The Last Tsar

by Edvard Radzinsky

  “From the pavilion we watched the crowd surrounding the stage, where they kept playing a hymn and ‘Be praised.’

  “We moved on to Petrovsky [Palace], where we received several deputations at the gates.… I had to give a speech.… Dined with Mama. Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”

  Meanwhile, the empress-mother had a very clear understanding of what had caused the Khodynka catastrophe. She had mastered her husband’s principles of rule. A command system (autocracy) functions only when the pyramid is crowned by Fear. With the death of the strong emperor, Fear had begun to wane. And just as an organism declares its illness with a high temperature, so with this terrible catastrophe the system had declared what was for her most ruinous: Fear had waned. Nicholas was a weak tsar.

  His mother decided that Fear must return. The punishment must be harsh. Was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, her husband’s own brother, guilty? All the better. It was he who must be punished as an example. Then Fear would return.

  She demanded the immediate creation of a commission of inquiry and punishment for the guilty parties. Nicholas agreed. One other thing she demanded: the cancellation of all entertainments, including the evening ball being given by the French Ambassador Montebello.

  This is the conversation concealed in his note “Dined with Mama.”

  “We left Mama’s.”

  For the first time, Alix took a stand against his mother. She would not allow the husband of her beloved sister to be fed to the wolves. She would not allow the entertainments canceled. Sergei Alexandrovich was right: everything should go on as if nothing had happened. A coronation occurs once in a lifetime, the ball must take place. (In the depths of her soul she tried to drive out this new, bloody presentiment: first a wedding in the wake of a funeral, now these corpses on Khodynka Meadow. She hoped that the ball and the music and these triumphs would wipe them from her memory.) And again Nicholas consented.

  “Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”

  Yes, to the horror of the new emperor’s friends, Nicholas and Alix danced at this ball.

  As before, constantly at Nicholas’s side was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich: Moscow had already dubbed him the Duke of Khodynka.

  Then, on the following days:

  “19 May. At 2 went with Alix to Old St. Catherine’s Hospital and toured all the barracks and wards where the unlucky victims from yesterday lay….

  “20 May.… At 3 went with Alix to St. Mary’s Hospital, where we saw the second largest group of injured.”

  He contributed generously for the victims. But the country noticed only one thing: “Went to the ball at Montebello’s.” His mother had been right.

  There is a concept: a tsarlike nature is the sum of qualities that produces the impression of a powerful will. Nicholas did not possess those qualities. “Irresolute compassion,” “paralysis of will”—this is what some said about him. Others objected: he was crafty. In actual fact, he was stubborn. His tragedy was that, although he was stubborn, he was also unable to say a clear no to a petitioner’s face. He was too delicate and well bred to be crudely determinate. He preferred silence to rejection, and as a rule the petitioner took his silence for consent. Nicholas was merely waiting for someone to turn up with his point of view.

  When he did, then Nicholas immediately made his decision. As a consequence, the first petitioner, who had taken silence for agreement, cursed the sovereign’s perfidy and spinelessness. That is precisely what happened with Kschessinska. When his mother and the minister crossed the ballerina’s name off the coronation program, he held his tongue—he could not insult his mother. But he waited. When his Uncle Vladimir came to intercede for Mathilde, Nicholas agreed on the spot.

  It was the same with Khodynka. He was the one, understanding Alix’s state, who decided to go on with the celebration, but he did not have the nerve to oppose his mother. Then, as if yielding to the demands of Sergei Alexandrovich.… But the legend about his spinelessness had been created, and it would run through his entire life. From the very beginning, his image was merged with an “un-tsarlike nature.”

  He appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Count Pahlen, the dowager empress’s protégé. At this point, however, a counterblow followed. Vladimir and Paul, the tsar’s uncles, announced that they would quit the court immediately if Sergei Alexandrovich suffered as a result of the investigation.

  It was a risk-free ultimatum. They knew they would not have to back down. Alix stood behind them.

