Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family

by Robert K. Massie

  Expressing their grief, Nicholas and Alexandra spent a day going from one hospital to another. Nicholas ordered that the dead be buried in separate coffins at his own expense rather than dumped into the common grave customary for mass disasters. From the Tsar’s private purse, the family of every victim received a thousand roubles. But no act of consideration could erase the terrible event. Masses of simple Russians took the disaster as an omen that the reign would be unhappy. Other Russians, more sophisticated or more vengeful, used the tragedy to underscore the heartlessness of the autocracy and the contemptible shallowness of the young Tsar and his “German woman.”

  After a coronation, the newly crowned monarch was expected to travel, making state visits and private courtesy calls on fellow sovereigns. In the summer of 1896, Nicholas and Alexandra went to Vienna to visit the aging Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph, called on the Kaiser at Breslau and spent ten quiet days in Copenhagen with Nicholas’s grandparents, King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. In September, taking with them ten-month-old Olga, they sailed to visit Queen Victoria.

  The Queen was in Scotland at the great, turreted, granite castle of Balmoral deep in the Highlands of Aberdeen. In a driving rain, the Russian Imperial yacht Standart anchored in the roadstead at Leith, and Uncle Bertie, the Prince of Wales, came aboard to escort the Russian guests through the wild mountains. Thoroughly drenched from riding in open carriages, they arrived at the castle after dark. The Queen was waiting for them on the castle steps, surrounded by tall Highlanders holding flaming torches.

  Overjoyed to see each other, grandmother and granddaughter spent hours playing with the baby. “She is marvelously kind and amiable to us, and so delighted to see our little daughter,” Nicholas wrote to Marie. Nicholas was left in the hands of Bertie. “They seem to consider it necessary to take me out shooting all day long with the gentlemen,” he complained. “The weather is awful, rain and wind every day and on top of it no luck at all—I haven’t killed a stag yet. … I’m glad Georgie comes out to shoot too—we can at least talk.”

  From Scotland, the Russian party traveled to Portsmouth and then to France. Unlike the British visit, which had been a family holiday, the Tsar’s visit to Paris was an event of the highest importance to both countries. Despite the great difference in their political systems, the needs of diplomacy had made military allies of Europe’s greatest republic and its most absolute autocracy. Since 1870, when France lost the Franco-Prussian War and was stripped of its eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, French statesmen and generals had dreamed of the day they would take revenge on Germany, aided by the countless soldiers of the Tsar. For his part, Tsar Alexander III had wanted a counterbalance to the immense military power of the German Empire which had grown up on his western frontier. Besides, France was willing to loan to Russia the enormous sums Alexander III needed to rebuild his army and to build his railways. In 1888 and 1889, the first of these loans was floated on the Paris Bourse at a low rate of interest. In 1891, the French fleet visited Kronstadt, and the Autocrat of all the Russias stood bareheaded while the bands played the “Marseillaise.” Until that moment it had been a criminal offense to play this revolutionary song anywhere in the Tsar’s dominions. In 1893, the Russian fleet visited Toulon, and in 1894, the year of Alexander III’s death and his son’s accession, Russia and France signed a treaty of alliance. In his Memoirs, Raymond Poincaré, President of France during World War I, recorded, “Those of us who reached manhood in 1890 cannot recall without emotion the prodigious effect produced by the friendliness of the Emperor Alexander III.”

  Nicholas II was the first tsar to visit France since the entente had been formed, and the French government proposed to give him an overwhelming welcome. It being late September, Paris carpenters were ordered to wire artificial chestnut blooms to the famed chestnut trees to give the city its most pleasing appearance. Police were stationed every twenty yards along the line of parade to dampen the enthusiasm of revolutionaries or anarchists who might jump at the chance to assassinate an autocrat. The French fleet steamed to the middle of the English Channel with flags flying and bands playing to greet the Tsar as he crossed from England.

