The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

by Candace Fleming

  Still, she coped with her son’s illness far better than Nicholas. Recalled Anna, “Seeing his boy in agony and hearing his faint screams of pain … [the tsar’s] courage completely gave way and he rushed, weeping bitterly, to his study.”

  Servants stuffed cotton in their ears and went on with their work. Since they did not know the cause of Alexei’s illness, they could only guess at the reason for his suffering. Meanwhile, Nicholas went on with his hunting. The grand duchesses went on with their walks and tennis games. Even Alexandra went on giving the obligatory teas expected by the Polish nobles who arrived at the lodge. It was, noted one historian, “an extraordinary situation; the heir to the throne lay dying, but everyone carried on as normal.” All of this just to keep Alexei’s hemophilia a secret.

  On the eleventh night of his ordeal, Alexei weakly grasped his mother’s hand. “When I am dead, build me a little monument of stones in the woods,” he whispered.

  There was, it seemed, nothing more they could do.

  Members of the grief-stricken family—Nicholas, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia—waited for the inevitable.

  But Alexandra refused to give up. There was still Rasputin. Since the incident with the letters, her faith in the starets had dulled. Should she contact him? The situation, she decided, left her no choice. She sent a telegram to Siberia.

  Rasputin immediately cabled back: “The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much.”

  Early the next morning, Alexandra entered the drawing room where her family sat waiting for Alexei’s death. Looking around at their sad, tired faces, she smiled. “The doctors notice no improvement,” she said, her tone suddenly confident, “but I am not a bit anxious myself now.… Father Gregory … has reassured me completely.”

  Twenty-four hours later, Alexei’s bleeding stopped. Astonished doctors could find no explanation for it. The boy had been at death’s door. In fact, the episode had been so severe that it would be a whole year before he could walk again. His sudden improvement seemed to defy science. “It is wholly inexplicable from a medical point of view,” said one of the doctors.

  The event wasn’t inexplicable to Alexandra. Rasputin, she believed, had interceded with God on her behalf, wrought a miracle through his power of prayer, vanquished death. Any lingering doubts she may have had about the starets were now completely swept away. Convinced that he spoke with God’s voice, she vowed to always listen … no matter what.

  Rasputin understood perfectly his strengthened hold over the royal family. Time and again, he warned the empress, “[The boy] will live only as long as I am alive.”

  GROWING UP

  One day in early 1913, Dr. Botkin arrived at the Alexander Palace to check on Alexei, who was still recovering from his illness in Spala. As the doctor headed along the second-floor corridor, he heard a thump-thumping sound coming from one of the rooms. Curious, the doctor peeked in.

  There was Anastasia, red-faced and sweating, and hopping on one leg.

  Struggling to keep a straight face, Dr. Botkin asked what she was doing.

  Without missing a hop, Anastasia breathlessly replied, “An officer … told me that to [jump] around … on one leg helps one grow.” And she desperately wanted to grow, “or something,” she admitted.

  At eighteen, her oldest sister, Olga, had a round face and high cheekbones.

  Sixteen-year-old Tatiana was willowy and tiny-waisted.

  Fourteen-year-old Marie had a peaches-and-cream complexion.

  And Anastasia?

  At twelve, she was short and chubby. True, people often commented on her good, strong Russian features. But they were lost in a face that one courtier called “lumpy and lacking elegance.” And in the past few months she had gotten so round her family had given her a nickname—kubyshka. It meant “dumpling.”

  But it wasn’t the girls’ appearance that worried some members of the court. It was their emotional immaturity. They blamed this on Alexandra’s obsessive desire to protect her daughters from the outside world. “Even when grown, the empress continued to regard them as little children,” recalled Anna Vyrubova. Isolated from society with no company but one another, the girls existed in a kind of time warp, one in which they never really grew up. Recalled one courtier, “When the two eldest had grown into real young women, one would hear them talking like little girls of ten and twelve.” They would giggle, poke each other, and run into corners.

