The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia Read online

  “A WORLD APART”

  Located fifteen miles south of St. Petersburg on eight hundred acres of thick green lawn, the Imperial Park at Tsarskoe Selo was “a world apart, an enchanted fairyland,” recalled one visitor. Ornate bridges crossed ponds and canals. Footpaths wound between rows of fruit trees and lush flower gardens. On warm spring days, bowers of lilacs perfumed the entire park.

  Among the place’s many wonders was a man-made lake that could be drained and refilled. On one shore stood a marble folly shaped like a Turkish bath, its gilt-tipped minaret stretching toward the sky. Nearby, an exact replica of a Chinese village glimmered exotically in the sunlight, while the tower of a medieval castle built intentionally to look like a ruin peeked above the treetops. Past the rose meadow crouched a granite pyramid, as well as the stone-turreted Elephant House. On warm days, the elephant—a gift from the king of Siam (modern-day Thailand)—bathed in a nearby pond while tame deer brought from faraway Mongolia wandered freely.

  There were also two palaces within the Imperial Park. The first was the immense Catherine Palace, sprawling across the landscape in an extravagant profusion of blue, white, and gold. The second, located in a wooded corner of the park, was the simpler, yellow-and-white Alexander Palace.

  Around all of it—palaces and park—ran a tall iron fence protected by Cossacks with sabers and pointed spears. Additionally, five thousand Imperial Guards patrolled both the gates and the footpaths inside the park, while hordes of plainclothes policemen kept an eye on the army of servants who worked on the grounds or in the palaces.

  Just beyond the gates stood the town of Tsarskoe Selo with its stylish shops and mansions. A graceful, tree-lined road stretched from the train station to the Imperial Park’s front gates. It was this road the imperial couple took the day they moved to the country.

  Alexandra had already picked the smaller palace with its mere (by royal standards) one hundred rooms for their new home. Declaring it a “charming, dear, precious place,” she began creating her own private world. In the palace’s left wing, beyond the columned ballroom and the ornate reception halls adorned with carved pilasters and gilded moldings, Alexandra chose two dozen ordinary rooms to serve as her family’s living quarters. She decorated them to her taste, replacing the crimson carpets and velvet curtains with chintz upholstery, wallpaper with flowered prints, porcelain knickknacks, and potted palms. “It is incredible,” said one visitor, “that these people can live surrounded by such bric-a-brac when they could have the most beautiful things in the world.” Still, there was a cozy drawing room in maple and shades of green, a music room with two grand pianos, a library, two studies, and a large dressing room for Nicholas. There was also an indoor saltwater swimming pool.

  But the room most gossiped about was Alexandra’s lilac drawing room. Almost everything in it was a pale purple, her favorite color—the wallpaper, the curtains, even the furniture was purple and white. People who saw it were aghast. They accused the empress of having common tastes and called her a hausfrau. But Alexandra loved her room. It was, recalled one courtier, her “opal-hued” world, the one place where she felt completely safe. Here, she could recline on a low sofa beneath a large painting of the Mother of God, delighting in the scent of the fresh flowers brought in daily by the servants, while gazing happily at the jumble of family photographs that crowded her shelves, tables, and mantelpiece.

  Double doors led to the imperial couple’s bedroom. Here, too, lilac was the dominant color, but the walls, instead of displaying family photographs, were covered with more than seven hundred icons. Each had been hung on the silk wallpaper by the empress herself.

  Once settled in, Alexandra did not want to leave. Nor did she want Nicholas to leave. They knew each other “through and through,” she told him, and only needed to be together, “utterly cut off in every way.”

  Nicholas agreed. “It’s inexpressibly wonderful to live here quietly, without seeing anyone—all day and night together!” he said. And so while the ministers, the treasury, and other government offices remained in St. Petersburg, the ruler of it all retreated to the country. He still read reports and spoke with advisers who came to him regularly from the city. He still signed orders and settled disputes. But secluded as he was in the country, tucked away from the happenings in the capital, Nicholas quickly lost touch with people and events. His and Alexandra’s life together was “a sort of everlasting cozy tea-party,” remarked one historian, fine for an ordinary private citizen, but not for the ruler of Russia.

