The Romanovs

by Robert K. Massie

  There were, however, obstacles to the marriage. Victoria Melita’s dynastic credentials were splendidly in order: she was of the House of Saxe-Coburg, which occupied the throne of England. And although the Russian Orthodox Church prohibited marriage between first cousins—as she and Cyril were—Victoria Melita did not become Orthodox until three years after her marriage. Ironically, this fact, while helping her avoid one pitfall, plunged her into another: it violated the rule of the Russian Imperial house that men in line for the throne may marry only women who were Orthodox at the time of their marriage. Most significant, however, was that the marriage lacked the permission of the reigning tsar. Here the problem was that Victoria Melita’s former husband, Ernest of Hesse, was the brother of Nicholas II’s wife. The puritanical empress was infuriated by Victoria Melita’s rejection of her brother and her open affair with Cyril. Alexandra, having the ear of the tsar, was determined to block the marriage.

  One can only sympathize with Nicholas II, overwhelmed by the political problems of ruling an empire and also afflicted by marital upheavals in the extended Imperial family. Real love matches, like the tsar’s own, were rare. Some Romanovs married stolid German princesses and settled down to a lifetime of tedium; others, like Boris and Andrew, and Sergei Mikhailovich, took lively, near-permanent mistresses; still others, like the tsar’s brother Grand Duke Michael and his uncle Grand Duke Paul, married previously married Russian women beneath their rank. Michael had a son before a morganatic marriage to his lover; Paul had two children by the woman he married morganatically. Nicholas II, attempting to enforce the law, banished his brother and uncle from Russia.

  Cyril and Victoria Melita, in the tsar’s view, were guilty of similar illegal conduct when, in 1905, they secretly married in Germany. When Cyril returned home, hoping to carry the day by presenting a fait accompli, he was instead stripped of his rank and command in the navy, deprived of the allowance he received as a member of the Imperial family, and ordered to leave Russia within forty-eight hours. His wife was denied the title of Grand Duchess. The couple lived in a small apartment on the avenue Henri-Martin in Paris, until, in 1909, on the death of Cyril’s father, their banishment was revoked. Nevertheless, despite official reconciliation, antagonism between the families ran deep.

  During the First World War, Cyril, promoted to rear admiral for no reason other than his name, remained in St. Petersburg commanding the Garde Equipage, an elite unit of sailors which in peacetime provided crews for the Imperial yachts. At the moment of crisis, in February 1917, Nicholas II was at Army Headquarters, five hundred miles from the capital. Empress Alexandra and her five children, all but Marie confined to darkened rooms with measles, were at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, fifteen miles from the city. A hostile crowd of mutinous soldiers from St. Petersburg was looting and drinking in the town, shouting its intention to seize “the German woman” and her son. The most reliable unit guarding the palace was a battalion of the Garde Equipage which established its campfires and soup kitchens in the palace courtyard. On the night of March 13, Alexandra, throwing a cloak over her shoulders and accompanied by her daughter Marie, went out among the sailors.

  “The scene was unforgettable,” wrote Baroness Buxhoevden, who watched from a window above. “It was dark, except for a faint light thrown up from the snow and reflected on the polished barrels of the rifles. The troops were lined up in battle order … the figures of the Empress and her daughter passed from line to line, the white palace looming a ghostly mass in the background.” Walking from man to man, Alexandra told them that she trusted them completely and that the life of the heir was in their hands. Returning to the palace, she was exuberant. “They are all our friends,” she said. In relays, she brought the men into the palace to drink hot tea.

