret police began to place provocateurs in the revolution.… This allowed the police to shroud everything in the greatest secrecy. That was when the sinister practice began of provocateurs throwing the bombs of unsuspecting revolutionaries at tsarist officials the camarilla didn’t like.
“It was at that time, my friend used to say, that the camarilla and the secret police carried out an entire series of dangerous intrigues against the tsar and society.
“One of them was the Japanese war.”
“COMFORT HEAVEN-SENT”
The war began—and immediately the Russian bureaucracy’s steadfast rule went into effect: when something clever is conceived, the result will be its direct opposite. The war, contrived to avert revolution, encouraged it instead.
This was when—in the aftermath of terrible defeats, in the confusion of advancing revolution—it happened.
Alix’s sacred belief that Serafim would intercede with God in heaven had not been in vain.
It happened at the Alexandria Palace, that small summer palace where he, the fourteen-year-old Nicholas, had heard the song of the old hag death and where once they—a boy and a girl in love—had etched their names in the glass. And so, on the afternoon of July 30, 1904….
“The empress,” Anna Vyrubova recalled, “had scarcely gone upstairs from her little study when the heir was born.”
Nicholas’s diary:
“30 July. For us a great, unforgettable day on which God’s goodness was so clearly visited upon us. At 1:15 this afternoon, Alix gave birth to a son, whom in prayer we have named Alexei. Everything happened remarkably quickly, for me at least. There are not words to thank God properly for the comfort He has sent us in this year of hard trials.”
General Raukh, who commanded the Cuirassiers, recalled his conversation with Nicholas: “The empress and I have decided to give the heir the name Alexei. We must do this to break the chain of Alexanders and Nicholases,” so the happy father and honorary chairman of the Russian Historical Society joked.
Indeed, tsars with the names Nicholas and Alexander had ruled Russia for an entire century.
But it was not all that simple.
The name Alexei was out of favor in the Romanov family. Ever since Peter the Great had ordered his son and heir Alexei secretly murdered, the Romanovs had avoided giving this name to heirs to the throne. There was even a story about a curse on the Romanov line that the stricken Tsarevich Alexei managed to cry out before his death. But Nicholas was set on this name, since he had long been attracted by the image of another Alexei, the Romanov Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
Shortly before the heir’s birth, several grand historical balls had been held. The halls of the Winter Palace had been filled with boyars and their ladies from the times of the first Romanovs. Nicholas appeared in a costume from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that glittered with gold and gems. Alix wore a jewel-strewn dress from Alexei’s wife, Tsaritsa Natalia Kirillovna. For Nicholas this was not simply a costume ball but a remembrance of his favorite tsar. By his religiosity, goodness, and exemplary behavior, Tsar Alexei had earned the sobriquet “the Quietest.” He had done a great deal for the state—not with cruelty or fierce will, as Peter the Great had, but with meekness and gradual reforms. So Nicholas gave his son this name.
“Christening began at 11. The morning was clear and warm. In front of the house, along the sea road, appeared golden carriages, and in the convoy platoon—hussars and Cossack chieftains.”
There was a convoy at Alexei’s birth—and there would be another at his death.
——
The Swiss Pierre Gilliard, Alexei’s future tutor, was giving lessons to Alexei’s sisters. The tsaritsa brought the boy into the room where Gilliard was working with the girls. The heir was a month and a half old, a fairy-tale prince with platinum locks and big gray-blue eyes. Alexandra bathed the boy herself and had been inseparable from him since his birth.
But after that the Swiss rarely saw the magical boy. Dark rumors about some sort of illness were roaming the palace.
Once the boy ran into the classroom, and right behind appeared the sailor who watched after him. The boy was scooped up and carried away, and his indignant shouts were heard in the halls. Again he disappeared for months.
The mystery was revealed to Gilliard when the tsar was hunting at Spala in Poland. The family was staying at the lodge. Hunting, endless entertainments. At one such celebration Gilliard walked out of the ballroom into an inner passageway.
He found himself standing in front of a door where he heard desperate moans. A moment later the Swiss saw Alix approaching at a run, clutching her long dress, which was getting in her way. She was so upset she did not notice him.
This was the secret the family was keeping: soon after their son’s birth the doctors established what Alix had feared most in the world—her child had inherited a disease that was in her maternal line and that was transmitted only through females almost exclusively to their male offspring (to the heirs to thrones—fate’s joke on kings). Terrible and incurable—hemophilia. When Gilliard was later entrusted with Alexei’s education, the heir’s physician, Dr. Derevenko, explained the symptoms in detail: the walls of hemophiliacs’ arteries are so fragile that any blow or intense pressure can cause the blood vessels to burst and can mean the end. A fall or a cut can be the beginning of that end.
She had given birth to a son. She had dreamed of him for so long, yet she was the cause of his advancing, irrevocable death. Herein lay the reason behind her quickly progressing hysteria. Now they could only wait for a miracle, which Alix believed in with every fiber of her being: the disease would be cured. No one need know of this temporary illness. Because it was temporary. Saint Serafim would not abandon them. The Guardian would certainly send their family someone to save the heir to the great throne.
The image of Serafim of Sarov hung in the sovereign’s office.
——
The family left Petersburg and shut themselves up in the tsar’s residences on the outskirts of the capital, guarding the boy’s illness, which became a state secret. All their hopes were pinned on a Deliverer.
At that time magical rumors began to reach her: somewhere in the backwoods of Siberia, on the broad river Tobol (Nicholas recalled his youthful journey), in the small village of Pokrovskoe, he lived—the Holy Man.
Thus, on the threshold of the First Revolution, in the fire of a lost war, Grigory Rasputin appeared.