  From the moment Nicholas’s carriage appeared on the wide boulevards of Paris, the people of France raised a thunderous, unceasing ovation. Huge crowds frantically waved their handkerchiefs and shouted as Nicholas and Alexandra went by. Seeing Olga and her nurse in another carriage, the crowds shouted “Vive le bébé,” “Vive la Grande Duchesse” and even “Vive la nounou.” Nicholas was overcome. “I can only compare it with my entry into Moscow [for the coronation].” Together, the Imperial guests visited Notre Dame, the Ste. Chapelle, the Panthéon and the Louvre. At the Invalides, they looked down on the tomb of Russia’s invader, Napoleon. With Alexandra in a blue satin gown standing at his side, Nicholas laid a foundation stone of the Pont Alexander III over the Seine. At Versailles for an evening, Alexandra was assigned the rooms of Marie Antoinette.

  The French visit concluded with a huge military review on the river Marne. Nicholas, dressed in a Cossack uniform, sat on a sorrel horse and watched seventy thousand Chasseurs Alpins, African Zouaves, Spahi horsemen in flowing robes, and regiments of regular infantry in red pantaloons. Then, as a climax to the review, the Spahis whirled and charged en masse, engulfing the reviewing party in clouds of dust. Leaving the field to board his train, Nicholas rode down a road lined on both sides with battalions of French infantry. Spontaneously the French soldiers began to cheer “Vive l’Empereur!”

  Exhilarated by their reception in France, Nicholas and Alexandra hated to begin the journey back to Russia by train across Germany. “We arrived at the frontier at eleven in the evening,” Nicholas wrote to Marie. “There for the last time, we heard the strains of our national anthem. After this began German helmets and it was unpleasant to look out of the window. At every station in France one heard ‘Hurrah’ and saw kind and jolly faces, but here everything was black and dark and boring. Happily, it was time to go to bed; by daylight it would have been even more depressing.”

  Nicholas never forgot the outpouring of emotion displayed by the people and soldiers of France on his first visit as Tsar. In the future, this favorable impression in the mind and heart of the young Tsar was to serve France well.

  * Nicholas’s complete title was: Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Tsar of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan, of Poland, of Siberia, of Tauric Chersonese, of Georgia, Lord of Pskov, Grand Duke of Smolensk, of Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia and Finland, Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalia, Samogotia, Bialostock, Karelia, Tver, Yougouria, Perm, Viatka, Bulgaria, and other countries; Lord and Grand Duke of Lower Novgorod, of Tchernigov, Riazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslav, Belozero, Oudoria, Obdoria, Condia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all the region of the North, Lord and Sovereign of the countries of Iveria, Cartalinia, Kabardinia and the provinces of Armenia, Sovereign of the Circassian Princes and the Mountain Princes, Lord of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig Holstein, of Storman, of the Ditmars, and of Oldenbourg, etc.

  6

  The New Tsar

  At home, Nicholas plunged into “the awful job I have feared all my life.” He attacked the mountains of paper brought him every day and dutifully initialed them, wrote comments in their margins, signed orders, promotions and lists of honors. At first, feeling his way, he relied on Marie for guidance. “The various affairs you left me, petitions, etc. have all been attended to,” he reported faithfully. Two weeks later she wrote back, “I am sorry to have still to forward you so many papers, but it is always like that in early summer just before the ministers go on leave.”

  But Nicholas did not always follow his mother’s recommendations. When she asked as a favor the loan of one million roubles from the State Bank to a needy princess, Nicholas lectured her sternly: “I must talk to you, darling Mama, about some rather unpleasant things…. As regards … a loan of a million roubles from the Bank, I mu
st tell you honestly that this is impossible. I should have liked to see how she would have dared even to hint at such a thing to Papa; and I can certainly hear the answer he would have given her…. It would be a fine state of affairs indeed at the Treasury if, in Witte’s absence (he is at present on a holiday) I were to give a million to one, two millions to another, etc…. What forms one of the most brilliant pages in the history of dear Papa’s reign is the sound condition of our finances—[this] would be destroyed in the course of a few years.”

