Alexander II

by Edvard Radzinsky

  Nicholas was willing to forgive Zhukovsky’s battle with military training, because the main point of Zhukovsky’s teaching, which he inculcated in Sasha daily, was the cult of his father and total obedience.

  “Never praise the Grand Duke,” he begged the tsar. “Ordinary gentle treatment from Your Majesty is already the highest reward.” “His Highness must tremble at the thought of his father’s rebuke.” “The thought of his father’s approval must be His Highness’s secret conscience.”

  Whenever the boy dared to be disobedient, he had to bear his father’s wrath, which all of Russia feared. “Begone! You are not worthy of approaching me after such behavior; you have forgotten that obedience is a sacred duty. I can forgive anything except disobedience!”

  He would resort to the greatest threat for the little Romanov: “I will deprive you of the right to wear the parade uniform for an entire month if you ever show the least bit of disobedience again.”

  His father. The fear of his father. Obedience, subordination. His father as role model. An idol in everything. His father slept on a camp bed under an old soldier’s greatcoat, on a thin straw-filled mattress. He wore his uniform at breakfast, he despised robes. “Even when he was sick, Nicholas wore an old military coat instead of a robe, and he slept under it,” recalled lady-in-waiting Maria Frederiks.

  Alexander would try to follow in his father’s footsteps. He would keep a camp bed in his study and he would die in it, like his father.

  But no matter how hard he tried to emulate his father, he was his mother’s son. His father supervised his studies, but he spoke to him very rarely. His father was strict, his mother tender. He came to her with his troubles.

  Lady-in-waiting Anna Tyutcheva gives a portrait of Alexander’s mother. “The daughter of the King of Prussia, she came from Germany, where everyone was delirious over the sensitive poetry of Schiller…. Her tender nature and shallow mind replaced principles with sensitivity. Nicholas had the passionate adoration for this frail and exquisite creature of a strong nature for a weak thing, who obediently turned him into her sole ruler and legislator…. Nicholas placed her in a golden cage of palaces, brilliant balls, and handsome courtiers…. In her magical dungeon she did not once think of freedom. She did not allow herself to dream of any life beyond the golden cage. She adored and saw only the beautiful and happy…. When once she saw a worn dress on a girl being presented at court, she wept.”

  The empress was like a charming, constantly chirping, flighty bird. That pleased the emperor. Like Napoleon, Nicholas hated intelligent women who interfered in politics.

  Nicholas and Alexandra were a harmonious couple. The court delightedly glorified their undying love out loud. But the whispers spoke differently. The palace was full of rumors, and adolescent boys are nastily observant. Sasha learned that his mother’s lady-in-waiting, who lived right in the Winter Palace and was the court’s greatest beauty, Varenka Nelidova, was his father’s mistress. It was horrible for him to find that his father kept her under the same roof as his adored mother. Every time his father sent for the lovely lady-in-waiting, he imagined them together.

  As is to be expected at that sinful age, Sasha watched everyone and saw everything with different eyes, the eyes of Adam after he had tasted the forbidden fruit. He also had to learn about the young ladies who quickly vanished from the palace. They were all given in marriage to officers of the Life Guards, and they all gave birth prematurely. Then they brought a beautiful bourgeoise to the palace with a petition, and the emperor agreed to receive her. She left his study smiling and happy, and never was seen at the palace again. Alexander learned as a teenager what was later described by the marquis de Custine in his famous book about Russia:

  “And just as a landowner was in charge of the lives and wishes of his serfs, so the tsar here is in charge of all his subjects. He gave his attention…not only to all the young beauties in the court—the ladies-in-waiting but also the young women he met during walks. If someone caught his fancy on a walk or at the theater, he told his adjutant. She would then be checked. If there was nothing against her, the husband (if she was married) or her parents (if a maiden) were informed of the honor that had befallen them…. The tsar never met resistance to his lust…. In that strange country sleeping with the emperor was considered an honor…for the parents and even the husbands.”

