The Last Tsar (21 page)

Forty-five years old—an old man already. Job.… And a feeling common to people in their forties: life was becoming more and more like a dream. Such moods were especially strong in him during these years of relative peace. There was still calm in Europe, there was still peace, friendly visits were still being exchanged with Uncle Willy (it was en route to Berlin that Nicholas started this notebook of his diary).

Strange photographs were already pasted into his diary: his son in a military uniform saluting. The tsaritsa and a grand duchess, both of them in the uniforms of the regiments they served as colonel-in-chief.

A strange martial accent appeared in this notebook.

It also appeared in their life.

A nervous Alix felt a foreboding and melancholy. She was plagued by horrific headaches—that is why she was weeping at the tricentennial ceremonies.

The year 1913, the year of greatest well-being for his empire, came to a close.

On December 31 he wrote in his diary: “Oh Lord, bless Russia and us all with peace and quiet and piety.”

On January 6, 1914, as if concluding an era, the last Epiphany parade was held in the Winter Palace. Platoons of the Guards and the military institutes formed up. The empress-mother wore a silver Russian sarafan with the blue ribbon of St. Andrew. Alix was dressed in a deep blue, gold-embroidered sarafan with an enormous sable-trimmed train. Her headdress was crowned by a diamond diadem with a pearl. The legendary Romanov jewels!

In the cramped stuffiness of Ekaterinburg imprisonment, they would recall the endless cold marble hall, the Guards in formation with their backs to the Neva, giant Nicholas Nikolaevich surrounded by his giant Grenadiers … and how they emerged from the palace onto the Palace Embankment … and how the metropolitan descended to the ice-bound Neva to sanctify the water in an ice hole.

The year was 1914. That hot July day they left with the children as usual for the Finnish Skerries on the yacht. In the afternoon a launch carrying a courier from Petersburg moored to the yacht. Nicholas read the two telegrams and hurriedly went into his drawing room—cum—study. On June 14, in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz-Ferdinand, and his wife were killed by shots fired from a revolver. Sarajevo had been inundated with Serbian nationalists, and the coach for some reason had been driving slowly without any guard. Like a target. The assassin was the Serbian nationalist Gavril Princip. In the language of the politicians of the day, this event meant one thing: war.

The second telegram was possibly connected with the first. In Siberia, in the village of Pokrovskoe, Grigory Rasputin had been severely wounded. A former admirer, Fyonia Guseva, had attacked him with a knife. Rasputin was a supporter of the German party, an active enemy of war with Germany.

So, simultaneously, grounds appeared for the future war, and the only person who had any influence over the tsar and who might have attempted to avert it was eliminated. Now Alix was helpless. When the yacht moored at Peterhof, she quickly proceeded to the palace. Locking herself in her study, the empress wept.

What was this? Coincidence? Or a game of the secret police, be it Russian (many in the camarilla wanted this war; actually, so did Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich) or German (bellicose Uncle Willy had long dreamed of this war).

In July 1914, French President Raymond Poincaré approached Russian shores aboard the battleship
France
. The president had come to negotiate an alliance in the impending war.

A reception was in progress in the palace at Peterhof. The most brilliant court in Europe was greeting the French president.

The ladies’ toilettes were a stream of jewels. The French president’s black suit stood out among the uniforms of the imperial suite. The minister of the court, magnificent old Count Fredericks, who even now had a captivating bearing and noble features; the chief marshal of the court, Prince Vasily Dolgorukov, a tall man with the elegant manners of the old aristocracy; the polished marshal of the court, Count Benckendorff—they made an amazing trio, reminding the French president of the magnificence of the court of the various Louises.

During this noisy reception, French Ambassador Paléologue, who was seated across from Alix, observed with astonishment the strange scene, which he recorded in detail in his diary: “In the course of the dinner I observed Alexandra Feodorovna.… Her head gleaming with diamonds and her figure in a décolleté dress of white brocade were still quite beautiful.… She was trying to engage Poincaré, seated to her right, in conversation, but quickly her smile became convulsive, her cheeks covered in spots. She kept biting her lips, and her feverish breathing infused the diamond net covering her breast with flames. While the dinner, which went on for a long time, was in progress, the poor woman evidently struggled with an attack of hysterics. Her features suddenly smoothed out when the emperor stood to pronounce a toast.”

Poor Alix. She knew that the president’s arrival meant war.

Everyone knew it. At a dinner in the home of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, his wife, the Montenegrin Princess Stana, kept
exclaiming as if inspired: “Before the end of the month we will have war. Our armies will meet in Berlin. Germany will be destroyed.” Only a look from the tsar interrupted this prophecy.

War. This was her trap. Now Alix constantly had to demonstrate her patriotism and her hatred for Uncle Willy and Germany.

Her brother Ernie lived in Germany, though, and he was going to have to fight her husband. Her homeland would send its sons to fight her new country. And of course, war would give her enemies, her many enemies, a terrible ace. She was already hearing the future whisper “German!” behind her back. But all this was in the inmost recesses of her soul. The only person who could read her soul was the Siberian muzhik, who understood immediately. He was the chief opponent of war with Germany. Over and over again he repeated the potential misfortunes and whispered terrible prophecies.

Rasputin had one other secret: he always said what she wanted to hear. Including what she kept deeply hidden and did not dare utter even to herself. He said it for her.

Rasputin was the sole figure who could have averted war at that time. She could have cited him as the voice of God and the people. She could have entreated Nicholas to listen to him.

Rasputin, however, lay wounded in a distant Siberian village.

