Across the square from the Assumption Cathedral stood the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, where the tsars were entombed. Built by Alvesio Novy of Milan, it was considerably more Italianate than either of its two sisters. Inside, amidst its several chapels, the deceased rulers were clustered in groups. In the middle of one small room, three carved stone coffins held Ivan the Terrible and his two sons. Other tsars lay in rows along the walls, their coffins of brass and stone covered with embroidered velvet cloths with inscriptions sewn in pearls around the hems. Tsar Alexis, father of Peter the Great, and two of his sons, Fedor and Ivan VI, also both tsars, would lie in this small room, but they would be the last. Alexis’ third son, Peter, would build a new cathedral in a new city on the Baltic where he and all the Romanovs who followed would be entombed.*
The smallest of the three cathedrals, the Cathedral of the Annunciation, had nine towers and three porches, and was the only one designed by Russian architects. Its builders came from Pskov, which was famous for its carved stone churches. Used extensively as a private chapel by the tsars and their families, its iconostasis was set with icons by the two most famous painters of this form of religious art in Russia, Theophanes the Greek, who came from Byzantium, and his Russian pupil Andrei Rublev.
On the eastern side of the square, towering above the three cathedrals, stood the whitewashed brick bell towers of Ivan the Great, the Bono Tower and the Tower of the Patriarch Philaret, now joined into a single structure. Beneath its highest cupola, 270 feet in the air, rows of bells hung in laddered niches. Cast in silver, copper, bronze and iron, in many sizes and timbres (the largest weighed thirty-one tons), they rang with a hundred messages: summoning Muscovites to early mass or vespers, reminding them of fasts and festivals, tolling the sadness of death, chiming the happiness of marriage, jangling warnings of fire or booming the celebration of victory. At times, they rang all night, driving foreigners to consternation. But Russians loved their bells. On holidays, the common people crowded to the belfries to take turns pulling the ropes. The first bells usually sounded from the Kremlin, then the sound was taken up by all the bells of Moscow’s “forty times forty” churches. Before long, waves of sound passed over the city and “the earth shook with their vibrations like thunder” according to one awed visitor.
From building cathedrals, the Italian architects turned to building palaces. In 1487, Ivan the Great commissioned the first stone palace of the Kremlin, the Palace of Facets (Granovitaya Palata), so named because its gray stone exterior walls were cut prismatically to resemble the surface of facet-cut jewels. Its most notable architectural feature was a throne room seventy-seven feet on each side, whose roof was supported by a single, massively arched column in the middle. When foreign ambassadors were being received, and on other state occasions, a small curtained window near the ceiling permitted the cloistered women of the tsar’s family to peek down and watch.
The Palace of Facets was primarily an official state building, and thus, in 1499, Ivan the Great ordered another palace of brick and stone in which to live. This five-story building, called the Terem Palace, contained a honeycomb of low-ceilinged, vaulted apartments for himself and the many women—wives, widows, sisters, daughters—of the royal family. The building was badly damaged by fire several times during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but both of the first Romanov tsars, Michael and his son Alexis, lavished great efforts to restore the building. In Alexis’ time, the doors, windows, parapets and cornices were made of white stone carved into foliage and figures of birds and animals, then painted bright colors. Alexis devoted special effort to refurbishing the fourth floor as a dwelling for himself. The five principal rooms—anteroom, throne room (known as the Golden Hall), study, bedroom and private chapel—were fitted with wooden walls and floors to prevent the dampness caused by moisture condensing on brick and stone, and the walls were covered with hangings of embroidered silk, woolen tapestries or tooled leather, depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The arches and ceilings were intersected by curving arabesques and Eastern versions of plants and fairy-tale birds, all done in brilliant colors with lavish inlays of silver and gold. The furnishing of the tsar’s apartment was partly traditional and partly modern. The old, carved oaken benches and chests and polished wooden tables were there, but so also were upholstered armchairs, elaborate gilded and ebony tables, clocks, mirrors, portraits and bookcases filled with books of theology and history. One window of the tsar’s study was known as the Petitioner’s Window. Outside was a small box which could be lowered to the ground, stuffed with petitions and complaints, then raised to be read by the sovereign. The tsar’s bedroom was upholstered with Venetian velvet and contained an intricately carved four-poster oak bed, curtained and canopied with brocade and silk and heaped with furs, eiderdown and cushions to ward off the icy currents of winter air that blasted against the windows and eddied under the doors. All these rooms were simultaneously heated and decorated by huge stoves of glazed, colored tiles whose radiant warmth also kept Russia’s rulers warm.