  Delicate Nicky was nodding tirelessly in opposite directions, trying to reconcile everyone: Pahlen’s report disappeared into the bowels of the archives. But the Moscow police chief, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich’s man, was dismissed. And to his mother’s horror, Nicholas set off for the estate of the Duke of Khodynka—Ilinskoe.

  He had not wanted to be tsar, he had not wanted to distress his mother, he had not wanted anyone to be killed, he had not wanted Alix to be sad. Yet all those things had come to pass. That was what it meant to be tsar.

  FEAST FOR THE SLAIN

  Even now, outside Moscow, that broad allée with centuries-old trees leading up to the famous estate Ilinskoe is there. The plane trees, a hundred years old then, still stand in the park, as does the ancient church.

  “3 June, 1896. The wedding anniversary of Uncle Sergei and Ella.”

  This day was celebrated noisily at Ilinskoe. Children ran around the estate: the new generation of the Romanov family.

  The nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the sets for the terrible new century were being invisibly raised—and the cast was coming out onstage, the Romanovs who would live in the twentieth century.

  Here was a five-year-old boy in velvet pants. This was Dmitry, son of the youngest brother of Nicholas’s father, Grand Duke Paul. Dmitry was born here at Ilinskoe and he killed his own mother.

  It happened in Ilinskoe before Nicholas’s marriage to Alix.

  Today, too, this path descends from the top of the hill to the Moscow River. At the river’s edge you can find half-ruined wooden piers. It was here, in the hot summer of 1891, enjoying the sun and the morning, that the young woman, the Greek Princess Alexandra, the wife of Grand Duke Paul, ran down to the pier.

  As she was getting into a boat she went into premature labor. Soon after, the dead Alexandra’s body was laid out at the estate. But the boy came into the world and survived. He was called Dmitry.

  Dmitry’s father, Grand Duke Paul, would be exiled from Russia. After his wife’s death he had a scandalous affair with the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir’s adjutant. Paul decided to marry her, but the dowager empress was implacable, and Paul’s brothers, Sergei and Vladimir, were forced to take her side. This was the first scandal in the Romanov family that poor Nicky had to referee. Nicholas was forced to send “dear Uncle Paul” out of Russia. But Dmitry remained in Russia and with his sister was raised in the family of Sergei Alexandrovich and Ella.

  Unable to have their own children, Ella and Sergei Alexandrovich showered all their kindness on Dmitry and his sister.

  During the revolution of 1905, the Socialist Revolutionary Kalyaev appeared with a bomb by the Bolshoi Theater. It had all been carefully calculated: as soon as the bright lanterns of the grand duke’s carriage turned on in the storm, Kalyaev threw himself in front of the carriage—and saw Ella and the children in the carriage along with Sergei Alexandrovich. Kalyaev did not dare throw his bomb. An idealistic terrorist of the idealistic nineteenth century! The next time Sergei Alexandrovich went alone, however, Kalyaev did not miss.

  After the murder of her husband, Ella devoted herself to the creation of a cloister, and Dmitry lived with his Uncle Nicky. “Papa and Mama”—that was what he called Nicholas and Alix.

  Ella had been one of the most captivating women of that time long past. The French ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paléologue, recalled fondly:

  “I remember dining with her in Paris … in about 1891. I can still see her as she was then: tall, stern, with shin
ing blue, naive eyes, her tender mouth, the soft features of her face and her straight slender nose … the charming rhythm of her carriage and movements. In her conversation one intuited a marvelous feminine mind—natural, serious, and full of hidden goodness.”

  They were having a good time at Ilinskoe. Ioann and Konstantin, the Romanov sons of the poet Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (K.R.), were running through the meadow with Dmitry. The infant Igor, K.R.’s youngest son, was crawling by Grand Duke Paul.

  Upstairs, in the house, Ella was singing K.R.’s “Lullaby” as her husband turned pages.

  Downstairs, Nicky was watching the sporting children benignly; Alix, greedily. Oh, how Alix dreamt of a son.

  At the bottom of a mine shaft, Ella would have the strength to tie a handkerchief around Ioann’s smashed head. Konstantin and Igor would perish in the mine shaft too. And, by the way, Uncle Paul would be shot dead a few months later.