The day after the state dinner with the French president, under a hot, threatening sky, 60,000 men engaged in military exercises. In the evening there was a farewell dinner on board the
France
, and a military orchestra played marches. With a convulsive smile Alix listened to the frenzied allegro. Once again, the French ambassador described the scene in his diary: With a suffering, somehow pleading face, she begged the ambassador, “Couldn’t you possibly….” Paléologue guessed and with a gesture of his hand asked the orchestra to stop. She was on the verge of hysterics. Olga rushed over to her.

The Gulf of Finland was lit by the moon, and the battleship’s shadow lay on the water.

From Nicholas’s diary:

“19 July, 1914. After breakfast summoned Nikolasha [Nicholas Nikolaevich] and informed him of his appointment as commander-in-chief until I could join the army.… At 6.30 went to vespers. Upon my return I learned that Germany had declared war on us….

“20 July. A good day in particular in the sense of an upsurge of spirit. At 2.30 set out on the
Alexandria
to Petr[ograd] and took a cutter directly to the Winter Palace. Signed the declaration of war. From the [Hall of] Malachite, we went out into St. Nicholas Hall, in the middle of which the declaration was read. Then public prayers were said.… The entire hall sang ‘Save Us, Lord’ and ‘Many Years.’ I said a few words. Upon our return the ladies rushed to kiss our hands and rather wore Alix and myself out.… Then we went out on the balcony on Alexander Square and bowed to the enormous mass of people.… At about 6 we went out onto the embankment to the cutter through a large crowd of officers and public. We returned to Peterhof at 7.15 and spent a quiet evening….

“23. In the morning learned good news: England has declared war on Germany….

“24. Austria has finally declared war on us. Now the situation is quite clear.”

Thus began the war that destroyed an empire.

On December 31, he looked back as usual on the year just past:

“We prayed to the Lord God to give us victory in the coming year and a quiet, tranquil life after that. Oh Lord, bless and strengthen our incomparable, valorous, and uncomplaining host for further victories.”

What about Rasputin? Once recovered from his wound he sent telegrams. Subsequently a great deal would be written about a certain mysterious telegram to the empress in which Rasputin predicted ruin and misery in war.

Alix herself later believed this and in Tobolsk talked of the mysterious telegram. But in the notebook of the holy man’s utterances, I found some very different telegrams from those days:

On July 19, the holy man wrote a telegram predicting peace: “I believe in, I hope for, peaceful rest. A great crime is being undertaken, we are not participants.”

But the prediction did not come true; war began—and Grigory predicted victory. Yes, as always, he predicted what his masters wanted to hear.

July 20, 1914: “The criminals shall receive all evil and cunning a hundredfold.… Strong is the Lord’s grace, beneath its shelter we shall remain in greatness.”

But when he returned to Petersburg and sensed Alix’s casting
about, Rasputin attempted to revive his apocalyptic predictions. Nicholas forbade him to visit the palace. As always, the Holy Devil did a turnabout just in time. Now he was declaring to his admirers: “I am glad about this war. It will rid us of two great evils: drunkenness and German friendship.”

T
he German embassies were burned. The Literary and Artistic Circle expelled anyone with a German name. The future Prime Minister Boris Stürmer considered changing his German name. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd.

All debates in the Duma were forgotten. Unity, unity! All discord in the large Romanov family was forgotten.

To his joy, now, during this national war, Nicholas gained the right to pardon—and his brother Misha returned to Russia. Only to perish there a few years later. Unity, unity!

The story of his great-grandfather flickered before him: like the war with Napoleon, this would be a patriotic war. The entire people. Unity, unity! He set out for Moscow, the ancient capital, the symbol of the Fatherland.

The Kremlin. The emperor and the family entered the white marble St. George Hall, Alexei (as usual he was sick, having hurt his leg) carried by his sailor-companion; alongside the tsaritsa was her sister Ella.

Maurice Paléologue recorded the emperor’s inspired words: “A magnificent impulse has gripped all Russia, without distinction for
tribe or nationality. Hence, from the heart of the Russian land, I send my valiant warriors fervent greeting. God is with us!”

Outside Assumption Cathedral, by the bell tower of Ivan the Great, there were immense crowds. The bell chimes drowned out their ecstatic cries, and the marshal of the court, Count Benckendorff, gazing at the smiling crowd, spoke triumphantly and mockingly: “Here’s the revolution they promised us in Berlin!”

Yes, warnings had come from Berlin: if there is war, it may well end in revolution in Russia. Actually, there had been many such warnings earlier as well, at the very start of Nicholas’s reign. But now all was forgotten: smiling shouts—the people were greeting the tsar’s family. There was joy on Alix’s face, for the first time in many months. Her dream had come true. How unexpectedly it had been achieved, this long-awaited unity—the people and the tsar!

In the golden dusk of the ancient Assumption Cathedral, the trembling flames of candles, court singers in silver garments from the sixteenth century, the source of the Romanov dynasty. The Divine Liturgy was read, and the precious stones on the brocade of the clergy’s vestments flickered in the candlelight.

In just three years, lost in wintry Siberia, they would recall this ringing of bells, this ecstasy of the people at the sight of their emperor.

“Official and private information reaching me from all over Russia is one and the same. The same popular exclamations and reverential zeal, the same rallying around the tsar.… No dissent whatsoever. The difficult days of 1905 seem to have been crossed out of their minds. Holy Russia’s collective soul has not expressed such power since 1812,” wrote the French ambassador.

On what a triumphant note this epilogue began.

“Everything has been closed up, all the revolutions have hidden themselves away, everyone’s thoughts are of common service to the Homeland. One breathes very easily in this pure atmosphere, which has become almost unknown among us,” wrote a Duma deputy.

In 1914 sadness bordering on despair reigned among the Bolshevik revolutionaries.