  The teenaged girls thought it especially fun when Olga led them all in a mock battle involving using toy guns and racing their bicycles through the palace rooms. And they still erupted into embarrassed giggles whenever the palace censor—whose job it was to clip out any unsuitable scenes from the films the family watched in the semicircular hall every Saturday night—missed an on-screen kiss or hug.

  Isolated. Immature. Naïve.

  These were the grand duchesses on the eve of the biggest celebration Russia had ever seen.

  THREE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

  Feeling betrayed by their subjects, Nicholas and Alexandra had rarely appeared in public since the events of 1905, eight long years ago. Once, when the English ambassador urged them to “break down the barrier that exists between you and your people, and regain their confidence,” the tsar had drawn himself up and replied haughtily, “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people, or that they are to regain my confidence?” The rift between ruler and subjects had continued to widen.

  But now a momentous event was approaching—the three-hundredth anniversary of Romanov rule over Russia. Nicholas and his advisers saw it as the perfect opportunity to reestablish the tsar’s relationship with his subjects. They planned an extravagant, weeklong jubilee in St. Petersburg, complete with balls, operas, parades, firework displays, fairs, and concerts in the park. Pictures of every Romanov tsar would be hung on the fronts of stores. And thousands of colored lights would be strung. Each night, the words God save the Tsar, as well as a double-headed Romanov eagle, would be illuminated; the Winter Palace would blaze with a huge portrait of Nicholas.

  In the workers’ district, factories would be closed for the first day of the celebrations, and free meals served to the poor. Additionally, Nicholas would show his benevolence by granting amnesty to two thousand political prisoners—all from the lower classes. “Thousands of invisible threads center in the tsar’s heart, and these threads stretch to both the huts of the poor and the palaces of the rich,” read one piece of jubilee propaganda.

  Nicholas and Alexandra felt sure this display of power and opulence would inspire loyalty from their subjects. “No hope seems too confident or too bright,” reported one British journalist.

  March 6, 1913—the first day of the long-planned celebrations—dawned with heavy clouds, a cold mist, and the occasional roll of thunder. As the imperial family’s carriages traveled from the Winter Palace, where they had moved weeks earlier in preparation for the anniversary festivities, to a special thanksgiving service at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, nothing seemed especially celebratory. The imperial banners of white, blue, and red that decorated the family’s route hung dripping and dispirited. And the crowds, far smaller than anyone had expected, were subdued when the tsar passed. Where was the cheering? The shouting? The singing? Instead, there was “little real enthusiasms, little real loyalty,” recalled one spectator. “I saw a cloud over the whole celebration.”

  The triple row of guards and policemen standing between the tsar’s procession and the people added to the gloomy mood. Fears over bombs and assassination attempts had turned the capital into an armed camp.

  Meanwhile, inside the cathedral, five thousand invited guests—nobles, diplomats, visiting dignitaries, generals, admirals, and government officials, as well as hundreds of policemen—waited. Everywhere in the flickering light of the candles, gold glinted, from the altar and icons to the priests’ vestments and the great dome overhead. Candlelight reflected off the women’s jewels, too, in “a fantastic sh
ower of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds … a blaze of fire and flame,” recalled French Ambassador Maurice Paléologue.

  But just minutes before the imperial family arrived, a scuffle took place at the front of the cathedral. All eyes turned to see Duma President Michael Rodzianko glowering at Rasputin.

  The starets had taken a seat in a block of prominently placed chairs reserved for Duma members. Rodzianko could not believe the man’s audacity. By doing so, Rasputin was publicly proclaiming his close ties to the throne.

  Infuriated, the Duma president (who believed all the rumors about the starets) shouted, “Clear out at once, you vile heretic.”

  Rasputin waved his invitation. “I was invited here by persons more highly placed than you,” he replied.

  “Clear out,” repeated Rodzianko, “or I’ll order the sergeant-at-arms to carry you out.”

  Refusing to budge, Rasputin looked at him coolly. Then his gaze grew intense. He looked deep into Rodzianko’s eyes.

  Rodzianko felt a “tremendous force” surge through his body. Believing the starets was using hypnosis, “I suddenly became possessed of an almost animal fury,” he later recalled.

