Alexandra wrote voluminously. She would begin early in the morning, add paragraphs during the day, go on for pages late at night and perhaps add even more the next day. In a bold, rounded hand, she wrote to the Tsar in English in the same telegraphic style she used for her friends: breathless prose with irregular spelling, many abbreviations, frequent omissions of words that seemed obvious, and punctuation largely with dots and dashes. Both the length and the style of her letters are unfortunate. Often by skipping and jumping, she gives an impression of light-mindedness on subjects about which she actually cared deeply. Similarly, the intense fervor of other passages is strong evidence of the great passions of which Alexandra was capable, but not—as some have charged—sufficient proof that the Empress was mad. The sheer length of her letters has made their interpretation difficult for historians and biographers. It is arduous to read them all and impossible to quote more than a minuscule fraction. Yet, in her case to an extraordinary extent, excerpting has been misleading. A thought whose germination has been proceeding for sentences—perhaps paragraphs—suddenly arrives full strength in a stark and damning phrase. These phrases, plucked from the mass of verbiage, make a loquacious woman seem hopelessly hysterical.
A remarkable feature of these letters was the freshness of Alexandra’s love. After two decades of marriage, she still wrote like a young girl. The Empress, so shy and even icy about expressing emotion in public, released all her romantic passion in her letters. Beneath the Victorian surface of reserve, she revealed the extravagant, flowery emotions of the Victorian poets.
The letters, usually arriving with petals of lilies or violets pressed between their pages, begin “Good morning, my darling … My beloved one … My sweetest treasure … My Own Beloved Angel.” They end: “Sleep well, my treasure … I yearn to hold you in my arms and rest my head upon your shoulder … I yearn for your kisses, for your arms and shy Childy [Nicholas] gives them me [only] in the dark and wify lives by them.” She was in anguish whenever he left for the front: “Oh, my love! It was hard bidding you goodbye and seeing that lonely, pale face with big sad eyes at the … [train] window—my heart cried out, take me with you … I gave my goodnight kiss to your cushion and longed to have you near me—in thoughts I see you lying in your compartment, bend over you, bless you, and gently kiss your sweet face all over—oh my Darling, how intensely dear you are to me—could I but help you in carrying your heavy burdens, there are so many that weigh on you.” Their burdens were much on her mind: “I … try to forget everything, gazing into your lovely eyes…. So much sorrow and pain, worries and trials—one gets so tired and one must keep up and be strong and face everything…. We show nothing of what we feel when together. Each keeps up for the other’s sake and suffers in silence. We have lived through so much together in these 20 years—and without words have understood each other.” Although her language had the fresh, gushing quality of young love, Alexandra did not deceive herself about the passing of time: “32 years ago my child’s heart already went out to you in deep love…. I know I ought not to say this, and for an old married woman it may seem ridiculous, but I cannot help it. With the years, love increases and the time without your sweet presence is hard to bear. Oh, could but our children be equally blessed in their married lives.”
Nicholas read her letters in bed at night, the last thing before going to sleep. His replies, if more restrained, were no less intimate and tender. “My beloved Sunny,” he wrote, “when I read your letters my eyes are moist … it seems that you are lying on your sofa and that I am listening to you, sitting in my armchair by the lamp…. I don’t know how I could have endured it all if God had not decreed to give you to me as a wife and friend. I speak in earnest. At times it is difficult to speak of such things and it is easier for me to put it down on paper, owing to stupid shyness…. Goodbye, my beloved sweet Sunny…. I kiss you and the children tenderly. Ever your old hubby, Nicky.”
Sitting on her balcony, the Empress described the changing seasons at Tsarskoe Selo: “the sun behind the trees, a soft haze over all, the swans swimming on the pond, steam rising off the grass,” and later, “the leaves are turning very yellow and red,” and then, “the pink sky behind the kitchen and the trees thickly covered in snow look quite fairy like.” From Mogilev, in early spring, Nicholas wrote “the Dnieper broke up yesterday. The whole river was covered with blocks of ice, they moved swiftly but noiselessly and only occasionally could be heard the sharp sound of the clashing of two large ice blocks. It was a magnificent spectacle.” A few weeks later: “the birches are growing green, the chestnuts are shimmering and soon will burst into bud. Everything smells good. I noticed two small dogs chasing each other while I stood washing at my window.”
Knowing how much he missed his children, Alexandra filled her letters with homey details of their activities: “Baby has his lessons and goes out in the donkey sled twice a day. We take tea in his room and he likes it…. Baby madly enjoys your bath and made us all come and look on his pranks in the water. All the daughters beg too for the same treat some evening. May they?” When the Tsar’s permission arrived: “The girls are wild that they may bathe in your bath.” And later: “Baby ate lots of blinis…. Baby improves playing on the balalaika. Tatiana too. I want them to learn to play together…. Marie stands at the door and, alas! picks her nose…. On the train, the girls are sprawling on the floor with the sun shining full upon them to get brown. From whom have they got that craze?…”
Despite the distraction of hospital work, the Empress continued to suffer from shortness of breath and used a wheelchair when not in public. Her feet were swollen and her teeth ached. During the spring of 1916, the dentist came daily; sometimes she saw him three separate times in a day. Alexis was bothered with recurring bleeding into his elbows and knees. When he was unable to walk, the Empress spent hours lying on a sofa in his room and took her dinner beside his bed. As evening approached and his pain became stronger—“he dreads the night,” she wrote—his sisters Olga and Tatiana came to distract him.
“Baby was awfully gay and cheery all day … in the night he woke up from pain in his left arm and from 2 on scarcely got a moment’s sleep,” she wrote on April 6, 1916. “The girls sat with him a good while. It seems he worked with a dirk and must have done too much—he is so strong that it’s difficult for him always to remember and think that he must not do strong movements. But as the pain came with such force in the night and the arm won’t bend I think it will pass quicker—generally three nights pain…. I cried like a baby in church. Cannot bear when the sweet child suffers.”
That night, she wrote again: “This afternoon I spent in Baby’s room whilst Mr. G. [Gilliard] read to him…. He suffered almost the whole time, then would doze for a few minutes, and then again strong pains…. Reading is the best thing, as for a time it distracts the thoughts…. Seeing him suffer makes me utterly wretched. Mr. G. is so gentle and kind with him, knows exactly how to be with him.”
For those who knew her, there never was any question of the Empress’s Russian patriotism. War between Germany and Russia was personally excruciating—her brother Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse was in the German army—but her allegiance was fervently Russian. “Twenty years have I spent in Russia,” she explained to a lady-in-waiting. “It is the country of my husband and my son. I have lived the life of a happy wife and mother in Russia. All my heart is bound to this country.” Nevertheless, she grieved at the change that had come over Germany. “What has happened to the Germany of my childhood?” she asked Pierre Gilliard. “I have such happy, poetic memories of my early years at Darmstadt. But on my later visits, Germany seemed to me a changed country, a country I did not know and had never known…. I had no community of thought or feeling with anyone.” She blamed the change on Prussia and the Kaiser. “Prussia has meant Germany’s ruin,” she declared. “I have no news of my brother. I shiver to think that the Emperor William may avenge himself against me by sending him to the Russian front. He is quite capable of such
monstrous behavior.”
Because of her awkward personal position, Alexandra was especially sensitive to the national reputation of the soldiers on both sides. When the German army savagely burned the Belgian library town of Louvain, she cried, “I blush to have been a German.” On September 25, 1914 (O.S.), she wrote to the Tsar, “I long that our troops should behave exemplarily in every sense and not rob and pillage—leave that horror to the Prussian troops…. I want our Russian troops to be remembered hereafter with awe and respect—and admiration…. Now I am bothering you with things that do not concern me, but only out of love for your soldiers and their reputation.”
Her deep sorrow was war itself and the suffering it brought. Like so many others, she yearned that the suffering would have meaning: “I do wonder what will be after this great war is over. Will there be a reawakening and new birth in all—shall once more ideals exist, will people become more pure and poetic, or will they continue to be dry materialists? So many things one longs to know. But such terrible misery as the whole world has suffered must clean hearts and minds and purify the stagnant brains and sleeping souls. Oh, only to guide all wisely into the right and fruitful channel.”
Sharing the Tsar’s patriotism, convinced that she and her husband were the center of a great national movement which was sweeping Russia, the Empress worked in the hospitals and awaited victory which would surely come. It was not until the spring of 1915, when the prospect of early victory had faded, that Alexandra’s letters first showed a serious interest in her husband’s work.
Her concern began, curiously enough, with the matter of the Tsar’s personal bearing. Wholly imbued with the principle of autocracy, convinced that it was the only form of government for Russia, Alexandra worried that her gentle husband, whom she loved for his kindness and charm, was not sufficiently regal. “Forgive me, precious one,” she began to write in April 1915, “but you know you are too kind and gentle—sometimes a good loud voice can do wonders and a severe look—do, my love, be more decided and sure of yourself. You know perfectly well what is right. They [the ministers] must remember who you are. You think me a meddlesome bore, but a woman feels and sees things sometimes clearer than my too humble sweetheart. Humility is God’s greatest gift but a sovereign needs to show his will more often.”
At the same time, she was advising, “Be more autocratic, my very own sweetheart … Be the master and lord, you are the autocrat,” Alexandra also began to warn against those she thought were encroaching on the Imperial prerogatives. Grand Duke Nicholas was one target of her criticism; she continued her chiding until he fell. Simultaneously, the Empress bitterly inveighed against the Duma. “Deary, I heard that that horrid Rodzianko and others … beg the Duma to be called at once together,” she wrote in July 1915. “Oh, please don’t it’s not their business, they want to discuss things not concerning them and bring more discontent—they must be kept away.” Over and over in her letters, she sounds the theme: “We’re not a constitutional country and dare not be, our people are not educated for it…. Never forget that you are and must remain autocratic Emperor. We are not ready for constitutional government.” It was not only her husband’s prerogative she was protecting, but also the rights of her son, the future tsar: “For Baby’s sake we must be firm as otherwise his inheritance will be awful, as with his character he won’t bow down to others but be his own master, as one must in Russia whilst people are still so uneducated.”
Seen from Alexandra’s viewpoint, the next step was entirely logical. In waging this great fight to save Russia and the autocracy, she needed a powerful ally. Rasputin, she was convinced, was a Man of God; his credentials had been proved in the hours when his prayers had seemed miraculously to check the Tsarevich’s hemorrhages. Now, in a time of war, he also appeared the living embodiment of the soul of the Russian people: coarse, simple, uneducated, but close to God and devoted to the Tsar. From these premises, it was no great step for her to conclude that God intended Rasputin to guide Russia through the ordeal of war. If she could trust him with the dearest thing she possessed—the life of her son—why should she not also trust him with choosing ministers, commanding the army or directing the life of the entire nation?
For a while in the first autumn of war, Rasputin’s influence at Tsarskoe Selo had dwindled. Nicholas could not forgive him his opposition to what the Tsar considered a patriotic war; the Empress was busy from morning until night with hospitals, fulfilling herself in nursing. Once when Rasputin telephoned Anna Vyrubova and asked to see the Empress, Anna replied that the Empress was busy and that he had better wait a few days. Rasputin put down the phone with loud annoyance.
Early in the winter of 1915, however, Rasputin’s influence over the Empress was sweepingly restored by another of those remarkable episodes which studded his life. Late on the afternoon of January 15, 1915, a train carrying Anna Vyrubova from Tsarskoe Selo into Petrograd was wrecked. When Anna was found and extricated from the wreckage, she was in critical condition. Her legs had been crushed by the coils of a steam radiator; a steel girder had fallen across her face and pinned her head; her skull and her spine were badly injured. At the hospital where she was taken, a surgeon declared, “Do” not disturb her. She is dying.” Nicholas and Alexandra came to her bedside and waited helplessly for the end. Rasputin, quite out of touch, did not hear about the accident until the following day. When he did, he jumped up from his table and drove straight to the hospital in a car lent to him by Countess Witte. When he entered the room, Anna was in a delirium, murmuring, “Father Gregory, pray for me,” while the Tsar and the Empress stood by. Rasputin strode to Anna’s side, took her hand and called out “Annushka! Annushka! Annushka!”
The third time he called, Anna slowly opened her eyes.
Rasputin ordered her, “Now wake up and rise.”
She made an effort to get up.
“Speak to me,” he commanded.
She spoke in a feeble voice.
“She will recover, but she will remain a cripple,” said Rasputin, turning to the others. Then he staggered from the room and collapsed in a wave of dizziness and perspiration.
Exactly as Rasputin had predicted, Anna recovered but thereafter moved only on crutches or in a wheelchair. Her devotion to Rasputin became unquestioning. Convinced that he was sent by Heaven to save the Imperial family, she dedicated herself to assisting Rasputin in his mission. Acting as intermediary, she did everything in her power to smooth over differences between her mistress and the starets.
In Alexandra, the episode overwhelmingly revived her conviction that Rasputin was a true saint capable of accomplishing miracles. Utterly convinced herself, she did her utmost to transfer her conviction to Nicholas. “No, harken unto Our Friend,” she wrote in June 1915. “Believe him. He has your interest and Russia’s at heart. It is not for nothing God sent him to us, only we must pay more attention to what He says. His words are not lightly spoken and the importance of having not only his prayers but his advice is great…. I am haunted by Our Friend’s wish and know it will be fatal for us and for the country if not fulfilled. He means what he says when he speaks so seriously.” In September 1916: “I fully trust in our Friend’s wisdom, endowed by God to counsel what is right for you and our country. He sees far ahead and therefore his judgement can be relied upon.”
One block from the Fontanka Canal, at 64 Gorokhovaya Street in Petrograd, stood the building where Rasputin lived during these crucial years, 1914–1916. A five-story brick apartment house, entered through a small paved courtyard, with a concierge’s room at the foot of the wide stairs, it was architecturally similar to thousands of buildings erected in that era in Paris, London, Berlin or New York. Socially, there was nothing distinguished about the house of the Imperial favorite. Rasputin’s neighbors were working people: a clerk, a seamstress, a masseuse. The staircase was thick with pungent smells: leather, sheepskin coats, thick clouds of cabbage soup and the rancid odor of hot sheep’s cheese.
Rasputin’s apartment
on the third floor of this building was surprisingly small and sedate. It consisted of five rooms. “The bedroom … was small and very simply furnished,” wrote Prince Felix Yussoupov, who often visited Rasputin. “In a corner close to the wall was a narrow bed with a red fox bedspread, a present from Anna Vyrubova. Near the bed was a big chest of painted wood; in the opposite corner were lamps which burned before a small icon. Portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina hung on the walls along with crude engravings representing biblical scenes.” [In the dining room] “water was boiling in the samovar; on the tables were a number of plates filled with biscuits, cakes and nuts; glass bowls contained jam and fruit and other delicacies; in the center stood a great basket of flowers. The furniture was of massive oak, the chairs had very high backs, a bulky dresser full of crockery took up most of one wall. There were a few badly-painted pictures. A bronze chandelier with glass shades lighted the table. The flat had an air of middle-class solidity.”
Here, on days when he had not been drinking late, Rasputin rose early and went to Mass. By the time he returned for a breakfast of bread and tea, the first of his petitioners already was climbing the stairs. Rasputin’s influence at court brought him people from all walks of life: bankers, bishops, officers, society women, actresses, adventurers and speculators, peasant girls, old women who had traveled miles simply to get his blessing. The callers came in such numbers that many had to wait in line on the staircase. Outside, the curb was lined with the automobiles of important people visiting Rasputin.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 42