The Last Tsar (8 page)

“There was a fuss about where to celebrate my wedding. Mama and I feel it would be better to do it here, while dear Papa is under our roof, but all the uncles are against it, they say I have to do this in Peter[sburg].”

The uncles won out. No sooner had Alexander died than their voice was heard.

As always, the ascent to the throne was attended by rumors. According to one version, the dowager empress wanted to replace Nicholas with her favorite son, Michael, and tried to force Nicholas to abdicate.

But that was only a rumor. The renowned minister of her husband and, now, her son, Sergei Witte, recorded in his
Memoirs
his conversation with her about Nicholas before Alexander’s death:

“You mean to say that the sovereign does not have the character of an emperor?”

“That is correct,” replied Marie Feodorovna. “In the event that anything should happen, Misha must take his place, although actually he has less will and character.”

Very soon something did happen. Alexander was younger than fifty when he died. This giant had seemed immortal, and when Nicholas suddenly learned about his father’s illness, he was overcome with fright. His friend Sandro recorded Nicholas’s exclamations of panic in his memoirs. So that, evidently, another rumor that emerged from inside the walls of the Livadia Palace was true: Nicholas begged to be allowed to abdicate. But Alexander was unbending: the law of succession must be observed. Nicholas must take the throne. And to his great joy, to strengthen his resolve, Nicholas was allowed to take the Hessian princess for his wife.

Petersburg, a gloomy autumn day. The funeral train arrived at the platform of Nikolaevsky Station.

Witte was among those meeting Alexander’s coffin.

“The new emperor arrived in Petersburg with his fiancée, the future empress, whom they say he loves,” wrote Witte.

Alix’s general forebodings were beginning to take specific form: she rode into Petersburg behind a coffin.

The funeral lasted a long time. While the metropolitan was speaking, the dowager empress collapsed in a fit of hysterics, crying: “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

She buried the emperor in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. A year of mourning was proclaimed in the country, but the wedding had to take place within a week—on the dowager empress’s birthday. Before the wedding they lived apart: she with her sister Ella, at the palace of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; he at his dear Anichkov with his mother.

“My wedding was the continuation of the funeral, only I was dressed in white,” Alix would say later.

——

“13 November, 1894. Anichkov. At 11 we went to mass in our dear church. It was both sad and painful to stand there … knowing that one place would always remain empty. Words cannot express how hard it was and how sorry I feel for dear Mama!… Saw my dear Alix at tea. Then said goodbye to her at 8. We are not to see each other anymore! Until the wedding! It still seems as if all this were leading up to someone else’s wedding. Odd under these circumstances to think about one’s own marriage.”

But why were they in such a hurry with the wedding? Why were they not even waiting out the usual forty days after his father’s death?

November 14 was the last day before the start of a fast that would continue until the beginning of January. So otherwise they would have had to postpone the wedding for quite some time.

“14 November. My wedding day. After coffee with the others went to dress. Put on my hussar’s uniform and at 11.30 went with Misha to the Winter Palace. Troops all along Nevsky. Mama and Alix. We all waited while they completed her toilette in the Hall of Malachite.”

Finally she appeared: she wore a silver dress and a diamond necklace, and over her shoulders lay an ermine-lined, gold brocade mantle with a long train. On her head rested a tiara blazing with diamonds. The new empress.

“At 10 minutes after 12 the entrance into the Great Church began, whence I returned a married man.… We were presented with an enormous silver swan from the family. Alix and I changed clothes, got into a Russian carriage, and went to Kazan Cathedral. A sea of people in the streets.… An honor guard from the Uhlan Life Guard Regiment was waiting in the Anichkov courtyard when we arrived. Mama welcomed us with bread and salt.… All evening we answered telegrams.… Collapsed into bed early, since her [Alix’s] head had begun to pound.”

This rather crude, guardsmanly “collapsed into bed” concealed his embarrassment and fear before the mystery of her virginity. And she? It is no accident that he noted her headache. On her wedding night she decided to write of her happiness in his diary, but strange words appeared in her entry: “When this life ends, we shall meet again in another world and remain together always.” She was tormented by the same sadness and odd fear. The young empress tried to explain it away by the recent funeral ceremonies—by this wedding mixed with grief.