  ROYAL BABY

  By the fall of 1895, Nicholas and Alexandra were expecting their first child. Once again, the Alexander Palace buzzed with workmen. When all was done, the rooms on the second floor of the private wing had been transformed into the imperial nursery, a cheerful complex of bedrooms, classrooms, and playroom. Big windows allowed the place to fill with light. Velvety carpets in shades of green and blue covered the hardwood floors. And at Alexandra’s request, a private staircase (and later, a small elevator) was installed connecting these rooms to her own. She envisioned reclining on the sofa in her lilac drawing room while listening to the sounds of her children playing happily overhead.

  Again and again, the couple visited the nursery. Just looking at it filled them with “utter delight,” Nicholas admitted. “Sometimes we simply sit in silence … and admire the walls, the fireplaces, the furniture.”

  Both hoped for a son. For the past one hundred years, Russia’s law of succession had specified that only males could inherit the throne. To ensure his family’s future, as well as a stable succession of power, it was imperative that Nicholas have a son. Otherwise, when he died, his vast dynasty would pass to his younger brother and his son. Nicholas’s own children would lose their direct link to the throne.

  Still, the couple wasn’t overly worried. Whenever Nicholas laid his hands on his wife’s growing belly, he felt reassured. “[The baby] has become very big and kicks about and fights a great deal inside,” he told his mother. Surely a rough-and-tumble son was on the way.

  Early on the morning of November 16, 1895, Alexandra’s pains began. As doctors tended to her in the bedroom, Nicholas hurried to his study. Excitedly, he ordered artillerymen in St. Petersburg to stand beside their cannons. Tradition prescribed that a thunderous three hundred rounds would be fired to announce the birth of a future tsar; one hundred and one shots would announce the birth of a daughter.

  Hours passed. Nicholas paced and chain-smoked. At last, at nine o’clock that evening, a baby’s cry was heard. “All the anxiety was over,” Nicholas later remembered. He hurried to his wife’s side.

  Minutes later, the cannons in St. Petersburg began to boom. For miles around, Russians stopped what they were doing and started counting.

  They listened for the hundred and second shot.

  It never came. The empress had given birth to a girl—the grand duchess Olga Nikolaevna.

  “God, what happiness!” Nicholas rejoiced in his diary. “I can hardly believe it’s really our child!”

  He knew some of his relatives were disappointed. But there was plenty of time to have a boy. After all, he and Alexandra were still young—she’d just celebrated her twenty-third birthday; he was twenty-seven. In the meantime, the couple was overjoyed with their “precious little one.”

  With her round face, blue-gray eyes, and button nose (which she later called her “humble snub”), Olga was a “sweet baby,” said Nicholas. She was big and healthy, too, weighing a whopping ten pounds at birth. “She does not look at all new-born, because she is such a big baby with a full head of hair,” her father bragged.

  Unlike most members of the nobility, who handed off their infants to nurses and nannies, Alexandra cared for Olga herself. She nursed and bathed the baby, changed her diapers, and sang her lullabies. “You can imagine our immense happiness,” she wrote to one of her sisters. “We have acquired a wonderful little one who is so nice to care for.”

  Olga remained in the lace-draped ba
ssinet beside her parents’ bed for several weeks before finally being sent upstairs to the nursery. “A pity and rather a bore,” remarked Nicholas when the time came. Still, an empress could not devote all her hours to motherhood. It wasn’t socially acceptable. So Olga was placed in the capable hands of a nurse.

  Nicholas and Alexandra continued to fawn over their baby. Nicholas’s sister Xenia recalled one afternoon at the palace. Before teatime, the proud parents took her up to the nursery. But rather than having the baby brought out for everyone’s inspection as expected, the tsar and empress did something surprising. To Xenia’s astonishment, they climbed into the playpen and played with their daughter!

  ANOTHER DARK OMEN?

