Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  Once all the children were well enough, the parents decided to resume their lessons, dividing their subjects among the people available. Nicholas himself became an instructor in history and geography, Baroness Buxhoeveden gave lessons in English and piano, Mlle. Schneider taught arithmetic, Countess Hendrikov taught art, and the Empress, religion. Gilliard, besides teaching French, became informal headmaster. After Nicholas had given his first lesson, the Tsar greeted Gilliard, “Good morning, dear colleague.”

  The tranquillity of Nicholas’s behavior during his imprisonment, beginning with the five months he and his family were held at Tsarskoe Selo, has attracted both contemptuous scorn and glowing praise. In general, the scorn has come from those who, distant in place or time, have wondered how a man could fall from the pinnacle of earthly power without lapsing into bitter, impotent fury. Yet those who were closest to Nicholas during these months and saw him as a man; who had been with him during the years of supreme power and knew what a burden, however conscientiously carried, that power had been—these witnesses regarded his calm as evidence of courage and nobility of spirit. It was not a secret inside the palace that the Tsar’s immense shield of reserve and self-control had broken when he returned to the palace; everyone knew that Nicholas had wept, and for a moment, for everyone, the anchor was gone. Then, he recovered and his bearing became once again the anchor which held everything and everyone else. “The Tsar accepted all these restraints with extraordinary serenity and moral grandeur,” said Pierre Gilliard. “No word of reproach ever passed his lips. The fact was that his whole being was dominated by one passion, which was more powerful even than the bonds between himself and his family—his love of country. We felt that he was ready to forgive everything to those who were inflicting such humiliations upon him so long as they were capable of saving Russia.”

  Through the Russian newspapers and French and English magazines he was allowed to have, Nicholas followed military and political events with keen interest. At his request, the priest in church prayed for the success of the Russian and Allied armies, and when the priest offered a prayer for the Provisional Government, Nicholas fervently crossed himself. Above all, he was anxious that the army be kept disciplined and strong and that the country remain faithful to its allies. Having seen with his own eyes the collapse of discipline at the palace, he worried about the decay taking place at the front. Hearing that General Ruzsky had resigned, Nicholas said indignantly, “He [Ruzsky] asked that an offensive be undertaken. The Soldiers’ Committee refused. What humilation! We are going to let our allies be crushed and then it will be our turn.” The following day, he mellowed and consoled himself. “What gives me a little hope,” he said, “is our love of exaggeration. I can’t believe that our army at the front is as bad as they say.”

  Purely in a physical sense, the abdication and imprisonment at Tsarskoe Selo were a blessing for the fearfully weary man whom Nicholas had become. For the first time in twenty-three years, there were no reports to read, no ministers to see, no supreme decisions to make. Nicholas was free to spend his days reading and smoking cigarettes, playing with his children, shoveling snow and walking in the garden. He read the Bible from the beginning. At night, sitting with his wife and daughters, he read aloud to them from the Russian classics. Gently, by example, he tried to make easier for Alexandra the painful transition from empress to prisoner. After the long midnight service on Easter Eve, Nicholas quietly asked the two officers of the guard on duty to join his family for the traditional Easter meal in the library. There, he embraced them, not as prisoner and jailor, but as Russian and Russian, Christian and Christian.

  Alexandra, unlike Nicholas, faced the overthrow of the monarchy and the beginning of captivity with deep bitterness. Proud and silent, thinner than ever before, her hair now predominantly gray, she remained most of the day on the sofa in the girls’ room. In the evening, she traveled by wheelchair to visit Anna, with Nicholas himself usually pushing the chair. Everything spoke to her of humiliation. Used to filling her rooms with violets, lilies of the valley and hyacinths from the park greenhouses or brought fresh from the Crimea, she was now forbidden these as “luxuries unnecessary for prisoners.” Occasionally when a maid or footman brought her a single branch of lilac, the Empress wept in gratitude.