The major drawback to these splendid chambers was their lack of light. Little sunlight could filter through the narrow windows with their double sheets of mica separated by strips of lead. Not only at night and on the short, gray days of winter, but even in summertime, most of the illumination in the Terem Palace came from the light of flickering candles in the alcoves and along the walls.
In the third quarter of the seventeenth century, the royal chambers were occupied by the second tsar of the Romanov dynasty, “the Great Lord, Tsar and Grand Duke, Alexis Mikhailovich, of all Great and Little and White Russia, Autocrat.” Remote and inaccessible to his subjects, this august figure was enclosed in an aura of semi-divinity. An embassy of Englishmen, come in 1664 to thank the Tsar for his constant support of their once-exiled monarch, Charles II, was deeply impressed by the sight of Tsar Alexis seated on his throne:
The Tsar like a sparkling sun darted forth most sumptuous rays, being most magnificently placed upon his throne, with his scepter in his hand and having his crown on his head. His throne was of massy silver gilt, wrought curiously on top with several works and pyramids; and being seven or eight steps higher than the floor, it rendered the person of the Prince transcendently majestic. His crown (which he wore upon a cap lined with black sables) was covered quite over with precious stones, terminating toward the top in the form of a pyramid with a golden cross at the spire. The scepter glittered also all over with jewels, his vest was set with the like from the top to the bottom and his collar was answerable to the same.
From infancy, Russians had been taught to regard their ruler as an almost god-like creature. Their proverbs embodied this view: “Only God and the tsar know,” “One sun shines in heaven and the Russian tsar on earth,” “Through God and the tsar, Russia is strong,” “It is very high up to God; it is a very long way to the tsar.”
Another proverb, “The sovereign is the father, the earth the mother,” related the Russian’s feeling for the tsar to his feeling for the land. The land, the earth, the motherland, “rodina,” was feminine. Not the pure maiden, the virgin girl, but the eternal, mature woman, the fertile mother. All Russians were her children. In a sense, long before communism, the Russian land was communal. It belonged to the tsar as father, but also to the people, his family. Its disposal belonged to the tsar—he could give away vast tracts to favored noblemen—yet it still remained the joint property of the national family. When it was threatened, all were willing to die for it.
The tsar, in this familial scheme, was the father, “Batushka,” of the people. His autocratic rule was patriarchal. He addressed his subjects as his children and had the same unlimited power over them that a father has over his children. The Russian people could not imagine any limitation of the power of the tsar, “for how can a father’s authority be limited except by God?” When he commanded, they obeyed for the same reason that when a father commands, the child must obey, without question. At times, obeisance
before the tsar took on a slavish, Byzantine quality. Russian noblemen, when greeting or receiving favors from the tsar, prostrated themselves in front of him, touching the ground with their foreheads. When addressing his royal master, Artemon Matveev, who was Tsar Alexis’ leading minister and close friend, declared, “We humbly beseech you, we your slave Artemushka Matveev, with the lowly worm, my son Adrushka, before the high throne of Your Royal Majesty, bowing our faces to the earth….” In addressing the tsar, his whole lengthy official title had to be used. In so doing, the accidental omission of a single word could be considered an act of personal disrespect almost equivalent to treason. The tsar’s own conversation was sacrosanct: “’Tis death for anyone to reveal what is spoken in the tsar’s palace,” declared an English resident.