  In May 1896, six months after Olga’s birth, Nicholas and Alexandra traveled to Russia’s old capital, Moscow. The twelve-month mourning period for Alexander III was finally over, and it was time to crown the new tsar.

  Elaborate preparations had been made. No expense was spared, no detail overlooked. Beneath the five golden domes of an ornate cathedral, Nicholas swore his oath as tsar and judge of Russia. Afterward, he turned and crowned Alexandra “so carefully, so tenderly,” recalled his sister Olga, that it brought tears to the eyes of the onlookers. Then Nicholas settled himself on the Diamond Throne, every inch of which was encrusted with jewels and pearls, while Alexandra sat on the Ivory Throne.

  Meanwhile, on a nearby military field, hundreds of thousands of peasants gathered. They had traveled from all across the country to glimpse their new ruler. They had also come for the feasts and presents traditionally given to them by the tsar on such momentous occasions. But the next morning, panic broke out. Somehow rumor started that there was not enough beer or gifts to go around. The crowd pushed forward, eager to grab their share. Some wooden planks that had been placed over several deep ditches gave way. Men, women, and children tripped and fell. Unable to rise in the mass of pushing, shoving bodies, they were trampled, crushed, suffocated. When the frantic surge ended, an estimated fourteen hundred people were dead.

  When Nicholas heard the news, he wanted to cancel that evening’s festivities. Deeply distressed and in tears, he declared he could not possibly attend the ball being given in his honor by the French ambassador. But his uncle Serge (Alexander III’s brother) convinced the still-inexperienced tsar otherwise. Failing to appear would insult their French allies, Serge told him. And that, he insisted, would only cause more scandal.

  Nicholas bowed to the older man’s judgment. And so, on the night of the tragedy, the imperial couple appeared at the glittering ball. They danced “on top of the corpses,” noted one reporter.

  The couple did try to comfort their subjects. They spent the next day visiting hospitals. They paid for all the funerals. And they gave a thousand rubles—an enormous sum equal to years of a peasant’s income—to each of the victims’ families. But it was too late. The people’s first impression was the lasting one. And they took it as a bad omen. The reign of Nicholas II, many peasants predicted, would be beset with troubles from God.

  A NEW BABY

  By September, Alexandra was pregnant again—and feeling miserable. Her back ached. Her legs swelled. And she experienced such debilitating nausea that the doctor confined her to bed for seven weeks. When she was finally allowed up, she had to be pushed around in a wheelchair.

  The entire family’s expectations ran high. Surely this time Alexandra was carrying a son.

  But on June 10, 1897, she gave birth to another daughter—the grand duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna. As the cannons boomed one hundred and one times, the dowager empress received a telegram announcing her granddaughter’s birth. “Mama’s emotion was intense,” Xenia said with subtle meaning.

  Nicholas’s cousin Grand Duke Konstantin was just sitting down to lunch at the officers’ club when he received word informing him of the baby’s birth. “The news soon spread,” he wrote in his diary. “Everyone was very disappointed.”

  Alexandra grew anxious. As empress, she knew her most important job was to produce an heir for Russia. And even though her new daughter was perfect, a little miracle from God, she’d failed.

  The only person who did not seem discouraged was Nicholas. In his diary that night he wrote: “The second bright day in our life … the Lord blessed us with a daughter—Tatiana.” Marveling at her fuzz of chestnut hair and large gray eyes, he was astonished by how much she looked like her mother.

  BEYOND THE PALACE GATES:

  LULLABIES FOR PEASANT BABIES

  In 1898, a Russian author named Olga Petrovna Semyonova began closely observing several peasant villages near her family estate in Riazan province south of Moscow. She soon discovered that because more than half of all peasant children died, their mothers were emotionally distant. They were afraid to love their children. In fact, the death of an infant in these poor families was often regarded as a blessing, and a common saying when a child died was, “Thank goodness the Lord thought better of it!” The traditional lullabies sung to peasant babies—and recorded by Semyonova in her book, which was originally titled The Life of “Ivan”: Sketches of Peasant Life from One of the Black Earth Provinces—show how poverty affected the bonds between mother and child. Here is one example:

  Hush, hush, hushaby my baby,

  A man lives at the end of the village.