  “You are a notorious swindler!” the Duma president shouted.

  At that, Rasputin dropped to his knees and began praying.

  Unable to control his rage, Rodzianko began kicking the starets in the ribs.

  But Rasputin remained on his knees.

  Finally, Rodzianko grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and heaved him into the aisle.

  Rasputin recognized defeat. Pulling himself up off the marble floor, he cried dramatically, “Oh, Lord, forgive him such sin!” Then as all eyes watched, he strode from the cathedral and into his waiting automobile (yet another gift from the empress).

  Shocked whispers rippled through the congregation.

  The empress’s expression as she entered the cathedral minutes later only added to the gossip. “Her face was cold and expressionless, almost austere,” said Meriel Buchanan, the British ambassador’s daughter.

  The sight of eight-year-old Alexei didn’t help, either. Still unable to walk, he was carried to his seat by a Cossack guard. Behind him, people put their heads together and whispered yet again. What was wrong with the future tsar?

  At last, the four grand duchesses entered. In their white silk gowns with trains of red velvet, they looked like fairy princesses. All eyes watched as they took their places behind their parents and brother. “Is that Olga Nikolaevna?” some people might have whispered. “Who is the little one?” Hardly anyone could tell the grand duchesses apart. Almost always photographed in matching white dresses, they tended to be considered as a whole, rather than as individuals. The grand duchesses obviously accepted this. Recently, they’d begun signing the letters and gifts they gave jointly as OTMA—a combination of the first letter of each of their names.

  As the music began, the congregation turned back toward the altar and the imperial couple. Alexandra stood stone-faced and straight as a stick, the diamonds covering her gown’s bodice trembling with each nervous breath she took.

  Nicholas, too, appeared uneasy. Despite the tight security in and around the cathedral, he kept “anxiously and furtively scanning the faces of the assembly as if afraid of meeting some secret danger,” recalled one observer. It was obvious the tsar no longer felt safe even among his most loyal subjects.

  That’s when some people noticed the imperial couple looking up into the shadowy heights of the cathedral dome. Two doves circled over their heads. Believing in religious omens as they did, they took this as a good sign. “A symbol,” Nicholas later said, “that the blessings of God, after three centuries, continue to rest on the … Romanov[s].”

  Two months later, as part of the anniversary celebration, the family took a weeklong trip to Moscow. Along the route, people flocked to see them. In Kostroma on the Volga River, people ventured waist-deep into the water for a closer look at the family. And in villages, old peasant men and women fell to their knees as the royals’ cars whizzed past. From their open-topped Renaults, the family hardly noticed the little tables that stood before many of the huts. On them, peasants had laid flowers, salt, and bread—the traditional Russian offering to guests. But while the people acted curious or reverent, on only one occasion was the family greeted with spontaneous good feelings.

  It happened during a visit to an ancient monastery. An old peasant woman stepped from the gathered crowd and approached Alexandra. Falling on her knees, she begged the empress for a blessing. Alexandra made the sign of the cross above the woman’s bent head. Then impulsively, she unwound the silk shawl she was wearing and gave it to the peasant.

  The crowd burst into cheers. “God save the Tsar!” they cried. “Let your Sovereign Family live forever.”

  This single experience convinced both Nicholas and Alexandra that the jubilee’s mission had succeeded. Said the empress to a friend shortly after the celebrations, “You can see it for yourself—we need merely to show ourselves and at once their hearts are ours.” Added Nicholas, “My people love me.”

  “Nobody … could have imagined that in less than four years Nicky’s very name would be splattered with mud and hatred,” his sister Olga later said.

  TEACHING ALEXEI

  Not long after the tercentenary celebrations, Pierre Gilliard, who had discovered the truth about Alexei’s illness at Spala, and Sydney Gibbes, who still knew nothing about it, began tutoring the tsarevich. It was long past time for the almost nine-year-old to enter the classroom, but his frequent illnesses had delayed his education. Now, with the boy on the mend, the teachers began their lessons. Sadly, recalled Gilliard, Alexei had not been taught the “habits of discipline.” The boy hated to be corrected, and tended to be lazy. He also blamed his teachers for his being in the classroom. “I had a definite impression of his mute hostility,” Gilliard wrote, “and at times it reached a stage of open defiance.” What sort of defiance? The always-reserved Gilliard did not elaborate.

