Alexandra

by Carolly Erickson

  The Soviet functioned as a second governing body, its views much more radical than those of the various Duma delegates, its influence strong yet its precise relationship to the Duma ill-defined – and evolving. But since everyone expected that the current political arrangements were only temporary, to be in force only until elections to a Constituent Assembly could be held, the imprecise nature of the Soviet’s position was tolerated.

  Everywhere committees sprang up, township committees, factory committees, committees of soldiers and workers. The thirst for democratization, for abandonment of all hierarchies of authority, spread quickly, and with it came a thirst for revenge against the rulers, the owners, the bosses, anyone who had held authority in the past. The rights of each individual, and of the people collectively, were exalted above all; any title or office or institution that appeared to diminish those rights was challenged, and threatened with destruction.

  Such was the mood in the capital where, in response to news of the tsar’s abdication, another wave of violent upheaval had begun to build up. Police were shot and ambushed, police stations burned, along with the law courts with all their records. Mansions were looted and set on fire. Prisoners had been liberated from the jails, and they roved through the city, taking vengeance, along with throngs of soldiers who had thrown off their allegiance to their officers and milled about in a disorderly way, answerable to no one and spoiling for a fight. It was unclear whether the Provisional Government would be able to restore order.

  Nearly all of the telephones at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo had been cut off, but the private line to the Winter Palace in Petrograd still functioned and, by means of this private line, word came that the capital was in chaos, and that the chaos was spreading.

  Meanwhile at Tsarskoe Selo the members of the Palace Guard, dejected after hearing that the tsar had abdicated, obeyed the orders they received to return to Petrograd.1 The palace was defenceless, and Petrograd, with its tens of thousands of striking labourers, roaming soldiers and liberated convicts, was only a few miles away.

  No one in the palace slept, Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote, remembering the first days following the abdication. Meals were forgotten, routines abandoned. The temperature was well below freezing, and the soldiers had used up nearly all the firewood. Supplies of food were very low as well. Alix continued to watch over her daughters and son, wearing her white nurse’s uniform over her black gown, staying occupied.

  On March 18, late at night, a cordon of trucks pulled up in front of the locked gates of the palace, and a large contingent of men spilled out. Alexander Guchkov, the new Minister of War, along with General Kornilov had arrived with his escort. ‘His thugs were everywhere,’ Sophie wrote, ‘abusing the servants for working for the oppressors and reviling the “bloodsuckers” who were members of the imperial suite.’

  Alix sent a hasty message to Grand Duke Paul, asking him to come to the palace to be with her when she met the envoys of the Provisional Government. With Paul beside her she received the minister and the general, not knowing what they might want of her, or indeed whether they had come to take her away. She had, finally, after days of uncertainty, received a phone call from Nicky; she knew that he was still alive. But she could not be sure that he was safe.

  It was nearly midnight when Guchkov and Kornilov were ushered into a room where Alix waited. They asked her whether she had everything she wanted. She said that, as far as she and the children were concerned, she needed nothing more for the moment, but asked that her military hospitals be maintained and supplied. Guchkov put a contingent of soldiers in place as guards, with an officer who was to serve as a go-between to keep him informed of conditions at the palace. It was to be a temporary arrangement, he said. Nothing permanent had yet been decided.

  The discussion was brief. Guchkov and Kornilov left, without arresting Alix or mentioning anything about her future or Nicky’s. But the rough, foul-mouthed revolutionary soldiers stayed behind, keeping up their shower of abuse and acting, Sophie thought, less like guards and protectors than jailers.

  All the palace doors were locked and sealed up. Apart from representatives of the new government, no one was allowed in or out except through a door in the kitchen, where a soldier stood guard. A very limited number of deliveries were allowed. Only one phone, in the orderly room, was kept operational, and when anyone spoke on that line, they had to speak in Russian – no English or French – and with an officer and soldier listening in.

  Kornilov told Alix and Marshal Benckendorff that these measures were essential, for the time being, but that soon the former tsar would arrive and the entire family would be sent by special train to Murmansk, where they would board a ship for England.

  The Provisional Government was in fact negotiating with the British government to allow the tsar and his family to emigrate. Foreign Minister Miliukov had sent a message to the British Prime Minister Lloyd George asking for asylum on behalf of the Romanovs and, despite the prime minister’s initial reluctance, they had come to an agreement.

  It was with this expectation in her mind that Alix met with General Kornilov again on March 21.2 She was waiting for him in the green drawing room, wearing her white apron with its red cross, the starkness of her simple uniform incongruous against the backdrop of the enormous, elegantly appointed room with its gilded walls and ornate carved chairs and sofas, costly pictures and objets d’art.

  The general delivered his message. He had come, he said, to put her, Alexandra Romanov, officially under arrest, by order of the Provisional Government. The former tsar had also been arrested, at Mogilev, having returned there following his abdication.

  Alix, calm and gracious, told the general that she was glad he had been the one to arrest her, since he knew what it felt like to be a prisoner, having himself been a prisoner of war in Austria. She knew he could empathize with her situation.

  Her manner was no longer grand or distant, but she had acquired, Count Benckendorff thought, a wonderful dignity. The count watched as she carried on her dialogue with Kornilov, asking nothing for herself, only that her hospitals and ambulance trains be maintained, so that no matter what happened to her the wounded would continue to be looked after. She asked that the servants in the nursery might be permitted to stay on, for the girls and Alexei were still recovering.

  She asked for leniency. ‘I am only a mother looking after my sick children,’ she told Kornilov.

  He responded that the servants and staff would be allowed to remain, but those who did would be arrested; all who wanted to avoid arrest would have to leave the palace. Among those who made the decision to stay were Marshal Benckendorff and his wife, the wardrobe mistress Madame Narishkin, Alix’s reader and companion Mademoiselle Schneider, who had been with her since the early days of her engagement, Alexei’s tutor Pierre Gilliard, and the two ladies-in-waiting Sophie Buxhoeveden and Anastasia Henrikov.

  Kornilov stressed that the arrests were only ‘a precautionary measure’, and that soon the family would be in Murmansk, on their way to a new life in England. And, as Alix knew, there was plenty of money to fund that new life. Her husband had nearly half a million roubles in cash, plus nearly two million roubles in securities, not counting the value of all his estates and palaces with their valuable furnishings. Alix herself owned a priceless jewellery collection. In exile, their every need would be supplied.

  Benckendorff advised Alix to begin packing, and the servants began filling trunks and suitcases. But Alix was very reluctant to leave, not only because the children were still recuperating but because, as she told Sophie Buxhoeveden, ‘it was such a nightmare to her that she prayed daily against it’. If they had to be ‘dragged’ out of Russia, she said, she preferred not to go to England, but to Norway, which had a climate that would suit Alexei, and where the family could live quietly and not be subjected to the stares of the curious.3 Nicky could be a farmer – his lifelong dream – and she could live the retired life she had always craved.4

  There
were other possibilities. Grand Duke Paul offered his house at Boulogne. Minnie’s relatives in Denmark would probably take the family in. After the war was over, Alix’s brother Ernie would be certain to make the Romanovs welcome, or her sister Irene. There were also relatives in Greece.

  But she did not want to go, not even when Madame Narishkin came to her with a very practical plan. Alix and Nicky should go on ahead to England, as quickly as possible, the wardrobe mistress advised. She and Count Benckendorff would look after the children. When they were completely well, the count and Sophie would bring them to England, or to wherever the parents had gone.

  Preparations for departure were being made, but in actuality the door to emigration was rapidly closing. Unknown to Alix or Nicky, the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was determined not to let the former tsar leave Russia. In their view, his tyranny, his years of heartless exploitation of the poor, his harsh economic policies and personal greed all deserved punishment. Memories of the Khodynka massacre, of the millions of Russian deaths from famine and disease for which the policies of the tsar’s ministers were blamed, of the tens of millions of war dead were evoked to justify bringing the man now known simply as Nicholas Romanov to justice. Besides, if he were allowed to go into exile, he would be certain to raise a foreign army and return to crush the revolution. He was very rich, after all, and had powerful relatives. Once he was allowed outside Russia, he would pose an immense threat.

  The Soviet sent a large group of soldiers armed with machine guns to the Alexander Palace on March 22 to take the former emperor prisoner and bring him back to Petrograd to be confined in the Peter and Paul Fortress until his inevitable execution. They came up against the guardsmen supplied by the Provisional Government, who had orders to keep watch over the Romanov prisoners in the palace, and had not been told to release any of them. To prevent a clash, the Soviet contingent agreed not to take the former tsar away, but they became belligerent, waving their guns and bullying the other company of guards.5 They refused to leave until they were shown the security arrangements within the palace, and shown Nicky himself, who was forced to walk past them all, a prisoner on parade.

  To make certain there were no dangerous emigrations within the Romanov family, the soviet ordered the railroad workers to prevent any train from reaching Murmansk. It was a needless gesture for, despite General Kornilov’s assurances to Alix, no British cruiser was waiting at Murmansk to provide a way of escape. The British government had changed its position, on orders from George V. The Romanovs were not to be allowed to enter England, lest their presence trigger a leftist rising there.6 The goodwill of Nicky’s and Alix’s cousin King George did not extend to granting them asylum. ‘It would not be reasonable,’ he told Foreign Minister Miliukov, ‘for the imperial family to be settled in our country.’

  Neither Alix nor Nicky knew of this decision, nor were they told of the similar conclusion reached by the government of Denmark. They continued to believe that, before long, arrangements would be made under which they would leave Russia – or that they would be sent to Livadia for a long stay.7

  In the meantime, they were prisoners, their every move watched, their every conversation overheard. Their lives had ceased to be their own.

  Slowly a routine evolved. Alix and Nicky took their meals with their children, and spent most of the day in their rooms, except for the daily walk Nicky was allowed to take for half an hour with his aide-de-camp Prince Dolgorukov. While the soldiers stood by, rifles at the ready and with fixed bayonets, he and the prince shovelled snow. Alix too went out, but in her wheelchair. She had not been able to take walks in a long time, though she could still move very quickly if she had to; her elderly page Wolkov told Sophie Buxhoeveden that when Nicky’s first phone call came through following the abdication, Alix ‘ran down the stairs like a girl’ to answer it.8 She spent time with the children, worked at her sewing or knitting, said her prayers, and read the many letters that came to the palace – each one having already been opened and read by an officer.

  In the evening Alix and Nicky went to sit by Anna Vyrubov’s bedside. Relations between Anna and Alix had been strained for several years, but long habit and an underlying affection still bound them together, and Alix still felt loyal to Anna and responsible for her, all the more so since her crippling accident. Alix had moved her friend out of her house in Tsarskoe Selo and into the palace after the soldiers, who hated Anna for her years of association with Rasputin, had threatened her life.

  ‘Those evenings were unspeakably sad,’ Sophie thought. ‘The empress [so Sophie continued to call her] was growing thinner and thinner, and was terribly aged in appearance. She sat almost in silence.’9 There was nothing to talk about; every topic raised painful emotions. And besides, they couldn’t speak freely. The guards were listening.

  They said little, sitting there beside Anna’s bed, but each could imagine the others’ thoughts: of the war, and how the Russian armies were faring, of the wounded in the hospital nearby, of the stories brought from Petrograd of soldiers murdering their officers and of the noisy clamour of the palace guardsmen demanding that Nicky be tried and sent to Kronstadt to await execution.

  Alix confided to Sophie that one thought often preoccupied her. If, as she believed, the Russian people were still faithful to the tsar, then how long would it be before they rose up and overthrew the Provisional Government and the Soviet, demanding his return to power? And when would foreign rulers take action against the revolution, as they had against the revolutionaries in France in the time of Louis XVI? She waited for the revolution to falter, for the counter-revolution to begin. She trusted in a ‘sudden miraculous change’ that would sweep away the nightmare of the abdication and its aftermath, and restore her husband to the throne.10

  She took heart from the few letters of consolation and encouragement she received. When an unknown lady sent Nicky a small icon, along with a prayer, Alix was ‘cheerful for a whole day’. The handful of letters that came from friends were cherished, and a warm letter from Nicky’s sister Xenia – the only letter from a family member that the soldiers did not confiscate – was comforting, as were the phone calls from Petrograd with messages of sympathy, and the flowers and notes sent to Alix by Queen Olga of Greece.11

  But for every comforting letter there were hundreds of insulting ones, accusing Nicky of treason, accusing Alix of everything from adultery to cruelty to sacrilege and crimes against nature. The hatred in these venomous letters was extreme, the appetite for revenge chilling. Alix had not suspected that such deep reservoirs of hatred existed, and she was very troubled by the letters.12

  Each day Alix had further searing proof of the current upwelling of resentment and contempt. The soldiers who guarded her, loud, ill-mannered, rowdy, truculent men, openly and incessantly hostile, harassed her and tried to unnerve her by telling coarse jokes in her presence and blowing the smoke from their cigarettes in her face.13 They singled her out as the special focus of their animosity, calling her ‘the tyrant’s wife’ and scrawling obscene graffiti on walls and on the benches in the garden where she would be certain to see them. They called out rude insults when she passed in her wheelchair, and threatened the servant who pushed the chair, swearing to kill him if he continued to serve his vile mistress.

  From morning to night, Alix was under siege from her jailers. When she dressed in the morning, a sentry was watching through the window; to preserve what modesty she could, she put on her clothes in a corner of the room, facing the wall, still in full view of him. When she went to mass, soldiers stood behind the altar screen, observing her. When she walked along the palace corridors, the guards shouted out rude greetings or snickered. She could never count on being alone, not in her private sitting room, her bedroom, even her bathroom. For the soldiers roamed at will through the palace, bursting into any room they liked, on any pretext, knocking over tables and lounging on sofas in their dirty boots, shouting to one another and haranguing the servants. At night she went to s
leep with the sound of their raucous noise in her ears, knowing that even her sleep would be watched.

  The constant malevolence of the guards wore Alix down, as did their petty meanness to her husband and children. Shouts of ‘Tyrant!’ or ‘Traitor!’ met Nicky wherever he went (along with a few murmurs of ‘Good day, Colonel’). Though he tried to ignore the insults, he could not ignore outright attacks, as when, riding on his bicycle in the park, a soldier stuck his bayonet through the spokes, making the bicycle swerve dangerously and nearly causing an accident. Such incidents, and the loud laughter of the soldiers who were looking on, were maddeningly provocative.14

  But it was the soldiers’ treatment of her daughters that angered Alix most. She had kept them sheltered, away from men. They had worked as nurses among soldiers, and had flirted with the officers of the imperial yacht, but the men had always been polite. The girls had never been subjected to anything like the barrage of leering, suggestive comments they now heard every hour. Their innocence was outraged by the sight of the soldiers, stripping naked to bathe in the ice-cold ponds, knowing that they would be seen by the girls and anticipating their well-bred confusion.

  Alix was angry, watching such incidents, but she was more fearful than angry, for there was always the chance that the lurid remarks, the sly looks and smirks might lead to kisses or rough fondling, and ultimately to rape. The girls’ very innocence was a provocation to men bent on revenge, men whose edgy meanness was barely kept contained by their officers. Often the guards were bored and restless: they marched around in groups, singing the ‘Marseillaise’, they picked fights with the palace servants, they shot the tame deer and swans in the palace park for target practice. Their pent-up aggression could not be controlled forever and, as the weeks passed, it seemed to be getting stronger.