Secret Lives of the Tsars

by Michael Farquhar

  Although the emperor and empress had been given a rather cool reception by the crowds as they entered the Kremlin on the eve of the coronation (in contrast to the “almost deafening” greeting given Dowager Empress Marie upon her arrival), the ceremony itself was splendid. It took place on a glorious day in May, at the ancient seat of Russia’s sovereigns, with all the dazzle and pageantry long associated with the sacred anointment of God’s representative on earth. Shortly after, though, disaster struck.

  Ordinary Russians had been invited to celebrate the coronation in an open field outside Moscow, where soldiers usually practiced military maneuvers. Free beer and souvenir mugs were to be distributed, and the newly crowned imperial couple was scheduled to make an appearance. The crowds began gathering before dawn for the festivities, but as their numbers grew ever larger, a rumor swept through the masses that the supply of beer and mugs was limited and would be distributed on a first come, first served basis. A mad rush ensued and, in the midst of it, thousands were trampled and crushed. When it was all over, the expanse where the soldiers practiced resembled an actual battleground, with scores of dead and injured littered across it.

  “The dreadful accident … was appalling beyond all description,” Dowager Empress Marie wrote to her mother in Denmark, “and has … draped a black veil over all the splendor and glory! Just imagine how many poor unfortunate people were crushed and fatally injured.”

  Nicholas and Alexandra were horrified by what had happened. They visited the injured in hospitals and paid the burial expenses for the dead. Alexandra wept bitterly. But on the night of the terrible event a coronation ball hosted by the French ambassador was planned. Much expense had been lavished on the affair, with silver and rare tapestries imported from Paris and Versailles, as well as one hundred thousand roses from the south of France. The emperor’s influential uncles insisted that he attend the affair lest offense be given to one of Russia’s few allies. Alas, Nicholas reluctantly agreed.

  “We expected that the party would be called off,” said Sergei Witte, minister of finance. “[Instead] it took place as if nothing had happened and the ball was opened by Their Majesties dancing a quadrille.” For many, an indelible image was formed of a callous young tsar, with “the German woman” by his side, dancing on the fresh corpses of his trampled subjects.

  After a period of time spent living under the dowager empress’s roof after their marriage, Nicholas and Alexandra finally moved out of Mama’s palace and settled into a place of their own. The empress eschewed the sprawling Winter Palace—traditional home of the tsars—in favor of the relatively modest Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (the Tsar’s Village), an imperial retreat outside St. Petersburg. Here, in what Nicholas described as “that charming, dear precious place,” the couple would reside, largely isolated from the rest of Russia, until revolution finally forced their permanent relocation in 1917.

  “Tsarskoe Selo was a world apart, an enchanted fairyland to which only a small number of people had the right of entry,” wrote Gleb Botkin, son of Nicholas II’s court physician. “It became a legendary place. To the loyal monarchists, it was sort of a terrestrial paradise, the abode of earthly gods. To the revolutionaries, it was a sinister place where blood-thirsty tyrants were hatching their terrible plots against an innocent population.”

  To Nicholas and Alexandra, though, Tsarskoe Selo was simply home. While she cocooned herself from society in her mauve-colored boudoir, he went about “the awful job I have feared all my life”: ruling Russia. The empress would have far preferred to have her husband beside her at all times—confined, as author Edward Crankshaw wrote, “to a sort of ever-lasting cozy tea-party.” In fact, she wanted to dominate him. But that role was still reserved for the tsar’s mother, as well as his formidable uncles: the brothers of Alexander III.

  “Nicholas II spent the first ten years of his reign sitting behind a massive desk in the palace and listening with near-awe to the well-rehearsed bellowing of his towering uncles,” wrote Grand Duke Alexander (“Sandro”), the tsar’s cousin. “He dreaded to be left alone with them. In the presence of witnesses his opinions were accepted as orders, but the instant the door of his study closed on the outside—down to the table would go with a bang the weighty first of Uncle Alexis … two hundred and fifty pounds … packed in the resplendent uniform of Grand Admiral of the Fleet.… Uncle Serge and Uncle Vladimir developed equally efficient methods of intimidation.… They all had their favorite generals and admirals … their ballerinas [who served as their mistresses] desirous of organizing a ‘Russian season’ in Paris; their wonderful preachers anxious to redeem the Emperor’s soul … their clairvoyant peasants with a divine message.”

