Secret Lives of the Tsars (32 page)

Queen Victoria seemed to be the only one less than thrilled by the engagement, pronouncing herself “quite thunderstruck” by the unwelcome news. Yet though the queen had long (and correctly) foreseen nothing but danger for her granddaughter in Russia, she had no choice but to accept the situation. “Alicky had tears in her eyes,” Victoria recorded in her diary after meeting with the couple, “but she looked very bright and I kissed them both.”

Nicholas II ascended the Russian throne with the bold pronouncement that he would “safeguard the principles of autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as did my late, unforgettable father.” But the reserved, gentle young emperor—just twenty-six when he succeeded—was hardly the Goliath Alexander
III had been. Alix saw this vulnerability in her new husband and was determined to stand firmly by his side—not only as a loving spouse, but as a twin pillar of imperial might. Yet before she could exercise the disastrous influence she eventually wielded over her husband, the new empress (called Alexandra after her conversion to Orthodoxy) first had to contend with the old one: Nicholas’s “dear, darling mother,” Marie.

Far from retiring after the death of her husband, Marie (now dowager empress) emerged from her grief as dazzling as ever. And she held absolute sway over her son. “Ask my mother,” Nicholas would often respond to questions about important government matters, or, “I shall ask my mother.” Having successfully served as Russia’s empress for thirteen years, Marie felt herself uniquely qualified to guide and counsel her often hapless son. As Maria von Bock (daughter of Prime Minister Peter Stolypin) wrote of her: “How could anyone of such small stature exude such imperial stateliness? Kind, amiable, simple in her discourse, she was an Empress from head to toe, combining an inborn majesty with such goodness that she was idolized by all who knew her.”

Alexandra, by contrast, was deeply introverted and nervous—new to Russia and entirely unfamiliar with the language and customs of that often bewildering country. “She was not born to be Empress of one of the largest countries on the face of the earth,” Maria von Bock noted. It was natural, then, that the far more experienced dowager empress would assume such a position of authority. But the fact that she dominated Nicholas, and unwittingly reduced him to apparent insignificance, inevitably caused deep resentment.

Even before she married Nicholas, Alix tried unsuccessfully to loosen Marie’s firm grip on affairs. It was during the waning days of Alexander III, when the bride-to-be arrived at
the imperial retreat at Livadia in the Crimea, only to find her fiancé, the future tsar, being completely overlooked as the emperor lay dying. All reports of Alexander’s condition were delivered to Marie, and all important decisions left to her. Nicholas merely stood by, impotent. Alix was appalled.

“Sweet child,” she wrote in Nicholas’s diary, “pray to God. He will comfort you. Don’t feel too low. Your Sunny is praying for you and the beloved patient.… Be firm and make the doctors come to you every day and tell you how they find him … so that you are always the first to know. Don’t let others be put first and you left out. You are father’s dear son and must be told all and asked everything. Show your mind and don’t let others forget who you are.”

Nicholas, however, seemed unable, or unwilling, to heed his Sunny’s advice. As the horror of his encroaching succession overwhelmed him, it was “Mother dear” to whom he turned. This recipe for discord was only exacerbated when Nicholas and Alexandra moved into Marie’s home at the Anichkov Palace after Alexander III died. Though they were now Russia’s new emperor and empress, it was Mama who still ruled. As if to punctuate Marie’s dominance, royal tradition held that a dowager empress took precedence over a reigning one. So, at all ceremonials, it was Marie who stood beside her son, while Alexandra was left behind them on the arm of some random grand duke. And, as if this wasn’t symbolic enough of the state of affairs, Marie refused at first to relinquish the imperial jewels that came to her daughter-in-law by right.

Essentially, though, the mounting tension between the two empresses came down to personalities. “They tried to understand each other and failed,” wrote Nicholas’s sister, Olga.
“They were utterly different in character, habits, and outlook.”

With the emperor busy ruling Russia—and his mother ruling him—Alexandra was left with little to do but fret. “I feel myself completely alone,” she confided to a friend in Germany. “I weep and worry all day because I feel that my husband is so young and so inexperienced.… I am alone most of the time. My husband is occupied all day and spends his evenings with his mother.”

