The Romanov Sisters

by Helen Rappaport

  Arriving in Russia just after Nicholas’s return, the Anglo-Irish journalist Robert Crozier Long was immediately struck by the ‘unexampled reversal of ranks and conditions which … the Revolution had brought about in the most despotic and class-crystallized country of Europe’. He travelled out to Tsarskoe Selo to report on the tsar’s incarceration and encountered an unnerving atmosphere. The town was ‘a microcosm of the Revolution’; at the Alexandrovsky Station he was greeted by ‘crowds of untidy revolutionary soldiers, all with red badges’, the stationmaster was an army corporal and ‘portraits of Nicholas II and his father Alexander III lay in tatters in a rubbish heap’. The authorities were finding it hard to keep the lid on renegade elements in the town that resented any form of indulgence shown to the prisoners and were keen to exert their own form of rough justice on the tsar and tsaritsa. The railings of the Alexander Park had now become a public sideshow where people gathered in order to catch a glimpse of the former tsar and his family whenever they emerged in the garden.20

  The family’s daily routine, having always been mundane, now became even more predictable. They all got up early except Alexandra and by 8 a.m. Nicholas was often seen walking outside with Dolgorukov, or undertaking some kind of physical work – breaking the ice on the waterways and clearing the snow. It was all too painful for Elizaveta Naryshkina to watch: ‘How far has he sunk who once owned the riches of the earth and a devoted people! How splendid his reign could have been, if he had only understood the needs of the era!’21 After a plain lunch at 1 p.m., and as the weather improved and the girls recovered, the family worked outside digging up the turf and preparing the ground for a vegetable garden to be planted in the spring. When it was warm enough Alexandra would join them in her wheelchair, where she sat embroidering or tatting. In the afternoon the younger children had their lessons, and later, if the weather continued fine, they returned to the garden until the light began to fade. Much to their surprise, the guards found themselves watching over a family that was ‘quiet, unprovocative, unfailingly polite to one another and to them, and whose occasional sadness bore the stamp of a dignity their jailers could never emulate and were reluctantly compelled to admire’.22 Some of the sentries exploited public curiosity by taking money from people wanting a closer look at the tsar and his children. The family moved out of sight as best they could when this happened, but even so they were not immune to insult not just from onlookers but also from their own guards. ‘When the young Grand Duchesses or the Empress appeared at a window, the sentries made obscene gestures which were greeted with shouts of laughter from their comrades.’23A few of the soldiers guarding them persisted in referring to Nicholas as the tsar or ex-tsar, and one officer, it was said, was dismissed ‘after being caught kissing the hand of the Grand Duchess Tatiana’, but these were exceptions. Other cruel gestures served only to hurt: the children’s rowing boat was soiled with excrement and graffiti, and out in the park Alexey’s pet goat was shot and the pet deer and swans too – probably for food.24

  Many found Nicholas’s extraordinary passivity in the face of insult disturbing: ‘The Tsar felt nothing; he was neither kind nor cruel; merry nor morose; he had no more sensibility than some of the lowest forms of life. “A human oyster” is how the later commandant, Evgeny Kobylinsky, would describe him.’25 As for Alexandra, Elizaveta Naryshkina found her conversation increasingly disjointed and incomprehensible. No doubt the constant headaches and dizzy spells as ever impinged on it, but Elizaveta had by now come to the conclusion that Alexandra’s unbalanced mental state had become ‘pathological’. ‘It should serve to acquit her’ should it come to the worst, she hoped, ‘and perhaps will be her only salvation.’ Dr Botkin agreed with her: ‘He now feels as I do when seeing the state the empress is in and berates himself for not having realized it sooner.’26

  Inside the palace much had changed. ‘Along the wide corridors covered with thick soft carpets, where formerly efficient, silent servants glided noiselessly, throngs of soldiers now reeled, with coats unbuttoned, in muddy shoes, caps on the side of their heads, unshaved, often drunk, and always noisy.’27 Visitors to the family were strictly forbidden (although members of the entourage were occasionally allowed to see their relatives). Use of the telephone or telegraph was forbidden and the family was ordered to speak Russian at all times. Correspondence was vetted by Kotzebue, who having served with Alexandra’s Uhlans was sympathetic and often allowed letters through without the formal checks being made. But he was soon replaced, and letters were later even tested for invisible ink.28 The family was still allowed to celebrate religious services on Sundays and high holidays, led by Father Belyaev from the Feodorovsky Sobor, who held them in a field chapel erected behind a screen in the corner of an upstairs room.29