The dowager empress did all she could to keep them with her: at first they lived in Anichkov Palace.

“15 November. So, a married man….

“16 November. All morning saw dear Alix only for one hour. We went for a ride.… Strange sitting beside her in Peter[sburg].

“17 November. Am inexpressibly happy with Alix. It is a shame my duties take up so much time, which I would prefer to spend exclusively with her.”

She was embarrassed by her poor Russian, and her active nature was tortured by the fact that she could only look on as the dowager empress and ministers managed her Nicky. But her voice was heard more and more frequently in his diary. She wrote admonitions: “First your duty, then rest and relaxation.” “Do not fear danger, the Lord is near and protects you.” The harmony of their union, his softness and her firmness. She thirsted to be at his side in everything. At his side—that is, to rule him. As yet she did so only in his diary.

A year of mourning: no balls or entertainments; they were left to themselves. He, after his duties, which “take up so much time”; she, all day long. At three o’clock, free after ministers’ reports and other state duties, they would leave Anichkov and ride down Nevsky, then on to the Winter Palace, where their apartment was being readied, and then back to Anichkov Palace—and again they were together. In the evening, he read aloud to her, as his father used to do. When the first snow fell, they went to Tsarskoe Selo, and there for the first time they spent an entire week alone.

On the last day of the year they wrote in his diary.

He: “Along with this irreparable woe, the Lord has rewarded me with unimaginable happiness by giving me Alix.”

She: “The last day of the old year. What happiness to spend it together. My love has grown so deep, so strong, so pure—it knows no bounds. May the Lord bless you and keep you.” And a verse from Lermontov: “Transparent twilight, icon lamp. Bowed head and cross—symbol of holiness. All is full of peace and joy.”

She had calmed down. Love filled her, and she longed to proclaim it. With him.

——

When he ascended to the throne, so much was expected of him. Russia’s unfailing expectation of a good new tsar! His image had already been created: as heir he had tried to slip out of the palace to have a good time (he thirsted for freedom); he had been in love with a Jewess (he would not oppress national minorities); he had put a police chief in the guardhouse for twenty-four hours (an end to police tyranny). These hopes produced endless requests from local elected councils for all manner of reform.

Pobedonostsev decided it was time to put a halt to all of this. Nicholas had to deliver an appropriate speech (written for the tsar by Pobedonostsev himself).

On January 17 (!), 1895, the young emperor and the new empress (who was baptized in St. Feodor’s Cathedral, becoming Alexandra Feodorovna) showed themselves to the country for the first time.

Representatives of the local councils, the cities, and the Cossacks gathered at Anichkov Palace. The sight of this multitude of people, who Pobedonostsev asserted harbored treason and whom Nicholas must now put in check, threw the timid Nicholas into confusion. The speech lay in the emperor’s lambskin cap.

He begins reading too loudly, in a breaking falsetto: “Recently at certain meetings of local councils we have heard the voices of people carried away by senseless dreams.” Out of his confusion and tenseness, he suddenly shouts this last sentence while staring at the representative of the Tver nobility. The tsar’s shout startles the old man, so that the gold platter with bread and salt which, according to ancient custom, members of the local councils prepared to offer the new sovereign flies from his hands.

The platter rolls across the floor, clanging, the bread falls off, and the gold salt cellar embedded in it rolls behind the platter. The impeccably well bred tsar does what any young man should do when something falls from an old man’s hands: Nicholas tries to pick the platter up, which embarrasses everyone dreadfully. The minister of the court, old Vorontsov-Dashkov, hastily chases after the platter, which is caught.

Aficionados of omens sigh grievously, anticipating sadness in the coming reign.

From the diary of Vladimir Nikolaevich Lamsdorf, a statesman who would become a minister to the tsar:

“January 19, 1895. In town they are directing harsh attacks against the emperor’s speech of the day before yesterday, which made the most distressing impression.… They are also blaming the empress for holding herself as if she had swallowed a yardstick and for not bowing to the deputations.”

