Alexander II

by Edvard Radzinsky

  But along with the liberals by command there were liberals by principle. The Milyutin brothers frequented the salon of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. Their ancestor had been a stoker in the palace. Courtiers maliciously recounted that his duties included feeding the fireplace in the bedroom of the empress so that it would burn all night and then scratching the soles of the feet of Empress Anna Ivanovna (who liked that before sleep) and her lover, Ernst Biron, who often spent the night with her. And now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the descendants of the stoker, important dignitaries, were the main figures of the imminent reforms.

  The dashing bureaucrat from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Nikolai Milyutin, felt the blood of his ancestor and made fiery speeches at the grand duchess’s salon about the greedy nobility that did not wish to comprehend the needs of its country.

  Not all talk was of reform, and not all speakers were among the living. Salons were very fashionable in St. Petersburg. The salon of Elena Pavlovna heard a lot of music and a lot of talk about politics. The salon of Empress Maria Alexandrovna also had a lot of music and even more talk about politics. But there was one more topic in all the St. Petersburg salons that was discussed continually and left no one indifferent. Spirits.

  In the 1860s the Romanov palaces were all in the thrall of spiritualist séances. Communing with spirits was appropriate in the palaces, where the ghosts of murdered emperors wandered. The greatest enthusiast was Kostya’s wife, Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna. The beauty who resembled Mary Stuart was very often visited by visions (before Nicholas’s death, a mysterious white specter came to her twice). Even her husband, a well-known skeptic, gave its due to the entertaining and hard-to-explain pastime.

  But for the new emperor, it was not merely a nod to fashion. Having decided to embark on great reforms, he thought it would not be amiss to chat with his late father. A famous “table-turner” was brought from Paris. At the very first séance, the late emperor made an appearance.

  The séance took place in the Big Hall of Peterhof. Present were the emperor and empress; the dowager empress; Kostya; his wife, of course; Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna’s brother, the Prince of Württemberg (the grand duchess herself, as a learned lady, scoffed at spiritualism); and the emperor’s childhood friend Sasha Adlerberg (son of the minister of the court Count Vladimir Adlerberg). Also the ladies-in-waiting Alexandra Dolgorukaya and Anna Tyutcheva.

  Once Anna Tyutchev returned to her room, she wrote everything down.

  “Everyone was seated at a round table, with hands on the table; the medium sat between the empress and Grand Duke Konstantin…. When the séance began, everyone was amazed by his appearance. Ordinarily, his face is rather insignificant, he looks almost stupid…. But during the séance an inner fire seems to radiate from him. A deathly pallor covers his features; his eyes are wide open and fixed on one spot…the hair, as the revelations of the spirits develop,…slowly rises and stands on his head, forming an aureole of horror. Soon knocking, done by the spirits, came from various corners of the room. Questions followed, which were answered by knocking, corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. The table rose to the height of half an arshin (about 35 cm) from the floor. The dowager empress felt a hand touch the ruffles of her dress, grab her hand, and take her wedding ring off. Then that hand grabbed, shook, and pinched everyone present…. It took a bell out of the Sovereign’s hands…. This elicited cries of fear, terror, and surprise.”

  The spirit of the emperor’s father appeared in the room together with his deceased seven-year-old daughter, Alexandra, whom they had called Sashenka. Nicholas and Sashenka came another time, in the Winter Palace, to Alexander’s rooms. The empress had refused to attend this time (the Russian Orthodox Church did not approve). In her stead, Minister of Foreign Affairs Gorchakov met with the late tsar.

  “The table rose, spun, and knocked the anthem God Save the Tsar! [As if to herald the emperor’s appearance.] Everyone present, even the skeptic Gorchakov, felt the touch of mysterious hands and saw them quickly run under the tablecloth. The Sovereign says that he saw fingers, translucent and glowing…. But most importantly, the Sovereign received a revelation from the present spirits. As during the first séance in Peterhof these were the spirit of Emperor Nicholas and the young Grand Duchess. They both responded to questions from the Sovereign, answering by knocking the letters of the alphabet. The Sovereign noted them with pencil on paper that lay before him. But the answers were inapposite and empty,” wrote Tyutcheva.