In fact, the demi-god who bore these titles, who wore a crown braided with “tufts of diamonds as big as peas, resembling bunches of glittering grapes” and the imperial mantle embroidered with emeralds, pearls and gold, was a relatively unassuming mortal. Tsar Alexis was recognized in his own time as “tishaishy tsar,” the quietest, gentlest and most pious of all the tsars, and when he succeeded his father on the throne in 1645 at the age of sixteen, he was already known as “the Young Monk.” In manhood, he grew taller than most Russians, about six feet, well built, inclined to fat. His roundish face was framed by light-brown hair, a mustache and a flowing brown beard. His eyes also were brown, their tone ranging from hardness in anger to warmth in affection and religious humility. “His Imperial Majesty is a goodly person, about two months older than King Charles II,” reported his English physician, Dr. Samuel Collins, adding that his patron was “severe in his chastisements but very careful of his subjects’ love. Being urged by a stranger to make it [punishable by] death for any man to desert his colors, he answered, ‘It was a hard case to do that, for God has not given courage to all men alike.’”
Although he was tsar, Alexis’ life inside the Kremlin was more like that of a monk. At four a.m., the Tsar threw aside his sable coverlet and stepped from his bed clad in shirt and drawers. He dressed and went immediately to the chapel next to his bedroom for twenty minutes of prayers and readings from devotional books. When he had kissed the icons and been sprinkled with holy water, he emerged and sent a chamberlain to bid the Tsaritsa good morning and ask after her health. A few minutes later, he went to her chamber to escort her to another chapel, where together they heard morning prayers and early mass.
Meanwhile, boyars, government officials and secretaries had gathered in a public anteroom awaiting the arrival of the Tsar from his private chambers. As soon as they saw “the bright eyes of the Tsar,” they began to bow to the ground, some as many as thirty times, in gratitude for favors granted. For a while, Alexis listened to reports and petitions; then, at about nine a.m., the entire group went to hear a two-hour mass. During the service, however, the Tsar continued to converse quietly with his boyars, conducting public business and issuing instructions. Alexis never missed any divine service. “If he be well, he goes to it,” said Dr. Collins. “If sick, it comes to him in his chamber. On fast days he frequents midnight prayers, standing four, five, or six hours together, prostrating himself on the ground, sometimes a thousand times, and on great festivals, fifteen hundred.”
Following morning mass, the Tsar returned to administrative work with his boyars and secretaries until time for dinner at noon. He ate alone at a high table surrounded by boyars who dined at lower tables along the walls of the room. He was served only by special boyars, who tasted his food and sipped his wine before offering the cup. Meals were gargantuan; on festival days, as many as seventy dishes might be served at the Tsar’s table. Zakuski, or hors d’oeuvres, included raw vegetables, especially cucumbers, salted fish, bacon and innumerable pirozhki, sometimes stuffed with egg, fish, rice or cabbage and herbs instead of meat. Then came soups and roasts of beef, mutton and pork, seasoned with onion, garlic, saffron and pepper. There were dishes of game and fish such as salmon, sturgeon and sterlet. Dessert was cakes, cheeses, preserves, fruits. Russians drank mostly vodka, beer or a milder drink called kvas, made of fermented black bread, variously flavored with raspberry, cherry or other fruits.
But Alexis rarely touched any of the succulent dishes that were presented to him. Instead, he sent them as presents to various boyars to show special favor. His own palate was monastically simple. He ate only plain rye bread and drank light wine or beer, perhaps with a few drops of cinnamon added; cinnamon, Dr. Collins reported, was the “aroma imperiale.” During periods of religious fasting, said Dr. Collins, the Tsar “eats but three meals a week; for the rest, he takes a piece of brown bread and salt, a pickled mushroom or cucumber and drinks a cup of small beer. He eats fish but twice in Lent and observes it seven weeks altogether…. In fine, no monk is more observant of canonical hours than he is of fasts. We may reckon he fasts almost eight months in twelve.”
Following dinner, the Tsar slept for three hours until time to return to church for vespers, again with his boyars, again to consult on affairs of state during the religious service. Supper and the end of the day were spent either with his family or with intimate friends playing backgammon or chess. Alexis’ special pleasure during these hours was to listen to people read or tell stories. He liked hearing passages from books of church history, or the lives of saints, or the presentation of religious dogma, but he also liked to hear the reports of Russian ambassadors traveling abroad, extracts from foreign newspapers or simple tales told by pilgrims and wanderers who had been brought to the palace to entertain the monarch. In warmer weather, Alexis left the Kremlin to visit his country mansions outside Moscow. One of these at Preobrazhenskoe on the Yauza River was the center of Alexis’ favorite sport, falconry. Over the years, the enthusiastic huntsman built up an immense establishment of 200 falconers, 3,000 falcons and 100,000 pigeons.
