The Romanovs

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  That evening, Alexander heard ‘the news from Cannes. She won’t live long.’ ‘She’ was the empress. On 9 January, he sent Adlerberg to fetch the dying tsarina. ‘No one asked my opinion,’ Marie said. ‘They’d treat a sick housemaid better.’

  On 23 January, Kostia chaired a meeting at the Marble Palace where Sasha ‘was so aggressively critical that I was several times obliged to restrain him . . .’ Sasha managed to crush the plan – ‘It’s the beginning of a constitution which is no benefit to us!’ Elections would just empower ‘windbag lawyers!’ The tsar did not give up, but ‘I see more and more [that Sasha] and I are totally different men.’

  *

  In the palace, ‘Strange things happened all the time,’ recalled Alexandra Tolstoya. ‘The carelessness was incomprehensible.’ The commandant General Delsal received the warning about the diagram of the palace but ‘regarded it as a tale’. One person sensed the danger, however. ‘The idea of a new attack pursued me ceaselessly,’ recalled Katya. ‘On our arrival, I ordered our servants to ask the commandant to examine the rooms of the workers.’ He promised that ‘all measures had been taken but my heart wasn’t reassured . . . As the days passed with terrible rapidity, I was particularly worried and I spent hours reflecting on security measures. Alas I could see the authorities were half asleep and lacking energy.’ Once she smelt the acridity of nitroglycerine, but everyone insisted it was just leaking gas.

  Deep in the cellar, Carpenter Khalturin had 250 pounds of nitroglycerine. Every day, he passed Zhelyabov in Palace Square and said: ‘No.’

  Just after 6 p.m. on 5 February, he calmly greeted Zhelyabov in a blizzard and said: ‘It’s ready.’ He had 300 pounds of nitroglycerine. The wires were connected. Fifteen minutes to get out. The two terrorists looked towards the illuminated palace. Family dinner was ready.

  The snow had delayed the emperor’s guest, Prince Alexander of Hesse, brother of the empress and father of the new prince of Bulgaria. The tsar sent his sons Sasha and Vladimir to meet his train. At 6.15, a servant announced that the prince had arrived and, as always, Katya accompanied the tsar along the corridors before returning to their apartment. Alexander met his brother-in-law in the Marshals’ Hall and embraced him. They were about to proceed to the Yellow Dining Room when, at 6.20 p.m., suddenly ‘The floor rose as if it was an earthquake. The gaslights in the gallery went out, there was total darkness,’ wrote the Hessian prince, ‘and the air was filled with the disgusting odour of gunpowder.’ The grand dukes ran ‘towards the Yellow Dining Room’, recalled Sasha, ‘whence the noise had come and we found all the windows burst open, the walls showing cracks, almost all the chandeliers out and everything covered with dust and plaster.’

  Two black ‘Nubian’ guards, faces and scarlet garb whitened by plaster like mummies, stood to attention. Firebells rang. The two terrorists on the Square, satisfied that the tsar was dead, headed to a safehouse. ‘There was total darkness in the big courtyard and terrible screams,’ wrote Sasha. ‘Vladimir and I immediately ran to the guardhouse which wasn’t easy since all the lights were out and the smoke so thick it was hard to breathe.’

  The emperor rushed towards his mistress’s apartment, calling ‘Katya!’, and encountered a servant with a candelabra which he commandeered. ‘I couldn’t feel my legs, my heart ceased to beat and I was almost mad,’ said Katya. She started ringing the bell to Alexander’s study – no reply. Then she heard ‘that cherished voice crying, “I’m coming, my adored angel”’. They embraced, then fell to their knees before the icons in her bedroom. He smilingly said: ‘So this is what they call a “gas” explosion. Oh God, the victims break my heart, I’m going to the place of the blast.’

  Sasha got there first. ‘We found a terrible scene: the entire guards room was blown up and everything had collapsed six feet deep and in that pile of brick, plaster, slabs and mounds of wall lay more than fifty soldiers covered with dust and blood.’ Twelve were dead; sixty-nine wounded. ‘A heartbreaking picture!’ remembered the heir. ‘I’ll never forget that horror as long as I live.’ The tsar arrived: ‘I wept . . . the sentries are all buried at their posts!’

  ‘On the stairs, hallways, there was bustle, chaos, dust, the smell of gas,’ noted Miliutin, ‘and in the hallway, I found the imperial family. The emperor called me into his study. As before, he showed total composure, seeing a new manifestation of God’s hand saving him for the fifth time.’ But he was less impressed with his police: ‘I’ve started to doubt the security. In spite of the plan of the Palace uncovered by us, no one had understood anything. As always they searched with the same negligence and reported that all was well!’