  But Sydney Gibbes did. One day, he taught Alexei to make a “telephone” by holding one end of a wire to his ear and the other between his teeth. But the project quickly turned into a scuffle, Gibbes fending off his student as Alexei struggled with all his might to wrap the wire around the teacher’s teeth.

  Another time, the two skirmished over scissors. “I had rather a bad [time],” Gibbes wrote in dismay. “[Alexei] wanted to cut my hair, and then his own, and when I tried to prevent him, he went behind the curtain and held it round him. When I opened it he had actually cut some hair off and he was rather disconcerted when I told him he had a bald place.… He would insist on cutting or pretending to cut everything. The more I tried to prevent him, the more he shrieked with delight.” Concluded Gibbes, “Lessons with the tsarevich were more exciting than pleasant.”

  Still, Alexei was “sensitive to the suffering in others because he suffered so much himself,” claimed Gilliard.

  He could also be introspective. One bright summer day in 1913—six months after Alexei’s ordeal at Spala—Olga found Alexei lying on his back in the grass, gazing wistfully up into the sky.

  What was he doing? she asked.

  “I like to think and wonder,” he replied.

  “About what?”

  “Oh, so many things,” he said. “I enjoy the sun and the beauty of summer as long as I can. Who knows if one of these days I shall be prevented from doing it.”

  BEYOND THE PALACE GATES:

  A DIFFERENT KIND OF EDUCATION FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF BOY

  Around 1913, poverty forced the peasant father of eight-year-old Nicholas Griaznov into an apprenticeship agreement with St. Petersburg shop owner A. Kasatkin. The father agreed that little Nicholas would work in the shop for four years, receiving a mere three rubles a month (not even enough to buy a cup of milk) plus room and board for his labor. In return, the shop owner promised to teach Nicholas a useful trade. But like most shop owners, Kasatkin looked upon his apprentices as nothing
more than cheap labor. Expected to rise earlier than anyone else (around four thirty), the boy was on the go all day, delivering purchases, unpacking merchandise, or standing on the sidewalk in every kind of weather, coaxing customers into the store. Not until midnight did he finally drop onto his straw mattress in the kitchen. More than five other child apprentices were also squeezed into this space. All were poorly fed, badly clothed, and regularly beaten. Desperate to call attention to his son’s plight, Nicholas’s father sent a letter to the newspaper New Russia. Because censorship allowed for public discussion of social problems as long as they weren’t blamed on the tsar or his government, the newspaper ran the letter. It read:

  I tried to take my son away and put him in another shop, but his boss wouldn’t let him go. He said there was some kind of law which let him keep my son until the apprenticeship was over, that is, for three and a half more years, and until then he wouldn’t give him up. Kasatkin told me, “The law gives me the right to teach the boy to be a human being and to hit him and even beat him with a rod if he is disrespectful to my family. If you want your son back … then you will have to pay me … 300 rubles for my expense in training the boy. Then I’ll give him to you.” Now where is a poor peasant like me supposed to get that kind of money? I don’t even have a crust of bread, not to speak of [300] rubles to give Mr. Kasatkin for my child.

  Days later, the newspaper printed Kasatkin’s response:

  I would like to direct your attention to the following fact. I paid a middleman a good bit of money for [Nicholas], just like all the other merchants who buy apprentices for their stores. These middlemen travel around to impoverished villages … during the winter months when food is scarce. They collect eight- to ten-year-old boys and send them to stores as apprentices without obtaining the consent of either the parents or the children. An honest press should not attack particular individuals but should attack this system of buying and selling children, which exists in [St.] Petersburg and in other cities. I alone do not have the power to fight against such established custom. Competition forces me to use as much cheap and unpaid labor as I can.