  This was well known in St. Petersburg and it was “the usual order” of things. The young radical, the famous critic Dobrolubov, wrote right after the tsar’s death, “The usual order was thus: A girl from a noble family was made a lady-in-waiting and she was used to service our most pious and most autocratic tsar.”

  Custine traveled around Russia but never did understand who the tsar was for his subjects. “The most autocratic tsar” Nicholas I was not a landowner in charge of his serfs as much as a terrible god come down from Olympus.

  “I grew up with a feeling not only of love but also reverence…. I regarded the tsar as our earthly god, so it is not surprising that there was also inexplicable fear,” wrote the nineteen-year-old beauty Maria Patkul (who married Sasha Patkul, who was educated with the heir). “The door opened of the Empress’s formal study, and Their Majesties came out. My God, my heart fluttered so. I felt my knees buckling, so I leaned against the billiard table, lowered my eyes and bowed my head, and made a low bow. When I raised my eyes, I saw that Their Majesties were coming straight toward me. When they approached, I curtsied again, and the Empress, addressing the Tsar, said, ‘My friend, I present to you the wife of Patkul.’ To which the Tsar, offering me his powerful hand, bowed with the words, ‘I ask for your love and pity.’ I was so stunned by that unexpected and very gracious greeting that I could not say a single word, blushed, and at first could not tell whether I had dreamed those words of the Tsar or whether I was awake…. Could I have ever dreamed that the Tsar, that Colossus of the Russian land, would turn to a nineteen-year-old girl with the words, ‘I ask for your love and pity.’”

  The tsar’s mercurial attention, which once made the beauty happy, was a gift from Zeus.

  Zeus’s escapades were wrapped in secrecy. “All that,” Maria Frederiks later wrote, “was done with such secrecy and such propriety…that it never occurred to anyone to pay any attention.” As if those court slaves drilled by Nicholas would have dared notice his behavior.

  When one of the empress’s overly loyal ladies-in-waiting tried to hint subtly about Varenka Nelidova, Nicholas’s main mistress, the empress simply would not seem to understand the hint, and the stupid lady-in-waiting would soon vanish from court. The empress, whom Anna Tyutcheva and other ladies considered not very intelligent and blind, was in fact wise and eagle-eyed. She had mastered the difficult art of living with a passionate man from the house of Romanov. She continued chirping insouciantly in her golden cage. The emperor was truly grateful to her and loved her deeply.

  When she was ill he stayed by her bedside until very late. She begged him not to do that, for fear that her adored spouse would not get enough sleep. In order not to worry her, Nicholas would pretend to leave, and take off his boots behind the screen. “You had to see this regal giant carefully tiptoe out from behind the screen and tread noiselessly in his socks. He was afraid to leave the patient alone for a minute,” wrote Anna Tyutcheva. He was afraid his bird might fly out of her golden cage.

  As an adolescent, Alexander began to feel the sensual fire he had inherited. The fire had burned in all the Romanovs: Peter the Great, Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, Paul, Alexander I, and his father. Nicholas I had a collection of antique phalluses that survives today and serves as a reminder of that fire.

  The Winter Palace was a fine hearth for that fire from the start. The ghosts of the emperors’ lovers and the stories of lustful empresses created an aura of sensuality that lived on in the luxurious apartments.

  Peter II was the first resident of the Winter Palace and he started the tradition by moving in his mistress Vorontsova. Catherine, here in the Winter Palace,
slept with her lover Grigory Orlov and bore his son while her husband was alive. Once she became empress, she had a series of thirteen official lovers—not counting the brief flings that the palace saw.

  When she was in her sixties, her last favorite, number thirteen, Platon Zubov, was only a bit over twenty. In response to cloaked rebukes, she said mockingly, “The homeland should be grateful to me for zealously bringing up brilliant young men for it.”

  The adoration of feminine beauty made Alexander’s grandfather, Paul I, continually “point out some lovely Dulcinea,” and his helpful lackeys “took her into account and tried to instantly execute the master’s desire,” according to cavalry guardsman Yakov Skaryatin.