  Miliutin was amazed: ‘Everyone’s thinking – where can one find peace and safety if the villains can lay mines in the royal palace itself?’

  Sasha was hysterical, saying, ‘The sovereign must leave the evil Winter Palace.’ All ‘nerves are so taut you expect to be blown up at any moment’, noted Kostia, who sensed the terrorists all around him but ‘We don’t see them or know them; we don’t even have the slightest idea of their numbers.’ The Romanovs ‘lived in a besieged fortress’, mused the tsar’s young nephew Sandro, Mikhail’s son. ‘The footman serving coffee could be working for the nihilists; every chimneysweep could be the bearer of an infernal machine.’

  Only the dying empress was oblivious. She slept through it. The sleepless emperor understood the need for a new order: ‘The night will bring me counsel.’35

  ‘The panic continues,’ wrote Kostia, ‘wild rumours spread.’ Yet there was sympathy for the bombers. ‘No one supports the government now,’ realized Miliutin. Every day Alexander consulted generals Drenteln and Gurko but ‘both behave as if they’re observers of what’s going on. Yet one is Gendarme commander, the other governor-general. Halfwits!’ decided Valuev. On 8 February, Sasha proposed a wartime dictator, adding menacingly, ‘If your life is dear to you, you should accept my project.’

  ‘I flatly refused,’ said Alexander, but the next day he gathered ministers and governor-generals Gurko of Petersburg and Loris-Melikov of Kharkov. ‘All agreed with my son. So the Supreme Commission will be named. All agreed enthusiastically.’ But who was to be the dictator? Then the emperor ‘surprised everyone’.

  ‘I gave total power to Loris-Melikov – powers so extensive that Loris will perhaps be considered a dictator.’ His choice was inspired.

  Mikhail Loris-Melikov, aged fifty-four, was not Russian and he did not even have a home in Petersburg, but he possessed political suppleness and emotional intelligence. Scion of ancient Armenian nobility, a charmer with luxuriant black whiskers, twinkling brown eyes and a lean figure, he had made his name in 180 battles against Ottomans and Murids. In Kharkov, he had tamed terrorism by repression combined with conciliation, his trademark: his soldiers nicknamed him Fox-Tail Wolf-Fang. As he was Armenian, courtiers judged him ‘Eastern, flexible, sly’, an image he played on teasing them, ‘They say the Armenian Loris is not fit to be dictator.’ The heir’s adviser Pobedonostsev thought him a ‘a juggler, a manipulator – able, intelligent and crafty’. Now he was so powerful that his rival Valuev nicknamed him ‘Michael II’.

  Sasha ‘is enchanted with his victory’, wrote Alexander but he knew Sasha’s Anichkov Palace was the headquarters of opposition. Loris flattered Sasha: ‘From the first day of my appointment, I vowed to act only in the same direction as Your Highness, finding the success of the work entrusted to me depends on it.’ At first, Loris and Sasha were close. ‘With great speed, he created for himself two patrons – Winter Palace [the tsar] and Anichkov [Sasha],’ commented Pobedonostsev bitterly. ‘For His Majesty he became a necessity, a screen against danger. He eased the Tsarevich’s approaches to His Majesty and offered ready answers – an Ariadne’s thread out of the labyrinth.’

  ‘God grant Loris success in uncovering the revolutionary nest so I can have a bit of security,’ wrote Alexander. ‘If not it’s better that I retire . . . to avoid a catastrophe. Let them try my indomitable son!
’

  Loris set to work energetically, not just ‘to crush sedition but the cause of sedition and its support’: he clarified judicial process, abolished the salt tax, liberalized the press and universities, gleefully appeasing the students: ‘I’ve finally achieved the sacking of [education minister Dmitri] Tolstoy, the evil genius of the Russian land,’ crowed Loris.

