He was giving way before the might of the working class—that midget of a Tsar named Nikolai II!!!
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That Thursday would be his oldest daughter Olga’s twenty-first birthday. Had she not been a Tsar’s daughter she would probably have been married by now. But, imprisoned as she was by palace protocol and dynastic convention, she could form only imaginary attachments, which she concealed even from her mother. This was all the more necessary because she resented admonitions, sulked if she was chided, was the most obstinate of all four daughters, and at the same time volatile and unpredictable. What she found particularly tiresome was to be told how young ladies were taught to behave in times gone by: she was apt to flare up and answer back with a defiant stare. But her presence was striking: tall, with golden curls and blue eyes, she had been colonel in chief of one of the hussar regiments from the age of sixteen, and very proud of it, especially when she could ride out in hussar uniform. She was a quick learner, for that very reason indolent, and so not particularly well educated.
The Empress had long refused to recognize that her daughters were grown up, but even she could no longer deny that the two older ones were adults.
In whatever free time was left from her agonizing preoccupation with affairs of state and the ever-pressing need to write, communicate, receive visitors, give instructions, she thought hard and fearfully about her daughters’ future. What fate awaited them? Whom were they destined to marry? To what foreign lands would they depart, never to return? Life was an enigma and the future was hidden behind a veil. Above all, would it be their good fortune to find the unquestioning and uninterrupted love which Aleksandra herself had now enjoyed with her angel Nicky for twenty-two years? Alas, such a love was becoming more and more of a rarity.
Then again—what sort of world would they be living in? Once the present war was over, would ideals exist, or would people remain the desiccated egoists they now were? What an age to live in! People’s mental landscape changed continually. Machines and money were destroying art. There were no great writers, musicians, artists left in any country in the world, and those who were considered gifted showed symptoms of depravity.
There was another Olga in their inner family circle—the Emperor’s sister. After years of entreaty she had finally been allowed to divorce the Duke of Oldenburg and was to marry his adjutant, a captain in the cuirassier regiment. They were to be married quietly that Friday, in a little church at Kiev, overlooking the Dnieper just where the image of the pagan god Perun had once stood. The Empress had serious misgivings about this marriage. There were already three ugly morganatic blots on the dynasty, and this was one more. But who did not long for private happiness? Who could have the heart to deny it to them?
The girls had been brought up by Aleksandra Fyodorovna herself—which was why for many years she had so little time to help the Emperor with his duties. In the small and modest court of Hesse she had been brought up to know the value of money, to be thrifty, and to make herself useful. She followed the same course with her daughters: garments and footwear were passed down from older to younger sister, and there was a limit to the number of toys allowed. This system was essential to the mental equilibrium of the Empress. (She herself was no slave to luxury. She could wear the same dresses for years on end and had to be reminded that she needed new ones.) Aleksandra Fyodorovna shielded her girls from friendship with the flighty daughters of the aristocracy, or with the other Grand Duchesses, their cousins and second cousins, whose upbringing seemed to her deplorable. (This created fresh fault lines of resentment within the dynasty.) She herself was skilled in various forms of needlework, had mastered the use of a sewing machine, and could embroider. She tried to pass on these skills to her daughters, and would not allow them to sit around doing nothing. Truth to tell, only Tatyana took it all in and was clever enough with her hands to become a good needlewoman. She made blouses for herself and her sisters, embroidered and knitted. She also often dressed her mother’s hair, which was no easy task. She was always busy with something. In many ways she was like her mother: she was hardly ever naughty, she was reserved, proud, secretive, but she also knew better than the others how to make her authority felt and earned her nickname of “the little governess” by continually reminding her sisters of their mother’s wishes. This patient, affectionate girl was born to be the consolation of her parents in old age.
The Empress had been surprised to find that in Russia upper-class young ladies were interested only in officers. She had tried setting up sewing circles in which matrons and young ladies would make things for the poor, but they had quickly lost interest and the circles had collapsed. The Empress’s more successful initiatives included a school for children’s nannies at Tsarskoye Selo, a home for veterans of the Japanese war in the palace park, where they were taught a trade, and a school of folk art in Petersburg, where girls from all over Russia were taught handicrafts. (She was guided partly by her belief that the strength of the throne was in the common people and that encouraging folk art would help her to know the country, the people, and the provinces more intimately, and to form a real union with them.) She built sanatoria for tuberculosis patients in the Crimea at her own expense, and organized bazaars for their benefit: she had stood for hours on her weak, swollen legs selling articles which she and her daughters had embroidered themselves.
As soon as this horrible war erupted the Empress busily set about organizing a network of medical facilities—field clinics, hospitals, and hospital trains—funding many of them herself, including the nearest, that inside the Great Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, known as “Her Majesty’s Own Clinic.” Olga presided over the Committee for Aid to Soldiers’ Families, Tatyana over the Refugees’ Committee. The Empress, her two older daughters, and Anya Vyrubova all attended special wartime courses for nurses, took lessons from a surgeon, and did their practical work as ordinary nurses in their own clinic, removing bloody bandages from the wounded, washing them, helping with dressings, assisting at operations: Aleksandra Fyodorovna even handed the surgeon his instruments, she was not afraid of blood, pus, or vomit, and was untroubled by the thought of losing for the moment her royal aureole. She learned to change bedding quickly, without disturbing patients, to prepare complicated dressings (and to put them on herself), and she was immensely proud when she earned her nurse’s certificate and her Red Cross chevron.
Of the four of them, the haughty and capricious Anya got tired of hospital work first, and began begging off, but some six months later she was involved in an accident and landed in the hospital herself. The two girls had been working there regularly and seriously for over two years. Tanya had made particularly good progress—she was shortly due to administer chloroform herself for the first time. Aleksandra Fyodorovna genuinely liked helping the surgeons and dressing wounds, and was happy when she could do this work. It helped to settle her nerves. But she had been able to work to her own satisfaction only in the first year of the war, 1914, and for part of this summer. The limiting factor was her health. Long operations were sometimes too much for her legs. Sometimes she was bedridden—for four months on end last winter. She had been unable to visit the military hospital in the Great Palace even once. And, of course, she had several others to inspect—emergency hospitals set up in the most surprising places—banks, the auditoriums of theaters … Some of them were in other towns, and there were also hospital trains …
Above all, there was her son. Her only son’s chronic illness. Aleksei’s cruel disability had shown itself in his infancy. The joy which the birth of an heir had brought was shadowed almost at once by continual anxiety. Not only was the slightest cut dangerous to him, he only had to bump a hand or a foot against a piece of furniture and an enormous, livid swelling would show that he was bleeding internally. The little boy would have to spend several days lying down. His mother bathed him herself, never left the nursery, forgetting at times that she was still also the Tsaritsa. All children’s games and high-spirited romps were for
bidden him from the start: he could not ride a bicycle, or play tennis, or even run about. Every mother feels her child’s pain as her own, every knock, every misstep he took hurt Aleksandra. Most agonizing of all was her unremitting awareness that she was to blame: without willing it, she had brought all these sufferings on him! She had known about this defect in her family: relatives of hers, her uncle, Queen Victoria’s son, and her younger brother, had died of the disease. Several of her nephews also suffered from it. She had known, but to hope is human, and Aleksandra had hoped that it would miss her son. She had been punished for it—or, rather, her boy had been punished.
He had terrible experiences, and the most terrifying thing about them was that the best and most experienced doctors were sometimes at a loss and admitted their helplessness. But then the Holy Man had appeared. One touch, or at times a single look, a single word, from him sufficed and the boy would begin to get well again. His mother knew by now for sure that he only had to visit her son and her son would recover. Four years ago Aleksei had lost his footing jumping into a boat at Skierniewice, and had hovered between life and death for three weeks, lying with one leg raised up, unable to straighten it, crying out in pain. His face was shrunken, waxen, his little nose sharp, and the doctors, Fyodorov and Derevenko, were inclined to think that his condition was hopeless. The boy, although he was only eight years old, realized it himself and asked his mother to “put up a memorial to me in the park at Tsarskoye Selo when I die.” All this was in Poland, and their Friend was in Siberia at the time They sent him a telegram, a last despairing cry for help, and he replied by telegram: “The illness is not as dangerous as it seems, do not let the doctors torment him.” That was all! And as soon as the telegram arrived the Heir to the Throne began to recover! Surely it was a miracle?
Then, last autumn, Aleksei had gone with his father to GHQ (letting him go had filled her with dread, but she could not condemn the Emperor to the horrors of loneliness at GHQ), and while he was there his nose had started bleeding so persistently that the doctors could not stop it. The Emperor had to leave GHQ immediately and hurry back on the royal train. The little boy was brought home, his mother knelt at his bedside … but the hemorrhage continued, and could not be stanched, and it seemed certain that he would bleed to death! Then they sent for Grigori Efimovich. He entered the room, made a sweeping sign of the cross over the Heir, and said, “Don’t be anxious—nothing more is needed!” and left. With that the bleeding stopped. (And there had been no major hemorrhage since.)
They knew now that what their Friend had told them was true: “If I am not near you the Heir will not live.”
If this had all happened in Europe they would have been looking for doctors and super-doctors. (Aleksandra herself did not like the famous ones, and preferred the humble Evgeni Botkin to his eminent brother Sergei.) Everywhere on earth people are treated with whatever local remedy is available—polar lichens, wild herbs, waterweeds. In Russia there have always been itinerant holy men, “God’s people.” Peculiarly Russian, they are not necessarily priests but are nonetheless styled “elders” (like venerable monks). They are endowed with God’s grace and the Lord pays special heed to their prayers. It was a holy man of this sort, an “elder,” whom Orthodox Russia, the simple Russian people, had sent to save their son, and so perhaps the throne itself. What was the point of being an Orthodox Tsar if you did not commune with and heed such men from the depths of the people? The royal couple had found him immediately after their first Friend, Monsieur Philippe. The Montenegrin sisters, Grand Duchesses both, had invited the Empress to their home to meet the man of God. She had taken one look and believed in him at once. There was nothing in his appearance, nothing at all, that could possibly be thought contrived or bogus. He was tall, very tall, with a slight stoop. He wore a Russian blouse, and high Russian boots. His pale face was gaunt, emaciated even, his blue-gray eyes piercing, searching, compelling, his eyebrows shaggy tufts, his hair untidily plastered down. There was about him an iconlike austerity and an assured strength. It was his self-assurance that particularly impressed her. His utterances were those of one with authority. It was as if a figure in a village painter’s picture had come to life: a picture of a holy man, a man of the people, not a symbolic figure, not a generalized abstraction, but a living human being. You could reach out and touch him, you could listen to him, and when he spoke the fact that he was semi-literate only made his speech the more vivid, made what he said more extraordinary than anything the Empress had ever heard, so interesting were his stories, so spiritually profound his thoughts. He knew a great deal of scripture, had walked all over Russia on his own two feet, had visited many monasteries, great and small. He had educated himself by prayer and fasting—meat and dairy products he no longer ate at all.
Frequent meetings over the years had made the Empress more and more certain that he was indeed chosen by God to save their threatened dynasty. The power of his prayer was vast, and effective not only in restoring the Heir to health. It had saved the lives of many soldiers at the front, the lives of all those he had prayed for. His prayers protected the Emperor himself on all his travels. During the war, the Empress had kept their Friend informed in advance of the Emperor’s movements, the secret routes he would be following, so that his blessing would be accurately oriented and reach its goal more surely. She sought his blessing on every journey the Emperor undertook. When the royal couple visited hostile Odessa their Friend had prayed so hard that he scarcely had time for sleep. But it went much further than that. His voice was tirelessly raised in prayer and benediction, by night and by day, blessing all Orthodox warriors, calling on the heavenly host to be with them, summoning angels to fight in the ranks of Russia’s soldiers. When the situation at the front was particularly serious, or a great offensive was planned, as now, on the Southwestern front, the Empress would reveal to him the General Staff’s latest orders, so that he could reflect on them and pray. Last winter he had been very annoyed when they launched an attack without consulting him. He would have advised delay, telling them that he was continually praying and trying to decide when the right moment would come, to avoid squandering lives to no purpose as Brusilov had done. He always advised them not to be forever on the offensive: if they were more patient less blood would be spilled. When our forces were held up by persistent mists Anya sent a telegram to their Friend asking for sunny weather (and he promised it in his answering telegram from Siberia). He gave presents of religious pictures and icons to the Emperor himself and every member of his family, and that summer, when the Empress visited GHQ, he had sent an icon to General Alekseev. (Provided that Alekseev had accepted it sincerely, in the appropriate frame of mind, God would undoubtedly bless his military labors.) And even when they were considering whether or not to grant Olga, the Tsar’s sister, permission to divorce, it was to their Friend that the Empress first turned for advice.
She always felt more troubled when he left for Siberia, more at ease when he was in Petrograd and she could send messages through Anya and ask his advice. Whenever something was done against his wishes Aleksandra’s heart bled. She felt frustrated—and afraid.
Such a gift of words he had! What lovely telegrams he sent! What courage, what wisdom they imparted!
“No matter what is used to cut down the impious tree, it falls just the same. St. Nicholas is with you and his miraculous manifestation always works miracles.”
“The well is deep and their ropes are too short.”
“In tribulation joy is more radiant. The Church is invincible.”
“An evil tongue is worthless, praise is of little worth, there is joy beside the throne.”
“God’s light is over you, let us not fear the insignificant.”
“You must never be too worried. God will help you anyway.”
“Be holy, as I am holy.”
It was difficult to reproduce the things he said, words were powerless, you had to respond to the spiritual fervor that went with them, the fervor that suffus
ed his reminiscences of Palestine. And how generously he gave to the poor! Every kopeck he received went to them. He was as greathearted, as kind to all men as was Christ himself. Many bishops, even, looked up to him. (The Empress was dreadfully displeased when some people called him simply “Rasputin.” She was trying to break her intimates of the habit.)
What happiness it was when they could also make use of the advice and wide experience of the man sent by God in the business of government, receive with gratitude the fruits of his spiritual vision, and invoke his blessing at every step they took. Aleksandra had read in a certain French book that “the state cannot perish if its ruler is guided by a man of God.”
Their Friend spent his nights not in sleep but in getting ready to advise the Emperor. He could peer into the distant future, and his judgment could therefore be relied on. He told them that they must always do as he said, for such was the wish of the Lord God. How many sober and sound counsels he had given over the years! He had urged them not to intervene in the Bosnian conflict: things had to be put in order at home. He had gone down on his knees to the Emperor to restrain him from entering the Balkan war: their enemies were only too eager for Russia to get bogged down there. He had also tried to hold them back from this present dreadful conflict: the Balkans were not worth a World War, and Serbia would prove ungrateful. He might have prevailed if he had not been lying wounded in Siberia. (Even so, he had sent telegrams urging restraint, but the Emperor had angrily rejected them.) He had advised against marching to Serbia through Romania, against calling up category 2 reservists, or men over forty, but had recommended drafting Tartars as well as Russians, after carefully explaining the situation to them. The Emperor should not visit Lvov and Peremyshl—it was too early: and as it turned out, shortly after his visit he was humiliated by having to surrender them. So many things would have gone better in this war if they had always listened to their Friend’s advice! He it was who had suggested organizing a day of prayer and religious processions throughout the land—and soon afterward the recoil of the Russian armies had been halted. He again, having no faith in Nikolasha, bade the Emperor assume Supreme Command himself, and never surrender it to others who knew less than he did. On a number of occasions he had opposed the convocation of the Duma—and that body had never done any good. When it was convened in February 1915 he had advised the Emperor to put in an unexpected appearance and so disarm the deputies. He constantly warned them that a government answerable to the Duma would spell ruin. Again, it had been his idea to publish information on the waste of government funds by Zemgor (the Empress’s heart ached when she thought how much more good the state itself could have done with a quarter of that sum). God had inspired all these salutary ideas of his. Again, because he remained close to the common people Grigori saw many things with their eyes, and gave valuable advice accordingly—as, for instance, not to raise streetcar fares from five to ten kopecks; not to prevent wounded soldiers from using streetcars; to order bakers’ shops to weigh bread in advance, so that people need not stand in line; to bring firewood into the city by water before the first frosts set in.
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