  Like ghosts, the titled descendants of august sins walked through the palace. Count Bobrinsky, the descendant of Catherine’s illegitimate son, played with little Sasha. His grandfather had several illegitimate children. Alexandra Vyrobova, the confidante of the last Russian tsaritsa, was descended from Paul. Alexander I had a beloved daughter by Countess Naryshkina. When she died young, the Winter Palace was plunged into mourning. Everyone, including the empress, consoled the grieving emperor.

  And now, Varenka Nelidova, of the marble shoulders, high breasts, and wasp waist, was living in the Winter Palace alongside Alexander’s mother.

  Alexander gave full rein to the Romanov sensuality. He seemed to sense subconsciously that this was the area where he could find freedom and release. Here his father would not dare interfere. Sasha fell in love, seriously. At the age of fourteen he fell in love with his mother’s lady-in-waiting Natalya B. He could not hide his attraction. He did not know how to do things “secretly and with propriety.” “Every new passion is immediately written on his face,” lady-in-waiting Alexandra Tolstaya (a distant relative of the great writer, Leo Tolstoy) recalled.

  “He is constantly in love and therefore kindly disposed,” said Bismarck, then Prussian ambassador to Russia.

  From his adolescence until his death, Alexander was wildly passionate and sensual. When the Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace in 1917, they found a collection of pornographic drawings in his old study. They were made for him by Mikhai Zichi, a famous artist at the time in Russia. Of Hungarian descent, a member of the Academy of the Arts, he was appointed court painter. His duties were quite varied. He created numerous watercolor scenes of court life, and as was later discovered, he also executed more intimate commissions from the passionate tsar.

  Nicholas was also crazy about war and knighthood. At Tsarskoye Selo, in the Arsenal, he had a marvelous collection of armor and antique arms. On occasion, fantastic spectacles were organized. The handsome emperor and the handsome heir, in armor, on Arabian steeds, headed a procession followed by all the young grand dukes in page costumes on horseback, and followed by the ladies of the court in dresses of the era of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Natalya B. was dazzling in her attire, and she knew it. Unlike his father, Sasha had trouble bearing the weight of the suit of armor, and was relieved to be allowed to remove it.

  On the way back from the Arsenal, he ran into her in a secluded grove. Naturally, the wench had been waiting for him. They were on horseback. They tied up the horses. She lifted her skirts, but could not get the medieval pantaloons off quickly enough. The damned Florentine outfit and his haste ruined everything, that time. The next time was a success.

  The very serious circumstances forced his mother to speak to his father, and Natalya B. was sent packing, married off to someone hastily.

  At sixteen, Alexander took the oath of the heir to the throne, to serve tsar and country faithfully. The entire court gathered in the Big Church of the Winter Palace. His father led Sasha to the lectern, and Sasha read the text of the lengthy oath. His main concern was not to cry.

  “He read the oath in a firm and cheerful voice, but as he started the prayer he had to stop because of his copious tears.” He was not the only one to get emotional. “The Tsar and Tsaritsa also wept. When he finished, the heir rushed over to embrace his father. Then his father led him to his mother. All three embraced and wept.” Naturally, the moved court also had to weep. “Many wept, and those who did not rubbed their dry eyes, trying to squeeze out a few tears,” recorded the poet Pushkin in his diary.

  After that day, the heir was treated differently. As his uncle Mikhail put it, “The tsar is not quite a God, but is human only in part.” Alexander now had duties as a representative of the crown.

  His list of infatuations continued. But at eighteen he once again fell in love seriously, with Olga K, another lady-in-waiting. Later, when Alexander was tsar, he taught his own son, “Remember, we have the right to nothing more than drawing-room intrigues.” But he broke that rule. He even told his mother about his pure love for Olga K. His father was informed of everything about his son, and he even read his diary secretly. Nicholas only smirked at the word “pure.” He took measures. Olga K. was given in marriage to the Polish magnate Count Oginski. She had a son who always believed that he was son of the Russian tsar.

  The empress made a decision. “He needs to have a stronger personality, otherwise he will perish. He falls in love too easily. He must be removed from St. Petersburg for a while,” wrote lady-in-waiting Maria Frederiks.