Alix was just as shy as her spouse. She fended off embarrassment with her regal bearing.

In the summer they went south, to the Crimea, to the Livadia Palace, where the dead emperor had so recently sat in his armchair. The dowager empress, Nicky’s brother Misha, his childhood comrade Sandro, and Sandro’s wife, Nicky’s sister Xenia.

Both Xenia and Alix were pregnant.

“31 July, 1895. After tea I was busy when suddenly I learned that a daughter, Irina, had been born to dear Xenia. Alix and I flew to the farm immediately. We saw Xenia and my little niece. Praise God, it all ended for the best.”

This Irina crying in her cradle would become the wife of Felix Yusupov, Grigory Rasputin’s chief assassin.

In the fall they returned to Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. From 1895 until the end of his reign, Tsarskoe Selo would be his family’s principal residence—“that charming, dear, precious place.” In the park, set among small artificial lakes, not far from the opulent Catherine Palace, stood the smaller Alexander Palace half hidden by trees. Here they lived. On the night of November 3, the dowager empress was summoned there from Gatchina.

“3 November. Friday. A day forever memorable for me, during which I suffered much! At 1 in the morning dear Alix began having pains that would not let her sleep. All day she lay in bed in great torment, poor thing. I could not watch her calmly. At about 2 in the morning dear Mama arrived from Gatchina. The three of us—she, Ella, and I—were with Alix constantly. At exactly 9 we heard a child’s squawk, and we all breathed freely! A daughter sent by God, in prayer we named her Olga….

“6 November. In the morning admired our enchanting little girl. She doesn’t seem like a newborn at all because she’s such a large child and her little head is covered with hair.”

The Russian nanny (the assistant to the English nanny) said that
“a head covered with hair” was a definite token of the little girl’s future happiness.

In 1918 she would be lucky. She would be standing next to her mother in that half-cellar room. “The tsaritsa and Olga tried to shield themselves with the sign of the cross, but could not do so. Shots rang out” (from the testimony of one of the sharpshooters in the guard, A. Strekotin).

The little girl grew up. A photograph he took: Alix and, next to her mother, on spindly little legs, tiny Olga.

Childishly (to his death he would be sweetly infantile), he kept comparing her with his sister’s daughter.

“21 March, 1896. After mass we brought our daughters to Holy Communion. Ours was perfectly calm, but Irina cried a little….

“1 April. Xenia brought Irina to our little one’s bath. They weigh the same, 20 pounds, but our little girl is chubbier.”

The birth coincided with the end of the mourning period. A brilliant ball is held at the Winter Palace: thousands of guests, the orchestra plays a polonaise, the master of ceremonies strikes his staff three times, Arabs in white turbans throw the doors open wide, the brilliant hall bows—and Nicholas and Alexandra make their entrance.

Alix still spoke Russian poorly, and being among people was quite a task for her. In any case, she was completely taken up with her infant; Alix ruled the nest at Tsarskoe Selo.

Nicholas’s mother and her people ruled the country. There was a story about the flower that righted itself: crushed by her husband’s iron will, the power-loving mother finally righted herself, and so on. In fact, it was all much more tragic and simple. The dowager empress (Aunt Minnie, as she was called in the Romanov family) knew her own son all too well. She feared that someone must inevitably come to influence the good Nicky (at that time she was not thinking of Alix)—perhaps Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, an out-and-out retrograde, or the dead tsar’s other brother Vladimir, as charming as he was stupid. Or Alexander’s dear but foolish third brother, Paul. Any of them could be fatal for the empire. This pragmatic woman believed in herself; she had learned a great deal from Alexander III.
Witte’s diaries contain a colorful description of this period: “Ask my mother”—that was Nicholas’s response to Witte on the subject of naming another minister. And elsewhere, again in a difficult moment: “I shall ask my mother.”

Marie Feodorovna demonstrated perspicacity by setting Nicky up with Sergei Yulievich Witte, her husband’s minister of finance. Witte constituted an entire era in himself: a supporter of reforms, a liberal—or, rather, a conservative liberal, as he would have to be after the frost that raged under Alexander. Witte knew that in Russia one cannot change the temperature too quickly.