  He abolished the Third Section and reformed the secret police, appalled by its ineptitude. His imaginative ingenuity was remarkable for a soldier. Yet this agency remained unfit for purpose: to chase the terrorists, and to appease the heir, Loris promoted Sasha’s henchman, the policeman Peter Cherevin, to the Commission. But astonishingly, instead of infiltrating the terrorists, General Cherevin pursued a mythical Jewish conspiracy, reporting on 6 April 1880, ‘All Jewish capitalists have entered the universal Jewish cabal with goals hostile to the entire Christian population.’ Then, at 2 p.m. on 20 April, as Loris stepped out of his carriage, a young man shot at him; the count ducked down but then threw himself at the assassin and subdued him – an admirable exploit – handing him over to his Cossacks. ‘Poor poor liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!’ wrote the tsar, impressed by Loris’s cool under fire. Fifty thousand spectators including Dostoevsky watched the terrorist’s hanging on Semyonovsky Square. But society was ambivalent: afterwards the novelist met the publisher Alexei Suvorin. Both agreed that, though they abhorred terrorists, they would never inform the police of a plot.

  Back in the palace, little Gogo was fascinated by the details of the execution as Alexander and Katya discussed it.36

  Katya talked more and more about politics. ‘She pushes me towards more extreme measures against the nihilists,’ Alexander noted on 16 March, ‘and says it’s necessary to hang, ceaselessly hang to extinguish this infamous revolt.’ But ‘I detest it when she gets mixed up in politics.’ She also nagged Alexander to make more arrangements for his children. The empress was close to death. Alexander was agonized by guilt. On 21 May he visited her. Dr Botkin said she would survive another night, so the tsar travelled out to Tsarskoe Selo where Katya was staying with the children.

  In the morning, Empress Marie was found dead: ‘My God, welcome her soul and forgive me my sins,’ Alexander wrote on 22 May. ‘My double life ends today. I am sorry but She [Katya] doesn’t hide her joy. She talks immediately about legalizing our situation; this mistrust kills me. I’ll do all for her but not against the national interest.’

  On the 23rd the emperor decided to marry Katya after a shortened mourning period of just forty days. ‘If we hadn’t expected more attacks, it would never have occurred to us to marry’ so quickly, she explained. On the 24th, he shared an even greater secret with her: ‘I will give the people a complete constitution.’ But Katya, ‘as overexcited as a child’, was already dreaming of their marriage. ‘Katya has never so aggravated me.’ He promised he would crown her on 1 August 1881. Then having determined to crown a new empress and give Russia the beginnings of a constitution, he decided on 4 July, ‘I shall retire’ – to the south of France. At Marie’s funeral, on 28 May, ‘A blinding fork of lightning crossed the darkened sky.’ The tsar shivered.

  The courtiers heard he was going to marry the scarlet woman they now called ‘Odalisque’, an Ottoman concubine. On 30 May, Sasha went to see him about it but the tsar, choosing his words carefully, said that the ‘gossip was ill founded’, at which the heir presumed there would be no marriage. Alexander tried to clarify: ‘I shall live as I wish and my union with Princess Dolgorukaya is definite,’ but ‘Your rights will be safeguarded.’ They parted in tears – and locked in an awkward misunderstanding.

  Father Bazhenov, who had married the tsar to Marie, refused to marry them. On 5 July, his childhood friend Adlerberg made a last-ditch attempt to ‘dissuade him by citing the unpleasant impression it would make unless he waited a year after the empress’s death’. But Alexander might be dead by then. He could be murdered any moment, any day. ‘He wasn’t wrong on every point,’ admitted the tsar, ‘but I’ve given my word.’ Adlerberg noticed that he was ‘silent, pale, confused, his hands trembled. Suddenly he stood up and left the room. The door opened and in came a woman.’ The count and the Odalisque rowed. She accused him of disloyalty. When Alexander peeped round the door, she snapped, ‘No, let us finish.’ Afterwards, Katya stormed out.

  ‘I was wrong about that man,’ the tsar reflected. ‘He’s a total nonentity and an intolerable blackmailer.’ But Alexander was supported by his younger brother Mikhail: ‘We have no right to criticize his decisions.’

  At 3 p.m. on 6 July, at Alexander I’s field church in Tsarskoe Selo, the tsar, in pale-blue Hussars uniform, and Katya, in a wedding gown, were married by Father Ksenophont Nikolsky.* Adlerberg signed the certificate, though ‘his presence astonished me’. After a small supper the couple took a carriage ride around the park. Then Alexander signed a decree: ‘Having entered . . . into lawful marriage with Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, we command her to be named Most Serene Princess Yurievskaya’ with ‘the same name given to the children’. He feared that ‘Russia and History will never forgive me,’ yet ‘The stone that oppressed his heart had been lifted,’ wrote Katya ‘and [he was] as happy as a being could ever be.’

