Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  Like Tsarevitch Alexei, Prince John’s seizures kept him incapacitated for long periods. The difference in the lives of Alexandra’s and Mary’s sons came by way of the fact that Alexei suffered through his illness with his family. By contrast, in 1917, John was given a separate establishment of his own, Wood House, on the grounds of the royal estate at Sandringham where the prince led a quiet life surrounded by a team of devoted nurses led by the lovable Charlotte Bill. Queen Mary was harshly criticized for sending John to Sandringham, but the young prince thrived at Wood House. He led a happy life where he received a well-planned education from his tutor, Henry Peter Hansell, and enjoyed trips into the Norfolk countryside with his equerry, Thomas Haverly. Although Mary did not visit her son as frequently as her other children, she was able to see him regularly when she was at Sandringham. As spring turned to summer and little John settled in at Wood House, the strain of the last year began to take its toll on the queen. She was plagued by severe pain in her right arm and shoulder, and her hair became tinged with gray. “I have never in my life suffered so much mentally as I am suffering now and I know you are feeling the same,” she wrote to George.978 It did not help that she was soon forced to turn her attentions back to the war, which was set to take an important turn. The wholesale, internecine destruction of Europe over the past three years had blinded many—including George and Mary—to the fact that the First World War had eroded the foundations of the continent’s two remaining empires, which were set to collapse at any moment.

  20

  Into the Abyss

  (November 1917–May 1918)

  In the summer of 1917, the Russian Provisional Government took a major step against the former imperial dynasty by confiscating their personal properties. It was reported that as early as May, the government had taken estates belonging to Nicholas that were valued at $700 million at the time. A commission was also set up to determine whether or not the properties owned by various grand dukes and duchesses, “worth about $210,000,000 should be seized for the benefit of the public.”979 This seizure of the Romanovs’ former homes coincided with their permanent relocation. Officially, the Kerensky government claimed that because Tsarskoe Selo was so close to the capital, the specter of violence against them was an ever-present danger.

  To ensure their continued safety, and with the possibilities of exile abroad now gone, the Russian Provisional Government decreed that the family was to leave Tsarskoe Selo for Tobolsk, a town in far-flung Siberia. Nearly seven hundred miles from Moscow, Tobolsk was a community of twenty thousand people, situated on the banks of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. Although the town boasted the first school, theater, and newspaper in Siberia, it was a barren region with desolate hinterland stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. “I chose Tobolsk,” Alexander Kerensky later said,” because it was an out-and-out backwater…had a very small garrison, no industrial proletariat, and a population which was prosperous and contented, not to say old-fashioned. In addition…the climate was excellent and the town could boast a very passable Governor’s residence where the Imperial family could live with some measure of comfort.”980

  When Alexandra and her family left Tsarskoe Selo, they did so for the last time. “The sunrise that saw us off was beautiful,” Nicholas wrote in his diary. “We left Tsarskoe Selo at 6:10 in the morning. Thank God we are all saved and together.”981 At dawn on August 13, after a night of standing and waiting in one of the palace’s semicircular halls, the Romanovs and the forty-two courtiers who chose to remain with them entered a series of automobiles. Surrounded with armed escorts, the caravan headed to a nearby train station. The train that transported them had its windows blacked out, shades pulled down, and was disguised with Japanese flags. It left for Siberia on August 13, the day after Alexei’s thirteenth birthday. It took several days to reach Tobolsk. They traveled by train to Tiumen and then took the steamship Rus upriver to Tobolsk. Along the way, they passed Rasputin’s native Pokrovskoie. When they arrived, the family and their paucity of retainers were forced to reside in the Governor’s Mansion, a dilapidated two-story edifice with barred-up windows and a fenced-in courtyard. The building was in such bad shape that they could not move in immediately. It took another week for the house to be made livable, which meant the Romanovs had to spend the time aboard the cramped old steamer that had brought them upriver. Aboard ship, Alexandra’s family suffered greatly. Marie had a cold, Pierre Gilliard contracted painful boils on his arms and legs, and Alexei had suffered an injury in his arm, which was bleeding internally. Night after night, his cries echoed through the ship’s empty corridors, keeping his depressed family awake. The Duchess of Coburg, Nicholas and Alexandra’s aunt, wrote to her daughter Queen Marie of Romania of the imperial family’s plight. She explained that they had been “bundled off in the middle of the night to some unknown destination! May God have mercy on them!”982

  When they were finally allowed to settle in at the Governor’s Mansion, the family and their court made efforts to rebuild something of their life from Tsarskoe Selo. They decorated their rooms with photographs, paintings, and other souvenirs they brought with them. Their personal belongings added to the sense that they still had some semblance of freedom. Most important of all were the $14 million in diamonds, pearls, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and gold that were carefully hidden among their possessions. These assets were intended to sustain them abroad if escape from Russia would be necessary. Once the Romanovs were settled in, Alexandra sent a letter to her sister-in-law Xenia, who had taken refuge at Ai-Todor in the Crimea with most of the other Romanovs, including the dowager empress.

  My darling Xenia, My thoughts are with you, how magically good and beautiful everything must be with you—you are the flowers. But it is indescribably painful for the kind motherland, I cannot explain. I am glad for you that you are finally with all your family as you have been apart.… Everybody is healthy, but myself, during the last 6 weeks I experience nerve pains in my face with toothache. Very tormenting …

  We live quietly, have established ourselves well [in Tobolsk] although it is far, far away from everybody. But God is merciful, He gives us strength and consolation …983

  Alexandra’s letter made it sound like Xenia and the other Romanovs were leading still relatively normal lives, but other members of the imperial family were suffering too. Minnie and the relatives who were with her at Ai-Todor lived under a sort of liberal house arrest. They were surrounded by revolutionary guards, but they had the freedom to come and go. Other Romanovs were not so fortunate. Many of the grand dukes and duchesses who were unable or unwilling to flee were left penurious. Grand duchesses were forced to sell their priceless treasures just to buy bread and potatoes. The dowager empress was not immune from these hardships. She wrote to Nicholas in Tobolsk detailing her difficult situation.

  My Dear Nicky

  You know that my thoughts and prayers never leave you—I think of you day and night and sometimes feel so sick at heart that I believe I cannot bear it any longer. But God is merciful—He will give us strength for this terrible ordeal.… Who could have thought … of all that was in store for us, and what we should have to go through. It is unbelievable. I live only in my memories of the happy past and try as much as possible to forget the present nightmare.…

  … we are always hungry. It is so difficult to get provisions, white bread and butter are the things I miss most, but sometimes I get some sent by kind people …

  I am very glad to get those dear letters from Alix and my granddaughters who all write so nicely. I thank and kiss them all … I long for news …

  On December 6th [the day of the tsar’s patron saint] all my thoughts will be with you, my dear darling Nicky, and I send you my warmest wishes. God bless you, send you strength and peace of mind …

  I kiss you tenderly. May Christ be with you.—Your fondly loving old

  Mama984

  Other Romanovs suffered from equally difficult circumstances. The tsar’s cousin G
rand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich died in poverty in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Others were living under self-imposed house arrest for their own safety. Queen Olga of Greece, who had returned to her native Russia after her husband’s death in 1913, had not left her home, Pavlovsk Palace, for two months.

  Without a doubt, the circumstances of the immediate imperial family were the worst. But the Romanovs at Tobolsk were somewhat relieved when they discovered that they still had some freedom. They attended Mass regularly, where they were greeted by people who were still loyal to the monarchy. Ordinary citizens crossed themselves or dropped to their knees when the imperial family passed by on their way to Mass. It comforted them that people still addressed them as “Your Imperial Majesties.” In the weeks that followed, Alexandra was able to contact some of her friends and relatives scattered throughout Europe. In her letters, she nursed a growing belief that the Russian people would soon realize they were deceived by the communist ideals of the revolution and restore the monarchy. “Many already recognize that it [the revolution] was all—a Utopia, a chimera,” she wrote to Madame Syroboyarsky, whom she befriended when Syroboyarsky’s son was injured in the war. “Their ideals are shattered, covered with dirt and shame, they didn’t achieve a single good thing for Russia.” She believed that, before long, more of the people would “awake, the lie will be revealed, all the falsity, for not all the people have been spoilt, they were tempted, led astray.”985

  Her faith in God also continued to be a source of great comfort to her, which she mentioned in many of her letters. “Ah God! Still He is merciful and will never forget His crown,” she wrote to Anna Viroubova. She also became increasingly preoccupied with the afterlife. In the same letter to Anna, she went on to say, “Great will be their reward in Heaven. The more we suffer here the fairer it will be on that other shore where so many dear ones await us.”986 Her unwavering faith would sustain Alexandra as her life entered its final, sad year.

  Throughout the course of 1917, Russia continued to cannibalize itself in bloody revolution. Alexander Kerensky and the government of the newly proclaimed Russian Republic had been moderate and somewhat sympathetic to the former tsar and his family. But Kerensky’s administration was undermined by choosing to keep Russia in the war. Amid this growing unpopularity, Kerensky and his government were overthrown by one of the most notorious revolutionaries in history—Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov. More commonly known as Vladimir Lenin, he and the ruthless Bolsheviks began their overthrow by taking control of key places in and around Petrograd. The government, which had retreated to the Winter Palace, finally conceded defeat after Russian warships, now under control of pro-Bolshevik sailors, began shelling the palace. Once in power, Lenin turned his attention to the captive Romanovs. He made it his mission to make life for them as unpleasant as possible. While Alexander Kerensky was determined to keep the family isolated but safe, Lenin’s rise to power signaled a dangerous threat against their lives.

  As Siberia descended into a winter of endless night and bitter cold, the living conditions at the Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk became unbearable. Nicholas, Alexandra, and their family were provided with little or no heat for the handful of rooms into which they were crammed. The windows were terribly thin and lacked insulation, offering no protection from the dangerous subzero temperatures outside, which plunged as low as -40°C on some days. Alexandra felt the cold worse than anyone else; her hands and feet nearly froze. “We shiver in the rooms, and there is always a strng [sic] draught from the windows,” she wrote to Anna Viroubova before Christmas. “Your pretty jacket is useful. We all have chilblains on our fingers.”987 Gleb Botkin, son of the family’s physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin, who had joined the family in Tobolsk, noted how “the Siberian winter held us, by that time, completely in its icy grip … one can only sit in despair and shiver … one no longer lives during the Siberian winter but merely vegetates, in a sort of frozen stupor.”988

  During this difficult period in Alexandra’s life, it was her daughter Anastasia who kept the family’s spirits afloat. Throughout the long, dark Siberian winter, Anastasia entertained her family with “amateur theatricals” and performing tricks with Jimmy, Tatiana’s dog that she brought from Tsarskoe Selo. Alexandra’s youngest daughter “was absolutely fearless and refused to be cowed by misfortune and the restrictions of imprisonment.”989

  The overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government did nothing to improve Russia’s fortunes in the war. Many became disillusioned when the Bolsheviks were unable to lead the army to victory on the battlefield. Desperate to preserve his hold on power, Lenin made the decision to pull his country out of the war. In March 1918, Russia signed a peace accord with the Central powers known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The treaty brought peace to Russia, allowing Lenin to concentrate his full efforts on the fragile government, but the price was high.

  Lenin conceded huge tracts of land and large swathes of population in a humiliating and harsh agreement imposed by Germany and its allies. Russia gave up Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and most of Byelorussia. Not only had Russia lost much land and a good many people to the Central powers, it had also let down the Entente side by withdrawing from the war. Nicholas was devastated by the news. “Had I known it would come to this,” he dejectedly told Dr. Botkin, “I would never have abdicated.”990

  Alexandra was just as aghast at the news. For her, it amounted to nothing short of treason. “What infamy!” she exclaimed, “that the Lord God should give peace to Russia, yes, but not by way of treason to the Germans.” And she later wrote to Anna Viroubova, “What a nightmare it is that it is Germans who are saving Russia (from Communism).… What could be more humiliating for us? With one hand the Germans give, and with the other they take away. Already they have seized an enormous territory. God help and save this unhappy country. Probably He wills us to endure these insults, but that we must take them from the Germans almost kills me.”991

  The war’s unpopularity in Vienna took a meteoric rise as food became scarce. “Many workers seemed to be living mainly off sour cucumbers,” one eyewitness said. A meager flour ration of 165 grams per day was instituted. Elderly women waited in line for hours to board trains to take them to the provinces to trade clothes and shoes for bread and potatoes. The Austrian economy crumbled under the weight of sustaining total warfare. Money soon became worthless. Austria-Hungary—like Russia in the last days of the Romanov monarchy—was engulfed in waves of paralyzing strikes, demonstrations, and work stoppages. Factory workers in Wiener-Neustadt, twenty-five miles from Vienna, walked off the job and laid siege to the nearby town hall. According to one estimate, within “forty-eight hours, nearly 100,000 men were out on strike in Lower Austria alone.” By the end of January 1918, a poisonous cloud of unrest had consumed provinces across Austria-Hungary. Fueled by starvation, Upper Austria, Styria, the Tyrol, Moravia, and western sections of Hungary rose up against the monarchy.992

  Unrest was not confined solely to the empire’s core territories. In February, the flagship of the Imperial Fifth Fleet, anchored in the Gulf of Kotor off the coast of Montenegro, began flying the red flag of revolution. At midday, the sailors sang “La Marseillaise.” Within an hour, the entire fleet—comprised mainly of Croatian and Czech sailors—had mutinied. “The Emperor was not really surprised by the Kotor mutiny,” Zita admitted. “He told me that he had for a long time feared that something of the sort might happen. Our navy had been forced into idleness by the Entente blockade of the high seas and the Fifth Fleet, who were relatively well fed, had been cooped up for months in the same harbour.”993 Things were just as bad in the east. After Austro-Hungarian forces overran and occupied Ukraine, a state of anarchy ensued. Desperate to feed the empire’s starving population, the government ordered Ukraine to produce more than a million tons of food by the summer. The Ukrainian peasants, who themselves were starving, hid as much of their grain as possible. When quotas were not met, whole villages were burned to the ground. As a result, the Ukrain
ians began launching a guerilla warfare campaign against the Austro-Hungarians. When they succeeded in assassinating two officers, imperial troops retaliated by executing thirteen villagers. According to an Austrian intelligence report, by August 1918, the “murder of landowners, policemen, and officials and other enemy acts of terrorism against the troops of the Central Powers were the order of the day.”994 Over the course of the summer, the violence escalated to horrific proportions.

  As Austria-Hungary’s fortunes took a turn for the worse, Empress Zita’s close association with her family in Italy and France laid her open to more accusations of treachery. The German ambassador to Austria wrote in a telegram sent to Berlin that the “Empress is descended from an Italian princely house … People do not entirely trust the Italian [author’s italics] and her brood of relatives.”995 The German government began its own campaign to discredit Zita, whom they perceived as a threat to German influence in Austrian domestic affairs. “It was difficult for them to attack the Emperor directly,” wrote one historian. “They thus chose another target: Zita. Her French ancestry, in the bellicose speeches of the pan-Germanists, would serve as the pretext for a campaign of disparagement of the Empress. In Germany, she was called ‘the Frenchwoman,’ and in Austria, ‘the Italian woman.’ Within a few months, some would be accusing her of treason.”996