  Thirty-six hours later, when the empress looked out on the morning of March 15, the courtyard was empty Grand Duke Cyril had ordered the Garde Equipage to return to St. Petersburg, leaving the tsar’s wife and children undefended. The previous day Cyril had—in the words of French ambassador Maurice Paléologue—“come out openly in favor of the revolution.” Sporting a red cockade on his naval uniform, he had placed himself at the head of his men and marched down the Nevsky Prospect to the Duma, where he had offered his services to Duma president Michael Rodzianko. Nicholas II was still on the throne, and Rodzianko was struggling to retain the monarchy in some form. Disgusted by Cyril’s breach of his oath to the tsar, he told the grand duke, “Go away. Your place is not here.” A week later Cyril compounded his betrayal. In an interview with a Petrograd newspaper, he said, “I have asked myself several times if the ex-empress were an accomplice of Wilhelm [the kaiser] but each time forced myself to recoil from the thought.” At that time Ambassador Paléologue went down Glinka Street and, he said, “saw something waving over [Grand Duke Cyril’s] palace: a red flag.” For the remainder of Cyril’s life, many Russian monarchists, even those who admitted that, despite his mother’s Lutheranism, he should be the legitimate pretender, considered that his abandonment of the empress and her children, his breach of oath to his sovereign, and his display of a red cockade and a red flag disqualified his claim to the throne.

  Grand Duke Vladimir’s life was free from the shame that disgraced his father, but it was, nevertheless, filled with disputation. Vladimir’s marriage, like Cyril’s, transgressed a rule of the Imperial family. Leonida Bagration-Moukhransky was unquestionably Orthodox. Leonida certainly had the “tsar’s” permission, for the “tsar” was Vladimir himself. She had previously been married and divorced, but divorce was not objectionable to the church and had not been raised as an argument against Cyril. The sticking point in Vladimir’s marriage to Leonida was whether she was descended from a “ruling house.” The argument here is arcane, but, within the family, bitterly contested. Leonida Bagration-Moukhransky descends from a branch of the family which ruled the kingdom of Georgia for three centuries. In 1800 Tsar Paul annexed Georgia into the Russian Empire and, in the opinion of Burke’s Royal Families of the World, “the Georgian kingdom ceased to exist … the princes of the blood royal were deported to Russia [and] their descendants were assimilated into the Russian aristocracy.” The Bagrations quickly became a leading family of the Russian nobility; Marshal Peter Bagration became a hero in the war against Napoleon and died on the field of Borodino. For over a hundred years, the Bagrations—like the Galitzines, the Sheremetyevs, and others—served the tsars in the Russian Army and at the Imperial court. Vladimir and Leonida, however, insisted that the Bagrations remained “a ruling house.” Thus, they contended, she was fully qualified to become the wife of a man who claimed the throne, to carry the title Grand Duchess of Russia, and to provide children and grandchildren who could become future sovereigns.

  Vladimir and Leonida, feeling the weakness of their own position, were always aggressive on questions of “equal marriage” and “ruling houses” when these applied to other Romanovs. In their view, since the revolution no Romanov male except Vladimir had made an equal marriage to a woman from a ruling house. By marrying unequally, all these others had disqualified their children not only from succession to the throne but from membership in the Imperial family, from using the title Prince, and even from calling themselves by the family name of Romanov. In Vladimir’s view, it was this dynastic horizon, barren of eligible males, that gave him the right to elevate his sixteen-year-old daughter to the succession.

  This 1969 proclamation stirred opposition among the several dozen people to whom the news that they were neither princes nor Romanovs was surprising and disagreeable. The leading members of the three other extant branches—Prince Vsevolod of the Constantinovichi, Prince Roman of the Nicholaevichi, and Prince Andrew of the Mikhailovichi, all born in Russia before the revolution (as Vladimir was not)—banded together to protest in writing. In this letter, they addressed Vladimir not as Grand Duke but merely as Prince, which would have been his prerevolutionary title. They declared that Leonida, having married Vladimir unequall
y, had no higher status than the wives of other Romanov princes and that she was not entitled to be called Grand Duchess. They said that they did not recognize Maria as a grand duchess and declared her proclamation as future curatrix of the Russian throne and head of the Russian Imperial house illegal.

  Intrafamily warfare continued in 1976, when Maria married Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia and Vladimir promoted his son-in-law to grand duke. It became even worse in 1981, when Maria’s son George was born and Vladimir named his new grandson a grand duke. Prince Vassily, a nephew of Nicholas II, responded that “the Romanov Family Association hereby declares that the joyful event in the Prussian royal house does not concern the Romanov Family Association since the newborn prince is not a member either of the Russian Imperial house or of the Romanov family. All questions of dynastic importance can only be concluded by the great Russian people on Russian soil.” Attempting to secure young George from the damaging (in Russia) allegation that the boy was a Hohenzollern, Vladimir legally changed his grandson’s name to Romanov and registered him with the French authorities as Grand Duke George of Russia. This infuriated George’s father, Prince Franz Wilhelm, now separated from Maria (“He came home one day and found his things in the hall,” explained a friend). In March 1994, Franz Wilhelm, who had shed his own Russian name and title of grand duke, said of his son, “I have his German passport right here”; he tapped the breast pocket of his jacket. “I always carry it with me. It says he is Prince George of Prussia.”

  The family argument about who is and is not qualified to claim a nonexistent throne, who is or is not a grand duke, a prince, or a Romanov is fueled by bitterness on both sides, but the more aggressive hostility has come from Cyril, Leonida, Vladimir, and Maria. Since the revolution, there has been no claimant or line of claimants other than this branch of the family. For them, this has not been enough. They have demanded acquiescence and support for their claim, and when these are denied they have retaliated. In 1992 Grand Duchess Maria wrote to President Yeltsin on the burial of the Ekaterinburg bones. Speaking of cousins closer by blood to Nicholas II than she, the grand duchess informed Yeltsin that “members of the Romanov family, heirs of morganatic marriages, not having any connection to the Imperial house, do not have the slightest right to speak their mind and wishes on this question. They can only go and pray at the grave, as can any other Russian who so wishes.”

  That summer, the seven senior Romanov princes in the Mikhailovich and Nicholaevich lines gathered in Paris to create a charitable Romanov Family Foundation, whose purpose was to provide medical and other assistance to Russia. Infiltrating a press conference announcing this foundation, partisans of Maria handed out their own press release, signed by Maria, declaring that “the other living members of the House of Romanov have lost all rights of succession as a result of the morganatic marriages of their parents.”

  In 1994 four Romanov princes were invited, along with Maria, to St. Petersburg to attend a Nicholas and Alexandra exhibition at the Hermitage. Maria refused to come. And a message from Leonida’s secretary stated that Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Leonida of Russia was shocked by the misuse of titles and protocol involved in the invitations to the princes. Earlier, at a press conference in Ekaterinburg with Maria, Leonida, and George sitting on the dais, the master of ceremonies announced, “There are only three Romanovs in the world. They are all in this room.”*

  Grand Duchess Maria, the forty-two-year-old Curatrix of the Russian Throne, lives with her son in a tree-shaded villa in the wooded hills outside Madrid. They share the house with Maria’s sister, Helen Kirby, now approaching sixty. (Maria and Helen’s mother, Leonida, lives mostly in Paris.) In the entry hall of the Madrid villa, there is a portrait of Maria’s great-great-grandfather, Tsar Alexander II, beneath which the grand duchess likes to pose with guests. In the parlor, a large portrait of Miss Kirby hangs over the fireplace.

  Maria is the central figure in the household. She is short and heavy, and her round face is surmounted by dark hair coiled on top of her head. Her English is fluent and Oxford accented; her Russian is equally fluent. In interviews both in Russia and in the West, she begins with caution, her answers rehearsed, feeling her way. Occasionally, she may shed the careful phraseology in which she has been schooled and speak more openly. Many Russians abroad who did not support Vladimir’s claim to the throne nevertheless liked him as a person. The same is true of his daughter.

  She answers straightforwardly that she cannot say when or whether the Russian government and people will restore the monarchy. “I don’t know. It’s difficult to tell,” she says. “Probably they say, ‘She might come back. She might not. Let’s just keep in touch and be nice to them because one never knows.’ They always treat us with kindness and respect when we go to Russia. In the summer of 1993, we made a two months’ trip along the Volga, stopping in thirty towns. The piers and riverbanks were covered with people. Many of them said, ‘When will you come back?’ and ‘Will you forgive us?’ I think in the back of their minds they have the idea of a monarchy. But I am not a prophet. Our return might be in a few months, or next year, or in ten years. So we just go there to find out about our country and to see whether we can help, with no desire—no immediate desire—to put on a crown.” Maria has no interest in going back over the past. “It is necessary to forgive, but never to forget,” she declares. As to the burial of the Ekaterinburg bones, she says that she “will be bound by the findings of the Russian government commission and the decision of the Russian government. I hope that the patriarch will canonize the family soon, along with all the martyrs of the revolution.”

  Maria has a good relationship with the present patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexis II. “Every time we go to Russia, he receives us kindly,” she says. “I think he really thinks that we can make a nice team and work together.” She is not bothered by continuing accusations from the Orthodox Church Abroad that the church in Russia is dominated by former agents of the KGB. “Somebody had to keep our church alive during that era, and it is thanks to these churchmen who lived in Russia that there still is a church in Russia,” she says. “For a small number of priests from abroad to say to them, ‘Well, you can just walk out now and we’ll come back and take your place,’ is absurd. I think that at one time the Church Abroad had a raison d’être. It doesn’t anymore.”

  When the schism in the Romanov family comes up, Maria is uncomfortable and testy. “If they want to abide by the family laws, then nobody will deny that they are Romanovs,” she says, speaking of her cousins. “That they are. Whether they have a title or not, that’s another matter. If they want to be Romanovs and carry the name with dignity, that’s fine, but one doesn’t need a title to do that. The family name is good enough. I understand that it is a very sad situation they find themselves in because their parents did not do the right thing. Their parents said that they didn’t give a damn and just went ahead and contracted these unequal marriages. Then their wives became Mrs. Romanov and their children Mr. Romanov and Miss Romanov. And that’s it. I can’t change our laws. My feeling about them is that now that something important is happening in Russia, they suddenly have awakened and said, ‘Ah ha! There might be something to gain out of this.’ ”

  While we talked, Miss Kirby and Grand Duke George sat with us, quietly listening. Then George had some tea and a piece of cake and politely excused himself. From the sun parlor, I could see him riding his bicycle back and forth in the garden. I asked about his future. “He knows very well that he is the tsarevich,” his mother said. “He talks about it often to me. Right now, he is at an English school here in Madrid where his classmates are the children of diplomats and businessmen. I have asked that they treat him as a normal boy, and he is called George. Someday, I hope he will do his military service in Russia.” In a surprising revelation, however, Maria says that George may have to wait his turn to mount the Russian throne. “As you know, I am head of the family,” she says. “We shall have to see what our count
ry wants. Right now, the one who is supposed to have the post would be me. So [before George could succeed], my country would have to say, ‘We don’t want a woman.’ ”

  Prince Nicholas Romanov, recognized by everyone in his family except Maria and Leonida as head of the Imperial house, stands at the train station in Gstaad, Switzerland, on a warm early spring day, extending his hand. He is tall, robust, and smiling. “We will need a taxi to get to my house,” he says. “And here we have one: the taxi Romanov.” We get into a battered elderly red car, so small that Nicholas fills most of the two front seats, and drive to the small chalet apartment to which he and his wife have retired from Italy. In moving he discovered that this apartment was not large enough for his library, so he bought a one-room studio on the floor below, which now is submerged in piles of books. Most are works of Russian history.

  If Grand Duchess Maria is not the legitimate pretender to the Russian throne, then Nicholas Romanov, now seventy-three, occupies that position. His parents married unequally; so, also, in his opinion, did Maria’s parents. Given equality on this count, Nicholas takes precedence because he is a male. The irony is that Nicholas neither wishes to be pretender nor believes that monarchy is suited to Russia’s current needs. A St. Petersburg television interviewer recently asked him what sort of a tsar he thought he would make. “My dear fellow,” Nicholas replied. “You haven’t heard? I am a republican.”

  He was born in the south of France in 1922, not far from the house of his great-uncle the tall soldier Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich. The grand duke had no children, and Nicholas and his brother, Dimitri, four years younger, became the only males in their generation of the Nicholaevich branch of the Romanov family. In 1936 his family moved to Rome, where his grandmother’s sister was queen of Italy. Nicholas was eighteen in 1940, when Italy entered the war, but, holding a stateless passport, he was not drafted into the army. In 1944, after the Allies entered Rome, Nicholas joined an Anglo-American psychological warfare unit. “Look here, Romanov, will you please learn English,” said his English colonel. Nicholas, who already spoke Russian, French, and Italian, did his best.