  The conversation between Hamlet and his father’s ghost did not take place. The disappointed lady-in-waiting asked a question in her diary that must have occurred to everyone at the séance. “Why were the spirits interested in such trivial pranks? Their strange playfulness and empty responses to questions astonish me.” She added what the empress had apparently said to her, refusing to come to this séance. “These are all pranks of the Evil One. Those who commune with us are not all the spirits we call on but the ones St. Augustine called ‘spirits of lies.’ Those spirits of the air are dangerous and false…Apostle Paul spoke of them, too. Dealing with them is a sin.”

  The dangerous séances had their effect. The Winter Palace had a clock with three monkeys, which played their instruments. It had not been wound in a long time. In the middle of the night, they began playing and woke up a terrified Anna Tyutcheva.

  The following year, the coronation was held in Moscow. Representatives of the nobility came from all over the country. During the coronation, much became clear to the emperor.

  The court and the royal family traveled to the ancient capital, for the first time, by modern railroad instead of carriages (like his father and earlier tsars). But, just as in the olden days, the emperor was greeted by the thunder of gun salutes and the ringing of innumerable church bells. They came from the train station along Tverskaya Street to the din and music: he, on horseback, the empress in a golden carriage. Thousands of startled doves and sparrows filled the sky.

  August 26 was Coronation Day, time for the mystical union of emperor and Russia. Things began well. Grandstands stuffed with festive people filled Cathedral Square in the Kremlin, the site of the history of Moscow’s tsars. The parade uniforms of the guards glittered with braiding. To the joyous pealing of church bells, the emperor and the empress came out arm in arm onto the Red Porch. Alexander wore a general’s uniform with the Order of St. Andrew on a golden chain. His wife was ornamented with the sky blue Catherine ribbon. Her head, onto which he would be placing a crown, was bare, and her hair combed back with two long curls down to the shoulders. The empress had a sad and concentrated look.

  From the Red Porch, Alexander bowed deeply to the people, following the tradition from the Muscovite reign. This was how Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible had bowed to the people. The crowd shouted greetings, military bands struck up, and the cannon salute resounded.

  Alexander came down the stairs and stood under the canopy held by high dignitaries. The procession moved toward the cathedral, and Alexander looked extremely concerned. His dignitaries were aged, but the walk went without a hitch.

  Inside the stuffy ancient Cathedral of the Assumption, he and the empress revered the icons and relics. At the steps of the thrones, the dowager empress, wearing a crown, awaited them. They sat on the thrones. His mother was also pale with agitation. Everyone seemed to be expecting a disaster. It happened.

  Adjutant general Prince Mikhail Gorchakov had fought in all of Alexander’s father’s wars and led the defense of Sevastopol. The honored general held the raspberry pillow on which lay the most important imperial attribute—the Golden Orb. In the stifling heat, the old man fainted and fell, dropping the pillow. The round golden orb clattered down the stone floor of the cathedral. People rushed to catch the orb and help Gorchakov. The poor man regained consciousness quickly, and the old general could have died of shame. But Alexander was quick. He said loudly, “It’s all right to fall here. The important thing is that you stood firm on the
battlefield.”

  It got worse. The metropolitan placed the imperial mantle on the sovereign. The tsar kneeled and the metropolitan blessed him. He rose, accepted the crown from the metropolitan, and placed it on his own head. Now he was supposed to crown the empress. Frightfully pale, she rose from the throne and kneeled before him. He placed the Small Crown on her, and an attendant fastened it with diamond clips. When the empress stood up, the crown fell from her head. The horror on the empress’s face suggested that she was about to fall as well.

  Once again, with great calm, as if nothing had happened, Alexander put the crown on her head, and four attendants, sweating with the effort, pinned it in her hair.

  They sat on their thrones to the salute and church bells. He held the scepter and orb. On the steps at attention stood chamberlains in golden uniforms and cavalry guards officers with glittering helmets and bared sabers. On the emperor’s right stood his mother, in her crown, and the entire Romanov family. There were so many grand dukes, innumerable Nicholases, named for his father, and Konstantins named for his older brother, and a sprinkling of Alexeis and Georges.

  The poor empress clearly showed the strain she was under.

  Lady-in-waiting Tyutcheva indignantly wrote in her diary about the new attitude people had toward a coronation. No one prayed. They laughed and joked, and some had brought food and munched away during the sacred ceremony.

  Alexander left the cathedral in crown and mantle, wearing many kilograms of orders and medals and regalia. The empress walked next to him. Her face was bloodless. He, too, was pale. Once again they walked through the screaming crowd to the roar of cannon and the ringing of bells along a wooden bridge covered with red cloth. This part went smoothly.

  Anna Tyutcheva’s father, the poet, wrote with overt irony, “When I saw our poor, dear emperor walking under the canopy with a huge crown on his head—weary, pale, bowing with difficulty to the welcoming crowd, tears just welled up in my eyes.”

  That evening, before dinner, they walked through the Terem Palace. Here, under the ceiling murals, Ivan the Terrible had sat on his golden throne.

  They came out on the terrace right under the roof of the palace. Below lay the wooden capital of the Muscovite tsars. It was lit up by fireworks—the crenellations of the ancient towers, the belfry of Ivan the Great, the cathedrals. That fiery magnificence was reflected in the river. But the empress was cheerless, unsettled by the fallen crown.

  Only the very first few rows in church had seen the mishaps of the ceremony. The rest of the court had not seen, much less heard, anything over the din in the cathedral. Nonetheless, the Third Department soon reported that rumors were being spread about the evil omens during the coronation. Obviously the rumors had to come from those who had seen what happened—the chief dignitaries, who were in the first few rows. They were the ones who hated the planned reforms, his father’s high officials, descendants of the murderers of former emperors. Alexander had to know that they were starting to move. They were frightened by “the actions of madmen and Jacobins in the palace,” wrote lady-in-waiting Sofia Uvarova.

  The carelessly attached crown, the chatter during the coronation, and the stories of bad omens would have been impossible under his father. The most dangerous change in an autocratic system was taking place—fear was vanishing, following the death of the last emperor.

  The fear was only beginning to recede. It was still strong enough for the liberation. Alexander chose the path most familiar to everyone in a land of toadies, the basic law of autocratic rule: This is my command, this is what I want! The nobility as a whole was against the repeal of serfdom, but it was the tsar’s wish.

  In general, it was best to anger the nobility to the utmost. He knew how to play cat and mouse with them. First he formed the Secret Committee on Peasant Reform. Opponents (Kostya always called them “the retrogrades”) were pleased—it was a familiar name. There had been a committee by that name under his father, and nothing came of it. He let them rejoice for a bit, and then saddened them. He appointed his brother, Kostya, with his boundless energy and his brusque intolerance of opposition, to the committee.

  For his father’s officials, Kostya was a Jacobin, but his regal rudeness reminded them of Nicholas. The reflex kicked in, and they obeyed. Editorial commissions were formed to elaborate the conditions of the emancipation.

  Alexander made Count Rostovtsev chairman of the editorial commissions. He was the one who had warned his father of the Decembrist plot. Nicholas had made Count Rostovtsev a director of the military schools. He had never dealt with agrarian questions and, more to the point, was an opponent of emancipation. The retrogrades were happy, yet the tsar wanted emancipation, and Rostovtsev instantly saw the light. As he put it, “I thought about History and dreamed of an honorable page in its scrolls.” Now Rostovtsev was a liberal bureaucrat. Nicholas’s training still worked.

  The meetings and arguments lasted till dawn. The majority of noblemen wanted the peasants emancipated without any land. Alexander understood that you could not free impoverished people. It was a formula for a future insurrection. Rostovtsev fought for giving emancipated peasants land. In fact, the zeal of his swift conversion to liberalism occasionally frightened Alexander.

  A group of liberal bureaucrats worked with Rostovtsev. Most came from the Naval Department, brought up through the ranks by Kostya. The discussions in the commissions were furious and hostile. The liberals and retrogrades argued in the Russian manner, that is, without hearing each other.

  Nikolai Milyutin (Kostya’s favorite, whom the sovereign considered “red”) shouted, “You nobles are hard to budge. You just scratch, roll over, and go back to sleep. You have to be jabbed hard to make you jump up!”

  The commission members would leave their meetings in early morning, to the twitter and chatter of birdsong. Old Rostovtsev was the first of the liberals to feel the strain of the negotiations. His name had become anathema to his former friends in Nicholas’s administration. The stress of the arguments and hostility was too much for him in the end. On his deathbed, the count told Alexander, “Sire, do not fear them.”

  “Poor Sasha is in mourning and wept bitterly,” the empress recorded. He was sensitive, as always. But he understood the concern of his faithful servant. They had to be watched. The closer the end of the commissions’ work, the more dangerously were the retrogrades uniting and the louder were they grumbling. They wrote petitions and warnings: If the peasants were freed, the army would be needed to protect the nobles. Insurrections would start the very first day. Yesterday’s slaves would certainly seek revenge for centuries of humiliation.

  Kostya told him to pay no attention, but Alexander was a worthy scion of clever, Asiatic tsars. He made a move that astonished the capital. He replaced Rostovtsev as head of the commissions with Count Nikita Panin, his father’s minister of justice.

  Count Panin was a supporter of the institution of serfdom, a thickheaded old campaigner, whose tough stance made him a symbol of officialdom. He had long been forgotten.

  A shock went through the ranks of the liberal bureaucracy. Joy reigned supreme in the land of the retrogrades. The regime was backing down.

  Kostya rushed to the palace. Alexander merely smiled and said mysteriously that nothing was changing. Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna came to the Winter Palace to beg the tsar to reconsider. She made an impassioned speech about Panin’s convictions. But Alexander responded briefly and mockingly, “His conviction is my command.”

  Soon afterward, Panin made an immortal statement of a Russian toady to Grand Duke Konstantin: “I have convictions, Your Highness, strong convictions. Some people think otherwise incorrectly…. But I feel obliged first of all to learn the view of the Sovereign Emperor. And if I discover that the Sovereign looks at things differently than I, I consider it my duty to immediately step back from my convictions and act even totally against them!”

  That was the result of Nicholas’s training. And that was how Alexander pushed through the r
eforms hated by most of the nobility.

  At the final decision level, the State Council—made up of the pillars of Russian nobility—the leaders of the retrograde party held up the reform, swamping it in debates. Alexander saw that they were resisting again. So on January 28, 1861, he addressed a meeting of the State Council.

  “I consider the issue of emancipation of the serfs to be a vital question for Russia, on which the development of its strength and might will depend. I demand of the State Council that the peasant question be completed in the first half of February.”

  The tsar ended on a threatening note: “Any further delay is pernicious for the state…. I hope that God will not abandon you and will bless the completion of this affair for the future benefit of our beloved Homeland.”

  Hearing the familiar intonations of Nicholas I, they made haste. However, they reduced the land allocation in favor of the landowners. The State Council signed the bill ending serfdom.

  Thus, the serfs were freed and received arable land. The allotments were disappointingly small, and they were expected to pay a ruinous price for it. The deadline for the buyout was two years.

  The important part was done. Centuries-old human slavery no longer existed in Russia. The law was sent by courier to the Winter Palace for the tsar’s signature.

  On February 19, 1861, he was to sign the manifesto repealing serfdom. The greatest day of his life had come. A great day in the history of Russia. Alexander II became the Tsar Liberator of the Russian peasants.

  He awoke as usual at eight. His valet brought his favorite cherry robe with tasseled belt. He stood at the window. It was still twilight in the February morning, but the candelabra on the table lit up his face. He would be forty-three in a few months. Tall, with the bearing of a guards officer, he had thick mutton chopside-whiskers with a touch of gray and a threateningly bristling mustache—his uncle Willy, the king of Prussia, and many other monarchs had such side-whiskers and mustaches. Naturally, all his ministers followed suit.