  For weeks, Alexandra remained convinced that, despite what had happened in Petrograd, the real Russia—the millions of peasants and the army—remained faithful. Only gradually, with a kind of bitter humor, did she begin to accept reality. Nicholas showed her the way. “He would sometimes laugh at the idea of being what he called ‘an Ex,’ ” said Lili Dehn. Alexandra picked up the expression. “Don’t call me an Empress any more—I’m only an Ex,” she would say. One day at lunch when an especially unpalatable ham appeared on the table, Nicholas made everyone laugh by shrugging and saying, “Well, this may have once been a ham, but now it’s nothing but an ex-ham.”

  In Petrograd during the weeks after the abdication, feelings mounted against all Romanovs. On March 24, Grand Duke Nicholas, reappointed by the Provisional Government to his old post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armies, arrived to take up his duties at Mogilev only to find a letter from Prince Lvov awaiting him. In the letter, the new Premier asked the Grand Duke to resign, explaining apologetically that “the national feeling is decidedly and insistently against the employment of any members of the House of Romanov in any official position.” Rigidly loyal, the Grand Duke immediately acquiesced, handing the command to Alexeiev with the grandiloquent declaration, “I am happy once more to be able to prove my love for my country which so far Russia has not doubted.” Then the old soldier retired from the army and retreated to his estate in the Crimea.

  Still, the focus of popular hatred was always the Tsar and his family at Tsarskoe Selo. From the moment of abdication, rumors spread through Petrograd that “Citizen Romanov” and his wife, “Alexandra the German,” were working secretly to betray the country to the Germans and with their help restore the autocracy. The press, freed of censorship and restraint, rushed into print with lurid tales of Rasputin and the Empress which hitherto had been passed only by word of mouth. The “private lives” of the Tsar’s four daughters were written by their “lovers.” A Rabelaisian palace dinner menu, described as “typical,” was published so that the hungry people of Petrograd could read how “Nikolasha” and his family were gorging themselves: “Caviar, lobster soup, mushroom patties, macaroni, pudding, roast goose, chicken pie, veal cutlets, orange jelly, pork chops, rice pudding, herrings with cucumber, omelet, rissoles in cream, fresh pineapple, sturgeon.” Cartoons depicted Nicholas clapping his hands with joy while he watched the hanging of a political prisoner, and Alexandra bathing in a tub filled with blood and saying, “If Nicky killed a few more of these revolutionaries, I could have such a bath more often.”

  It was at this point, with public opinion thoroughly aroused and the Soviet demanding that Nicholas be thrown into the Fortress, that the Provisional Government placed responsibility for the safety of the Imperial family entirely on Kerensky’s shoulders. On April 3, the new warden decided to take a personal look at his prisoners.

  He arrived early in the afternoon in one of the Tsar’s automobiles driven by a chauffeur from the Imperial Garage. Alighting at the kitchen door, he assembled the soldiers of the guard and the palace servants in a passageway and delivered an impassioned revolutionary speech. The servants, he announced, were now the servants of the people, who paid their salaries, and who expected them to keep a close eye and report everything suspicious that happened in the palace. Next, in the Tsar’s waiting room, Kerensky met Benckendorff. “He was dressed in a blue shirt buttoned to the neck, with no cuffs or collar, big boots, and he affected the air of a workman in his Sunday clothes,” recalled the Count. “… He introduced himself and said, ‘I have come here to see how you live, to inspect your Palace and to talk to Nicholas Alexandrovich.’ ” According to Kerensky, “the old dignitary [Benckendorff] with a monocle in his eye rep
lied that he would put the matter before His Majesty.” In the meantime, Benckendorff, knowing that Nicholas and Alexandra were still at lunch with the children, distracted Kerensky by proposing a tour of the palace. Kerensky agreed. “His manner was abrupt and nervous,” Benckendorff recalled. “He did not walk but ran through the rooms, talking very loudly.… He had the Emperor’s private rooms opened; and all the doors, drawers and cupboards searched, and told those who accompanied him to look in every corner and under the furniture.” Without saying a word to them, Kerensky went through the rooms of the ladies-in-waiting, who stood and watched him. Eventually, he came to the door of Anna Vyrubova.

  Nearly recovered from measles, Anna had been up having lunch with Lili Dehn when the noise and confusion in the palace signaled Kerensky’s arrival. In terror, she grabbed a pile of her private papers and threw them into her fire, then jumped into bed and pulled the covers up to her head. As the commotion outside grew louder, Anna, “with an icy hand” upon her heart, whispered to Lili, “They are coming.” A moment later, Kerensky entered, noting the fireplace filled with the glowing ash of burning paper. “The room seemed to fill up with men,” Anna wrote, “and walking arrogantly before them I beheld a small, clean-shaven, theatrical person whose essentially weak face was disguised in a Napoleonic frown. Standing over me … right hand thrust into the bosom of his jacket, the man boomed out, ‘I am the Minister of Justice. You are to dress and go at once to Petrograd.’ I answered not a word but lay still on my pillows.… This seemed to disconcert him somewhat for he turned … and said nervously ‘Ask the doctors if she is fit to go.’ ” Botkin and Derevenko were questioned and both declared that, from a medical viewpoint, it would not harm her to leave. Later, Anna bitterly attributed the doctors’ decision to “craven fear.”

  Leaving Anna, Kerensky passed Gilliard’s room. Assuming that the Swiss—being a citizen of a republic—was a friend, Kerensky nodded pleasantly and said, “Everything is going well.”

  By then, Nicholas and Alexandra were ready. Kerensky was conducted to the children’s schoolroom, where Benckendorff left him standing before a closed door while he stepped in to announce the new Minister. Then, swinging wide open the double door, the Count announced grandly, “His Majesty bids you welcome.” “Kerensky,” Benckendorff recalled, “was in a state of feverish agitation; he could not stand still, touched all the objects which were on the table and seemed like a madman. He spoke incoherently.”

  Kerensky admitted his extreme nervousness: “To be frank I was anything but calm before this first meeting with Nicholas II. Too many hard, terrible things had been connected in the past with his name.… All the way along the endless chain of official apartments I was struggling for control over my emotions.… [Entering the room] my feelings underwent a lightning change.… The Imperial family … were standing … near the window, around a small table, in a huddled, perplexed little group. From this cluster of frightened humanity, there stepped out somewhat hesitantly, a man of medium height in military kit, who walked forward to meet me with a slight peculiar smile. It was the Emperor … he stopped in confusion. He did not know what to do, he did not know how I would act, what attitude I would adopt. Should he walk forward to meet me as a host, or ought he to wait for me to speak first? Should he hold out his hand?

  “In a flash, instinctively, I knew the exact position: the family’s confusion, its fear at finding itself alone with a revolutionary whose objects in bursting in upon it were unknown.… With an answering smile, I hurriedly walked over to the Emperor, shook hands and sharply said, ‘Kerensky’—as I always do, by way of introduction.… Nicholas II gave my hand a firm grasp, immediately recovering from his confusion, and smiling once again, led me to his family.

  “His daughters and the Heir Apparent were obviously burning with curiosity and their eyes were simply glued to me. But Alexandra Fedorovna stood tense and erect—proud, domineering, irreconcilable; she held out her hand to me slowly and unwillingly.… When the hand-shaking was over, I inquired after their health [and] told them that their relatives abroad were taking a keen interest in their welfare.… [I] told them not to be frightened … but to have complete confidence in the Provisional Government. After that the Emperor and I went into the next room where I again assured him that they were safe.… He had fully recovered his impressive calm. He asked me about the military situation and wished us success in our difficult new task.”

  In recalling the events of this day, Kerensky makes no mention of the arrest of Anna Vyrubova and Lili Dehn. Before leaving, both women briefly said goodbye to the Empress. “The last thing I remember,” wrote Anna, “was the white hand of the Empress pointing upward and her voice, ‘There we are always together.’ ” Alexandra’s last words to Lili were similar: “With a tremendous effort of will, she [Alexandra] forced herself to smile; then, in a voice whose every accent bespoke intense love and deep religious conviction, she said: ‘Lili, by suffering, we are purified for Heaven. This goodbye matters little. We shall meet in another world.’ ” Leaving her pet spaniel Jimmy behind, Anna stumbled on her crutches to the waiting car and climbed in beside Lili. “The car shot forward, and I left the palace at Tsarskoe Selo forever,” Anna later wrote. “Both Lili and I pressed our faces to the glass in a last effort to see those beloved we were leaving behind, and through the mist and rain we could just discern a group of white-clad figures crowded close to the nursery windows to see us go. In a moment of time the picture was blotted out and we saw only the wet landscape, the storm-bent trees, the rapidly creeping twilight.” In Petrograd, Lili was released the following day, but Anna was sent to spend five chilling months in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