  Their carefree life continued. They traveled.

  Austria—a visit to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph, then visited Nicky’s grandmother and grandfather (the Danish king and queen), and from there to England to another grandmother, Queen Victoria. The circuit of royal names ended in a republic—France.

  Khodynka, which later would be held up to him so many times in Russia, had made no impression on Europe. In France he was received ecstatically: the beautiful empress, the young sovereign, and the enchanting little girl in the open carriage. This was the first visit to Paris of a Russian tsar since his grandfather’s unfortunate visit, when the Pole Berezowski shot at him—in revenge for the oppression of Poland.

  No one was shooting now. On the contrary: Nicholas was greeted by enthusiastic crowds and ovations. Only a free republic can get so excited about a monarch.

  “On September 25, a bridge named after my papa was laid. We sat in a large tent.… Then the three of us went to Versailles. Crowds of people stood along the entire route from Paris to Versailles. My hand nearly dried up [he was in uniform and kept touching his hand to the brim of his cap].

  “We arrived at 4.30 and took a ride around the beautiful park, viewing the fountains.… There truly is a similarity to Peterhof. The halls and rooms of the palace are interesting in this historical aspect.”

  He was stunned by the similarity to Peterhof, the tsars summer palace on the Gulf of Finland, and by the “historical aspect.” She stood on the balcony of the palace where during the Revolution the people had burst into Versailles and forced the royal couple out.

  In Paris Alix was told about the former site of the pit where all those guillotined had been brought. She and Nicky pictured them together in the dark filth: Danton, Robespierre, the Girondists. They had dared execute their own king. Well, God punished them with madness, and they killed each other. She never forgot all this. Twenty years later, when she heard of Nicky’s abdication, she repeated in French, “abdiqué” (“he has abdicated”).… The secret recesses of the soul.

  The year 1896 was coming to an end. Alix was expecting a child, and she believed it would be a boy. How she longed for that boy.

  “29 May, 1897. The second happiest day in our family’s life.… At 10 in the morning the Lord blessed us with a little girl, Tatiana. She weighs 8½ pounds and is 54 centimeters long. Read and wrote telegrams.”

  THE IMPRACTICABILITY OF DREAMS

  He was still ruling on the strength of his dead father, but an unseen volcano was already smoldering: upheaval in the army (which was not written about in the press; the army was always supposed to be loyal) and the terrible famine of 1898 (which was written about a great deal). But their carefree happiness continued. During those years he hunted a lot.

  “20 September [1898]. Total game killed: 100 deer, 56 goats, 50 boar, 10 foxes, 27 hares—253 in 11 days.”

  Such was the tsar’s hunt. But another hunt had already begun in his country—a hunt in which the trophies would be much more serious: a hunt for people.

  It began as soon as the twentieth century was under way. In February 1901 the minister of education was killed by a former student. The student explained that Moscow University was dissatisfied with the minister’s reactionary views. A year later Sipyagin, the minister of internal affairs, was killed. The Finnish governor-general perished, and then Nicholas’s new minister of internal affairs, Vyacheslav Plehve. Thus the Socialist Revolutionaries’ terrorist organization began its operations.

  The young tsar was behaving rather strangely. He scarcely mourned. It was as if he immediately forgot about his dead ministers.

  The solution to the riddle was in his diary: “We must endure the trials the Lord sends us for our good with humility and steadfastness” (after the murder of Sipyagin).

  “Thus is His sacred will” (after the murder of Plehve).

  One and the same principal feature in his outlook: God determines everything in this world, the fate of nations and men. It is not for us to guess at God’s intent or the good that each of His actions conceals.

  This belief helped Nicholas reconcile himself to the strange impracticability of all his beginnings. He was already getting the feeling that no matter what he did, no matter what he undertook, no matter how good his intentions, it would all either come to naught, turn into its opposite, or simply go to rack and ruin.