  Getting the easily infatuated Don Juan out of the capital was simple. His education (truly outstanding, by the most stringent European standards) was completed. He took his exams, facing the cream of Russian scholars, who had been his teachers. The head of the commission, naturally, was the tsar. The exams went well, and the tsar gave out rewards to the students and teachers.

  Now, according to Zhukovsky’s plan, the education was to be polished by two very important journeys. First Sasha would travel around his own country. He would travel for over six months around Russia’s roadless expanses. Alexander would be the first heir to the throne to have personally seen the vast country he would rule.

  Zhukovsky was supposed to accompany him on his travels. Sasha told the eternal child about his pure love (the Romantic poet would not have understood anything else) for Olga, and his suffering. Zhukovsky must have been informed of her pregnancy, but what was pitiful truth in the face of great invention! They wept in each other’s arms.

  Then, with Zhukovsky present, the emperor read, in his resonant voice, “This voyage, dear Sasha, is an important milestone in your life. Leaving your parents’ roof for the first time, you will be placed in a certain way in judgment of your subjects in a trial of your mental abilities.”

  After which Zhukovsky made a speech. “Russia is a Book, but an animate one. Your Imperial Highness will be reading it, but at the same time, it will be learning about its reader. This mutual comprehension is the true goal of this voyage.”

  Nicholas’s preferred method of communication was sending instructions. That same morning, Alexander was given his first list. Everything was laid out point by point. “Your first goal is to familiarize yourself with the state that you will rule sooner or later. Second. Your judgments during your trip must be extremely cautious. Avoid making remarks, for you are traveling not to judge but to learn…. You should rise at five and depart at six.”

  Sasha traveled throughout the European part of Russia. From each provincial capital he sent a letter to his dear father. Thus, the entire voyage is recorded in detail in his letters to Nicholas.

  How happy he was to feel free, and how merry and insouciant he became at a remove from his strict father. In the city of Kostroma he saw the Ipatyev Monastery, where their dynasty had begun. His ancestor, the first Romanov invited to rule the country, had lived in a monastery cell. After the turmoil of the Time of Troubles, following the death of the last Rurik tsar in 1598, after near civil war, after regicides and the invasion of Swedes and Poles, the Zemsky Sobor, or National Assembly, elected in 1613 as the new tsar sixteen-year-old Mikhail Romanov, a relative of the defunct Rurik dynasty of Moscow rulers.

  From atop the monastery walls, Alexander saw the Volga River. In that year, across the frozen river,
a long procession had come to the monastery. The armor of the soldiers and gold of the boyars’ clothing gleamed in the winter sun as they followed the clergy in sparkling vestments and bearing jewel-encrusted icons. They came to the Ipatyev Monastery to ask Mikhail Romanov to rule them. And what was his response? Mikhail wept and cried, “I do not want to be your tsar.”

  It was as if, there at the monastery, he foresaw how heavy would lie the crown of Monomakh on the heads of his descendants. But he was persuaded to accept the throne, and Russia swore to Alexander’s ancestor that the Romanovs would rule as autocrats by divine right, responsible only to God.

  The heir to the throne was met reverently by thousands of people wherever he went. As he traveled along the Volga in the Kostroma region, people stood knee-deep in the river for hours to get a glimpse of their earthly god. When he left the cathedral, the crowd of thousands shouted huzzahs and tried to press closer, to touch him. The entourage that protected Sasha from the crowd was severely bruised and battered by his enthusiastic subjects.

  Sasha would remember the cities in the Urals and Siberia. In Simbirsk a huge crowd, shouting “Hurrah,” ran after their carriage. Teary-eyed Zhukovsky extended his arms to the running crowd and exclaimed, “Run after him, Russia. He is worthy of your love!” Simbirsk would be the hometown of the future leaders of both revolutions of 1917, in February and October—Alexander Kerensky and Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin).

  The tsarevich was the first Romanov heir to visit Siberia, where convicts and exiles were sent. He was also the first to go to Ekaterinburg, where after the revolution, in the cellar of the house belonging to the merchant Ipatyev, Alexander’s wretched grandson, Nicholas II, and his great-grandchildren would be murdered.