  Far more difficult for Nicholas were the uncles, the four surviving brothers of Alexander III. Vladimir, the oldest, a hunter, gourmet and patron of the arts, was Commander of the Imperial Guard and President of the Academy of Fine Arts. Alexis, a man of infinite charm and enormous girth, was simultaneously Grand Admiral of the Russian Navy and an international bon vivant—“his was a case of fast women and slow ships.” Serge, the husband of Grand Duchess Elizabeth, was the violently reactionary Governor General of Moscow, a man so narrow and despotic that he forbade his wife to read Anna Karenina for fear of arousing “unhealthy curiosity and violent emotions.” Only Paul, a mere eight years older than his nephew, made no trouble for Nicholas.

  “Nicholas II spent the first ten years of his reign sitting behind a massive desk in the palace and listening with near-awe to the well-rehearsed bellowing of his towering uncles,” wrote Grand Duke Alexander, the Tsar’s cousin. “He dreaded to be left alone with them. In the presence of witnesses his opinions were accepted as orders, but the instant the door of his study closed on the outsider—down on the table would go with a bang the weighty fist of Uncle Alexis … two hundred and fifty pounds … packed in the resplendent uniform of Grand Admiral of the Fleet…. Uncle Serge and Uncle Vladimir developed equally efficient methods of intimidation…. They all had their favorite generals and admirals … their ballerinas desirous of organizing a ‘Russian season’ in Paris; their wonderful preachers anxious to redeem the Emperor’s soul … their clairvoyant peasants with a divine message.”

  It was not surprising that the uncles had a powerful influence; all were vigorous, relatively young men when their inexperienced twenty-six-year-old nephew suddenly became Tsar. Three of them had been present in Darmstadt to steer Nicholas through his proposal to Princess Alix; later it was they who decided that Nicholas should marry publicly in St. Petersburg, not privately at Livadia; at the coronation, the uncles insisted that Nicholas go on to the French ambassador’s ball after the disaster at Khodynka Meadow. The uncles’ influence continued over the first decade of the reign. It was not until Nicholas had gone through the fires of war with Japan and the 1905 Revolution and was himself thirty-six that their influence began to fade.

  Along with becoming Tsar of Russia, Nicholas had suddenly become head of the House of Romanov and manager of the vast Imperial estate. His income, totaling 24 million gold roubles ($12 million) a year, came partly from an annual Treasury appropriation and partly from the profits of the millions of acres of crown lands—vineyards, farms and cotton plantations—purchased mainly by Catherine the Great. In 1914 the value of these Romanov lands was estimated at $50 million. Another $80 million was frozen in the form of the immense treasures of jewelry bought in three centuries of rule. Along with the fabulous Russian Imperial Crown, these included the Orlov Diamond of 194.5 carats, which was set in the Imperial Scepter; the Moon of the Mountain diamond of 120 carats; and the Polar Star, a superb 40-carat ruby.

  Despite this wealth, the Tsar’s private purse was often empty. There were seven palaces to be kept up: the Winter Palace and the Anitchkov Palace in St. Petersburg; the Alexander and Catherine Palaces at Tsarskoe Selo; Peterhof; Gatchina; the Imperial apartments in the Kremlin; and Livadia Palace in the Crimea. In these palaces, fifteen thousand officials and servants required salaries, food, uniforms and appropriate presents on holidays. There were the Imperial trains and yachts. Three theatres in St. Petersburg and two in Moscow, the Imperial Academy of Arts and the Imperial Ballet with its 153 ballerinas and 73 male dancers, all were maintained from the Tsar’s private purse. Even the little students at the Ballet School, wearing dark blue uniforms with silver lyres on their collars, and training in leaps and entrechats, were considered members of the personal household of the Tsar.

  In addition, every member of the vast Imperial family received an allowance from the Tsar. Each of the grand dukes was given $100,000 a year and every grand duchess received a dowry of $500,000. Innumerable hospitals, orphanages and institutions for the blind depended on the Imperial charity. A flood of private petitions for financial aid poured in each year to the private chancery; many were worthy and had to be satisfied. Before the end of the year, the Tsar was usually penniless; sometimes he reached this embarrassing state by autumn.

  In running his family and empire, Nicholas looked to his father and the Russian past. Nicholas preferred to be Russian down to the smallest details of personal life. At his desk, he wore a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy breeches and soft leather boots. Once he toyed with the idea of converting formal court dress to the ancient long caftans of the days of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. He gave up the project only when he discovered that the cost of ornamenting these robes with jewels in the style of the ancient Muscovite boyars was more than any modern purse could bear. Although Nicholas’s English, French and German were excellent, he preferred to speak Russian. He spoke Russian to his children and wrote in Russian to his mother; only to the Empress Alexandra, whose Russian was awkward, did he speak and write in English. Although French was the popular language of the upper classes, he insisted that his ministers report to him in Russian and was displeased even by the insertion of a foreign phrase or expression. Even culturally, Nicholas was intensely nationalistic. He liked to read Pushkin, Gogol and the novels of Tolstoy. He was fond of Tchaikovsky and went to concerts, opera and ballet several times a week; his favorite ballet was The Hunchback Horse, based on a Russian fairy tale. Of all the tsars, Nicholas most admired Alexis the Mild, last of the purely Muscovite tsars and father of Peter the Great. In 1903, Nicholas’s interest led to a lavish costume ball at which everyone present appeared in robes and gowns of the seventeenth century and danced old Russian dances which they had rehearsed for weeks. Once when an aide was talking enthusiastically about Peter the Great, Nicholas replied thoughtfully, “I recognize my ancestor’s great merits, but … he is the ancestor who appeals to me least of all. He had too much admiration for European culture…. He stamped out Russian habits, the good customs, the usages, bequeathed by a nation.”

  In his work habits, Nicholas was solitary. Unlike most monarchs and chiefs of state—unlike even his own wife—he had no private secretary. He preferred to do things for himself. On his desk he kept a large calendar of his daily appointments, scrupulously entered in his own hand. When official papers arrived, he opened them, read them, signed them and put them in envelopes himself. He once explained that he placed things exactly because he liked to feel that he could enter his office in the dark and put his hand on any object he desired. With much the same sense of privacy, Nicholas disliked discussions of politics, especially in casual conversation. A new aide-de-camp, galloping at the side of the Tsar near Livadia on a morning ride, supposed that his duty was to amuse the Tsar with small talk. He chose politics as his subject. Nicholas replied reluctantly, and quickly switched the conversation to the weather, the mountain scenery, the horses and tennis. When the aide persisted, Nicholas put spurs to his horse and galloped ahead.

  This sense of privacy, along with an unwillingness to provoke personal unpleasantness, created perennial difficulty between the Tsar and his ministers. Ministers were appointed and dismissed directly by the crown. In theory, they were the servants of the Tsar, and he was free to give these posts to whomever he liked, to listen to or ignore a minister’s advice, and to hand down dismissals without explanation. In practice, the ministers were the heads of large government departments where continuity and coordination were
administrative necessities. In addition, the ministers were also ambitious, proud and sensitive men. Nicholas never mastered the technique of forceful, efficient management of subordinates. He hated scenes and found it impossible to sternly criticize or dismiss a man to his face. If something was wrong, he preferred to give a minister a friendly reception, comment gently and shake hands warmly. Occasionally, after such an interview, the minister would return to his office, well pleased with himself, only to receive in the morning mail a letter regretfully asking for his resignation. Not unnaturally, these men complained that they had been deceived.

  The major lines of Nicholas’s character as Tsar were set in these early years of the reign. Coming to the throne unprepared, he was forced to develop his administration of the office as he went along. Because he was influenced at first by his mother, his uncles and his tutor (Pobedonostsev remained Procurator of the Holy Synod until 1905), his enemies declared that he had no will of his own. It would be more accurate to say that he was a man of narrow, special education; of strong and—unfortunately—unchanging conviction; of soft-spoken, kindly manner; and, underneath, of stubborn courage. Even Sergius Witte, whose abrupt dismissal from office later bred in him a venomous hatred of Nicholas, nevertheless wrote of the early years: “In those days, the young Emperor carried in himself the seeds of the best that the human mind and heart possess.”