  Although it was mid-March Maria was still very sick and Anastasia had developed such acute earache that her eardrums had had to be pierced to relieve the pressure in them.30 And then on the 15th Anastasia developed a secondary infection – pleurisy – on a day when Maria’s temperature hit 40.6 degrees C (over 105 degrees F). Both children were prostrated by fits of terrible coughing.31 In a letter to Rita Khitrovo, Tatiana wrote that Anastasia wasn’t able to eat either, ‘because it all comes back again’. Both her sisters, she said, were ‘very patient and lie quietly. Anastasia is still deaf and you have to shout so that she can hear what you’re saying to her.’ Her own hearing was much better, although she was still having problems with her right ear. She couldn’t say much more: ‘Remember that they are reading your and my letters.’32

  By the 18th Maria was so ill that Alexandra sent Anna Vyrubova an anxious note, fearful that she was dying. Anastasia too was ‘in a critical condition, lungs and ears being in a sad state of inflammation’. ‘Oxygen alone was keeping the children alive’, administered by a doctor who had come out voluntarily from Petrograd to attend them.33 It was not until 20 March that Anastasia and Maria’s temperatures finally began to drop. They were at last over the worst, much to their parents’ relief, though were still very weak and sleeping a lot.34 Alexey was recovering too and Tatiana, the most robust of all the children, was much better. But Olga still seemed very under par.

  There was now a new palace commandant – Pavel Korovichenko – who was introduced to the family on 21 March by Kerensky when he arrived on an inspection. Before leaving that day, Kerensky announced that Anna Vyrubova was to be removed. The stigma of her previous close association with Rasputin was still bringing with it accusations of her being involved in ‘political plots’ against the new regime.35 Her presence at the palace, it was felt, served only to inflame revolutionary hatred of the imperial family. To lose Anna was a disaster for an emotionally drained Alexandra, but even worse was Kerensky’s decision to take her other close friend Lili Dehn away too. Before Lili left Alexandra hung a small icon round her neck as a blessing and Tatiana rushed in with a small leather photograph case containing photos of her parents – taken from her own bedside table. ‘If Kerensky is going to take you away from us, you shall at least have Papa and Mama to console you’, she said, and then she turned to Anna and begged for ‘a last memory’ of her as a keepsake. Anna gave her the only thing she had – her wedding ring.36

  Lili was still wearing her nurse’s uniform when she and Anna were taken out to the waiting cars. Alexandra and Olga seemed calm and impassive as they left, but Tatiana was openly sobbing – ‘this the girl whom history had since described as “proud and reserved”’, but on this occasion, as Lili remembered, ‘ma[king] no secret of her grief’. Both women were heartbroken to be so unjustly and forcibly removed after so many years of loyal service to the family; Anna, still weak both from the measles and the injuries sustained in her accident, could barely walk, even with the help of crutches. As their car drove away in the rain, Anna could just make out ‘a group of white-clad figures crowded close to the nursery windows’ watching them go. From Tsarskoe Selo the two women were taken to the Palace of Justice in Petrograd; after being held for two da
ys in a freezing cold room with little food Lili was allowed to go home to her sick son Titi.37 But Anna was transferred to the notorious Trubetskoy Bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress where she was held for interrogation and not released until July.

  With all the children recovered, the family still nursed the hope that it would be allowed to go into temporary exile and on 23 March Nicholas noted that he had been going through his books and papers, packing up everything he might wish to take with him ‘if we should leave for England’.38 But Lent came and there was still no news. Father Belyaev was allowed to come and stay at the Alexander Palace to conduct services, albeit closely observed at all times by the highly suspicious members of the guard. On Saturday 25 March Anastasia got up for the first time and joined the family for lunch. The following morning, Palm Sunday, she sat down and wrote what was probably her first letter since her illness; and she wrote it to the person closest to her favourite officer – Viktor Zborovsky’s sister, Katya.