Tensions between the empress and her mother-in-law extended to other members of the Romanov family as well—particularly with the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna (“Miechen” to the family), wife of Nicholas’s uncle, Vladimir. (See
family tree
.) Miechen took an almost instant dislike to Alix and, according to Countess Kleinmichel, a leading hostess, “consistently used her powerful influence in Petersburg society to promote anything that could harm the Empress. She incited ladies holding high positions to give [bad] advice to the Tsarina, applauded their courage when they criticized her adversely, and made public the contents of their letters or the gist of their conversations.”

Yet while Miechen’s campaign against Alexandra was as ruthless as it was relentless (and would later intensify dangerously), the empress inadvertently assisted it with her own, often misunderstood, behavior. Socially she was a disaster. At court ceremonials and entertainments, where she was expected to shine, Alexandra instead became flushed with discomfort and embarrassment. She “felt absolutely lost,” recalled Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, and yearned “to disappear under the ground.” This extreme reticence was cruelly misconstrued. “Society did not know her,” concluded Baroness
Buxhoeveden, “and her timidity was ascribed to haughtiness, and her reserve to pride.”

The withering criticism, which served to make the empress all the more insecure and to retreat further into herself, soon spread far beyond the gossipy parlors of St. Petersburg when a horrific tragedy took place in May 1896, just after Nicholas and Alexandra were formally crowned in Moscow.

Although the emperor and empress had been given a rather cool reception by the crowds as they entered the Kremlin on the eve of the coronation (in contrast to the “almost deafening” greeting given Dowager Empress Marie upon her arrival), the ceremony itself was splendid. It took place on a glorious day in May, at the ancient seat of Russia’s sovereigns, with all the dazzle and pageantry long associated with the sacred anointment of God’s representative on earth. Shortly after, though, disaster struck.

Ordinary Russians had been invited to celebrate the coronation in an open field outside Moscow, where soldiers usually practiced military maneuvers. Free beer and souvenir mugs were to be distributed, and the newly crowned imperial couple was scheduled to make an appearance. The crowds began gathering before dawn for the festivities, but as their numbers grew ever larger, a rumor swept through the masses that the supply of beer and mugs was limited and would be distributed on a first come, first served basis. A mad rush ensued and, in the midst of it, thousands were trampled and crushed. When it was all over, the expanse where the soldiers practiced resembled an actual battleground, with scores of dead and injured littered across it.

“The
dreadful
accident … was appalling beyond all description,” Dowager Empress Marie wrote to her mother in Denmark, “and has … draped a
black veil
over all the splendor
and glory! Just imagine
how many
poor unfortunate people were
crushed
and fatally injured.”

Nicholas and Alexandra were horrified by what had happened. They visited the injured in hospitals and paid the burial expenses for the dead. Alexandra wept bitterly. But on the night of the terrible event a coronation ball hosted by the French ambassador was planned. Much expense had been lavished on the affair, with silver and rare tapestries imported from Paris and Versailles, as well as one hundred thousand roses from the south of France. The emperor’s influential uncles insisted that he attend the affair lest offense be given to one of Russia’s few allies. Alas, Nicholas reluctantly agreed.

“We expected that the party would be called off,” said Sergei Witte, minister of finance. “[Instead] it took place as if nothing had happened and the ball was opened by Their Majesties dancing a quadrille.” For many, an indelible image was formed of a callous young tsar, with “the German woman” by his side, dancing on the fresh corpses of his trampled subjects.

After a period of time spent living under the dowager empress’s roof after their marriage, Nicholas and Alexandra finally moved out of Mama’s palace and settled into a place of their own. The empress eschewed the sprawling Winter Palace—traditional home of the tsars—in favor of the relatively modest Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (the Tsar’s Village), an imperial retreat outside St. Petersburg. Here, in what Nicholas described as “that charming, dear precious place,” the couple would reside, largely isolated from the rest of Russia, until revolution finally forced their permanent relocation in 1917.

“Tsarskoe Selo was a world apart, an enchanted fairyland to which only a small number of people had the right of entry,” wrote Gleb Botkin, son of Nicholas II’s court physician. “It became a legendary place. To the loyal monarchists, it was sort of a terrestrial paradise, the abode of earthly gods. To the revolutionaries, it was a sinister place where blood-thirsty tyrants were hatching their terrible plots against an innocent population.”