  As his father had instructed, immediately after his ascent to the throne Nicholas passed a law against drunkenness. Drunkenness—the “Russian disease,” as it was called in Europe. The law was good, but drunkenness did not disappear. People simply paid more for vodka. They continued to drink and ruin themselves as before. The next law was proposed by the irrepressible Witte, who put the Russian ruble on the gold standard so that Russian currency would rise to a level with European currencies (which it did). Now rich Russians created a furor in Europe, losing their fortunes and squandering their estates in Parisian restaurants: “Russian beluga began to spawn gold.” But as a result, many people of good birth, scions of the best families, were ruined. And those same gold coins on which Nicholas’s profile was stamped came to rule his country more and more.

  THE RUSSIAN TSAR GOES TO THE PEOPLE

  It was at this time that Alix developed her mistrust for the rich. Then, on the threshold of the century, he had an idea: “the tsar and the people—and no one between them.” On the threshold of the century his strange preoccupation with truth seeking first manifested itself.

  One day in conversation with one of the grand dukes he learned of an impoverished Novgorod landowner with a very funny name, Klopov—“Bedbugson.” This Klopov was always writing the grand duke eloquent letters about the embezzlement of public funds in the flour milling business. These first letters naturally did not reach Nicholas, but the indefatigable truth seeker continued to write. Nicholas told Alix about him, and they read the letters aloud, amazed at the purity of this unknown, simple man. Perhaps he was found, the man of the people, perhaps he had come to them himself? The people and the tsar—and no one between them!

  The titular councilor was brought to the tsar. The quiet, shy little Klopov, with his gentle eyes, was very much like the not very tall, shy man who met him in his office. Indeed, they were alike—the pathetic titular councilor and the ruler of one-sixth of the world.

  Nicholas sent Klopov on a secret mission, giving him broad, confidential authorities. Klopov was going to inspect Russia. He was to understand the reasons for the crop failures, clarify officials’ abuses, and bring the tsar back the truth. Moreover, not the “governor’s truth”—the truth of the bureaucracy—but the genuine, popular truth they were hiding from the tsar. So Klopov went.

  “In Russia, everything is a secret but there is no secrecy.” Very soon afterward the whole country knew about the mysterious Klopov. Crowds of people besieged the tsar’s emissary with petitions.

  But Klopov was after all merely a minor landowner who knew the flour milling business. High officials chatted courteously with him and promised to see to all the problems in the flour milling business.
Klopov, deeply moved, brought back to his patron this truth from the depths of Russia: “Minister of Internal Affairs Plehve and his entire ministry are instilled with the very best intentions.”

  Thus began Nicholas’s perilous truth seeking. After Klopov’s truth he could tell himself yet again: the impracticability of dreams….

  So it was in everything. His fearsome father had aptly been called the “Peacemaker” because he was adept at avoiding war. Nicholas ascended to the throne with the same intention. At the turn of the century he read the essays of I. Bloch, an industrialist and philosopher who wrote about the impossibility of waging a limited war in the new Europe. War in the twentieth century, if it happened, must necessarily become global. “The victor will be unable to avert the most dreadful havoc; therefore every government that is now preparing for war must prepare too for social catastrophe.” Bloch predicted that war could be a graveyard for the great European monarchies. Nicholas received Bloch, and their conversation made an impression on him.

  It was then that Nicholas’s “Appeal to the Rulers” was conceived. Nicholas proposed to Europe a universal peace.

  Witte wrote about the basic idea for the “Appeal” in his Memoirs: “All of Europe will be united and peaceful, Europe will not be spending great sums on the rivalry between the various countries; it will not represent an armed camp, as it does now. Europe is deteriorating under the weight of mutual enmity and international wars … soon the other nations of America and Japan may be treating Europe with respect, but the kind of respect … due an aging beauty.”

  The idea of universal peace would soon end, however, in war with Japan.

  In 1899 a third daughter, Marie, was born. They still did not have their long-awaited son. The tsar’s family entered the twentieth century with three daughters. In 1899 Nicholas’s brother George died of tuberculosis, and now his youngest brother, Michael, became heir to the throne.