  Six days later, on April 9, Kerensky returned to the palace to begin an investigation of the Empress’s “treasonable, pro-German” activities. While the interrogation was under way, he ordered the Empress separated from her husband and children. At once, he ran into a storm of protest from both doctors and ladies-in-waiting, who declared that it was inhuman to separate a mother from her sick children. Kerensky relented and named Nicholas as the parent who would have to live apart. The couple were permitted to meet at prayers and meals, providing an officer was always present and only Russian was spoken.

  Although the separation lasted for eighteen days, the investigation was casual and Kerensky learned nothing. His questioning of Alexandra was confined to a single session lasting one hour. As Benckendorff later described it, Kerensky began politely and mildly by asking about “the part the Empress had played in politics, [and] her influence on the Emperor in the choice of ministers whom she often had received in the absence of the Emperor. Her Majesty answered that the Emperor and herself were the most united of couples, whose whole joy and pleasure was in their family life, and that they had no secrets from each other; that they discussed everything, and that it was not astonishing that in the last years which had been so troubled, they had often discussed politics.… It was true that they had discussed the different appointments of ministers, but this could not be otherwise in a marriage such as theirs.” Benckendorff learned afterward that Alexandra had been impressed by Kerensky’s politeness and that Kerensky had been “struck by the clarity, the energy and the frankness of her words.” When the Minister came out, he said to the Tsar, who was waiting outside, “Your wife does not lie.” Quietly, Nicholas observed that this was scarcely news to him.

  Questioning Nicholas, Kerensky learned even less. He asked why the Tsar had changed ministers so frequently, why he had appointed Stürmer and Protopopov and dismissed Sazonov, but Nicholas avoided answering directly and Kerensky quickly let the conversation drop. There was no further discussion of “treason” and Kerensky himself declared to his colleagues in the Provisional Government that the Empress Alexandra had been loyal to Russia.

  As time passed and Kerensky continued to visit the palace, the relationship between the socialist minister and the deposed sovereign and his wife markedly improved. “Kerensky’s attitude towa
rd the Tsar is no longer what it was at the beginning.… [He] has requested the papers to put an end to their campaign against the Tsar and more especially the Empress,” Gilliard wrote in his diary on April 25. Kerensky admitted that, during these weeks, he was affected by Nicholas’s “unassuming manner and complete absence of pose. Perhaps it was this natural, quite artless simplicity that gave the Emperor that peculiar fascination, that charm which was further increased by his wonderful eyes, deep and sorrowful.… It cannot be said that my talks with the Tsar were due to a special desire on his part; he was obliged to see me … yet the former Emperor never once lost his equilibrium, never failed to act as a courteous man of the world.” On Nicholas’s part, Benckendorff noted that “the confidence which the Emperor felt in Kerensky increased still more … and the Empress shared this confidence.” Nicholas himself declared of Kerensky, “He is not a bad sort. He’s a good fellow. One can talk to him.” Later, Nicholas was to add, “He [Kerensky] is a man who loves Russia, and I wish I could have known him earlier because he could have been useful to me.”

  Spring melted the snow, and in the afternoons the family began to go out together into the park. At first, they had to wait in the semicircular entry hall for an officer to come with the key, then file out, the Empress being pushed in her wheelchair, through a gauntlet of gaping, loitering soldiers, many of whom gibed and snickered as they passed. Sometimes, the men did more than mock: when Nicholas got his bicycle and started to pedal along a path, a soldier thrust his bayonet between the spokes. The Tsar fell and the soldiers guffawed. Yet Nicholas was unfailingly friendly even to those who insulted him. He always said “Good morning” and held out his hand. “Not for anything in the world,” declared one soldier, turning his back on the outstretched hand. “But, my dear fellow, why? What have you got against me?” asked Nicholas, genuinely astonished.