  Next morning, he told Count Loris: ‘I know how loyal you are to me. Now you must be loyal to my wife and children.’ Loris started to consult Katya, who afterwards reflected, ‘The outstanding minister understood what a valuable ally the princess was as wife of the tsar.’

  As the family learned of the secret marriage, he justified himself to his sister, Ollie, queen of Württemberg: Katya ‘preferred to renounce all the social amusements and pleasures desired by young ladies and has devoted her entire life to me’, but ‘without interfering in any affairs, she lives only for me, dedicated to bringing up the children’. Sasha thought the marriage ‘forever ruined all the dear good memories of family life’. As he later wrote to Minny, it was ‘The start of these troubled times, this living nightmare.’ Sasha seethed malevolently.37

  The tsar was ‘a pitiful and unfortunate man’ and ‘God’s fates sent him to the misfortune of Russia; the only instincts left are dull love of power and sensuality.’ This description of Alexander was written not by a Nihilist but by his son Sasha’s closest adviser, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the ex-tutor who now visited the heir every day at the Anichkov Palace.

  Tall, gangly and fusty with thin lips, beaky nose and thick spectacles, Pobedonostsev looked as if he had never been young, had never smiled and had never seen sunlight – indeed he loved attending funerals. Once he had drafted Alexander’s legal reforms and had tutored Nixa, but he was now passionately convinced that the reforms were a disaster. Spitting hatred to his confidante, Ekaterina Tyutcheva, ex-lady-in-waiting, he declared that the tsar was ‘the abomination of desolation’ who ‘only wants to live by the mindless will of the belly’. But there was principle behind his venom. Nicknamed Torquemada, he was disgusted by the modern world of newspapers, stock markets, democracies and Jews, and wanted Russia frozen in the age of Nicholas I. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I pay my coachman to drive slowly.’ A fanatical believer in the autocracy and Russia’s Slavophile mission to civilization, for him there was no place for Jews (‘our great ulcer’) or Poles.* Even his patron, Count Sergei Stroganov, said, ‘He knew exactly what shouldn’t be done but never what should be done instead.’ The tsar called Pobedonostsev a ‘desperate fanatic’ and ‘a Pharisee’, but to please Sasha, he and Loris appointed Torquemada to the Supreme Commission.

  At court the ladies-in-waiting muttered against the Odalisque. Daria Tyutcheva, another of that courtier family, dared to write to the emperor: ‘Could you and will you promise that I’ll never be put in the position of offending my feelings for our beloved empress?’ Alexander was incensed but replied via Adlerberg: ‘If this situation does not suit you, you may do what you wish.’ She then resigned because, she confided to Alexandra Tolstoya, ‘I can’t promise not to make a public scene
and even spit in the face of Princess Yurievskaya at the first opportunity.’ But she left with a terrible prediction: ‘I have a good feeling that everything will change. In three or four months, all the dirt will be swept out of the Winter Palace!’38

  On 6 August, Loris reported that order had been restored. Alexander appointed him interior minister in charge of the police, and as a sop to Sasha they brought in his two henchmen, Cherevin as his deputy minister and Pobedonostsev, as ober-procurator of the Synod.

  Loris advised the tsar not to take the train to Crimea for ‘fear of an infernal machine’. When the tsar insisted, he asked Katya and the children to travel on a different train. ‘A woman wouldn’t miss the chance to show her devotion,’ noted Miliutin.. Indeed ‘I left with him so we could die together,’ recalled Katya. The tsar introduced her to the ministers and she grew closer to Loris, sharing his liberalism.

  At Livadia, Alexander and Loris agreed a radical reform – the election of representatives from the local assemblies to sit in the State Council where they could advise but not legislate.

  The emperor wanted to introduce Sasha and Minny to his wife. Loris contrived to lure them to Crimea, only informing them when they were already approaching Yalta on the boat, with little Nicky and the other children, that Princess Yurievskaya would be there. ‘Just think of it,’ Minny complained. ‘He waited till we were on the boat. Here we were – trapped!’ The emperor was waiting on the quay – and they found Katya living in the late empress’s rooms. Sasha was polite, Minny icy.

  Sasha’s hostility accelerated the emperor’s signing of a secret decree. ‘These 3,302,910 roubles are the absolute property of my wife, Serene Princess Yurievskaya née Princess Dolgorukaya, and our children,’ he wrote on 11 September, transferring the money from the Court Ministry to the State Bank. He sent courtiers to research Peter the Great’s coronation of a peasant (Catherine I) with whom he already had several children and signed this attachment to his will: