The Romanovs

by Robert K. Massie

  In 1946, just before the referendum that transformed Italy from a kingdom into a republic, Nicholas, his parents, and his brother left for Egypt. There Nicholas fell in love with an Egyptian woman whose language was English. “My English improved immensely,” he remembers. In 1950, on his way to Geneva to look for work with one of the new United Nations offices, he passed through Rome and met Countess Sveva della Gherardesca. Within a month he proposed marriage. She accepted, but her father told him, “First, get a job.” He began selling Austin automobiles in Rome. Three years later his father-in-law and his wife’s twin brother died at almost the same time, leaving their vineyards in Tuscany unmanaged. “Not very large but quite good wine,” says Nicholas. “So I took over and went into the fields and learned to farm. And that is what I have done most of my life.”

  Along with farming Nicholas Romanov has devoted his life to reading history. In retrospect, he has great sympathy for his namesake, Nicholas II. “He was a charming, extremely considerate, very unlucky man,” Prince Nicholas says. “He had a reputation for being indecisive, for changing his mind too easily, for never keeping his word. Part of this was his character, but part was the system. Let us say you are the minister of education and you come to see the tsar. Tour Majesty,’ you say to him, ‘we must build a dozen Russian-language schools in Tajikistan; otherwise all the boys will listen only to the mullahs.’ And Nicholas would say, ‘An excellent idea. All right. Let’s do it.’ The tsar’s next audience is with the minister of finance, and Nicholas says, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve ordered twelve new schools in Tajikistan.’ And the minister of finance says, ‘Good idea. But where are the funds?’ ‘Ah, well,’ says the tsar, ‘we can arrange that.’ ‘Not so easily, Your Majesty,’ says the minister. ‘You know, the French loans are coming due. And remember that we have decided to reequip the artillery. Frankly, we don’t have the money.’ The tsar is distressed. ‘You mean we can’t do it?’ ‘Not now,’ says the finance minister. ‘Perhaps later. It is an excellent idea.’ So when the tsar next sees the minister of education, he says, ‘Oh, by the way, an excellent idea, those schools of yours, but we can’t do it just now.’ And the minister of education goes out and writes in his diary and later in his memoirs that, once again, the tsar has gone back on his word.

  “The problem,” continues the Nicholas Romanov of the 1990s, “was the system. If Nicholas II had presided over a Council of Ministers, he would have learned, at the same session, of the need for schools and of the unavailability of money. Perhaps then he would have said, ‘Let’s start with three schools and try for more later.’ But under the autocracy, Nicholas had to know everything and make every decision. Autocracy in Russia may have been logical in the time of Peter the Great, but it was unworkable in the time of Nicholas II.”

  This leads Nicholas Romanov to the question of monarchy today. “The only thing I know is that whoever speaks of monarchy in Russia today doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We cannot even think of it. First of all, because it’s out of step with the times. The idea that it could be a symbolic thing which will unite all Russians—that’s nonsense. It will unite all Russians for a while, and very soon—the minute the first problems arise—all that will collapse. People will blame whoever is the head of state, and there will be no way of getting rid of him. So this is the reason I personally favor a presidential republic now in Russia. Because we need to be able to change the man at the top periodically. It has happened with Gorbachev. It will happen with Yeltsin. The important thing is that the changes are made without trauma for the country, without bloodshed.”

  What about a constitutional monarchy? “No, I don’t think a constitutional monarch, who is a mere symbol of the nation’s unity, can work, because Russia does not have a constitutional tradition. We Romanovs took care of that in our time, and our Communist successors made sure after we were gone. This constitutional tradition is born now, it is struggling to grow. There are elections, there is give-and-take in Parliament. Yes, sometimes the wrong people get elected. That is democracy. Everyone gets upset because a madman named Zhirinovsky suddenly gets 25 percent of the vote and starts making frightening pronouncements. Does anybody in the West understand why his supporters voted for him? It’s very simple. Take a Russian of my age, seventy-three. As a soldier, he was twenty-two or twenty-three when he beat the greatest army in the world, the German Wehrmacht. He fought his way from Moscow to Berlin, he climbed the Reichstag and put the red flag on the summit. All his life, he has been proud of that. Today, fifty years later, where is this old soldier? Living on a pension which provides a living for only two or three days a month. Do you expect him to be happy seeing Russia begging for deutsche marks and seeing foreigners and Russian criminals racing down streets in Mercedeses and BMWs?

  “What I really want,” says Nicholas Romanov, “is that my country come out of this historical period and stop dwelling on it. So I’m ready to say that I don’t give a damn whether it was Lenin, Sverdlov, Smith, or Jones who ordered the murder of my family. Somebody did. The stigma lies on the men of that era. But, for heaven’s sakes, after seventy-five years, we are living now in a new Russia. We have colossal problems to face. Let’s forget the political aspect of the past. Let’s leave that to the historians. Whether Lenin was responsible or not is extremely interesting, and I’m not in favor of bottling it up, but let’s not make that more important than what happens today and tomorrow.”

  What about the burial of the Ekaterinburg bones? “I believe that they are valid, but what is more important is that we today—all the people of Russia—make a gesture of atonement for this crime and go and express that feeling of atonement at the grave of the victims. If somebody says, ‘Look, you are repenting over the wrong bones and the wrong grave,’ does that make my repenting less valid? It is the repentance which is important, not the grave. Then it will be over. Finished. Russia can go forward.”

  Mention of the family schism causes Nicholas to shake his head. “Look, Vladimir married a commoner,” he says. “Leonida comes from the most exalted family of the Caucasus, a great, esteemed family of the Russian nobility, but she was not royalty. So what? Our parents married commoners. So what? We have married commoners. Again, so what? There was nobody to ask us to renounce our rights, so we married without renouncing them, and we and our children still have rights to the throne of Russia. That is our position. Cyril would not admit it; Vladimir would not admit it; Maria does not admit it. And we don’t give a damn, because we don’t want to reign in Russia. We do say, however, that Maria cannot, in her pursuit of a throne, take away who we are and what we are. She cannot put herself out in front. If, when the bones of the Imperial family are buried, Maria insists on being treated differently from us, then my advice to the rest of the family would be not to go. Because then what should be a religious service of repentance and reconciliation would become a political event.

  “It is ironical, you know, our Russian law about unequal marriages. Our family in exile is more restrictive in this matter than are the royal families still on their thrones. In England, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, when the monarch or heir marries a commoner, most people think it is politically healthy.” Ultimately, Nicholas accepts the view held by the Dowager Empress Marie and by Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich that only the Russian people can decide. “It is up to them whether or not they want a monarch and, if so, who that monarch should be,” he says. “If they want a Romanov, they should choose any Romanov they like. If they want someone from another family, they should choose that person. It’s not up to us.”

  Nicholas, in his own view, is Prince Nicholas Romanov, head of the family, president of the Romanov Foundation, historian and retired farmer. That he might be something more was suggested not long ago by the behavior of an expert on royal genealogy and protocol. Traditionally, the queen of England stands up only for other monarchs or heads of state. Not long ago in London, at an exhibition of jewelry by Fabergé, Nicholas Romanov approached Elizab
eth II to be introduced. Seeing him coming, the queen stood.

  In Russia in 1995, the symbols of the tsars have begun to reappear. The flag of Russia is the flag of Peter the Great. The double-headed eagle of the Romanovs appears on visas issued by the Russian government and on caps worn by Russian generals. In Copenhagen, the Russian ambassador, a former Soviet diplomat, threw up his hands before a Romanov prince and said, “Imagine! They killed not just the tsar and the empress but the children too! All murdered! How terrible!” At a dinner in Chicago, Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg, told his table partners that he supports the claim of Grand Duchess Maria and that it is only a matter of time before a constitutional monarchy under Grand Duke George is established in Russia.

  Despite this revival of symbols and interest, however, the time of which Sobchak speaks is unlikely to be soon. Russians, for the most part, do not want a Romanov restoration. “The Romanovs are of no interest to anyone here,” said Geli Ryabov, the film director who helped find the grave of the Imperial family. “Why? People are tired. Tired! They want to live quietly, to eat, drink, dress, rest, and sleep and not have to think that tomorrow, once again, someone will be shooting at government buildings.” Pavel Ivanov, the DNA expert who helped identify the Romanov bones in England, agrees. “Knowing how life is in Russia today, I can only laugh,” he said about a restoration. “The Russian people have other cares, other problems. It is dangerous to live in Moscow now; the most profitable business in this city is selling steel doors. A life in Russia now is worth five thousand dollars; that is what it costs to arrange an assassination. Talk about royal families and thrones is ridiculous.”

  Irina Pozdeeva, a professor of religious history at Moscow University, expressed the same opinion more philosophically: “Believe me, for the people in Russia today, the tsarist idea does not exist at all. The people today do not remember the Batushka Tsar [Little Father]. Three generations of people, even four, have grown up without this image. It has remained only in fairy tales and in historical memory. For the intelligentsia, for certain circles of an intellectual spirit, this idea has been preserved, it has a magnificent color, but it is very small. The return of the Romanovs? No. It would be an attempt to turn the river back in the opposite direction.”

  Practically speaking, a restoration of the Russian monarchy would require that the Russian president and Parliament—two institutions which now rarely agree on anything—combine to perform the delicate operation of grafting a third institution, the monarchy, onto the top of an already enfeebled government structure. A dictator, a Russian Francisco Franco, might do it, but Franco held absolute power in Spain for forty years, and he prepared his country by announcing his intention to bring back the king many years before it happened. Russia has no Franco and does not want one; its experiment with democracy is not yet concluded. But democracy has given Russia weak and divided government, balanced so precariously that no one dares upset its fragile equilibrium. Bodies and bones remain unburied for fear that the act of burial would stir political antagonism: Lenin’s corpse, swimming in preservatives, lies untouched in the mausoleum on Red Square for fear of outraging the Communists; the bones of the Imperial family lie exposed on morgue tables in Ekaterinburg for fear of offending the Orthodox Church. A government powerless even to lay to rest these remains of the overthrow of monarchy cannot expect—or be expected—to find the strength to re-create it.

  * There are, of course, many more than three Romanovs. One of them, whose existence makes some of the others uncomfortable, is Paul R. Ilyinsky, an American citizen, a former colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, and the current mayor of Palm Beach, Florida.

  Ilyinsky, sixty-seven, is the son of Grand Duke Dimitri and Cincinnati heiress Audrey Emery. He was born in England and, as a child, was given the title Prince Paul Romanovsky-Ilyinsky by the pretender, his father’s cousin Cyril. Because his parents divorced when he was nine and his father died when he was fourteen, Paul’s youthful life revolved around his American mother. He went to a Virginia prep school and the University of Virginia. Setting out on his own, he took the name Paul R. Ilyinsky, entered the Marine Corps as an enlisted man (thereby becoming an American citizen, which entailed renouncing his foreign title), was promoted to officer, served in Korea, and remained in the Reserve to the rank of colonel. He married in Palm Beach, has four children and numerous grandchildren, and worked in real estate and as a professional photographer. Building on a collection left him by his father, Ilyinsky has marshaled an enormous army of miniature lead soldiers; and in a wing attached to his waterside house in Palm Beach is one of the world’s great private collections of electric trains.

  Paul Ilyinsky was friendly with his cousin Vladimir, who visited him in Palm Beach, and is equally at ease with the other Romanov princes whom he has met. He himself is not interested in the Russian throne. Nevertheless, by whatever name he calls himself, he is a Romanov. And by interpreting the old Russian laws of succession in his own favor—a practice of all other contemporary Romanovs—he could make a claim to be the pretender. He, as a male, would come before Vladimir’s daughter, Maria. Ilyinsky is the great-grandson in the male line of a tsar (Alexander II), whereas Prince Nicholas Romanov is the great-great-grandson of a tsar (Nicholas I). Ilyinsky’s father was a prerevolutionary grand duke; this is not true of any of the other living male Romanovs. The flaw in his claim is that he is the product of an unequal marriage. But so, it would seem, are all the other living Romanovs. Contemplating this, Paul Ilyinsky smiles and says, “I am an American and I already have a public office to which I was elected. I am the mayor.”

  CHAPTER 20

  SEVENTY-EIGHT DAYS

  For seventy-eight days, the tsar, his family, and members of their household were confined in a part of the upper, main floor of the Ipatiev House. Nicholas and Alexandra had the front corner bedroom, furnished with pale yellow wallpaper, two beds, a couch, two tables, a lamp, a bookcase, and a single armoire, which held all of their clothing. Their four daughters and thirteen-year-old son shared another room with wallpaper of pink and green flowers (eventually, Alexis’s bed was moved into his parents’ room). The maid, Anna Demidova, had a small room in the back of the house. Dr. Botkin slept in the salon, Trupp and Kharitonov were in the hallway. Two or three armed guards were always present on the main floor with the family, and, to get to the washroom and toilet, the captives had to walk past these men. A wooden fence or palisade, fourteen feet high, masked the house and its windows from the street. Looking out from their rooms, the prisoners could see only the tops of the trees.

  The family settled into a monotonous routine. They rose at nine o’clock and at ten had black bread and tea. Every morning and evening they said prayers and read from the Gospel together. Lunch was at one, dinner between four and five, tea at seven, supper at nine. Usually, Nicholas read aloud to the family after tea and in the evening; in the days just after their arrival in Ekaterinburg, he read from the Book of Job. Those who wished were permitted to walk outside twice a day, thirty minutes in the morning, thirty minutes in the afternoon.

  Siberia was still in early spring. When Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria, who traveled from Tobolsk ahead of the others, arrived in Ekaterinburg, Alexandra was happy that the long winter seemed over. “Weather was glorious, so warm and sunny,” she wrote on April 30, the day they entered the Ipatiev House. Thereafter, most days were pleasant: “Beautiful, warm, sunny, but windy … glorious bright sunshine … sunshine and changing clouds … beautiful warm morning … sat in the garden, warm wind.… Fine, bright morning.” On May 25, however, she reported that it was “snowing hard” and the next day that “everything [was] covered by snow.”

  After May 15, it was not easy for them to see the sun, clouds, or snow from inside the house. “An old man painted all the windows white from outside,” Alexandra wrote that day in her diary, “so only at the top can see a bit of sky and it looks [from inside] as though there were a thick fog.” The following day another man painte
d over the outside thermometer so that they were unable to read the temperature. Four days later the commander of the guards “scratched off the paint covering the thermometer; so now can see again the degrees,” the empress wrote.

  On May 23, Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia, Alexis, and the sailor Nagorny (who for five years had carried the tsarevich when he could not walk) arrived from Tobolsk. “Such joy to have them again,” Alexandra wrote. That night, there were not enough beds, and the four grand duchesses slept on cloaks and cushions on the floor. The family’s joy at being reunited was quickly shadowed by the illness of the tsarevich. “Baby woke up every hour from pain in his knee, slipped and hurt it when getting into bed,” the empress wrote. “Cannot walk yet. One carries him. [He has] lost fourteen pounds since his illness.”

  PLAN OF THE MAIN FLOOR OF THE IPATIEV HOUSE

  Room XIII: bedroom occupied by Nicholas, Alexandra, and Alexis; room X: bedroom occupied by Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia; room XI: bedroom occupied by Demidova; room VIII: salon occupied by Dr. Botkin; room XII: hallway occupied by Kharitonov and Trupp; room IX; dining room; room XIV: kitchen; room III: bathroom; room IV: toilet; room VI: occupied by guards.

  From that day to the end, Alexis’s illness dominated his mother’s thoughts: