November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Nonetheless, this at once necessitated a whispered consultation around Milyukov. Twenty-minute recess! (During the interval Shuvaev thanked Milyukov for his earlier patriotic speech.)

  Rodichev: It rarely happens that what needs to be said is said so powerfully. To fight on to the end is of course the one thing we want, that after all is the only reason we are sitting here. (Applause on the left and in the center.) We have behind us the universal enthusiasm of the whole country, and more than two hundred years of heroic sacrifices, which Russia has not begrudged. But if we are not to begrudge such sacrifices, we must have faith in our leaders. Russia needs to have faith in her rulers. This has been her need of old—honest and conscientious rule. And when noxious air pours through every crack we say clean up the atmosphere!

  Deputy Markov spoke one great truth: when he asked how your speeches could be allowed to circulate throughout Russia without refutation. That is the unfortunate thing about our speeches—that they have indeed gone without refutation. In this we see the tragedy of the impossible task which they have set themselves: defeating the enemy while despising their fatherland.

  One belief in Russia remains unshakable—that is belief in the State Duma. (“Bravo!” from the left.) It is the only place in Russia where free speech—the power of which knows no bounds—is heard. (Applause from the left and in the center. “Bravo!”)

  We will hear more from this Duma later.

  Document No. 5

  Petrograd, 16 November

  CIRCULAR TELEGRAM TO RUSSIAN AMBASSADORS

  From Minister of Foreign Affairs Stürmer

  Rumors recently spread by the press of certain countries concerning separate negotiations allegedly conducted between Russia and Germany with a view to the conclusion of a separate peace … only play into the hands of hostile states … Russia will fight hand in hand with her valiant allies against the common foe without the slightest wavering to the hour of final victory.

  [72]

  The Empress was attached to her private hospital not merely by the fact that she worked in it but by far deeper feelings: she went there to sit at the bedsides of patients, sometimes silently holding the hand of a grievously sick man, or laying her own hand on his head, and speaking words of comfort, taking the place of his absent loved ones. She had her favorites among the wounded, would sit beside them day after day, until they recovered or died, and would subsequently remember the dead as if they had been members of her own family. At the bedsides of the less seriously ill she would do embroidery while they told her their stories. She would take them flowers. One wounded young man had said, “I’m so happy now—I don’t want anything more.” Sometimes she came across officers who had seen her ten or fifteen years ago at a distance, reviewing troops, while newer acquaintances became friends never to be forgotten. The gratitude of the wounded restored and sustained the Empress herself. She was drawn to the hospital when she most missed her husband and her son. Once there she forgot her loneliness. She was drawn to the place whenever she felt particularly depressed and unhappy. When she was unable to sit in a chair she would still go to the hospital and lie on a sofa, and even so would enjoy the comfort and tranquillity which those surroundings instilled in her.

  She felt closer than ever to the wounded when she prayed with them. This she saw as one of her womanly duties—to try to bring people whenever possible closer to God. And the souls of common soldiers (though not the souls of officers) are childlike. The Empress attended church services with convalescents. She prayed with the dying. Prayer always helps a departing soul. Behold—yet another brave soul is abandoning this world to become one with the shining stars! And every dying man helped her to understand more clearly the awesome significance of what was happening.

  Faith was an even greater help than work. The Church is an incomparable help for those who are sad at heart. Tears shed there bring relief. In earlier days, when she was more mobile, the Empress liked to ride with Anya, incognito, in a one-horse sled, to some obscure, sparsely attended church, and to kneel in prayer on the stone floor. For so many years now she had petitioned God for her son’s health. Once she had set a candle in the Church of the Sign and prayed for the Emperor, the throne, and the Heir as she did every day, Aleksandra felt calm. She took communion several times a year, and this was more than anything else a source of spiritual strength. M. Philippe—all those years ago—had persuaded her that she enjoyed the protection of the Mother of God and had special ties with her. She had faith particularly in the Feast of the Protection, as a day which should confer special favor. It made a great impression on her when their Friend also said that the day of the Nativity of the Virgin was her special day. Not all conversations with their Friend were alike, but when a truly magical conversation arose, about miracles and the inexplicable, the Empress’s soul thrilled: such conversations helped her to rise above earthly cares, to look down on them from on high. She also read books about the religions of India and of Persia.

  It was easy to see that all the present turmoil on earth—this monstrous European war, all that was happening in Russia, the struggle of the Russian throne against its sworn enemies—had a much profounder significance than was immediately obvious. “We who have learned to look at things from another side too can see the true nature and meaning of the struggle.”

  And perhaps expect it to end horribly.

  Last summer, in the most grueling days of the Russian retreat, Varnava had suddenly telegraphed from Tobolsk to say that people had seen a cross in the sky in broad daylight.

  Now, overnight from Thursday to Friday, the Empress had had a strange dream in which she seemed to be undergoing an operation. She was lying on the operating table, fully conscious. Her right arm was being amputated, but she felt no pain, only acute regret: how can you fight the good fight without your right arm? And how would she now cross herself? And write to Nicky?

  She awoke with a violent start.

  She fought against the fear that oppressed her. Unfortunately she remembered feeling like that for the first time when she was a young bride-to-be. She had arrived in Petersburg, to become Empress of Russia, accompanying the coffin of the late Tsar from the Crimea. The funeral was followed by several memorial services, and, except that the bride was allowed to wear white, the wedding was like a continuation of the burial service.

  And now—with all her ailments and anxieties—she felt so old and so downhearted! Since this unhappy war had begun her heart had never been free from anxiety for a single day.

  The war had started in the suite of rooms adjoining her own, but the Emperor had told her nothing that day, had not once sought her advice, so that she knew nothing about the general mobilization—and had wept bitterly when she learned of it. She had felt that something irreparable had happened in the world.

  Once the war began, what was the right thing for the Emperor to do? They had decided that his place was with the troops, and that he ought to visit fighting units as often as possible—something he liked doing anyway. If it was such a comfort to him to see these great bodies of devoted and happy subjects, what must it mean to them? A priceless recompense! Imagine their feelings when they saw the Emperor so near, so much one of themselves, and, what is more, accompanied by Baby! What valor this precious manifestation would inspire in them, what sunny memories would remain with them all for the rest of their lives! They would see for whom they were fighting and dying, that it was not just for GHQ, not for Nikolasha (who, incidentally, had let himself down badly by never visiting the troops in the field). The Emperor must inspect as many units as possible, and the papers must report these occasions. The Empress thought of herself as a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife, and would have liked to go with her husband, nearer to the front line, to give the soldiers new heart. She would have liked to see the faces of those brave men when they saw for whom they were going into battle.

  Cruel separation was the price which husband and wife now had to pay for Nicky’s decision to assu
me the post of Supreme Commander. In the preceding twenty-one years their loving hearts had never been separated. Now a single week apart seemed an eternity—and at times they were separated for several weeks.

  How desperately unhappy it makes me not to be with you! How dearly I wish that I need never be separated from you, that I could share everything, see everything with you! I have cried my eyes out! But this wife of yours is always with you, and within you! I cannot endure the knowledge that you are continually overburdened with anxieties, and so far away from me. I hate letting you go where all those torments and troubles await you. It is a dreadful thing to spend month after month after month at GHQ, never leaving the town. You spend all your time reading dispatches, my poor boy. And what a trial those ministers are, whom you have to receive even when it is terribly hot. How hard you have to work, what an awful life you lead.

  These continual separations wear out the heart. I will never get used to the moment of parting. I see your big, sad eyes, full of love, before me, afterward they haunt me. And the horrid consciousness of your absence never lets up. You and I are, and always will be, a single whole. It is amazing, the love my old heart is still capable of! I love you more and more with every day that passes! I love you as few have ever been loved. Even beyond the grave I shall still be your wife and your friend. My poor, big Lambkin! My brave little boy! Dear little boy with the big heart! My sweet! My sunlight! Sunshine of my sick soul! I am enclosing some little rose petals—yes, I have kissed them! I envy them because they will wing their way to you. You must kiss them too. The place circled in my letter is where I have left a big kiss. I have perfumed this letter, to take away the nasty smell of ink. And I am sending you the flowers that were in our room, your old Sunny had breathed in their fragrance. How I love to get flowers from you! They are a pledge of tender love. I shut myself up alone to delight in your dear letter. I read it over and over, crazy old woman that I am, and kiss your dear handwriting. In my imagination I lay my head on your shoulder, and lie quietly on your breast. When I go to bed I always bless and kiss your pillow. I go over and over your words in the darkness, they fill me with quiet happiness and I feel younger. I want you to dream about your little wife. Feel my arms entwining you—always together, forever inseparable. These separations only cause the fire to burn more fiercely. Telegrams cannot be hot—they pass through so many hands. Feel me beside you, I am warming and caressing you. I long to feel that you are my very own, I kiss you all over—I alone have a perfect right to do that, haven’t I?

  I don’t want to boast, but no one loves you like your old Sunny. She* has the audacity to call you her own, she complains that she gets too little affection, she thinks that she alone misses you. She is completely shattered, she who has never in her life been put to the test. You are her life, for her everything is concentrated in her own person and in you, but you are mine not hers, as she dares to call you. You burn her letters, don’t you, so that they will not fall into anyone else’s hands? I will gladly pass them on myself, although Anya does not understand how little interest her letters hold for you. But it will be better if she writes through me, rather than through her servants. See—she kisses your hand. Here is another loving kiss from her. Here is her voluminous love letter to you. She sends you lots of loving kisses. She is out of her mind with joy that you are returning to Tsarskoye. Send her your greetings, she grieves if there is nothing for her. Send her a kiss, that will make her happy. (I can’t bear begging for kisses, like Anya.) But don’t allow the lady of your heart to write too often. You must train her to be moderate, because the more one has, the more one wants. You must always pour cold water on her. Of course, if you need these exchanges with her, that’s another matter. But unless we are firm now we will have trouble and lover’s tantrums, like in the Crimea.

  Anya Taneyeva had become a lady-in-waiting, and been given permission to wear the Empress’s monogram picked out in diamonds, back in 1903, when she was a girl of nineteen. But she had quickly risen above her nominal station, and within two years the whole court was so jealous of her relationship with Her Majesty that, to avoid arousing the envy of other ladies-in-waiting, she was sometimes taken to the Empress’s study by way of a service room (which, however, gave rise to other misinterpretations). Their friendship was reinforced by music, they played pieces for four hands, took singing lessons from a professor at the Conservatoire, sang duets (Anya had a high soprano, the Empress a fine contralto), but this had come to an end because the Emperor did not like his wife to sing. Moreover, Anya shared the Empress’s religious sentiments, her general perception of reality, and her feeling that the world is full of mystic auguries and awful warnings.

  The Empress’s need for an understanding womanly soul close to her was all the greater because from the moment she set foot in Russia she had been at odds with the notables of St. Petersburg, and the breach had since become unbridgeable. From her very first days in Russia she had felt that she was for some reason not liked there and never would be. If she had acted quickly she might have put things right, but for Aleksandra this would have been excruciatingly difficult. She was, at the best of times, reserved and painfully shy, and, feeling that the public was prejudiced against her, she withdrew still further into herself. It was her misfortune always to look constrained in company, and this made her unprepossessing. She was incapable of pretense, of those insincere little smiles that beguile the crowd. She had no winning wiles. Nothing was more painful to her than hobnobbing with people whom she had no wish to know, and in public she seemed cold, stiff, bored—and was indeed bored—all this, moreover, in contrast to the smiling, gracious dowager Empress, with whom she was unable to compete. (She loved receptions, and always took precedence, arm in arm with the Emperor.) Then, soon afterward, came children, and illnesses, one after another, and she had to spend a lot of time lying down—she could not even stand comfortably, so that balls and receptions, even private ones, were out of the question, and such events were canceled. Many people were eager to be received privately, and those who were granted this favor were at once enrolled in the ranks of her friends. People would forgive her everything in return for such an interview, but even this became too much for her, and she refused one request after another. She could not plead serious illness as an excuse because this too had to be concealed, and so the explanation found for the Empress’s behavior was her pride, her coldness, her unsociability. When the house of Romanov had celebrated its tricentenary the pomp of the occasion had been matched only by the coldness and hostility of the glittering ranks of socialites toward the imperial couple!

  Anya Taneyeva, then, had become no mere courtier but the closest of friends. She was twelve years the Empress’s junior, twelve years her daughter Olga’s senior, and so like a younger sister or an older daughter. Anya shared the imperial family’s favorite private outings, yachting among the Finnish skerries, where they could wander the island paths without fear of terrorists, mushrooming and blackberrying like ordinary people. It was there that the Empress had once embraced her and said, “God has sent you to me, and I will never be alone again.” In 1907 Anya had married Vyrubov, a naval officer who had escaped with his life when the Petropavlovsk was blown up. Their Majesties had blessed the couple with an icon in the palace church, but they had soon parted and divorced. Anya’s experience of married life was simply her husband’s ungovernable rages, and she had run away from him, retaining for the rest of her days only his surname. At court she did not resume her position as lady-in-waiting, but was simply the Empress’s one and only intimate friend.

  Gradually, however, she had become more than that—a third party permanently attached to the imperial couple, so that they were never allowed to be quite alone or to belong only to each other. Are we ever safe from human ingratitude? They had given her their hearts, a home, a share in their private life, how could they not feel aggrieved when she had behaved in a manner so unworthy of herself in the autumn of 1913 in the Crimea, and again in the winter and
spring of 1914? There had been warning signs as she had gravitated toward the Emperor, and distanced herself from the Empress, treating her indeed with inexplicable rudeness, hauteur, coldness, and withdrawing completely from their previous intimacy. The Empress had sent her packing from the Crimea.

  Separation had not lasted long. The Empress had forgiven Anya and recalled her. But something had gone forever. Their relationship was strained, they could not feel as close and as easy with one another as before. Anya’s caprices ruined quiet evenings, and it became obvious how spoiled and badly brought up she was. Anya thought only of herself, and was constantly in need of novelty, so that the Empress lived in fear of her sudden changes of mood.

  Then, in January last year, Anya had suffered a terrible blow. She had been involved in a train crash, broken both legs, suffered injuries to her head and her back, vomited blood. She had spent six months lying on her back and undergone several operations. Now she was a cripple, and always had to use a crutch. This might have led to a complete renewal of their former friendship: the Empress had sat at her bedside for hours on end, but, heavens, how far Anya now was from her! Illness had not improved her, she was more capricious, more demanding, than ever, she showed her spite in cryptic but wounding remarks, she hoped that her disability would earn her more attention, more visits, more affection from the Emperor, hoped to recover her old position. She refused to recognize that the Empress had too many other obligations, was jealous of the attention she paid to the wounded, wrote five notes a day requiring her presence, considered two visits a day insufficient, although there was nothing to talk about. In the hope that a result of the accident would be peace, and to take Anya’s mind off herself, the Empress read the Lives of the Saints to her, but those hard eyes were a long time softening, and she still wanted the Emperor to visit her frequently. “You have your children, I have only him!” She took to visiting in a wheelchair, and wanted to live in the palace so that she could meet him in the garden without the Empress present. Only by consistent firmness and cautious handling did they finally cure her.