Most of the time, however, Alexis prayed and worked. He never questioned his own divinely granted right to rule; in his mind, he and all monarchs were chosen by God and responsible only to God.* Beneath the tsar stood the nobility, divided into almost a dozen ranks. The greatest noblemen held the highest rank, that of boyar, and were members of the old princely families who held hereditary landed estates. Below were the lesser aristocracy and gentry who had been given estates in return for service. There was a small middle class of merchants, artisans and other townspeople and then—the huge base of the pyramid—the peasants and serfs who made up the overwhelming mass of Russian society; their conditions of life and methods of farming were roughly similar to those of the serfs of medieval Europe. Most Muscovites used the title “boyar” to include all noblemen and high officials. Meanwhile, the actual daily work of administering the tsar’s government was in the hands of between thirty and forty departments known as Prikazy. Generally speaking, they were inefficient, wasteful, overlapping, difficult to control and corrupt—in brief, a bureaucracy which nobody had designed and over which no one had any real control.
From his dimly lit, incense-scented Kremlin rooms and chapels, Tsar Alexis ruled the largest nation on earth. Vast plains, endless tracts of dark forest and boundless expanses of desert and tundra stretched from Poland to the Pacific. Nowhere in this immensity of space was the wide horizon broken by more than shallow mountains and rolling hills. The only natural barriers to movement on the broad plain were the rivers, and from the earliest times these had been converted into a network of watery highways. In the region around Moscow, four great rivers had their tributary headwaters: the Dnieper, the Don and the mighty Volga flowed south to the Black and the Caspian seas; the Dvina flowed north to the Baltic and the frozen Arctic.
Scattered over this immense landscape was a thin sprinkling of human beings. At the time of Peter’s birth—near the end of Tsar Alexis’ reign—the population of Russia was roughly eight million people. This was about the same as that of Russia’s western neighbor, Poland, although the Russians were dispersed over a far greater area. It was much larger than the p
opulation of Sweden (less than two million) or England (slightly more than five million), but less than half that of the most populous and powerful state in Europe, the France of Louis XIV (nineteen million). A fraction of the Russian population lived in the old Russian towns—Nizhni-Novgorod, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, Vologda, Archangel, Yaroslavl, Rostov, Vladimir, Suzdal, Tver, Tula—and in the more recently acquired Kiev, Smolensk, Kazan and Astrachan. Most of the people lived on the land, where they wrenched a living from the earth, the forest and the waters.
Enormous though Alexis’ tsardom was, Russia’s boundaries were fragile and under pressure. In the east, under Ivan the Terrible and his successors, Muscovy had conquered the middle Volga and the khanate of Kazan, extending the Russian empire to Astrachan and the Caspian Sea. The Urals had been crossed and the immense, largely empty spaces of Siberia added to the tsar’s domain. Russian pioneers had penetrated to the northern Pacific and established a few bleak settlements there, although a clash with the aggressive Manchu Dynasty of China had forced a withdrawal of Russian outposts along the Amur River.
To the west and the south, Russia was ringed by enemies who struggled to keep the giant landlocked and isolated. Sweden, then reigning as Mistress of the Baltic, stood guard across this seaborne road to the West. Westward lay Catholic Poland, the ancient enemy of Orthodox Russia. Only recently, Tsar Alexis had reconquered Smolensk from Poland, although that Russian fortress town lay a mere 150 miles from Moscow. Late in his reign, Alexis had won back from Poland the shining prize of Kiev, mother of all Russian cities and the birthplace of Russian Christianity. Kiev and the fertile regions both east and west of the Dnieper were the lands of the Cossacks. These were Orthodox people, originally vagabonds, freebooters and runaways who had fled the onerous conditions of life in old Muscovy to form bands of irregular cavalry and then to become pioneers, colonizing farms, villages and towns throughout the upper Ukraine. Gradually, this line of Cossack settlements was spreading southward, but the limits still were 300 or 400 miles above the shores of the Black Sea.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 68