  Like her sisters Rimma and Xenia, Katya had been serving as a nurse during the war, at Feodorovsky Gorodok.39 Three years older than Anastasia, she had sometimes been brought out from St Petersburg to play with her when they were younger and had become a close friend, thanks to their common bond with her brother Viktor. During the war, all four Romanov sisters often sent gifts to their Escort favourites – especially hand-knitted items of warm clothing to take to the front. They also treasured their photographs of Vitya (Viktor), Shurik (Alexander Shvedov) and Skvorchik (Mikhail Skvortsov) taken at tea parties at Anna Vyrubova’s. After they were shut up in the Alexander Palace the girls were desperate to stay in touch with the Escort and Katya became the conduit, allowed a pass into the palace to come and deliver and fetch letters.40

  Until now Anastasia had been something of a sluggish letter writer compared to her sisters, but with little to do she began writing regularly to Katya in order to have news of Viktor. ‘Tatiana asks me to send this blanket for Makyukho [one of the officers] for his young son’, she wrote on the 26 March:

  He apparently is her godson. What is his name? Give the remaining socks and shirts to your brother and he can hand them out to his colleagues. We are sorry there aren’t enough for everyone, but we are sending all we have left. At the bottom of these two boxes is written which item is to be given to our former wounded. Maria is still ill, but I got up yesterday, and am very glad about that, as I had been confined to bed for about four weeks, though I am still weak in the legs.

  Please ask your brother again to return the group [photographs] that we sent you last time. We think of you all often and send huge greetings. Write and tell us sometimes, dear Katya how everyone is and so on, we are always so happy to have news. Jim [her dog] is well and happy.* Send my best to Sidorov. Warmest greetings to your mother and brother. All the best! I kiss you warmly, Your Anastasia. These little icons are from mother for all the officers.41

  At a time when such simple acts of friendship and remembrance preoccupied the four sisters, a positive ‘outpouring of venom’ against the imperial family was filling the Petrograd press. Some of it took the form of lurid cartoons of the former tsar and tsaritsa – of Alexandra reclining in a bath full of blood, or Nicholas watching mass hangings – or featured descriptions of elaborate, bloated meals of caviar, lobster and sturgeon gorged on by the imperial family while Petrograd starved.

  There was a cartoon of the Emperor lighting a cigarette with a hundred-rouble note. There was a nauseating story about ‘the proof’ that Grand-Duke Alexis was the son of [Monsieur] Philippe. There were sketches of the young grand-duchesses’ ‘private’ lives written by their ‘lovers’.42

  ‘The joint excesses of Nero, Caligula, the Sforzas and the Borgias would have suggested a mild nursery-story’ in comparison with the lurid press accounts that Edith Almedingen remembered reading that spring. Yet still the accusations against Nicholas and Alexandra escalated, so much so that on 27 March, during the judicial investigation into Anna Vyrubova, Kerensky ordered that the couple should be separated in order to prevent collusion between them, should any trial ensue. For the next three weeks they were allowed to meet only twice daily at meals, Nicholas appearing almost glad to escape his wife’s draining presence for a while.43 They adhered strictly to the new rules imposed on them, fearing that if they did not one or both of them might be taken away, like Anna, to the Peter and Paul Fortress.* Kerensky had actually wanted to separate Alexandra from the children, confining them with their father, but Elizaveta Naryshkina had appealed saying this was too cruel: ‘It would mean death to her. Her children are her life.’44 It was as well that Kerensky relented, for on 27 March Olga was back in bed again with swollen glands and a sore throat; once more her temperature climbed to nearly 40 degrees C (104 degrees F).45 On 4 April Alexandra noted that her daughter was now suffering from ‘inflammation around the heart’.46

  Over Easter weekend the entire household, including the remaining servants, were grateful to be allowed to pray together, though at one stage Belyaev had had to contend with a noisy funeral service being held in the park outside for supposed ‘victims of the Revolution’– in fact, those killed during wine-shop rioting and pillaging in the town a few days previously.47 All five children had made confession to him on Good Friday, Olga in bed and Maria in a wheelchair, and he was impressed by their ‘mildness, restraint [and] obedience to their parents’ wishes’. They seemed to him so innocent, so ‘ignorant of worldly filth’.48 The late-night communion service for Velikaya Subbota (Great Saturday) on 1 April was especially poignant for everyone (though Olga and Maria were too sick to attend). Afterwards eighteen sat down at table to break the fast. There was a huge Easter kulich, decorated eggs, ham and veal, sausage and vegetables, but for Iza Buxhoeveden it was ‘a dismal repast, like a meal in a house of mourning’, during which Nicholas and Alexandra were obliged to sit apart, the tsaritsa hardly speaking. She ate nothing and drank only a cup of coffee, saying she was ‘always on a diet’.49