  He’s neither poor, nor rich,

  He has many children,

  They sit on a bench And eat straw.

  I’ll make you suffer even more,

  I won’t give you anything to eat.

  I won’t make a bed for you.

  “AND SO, THERE’S NO HEIR”

  By fall 1898, Alexandra was again pregnant. And again hopes ran high. Surely this time there would be an heir. But when the cannons rumbled on June 26, 1899, they announced the birth of yet another girl—the grand duchess Marie Nikolaevna.

  “And so, there’s no heir,” Cousin Konstantin grumbled. “The whole of Russia will be disappointed by this news.”

  This time, Nicholas and Alexandra were more than disappointed. They were alarmed. Every pregnancy was getting harder for Alexandra. While carrying Marie, the empress had not been able to walk without experiencing shooting back and leg pains. Forced to go everywhere by wheelchair, she’d even needed attendants to help her roll over in bed.

  And then there was Nicholas’s family—his mother, sisters, cousins, and nephews. Alexandra knew they scorned her for not fulfilling her duty. The country demanded an heir. The imperial line depended on her. More and more, she sank to her knees before her icons, begging God for the miracle of a son.

  THE DARK SISTERS COME CALLING

  Not long after Marie’s birth, Nicholas’s cousins came to tea—the grand duchesses Militsa and Anastasia. Known as the dark sisters because they dabbled in the occult, the two were notorious for the midnight séances they held in their St. Petersburg palaces. But that wasn’t all. Both women believed in a host of psychic phenomena—ghosts, astrology, even magic.

  Now, as each sister settled into one of Alexandra’s purple-and-white upholstered chairs, they noticed how pale and strained the empress looked. Was she ill?

  Not ill, Alexandra confessed, but afraid—afraid she’d never give birth to a son.

  There was someone who could help, the sisters said. And they told the empress about a French mystic and “soul doctor” called “Dr.” Philippe (though he was not a medical doctor), who could heal the sick by chanting, predict the future by praying, and make himself invisible just by donning a magic hat. Most incredible of all, he could tell the gender of an unborn child, even change it from a girl to a boy.

  Alexandra accepted every word as truth. After all, the Russian Orthodox Church believed in seers, holy men, martyrs, and living saints as well as visions, miracles, and speaking in tongues. For centuries, it had taught that God often blessed ordinary men with the divine ability to heal bodies and souls, in addition to the ability to act as spiritual guides to the rich and powerful. “Holy Russia abou
nds in saints,” declared one church official in 1901. “God sends consolation from time to time in the guise of simple men.”

  THE MYSTERIOUS “DR.” PHILIPPE

  Nicholas and Alexandra met with “Dr.” Philippe in early 1901 when she was already pregnant with her fourth child. A portly man with wire-rimmed glasses and a black handlebar mustache, “Dr.” Philippe gave the empress what he called a “moral examination” by peering deep into her eyes for several long moments. Confidently, he declared that her next child would be a boy … if she partook of his “astral medicine.”

  Alexandra eagerly followed his instructions. She prayed for hours on end, and forced down glass after glass of bitter herbal concoctions. She even bathed in the moonlight on what “Dr.” Philippe called “astrologically auspicious nights.” And as the months slipped by, Nicholas and Alexandra’s confidence grew. This time—they knew it—they were having a boy.

  IS IT A BOY?

  Dawn was just breaking, the sky above St. Petersburg streaked with pink and violet, when the cannons once more began to boom. Already, working women wearing colored kerchiefs prowled in search of bargains at the fish market. Aproned vendors set up their stalls along the wide and sweeping boulevards. Laborers, their faces thin and careworn, trudged across the arching canal bridges toward their factory jobs. But with the first shot, many people stopped. The empress Alexandra had given birth to her fourth child! They began counting: odin, dva, tri …