To Nicholas and Alexandra, though, Tsarskoe Selo was simply home. While she cocooned herself from society in her mauve-colored boudoir, he went about “the awful job I have feared all my life”: ruling Russia. The empress would have far preferred to have her husband beside her at all times—confined, as author Edward Crankshaw wrote, “to a sort of ever-lasting cozy tea-party.” In fact, she wanted to dominate him. But that role was still reserved for the tsar’s mother, as well as his formidable uncles: the brothers of Alexander III.

“Nicholas II spent the first ten years of his reign sitting behind a massive desk in the palace and listening with near-awe to the well-rehearsed bellowing of his towering uncles,” wrote Grand Duke Alexander (“Sandro”), the tsar’s cousin. “He dreaded to be left alone with them. In the presence of witnesses his opinions were accepted as orders, but the instant the door of his study closed on the outside—down to the table would go with a bang the weighty first of Uncle Alexis … two hundred and fifty pounds … packed in the resplendent uniform of Grand Admiral of the Fleet.… Uncle Serge and Uncle Vladimir developed equally efficient methods of intimidation.… They all had their favorite generals and admirals … their ballerinas [who served as their mistresses] desirous of organizing a ‘Russian season’ in Paris;
their wonderful preachers anxious to redeem the Emperor’s soul … their clairvoyant peasants with a divine message.”

Another pernicious influence on the young emperor was Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany—the same cousin “Willy” who had earlier helped orchestrate Alexandra’s acceptance of Nicholas’s marriage proposal. For years Russia had pursued an expansionist policy in Asia—occupying Manchuria, for example, and making aggressive forays into the Korean peninsula. The pinnacle of this Asian adventurism was the seizure from Japan of the Chinese fortress city of Port Arthur in 1898, giving Russia its only warm-water access to the Pacific. It was the bellicose German kaiser who encouraged this aggressive policy, flattering and cajoling the impressionable “Nicky,” confirming upon him the meaningless title “Admiral of the Pacific.” Willy’s motive was simple self-interest: He wanted the tsar distracted in the east, which would allow him to pursue his own agenda in Europe without Russian interference. Unfortunately, Nicky found Willy’s siren call irresistible.

The emperor was thoroughly convinced of Russia’s superiority over the “little short-tailed monkeys,” as he derisively referred to the Japanese. Nevertheless, when diplomatic relations with them finally broke down over Russia’s continued excursions into Korea, Nicholas wavered over the idea of actually going to war. There were hawks, like Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav Plehve, who advocated “a short, victorious war” to help distract the people from a rapidly reemerging revolutionary movement wrought by vast and insidious social injustices. But Sergei Witte, among others, was vehemently opposed to any such engagement. “An armed struggle with Japan … would be a great disaster,” he warned the emperor;
far from stifling revolt, it would certainly transform “the latent dissatisfaction of our domestic life” into overt political violence.

The gentle, retiring Russian sovereign was a man who relied as much on fate as upon the advice of others—or his own judgment—to resolve an issue. And so it was with the Japan crisis. “War is war,” he said, “and peace is peace. But this business of not knowing either way is agonizing.” It was only with Japan’s surprise attack on Port Arthur in February 1904 that Nicholas’s decision was made for him. “Is this undeclared war?” he exclaimed upon receiving the news. “Then may God help us!”

The attack on Port Arthur resulted in a brief surge in Russian nationalism. “Everyone was mixed together,” one newspaper reported. “Generals and tramps marched side-by-side, students with banners, and ladies, their arms filled with shopping. Everyone was united in one general feeling.” But what was supposed to be “a short, victorious war” turned out to be a protracted catastrophe. Japan had emerged as an industrial and military giant over the last generation, capable of easily replenishing their troops, while Russian forces had to travel vast distances to the front on the still-incomplete Trans-Siberian Railroad. The losses were staggering, and as they mounted patriotism rapidly devolved into widespread discontent—just as Witte had predicted.

“You have no idea the intensity of feeling aroused in Russia during the last few months,” Countess Kleinmichel wrote at the end of 1904. “Our
mujiks
[peasants] are now objecting to being killed for what they call
a bit of territory we’ve never heard of
.… Not a week passes without a mutiny in the barracks, or riots along the line when reservists leave for the front.… In the universities it’s even worse; revolutionary
demonstrations, provoked by the slightest incident, are everyday occurrences. You can be sure that the peasants will come on the scene before long. That will mean the end of Tsarism and Russia!”