  Another pernicious influence on the young emperor was Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany—the same cousin “Willy” who had earlier helped orchestrate Alexandra’s acceptance of Nicholas’s marriage proposal. For years Russia had pursued an expansionist policy in Asia—occupying Manchuria, for example, and making aggressive forays into the Korean peninsula. The pinnacle of this Asian adventurism was the seizure from Japan of the Chinese fortress city of Port Arthur in 1898, giving Russia its only warm-water access to the Pacific. It was the bellicose German kaiser who encouraged this aggressive policy, flattering and cajoling the impressionable “Nicky,” confirming upon him the meaningless title “Admiral of the Pacific.” Willy’s motive was simple self-interest: He wanted the tsar distracted in the east, which would allow him to pursue his own agenda in Europe without Russian interference. Unfortunately, Nicky found Willy’s siren call irresistible.

  The emperor was thoroughly convinced of Russia’s superiority over the “little short-tailed monkeys,” as he derisively referred to the Japanese. Nevertheless, when diplomatic relations with them finally broke down over Russia’s continued excursions into Korea, Nicholas wavered over the idea of actually going to war. There were hawks, like Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav Plehve, who advocated “a short, victorious war” to help distract the people from a rapidly reemerging revolutionary movement wrought by vast and insidious social injustices. But Sergei Witte, among others, was vehemently opposed to any such engagement. “An armed struggle with Japan … would be a great disaster,” he warned the emperor; far from stifling revolt, it would certainly transform “the latent dissatisfaction of our domestic life” into overt political violence.

  The gentle, retiring Russian sovereign was a man who relied as much on fate as upon the advice of others—or his own judgment—to resolve an issue. And so it was with the Japan crisis. “War is war,” he said, “and peace is peace. But this business of not knowing either way is agonizing.” It was only with Japan’s surprise attack on Port Arthur in February 1904 that Nicholas’s decision was made for him. “Is this undeclared war?” he exclaimed upon receiving the news. “Then may God help us!”

  The attack on Port Arthur resulted in a brief surge in Russian nationalism. “Everyone was mixed together,” one newspaper reported. “Generals and tramps marched side-by-side, students with banners, and ladies, their arms filled with shopping. Everyone was united in one general feeling.” But what was supposed to be “a short, victorious war” turned out to be a protracted catastrophe. Japan had emerged as an industrial and military giant over the last generation, capable of easily replenishing their troops, while Russian forces had to travel vast distances to the front on the still-incomplete Trans-Siberian Railroad. The losses were staggering, and as they mounted patriotism rapidly devolved into widespread discontent—just as Witte had predicted.

  “You have no idea the intensity of feeling aroused in Russia during the last few months,” Countess Kleinmichel wrote at the end of 1904. “Our mujiks [peasants] are now objecting to being killed for what they call a bit of territory we’ve never heard of.… Not a week passes without a mutiny in the barracks, or riots along the line when reservists leave for the front.… In the universities it’s even worse; revolutionary demonstrations, provoked by the slightest incident, are everyday oc
currences. You can be sure that the peasants will come on the scene before long. That will mean the end of Tsarism and Russia!”

  Yet bleak as the situation had become in 1904, it served merely as a preview for the momentous year that followed—what Dowager Empress Marie called “the year of nightmares.”

  The new year, 1905, opened with a debilitating setback for Russia, news of which the French ambassador recorded in his diary: “Port Arthur, the Gibraltar of the Far East, the great fortress, symbolizing Russian domination in the China Seas … surrendered this morning.” Not only did the fall of this strategic gem have the effect of “piling national humiliation on national anger,” as Crankshaw wrote; it also unleashed widespread strikes by workers long disgruntled with the abysmal living and working conditions to which they were subjected as Russia rapidly industrialized. What resulted was, at least to that point, the nadir of Nicholas II’s reign.

  A youthful priest by the name of George Gapon was able to marshal the workers’ simmering discontent into a mass march on the Winter Palace, where he planned to present their grievances directly to the tsar. On Sunday, January 22, the rally began. Enormous crowds began to peacefully march to the palace from all directions. Jubilant in their expectations, they carried crosses, icons, and portraits of Nicholas, while singing the imperial anthem, “God Save the Tsar.”

  Although the converging processions to the center of the city were celebratory, the sheer mass of people proved overwhelming to the soldiers charged with maintaining order. A number of them opened fire, and men, women and children fell by the hundreds. “The day, which became known as ‘Bloody Sunday,’ was a turning point in Russian history,” wrote biographer Robert K. Massie. “It shattered the ancient, legendary belief that tsar and the people were one. As bullets riddled their icons, their banners and their portraits of Nicholas, the people shrieked, ‘The Tsar will not help us!’ It would not be long before they added the grim corollary, ‘And so we have no Tsar.’ ”

  Nicholas, who was actually at Tsarskoe Selo when the slaughter took place, recorded the tragedy in his journal that night: “A painful day! Serious disorders took place in Petersburg when the workers tried to come to the Winter Palace. The troops have been forced to fire in several parts of the city and there are many killed and wounded. Lord, how painful and sad this is!”

  Other members of the imperial family reacted with revulsion as well. “We’re lost, aren’t we?” cried the tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke Paul; “within and without, everything’s crumbling!” Similarly, Paul’s wife, Olga, declared, “What a horrible day! Now we shall have revolution—it’s the end!… Today’s disaster is irreparable!”

  The response to Bloody Sunday was a call for revolt and terrorism rarely seen in Russia since the days of Alexander II. “The Revolution has come,” declared the Marxist Leon Trotsky. From his hiding place, Father Gapon wrote a public denunciation of “Nicholas Romanov, formerly Tsar and at present soul-murderer of the Russian empire,” while the Russian Social Democratic Party issued a violent manifesto: “Yesterday you saw the savagery of the monarchy. You saw the blood running in the streets.… Who directed the soldiers’ rifles and shot against the breasts of the workers? It was the Tsar! The Grand Dukes, the ministers, the generals, the scum of the Court … may they meet death!”

  Three weeks later, the tsar’s uncle (and Alexandra’s brother-in-law), Grand Duke Serge, did indeed meet death—in an assassination even more ghastly than that of his father Alexander II (see Chapter 11). He was blown to smithereens after a bomb was tossed into his carriage. “The unfortunate grand duke was reduced to pieces and we literally found nothing of his head, which must have been shattered into tiny pieces,” recounted the tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas. “Parts of his body, such as two fingers, were found on the roof of the Palace of Justice, and those which were laying on the snow, were fragments full of blood and frightful limbs, etc.”*3

  Such was the specter of violence in the capital that the emperor and empress were unable to attend Serge’s funeral, as it was deemed far too dangerous. However, the murdered grand duke’s brother Paul, who had been exiled for having married a commoner without the tsar’s consent, was allowed back home to attend. And what he found after meeting with his nephew Nicholas II was troubling. According to Paul, the tsar seemed oblivious—both to the perils of the continuing war with Japan, with the massive losses that accompanied it, and to the rising revolutionary fervor that resulted.

  The emperor “discussed the war with alarming complacency,” as the French diplomat (and future ambassador) Maurice Paléologue reported Paul saying in a conversation he had with the grand duke. “The revolutionary outbreaks hardly worry him at all; he claims that the masses are not in the least interested in them; he believes he is one with the people.”

  The tsar’s mother was far more realistic about the situation than her son, and offered Paul a bleak outlook: “We’ve lost our last chance of winning in the Far East; we’re beaten already; we ought to make peace at once; otherwise there’ll be a revolution.” When the grand duke asked his sister-in-law if she had been so candid with her son, the dowager empress replied, “I tell him so every day, but he won’t listen to me; he doesn’t realize our military situation any better than the position at home. He can’t see that he’s leading Russia into disaster.”

  Marie’s dire assessment proved all too accurate as “the year of nightmares” progressed. On May 27, the Russian Baltic Fleet, after sailing halfway around the globe over seven months, was ambushed by the Japanese as it made its way up the Tsushima Strait. More than four thousand Russians were killed in the epic naval battle that ensued—the largest since Trafalgar a century before—and six thousand more were captured. In all, twenty warships were lost, forcing Russia’s surrender the next day. After receiving the report, Nicholas II “turned ashen pale,” according to his sister Olga; “he trembled, and clutched at a chair for support. Alicky broke down and sobbed. The whole palace was plunged into mourning that day.”

  After this ignominious surrender, there was no choice now but to end the entire war. Sergei Witte deftly negotiated rather favorable peace terms for Russia,*4 but as author W. Bruce Lincoln noted, “even [he] could not shield Nicholas from being the first ruler in Europe to admit defeat at the hands of Asians.”

  Meanwhile, violence and disturbances were erupting across Russia at an alarming rate, which, Lincoln wrote, made it evident that Bloody Sunday had been but “the first bloodletting of the year.” “What’s happening to Russia?” exclaimed Grand Duke Constantine (known as K.R.). “What disorganization, what disintegration, just like a piece of clothing that is beginning to rip and tear along the seams, and fall open.”

  Even Nicholas now seemed at last to grasp the seriousness of the situation. “It makes me sick to read the news,” he wrote; “strikes in schools and factories, murdered policemen, Cossacks, riots. But the ministers, instead of acting with quick decision, only assemble in council like a lot of frightened hens and cackle about providing united ministerial action.” Yet despite the tsar’s lament, the ultimate authority and responsibility rested, as it always had in autocratic Russia, with the sovereign. And he was helpless.

  “My poor Nicky!” his mother wrote. “May God give you the strength and wisdom in these terribly difficult times to take the right measures and so overcome this evil.… May God help you, that is my constant prayer.” Mother also had a bit of advice left for the emperor who had begun listening to her less and less. “I am sure that the only man who can help you now and be useful is [Serge] Witte … he certainly is a man of genius, energetic and clear sighted.”

  By mid-October, in what Lincoln called “a storm unlike any Russia had ever seen,” the entire country was paralyzed by strikes. Workers from virtually every sector walked off their jobs in the cities, while peasants rampaged through the countryside, burning and pillaging. “The revolution was at hand,” wrote Massie; “it needed only a spark.”

  “So the ominous quiet days
began,” Nicholas wrote to his mother. “Complete order in the streets, but at the same time everybody knew that something was going to happen. The troops were waiting for the signal but the other side would not begin. One had the same feeling as before a thunder storm in the summer. Everybody was on edge and extremely nervous.… Through all these horrible days I constantly met with Witte. We very often met in the early morning to part only in the evening when night fell. There were only two ways open: to find an energetic soldier to crush the rebellion by sheer force. There would be time to breathe then but as likely as not, one would have to use force again in a few months, and that would mean rivers of blood and in the end we should be where we started.”

  One of the few men thought capable of crushing dissent and establishing what would in effect be a military dictatorship was the tsar’s imposing cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas (“Nikolasha,” to the family), commander of the St. Petersburg Military District. But the grand duke made quite clear his opposition to any such plan by brandishing a gun and declaring that if the emperor “wants to force me to become a dictator, I shall kill myself in his presence with this revolver.”

  That left the only other option Witte outlined for the emperor, which Nicholas described to his mother: “The other way out would be to give the people their civil rights, freedom of speech and press, also to have all laws confirmed by a State Duma—that of course would be a constitution. Witte defends this energetically. He says that, while it is not without risk, it is the only way out at the present moment.”

  After much debate, Nicholas II—“invoking God’s help,” as he wrote—signed what became known as the October Manifesto, granting the people liberties previously unimaginable. In that moment Russia became a semiconstitutional monarchy. And while the emperor retained certain prerogatives, such as conducting foreign affairs and the appointment of ministers, the age-old autocracy was no more.