  Beautiful spring weather greeted Easter Sunday, ‘a day of great joy despite the human suffering’, recalled Elizaveta Naryshkina. Nicholas presented her with a porcelain egg with his insignia. ‘I shall treasure it as a good memory’, she wrote in her diary. ‘How few loyal people they have left … One cannot be certain of the future: everything depends on whether the Provisional Government can hold on or whether the anarchists will win – the danger is unavoidable. How I wish that they could leave as soon as possible, seeing that they are now all well.’50 It being a Sunday and a public holiday, crowds gathered outside the railings to gawp at the tsar when he came out to work in the garden, surrounded by guards with fixed bayonets. ‘We look like convicts with their warders’, Pierre Gilliard remarked ruefully.51 People were now taking day trips out from the capital to stand and stare and there were as many again on Easter Monday, gathered to watch Nicholas shovelling the snow away from the canal. They stood there in silence, ‘like watching a wild animal in a cage’, recalled Valentina Chebotareva. ‘Why do they have to do this?’52 The family had at least been consoled by another wonderful service that day but afterwards, when Elizaveta Naryshkina went to see the grand duchesses in their sickroom, she had been alarmed to see how much thinner Maria was, though ‘very much prettier; the expression on her face sad and gentle. You can see that she has suffered a lot and that what she has been through has left a deep mark on her.’53

  At the annexe hospital, Valentina Chebotareva was continually saddened and frustrated by the lack of contact, particularly with her beloved Tatianochka. ‘We know little about the prisoners, although letters regularly arrive’, but these were extremely circumspect. She was worried about writing too often, which might be seen as a provocation by those who did not understand her close friendship with the grand duchesses. Any letters sent in signed with pet names and not in full immediately fell under suspicion as being some kind of coded message – there had already been problems with the authorities taking exception to letters sent by ‘Lili’ and ‘
Titi’ or sometimes even ‘Tili’ – a combination of the two.54 Knowing that they could now never return to the annexe, Tatiana had asked Bibi and Valentina to send back the things they had left there. Valentina worried that this too might be looked upon suspiciously, but nevertheless she packed up their nurses’ smocks, photo albums and other mementoes, together with a last photograph of them taken with their wounded in the dining room.55 Tatiana in return sent gifts of shirts, pillows and books for the patients from herself and Olga. ‘Tell darling Bibi that we love her and kiss her fondly’, she wrote, adding plaintively, ‘What are Mitya and Volodya doing?’56 The girls sent Easter greetings on the Sunday but Valentina was worried to read how ill Olga was and that ‘Alexey Nikolaevich is in bed having hurt his arm – another haemorrhage’. She had heard that when Kerensky had recently visited, he had asked Alexey, ‘Do you have everything you need?’ to which the child had responded:

  ‘Yes, only I’m bored and I love the soldiers so much.’

  ‘But there are so many all around and in the garden.’

  ‘No, not that kind, they aren’t going to the front – it’s those that I love.’57

  There were indeed plenty of soldiers all around, so much so that Tsarskoe Selo was now being called Soldatskoe Selo [Soldiers’ Village] for, as a British businessman in Petrograd remarked, ‘The Tsarskoe Selo municipal authorities are as ultra-Red as Versailles in 1789.’58

  It was now April and the days were beginning to drag – ‘one and the same, in a state of spiritual anguish’, as Elizaveta Naryshkina noted.59 While Tatiana was often out in the garden with Nicholas helping to break the ice around the bridges, Alexandra remained preoccupied with Olga and Maria, who were still confined to their rooms. ‘Olga is still very weak poor thing,’ wrote a despondent Elizaveta Naryshkina on 9 April, ‘her heart has been strained by unremitting illness over the last two months … She is very sweet; and Maria is enchanting even though still in bed with the last vestiges of pleurisy.’60 Tatiana meanwhile was pining for the annexe: ‘It’s sad that now we are better we can’t come and work in the hospital again. It’s so strange to be at home in the morning and not to be doing the dressings.’ Who was doing them, she asked Valentina.61 ‘What will happen to our old hospital now?’ ‘Forgive me for so many questions dear Valentina Ivanovna, but it’s so interesting to know what is happening with you. We constantly remember how good it was to work at the hospital and how we all got along together.’62