Nicholas and Alexandra

ships.” Serge, the husband of Grand Duchess Elizabeth, was the violently reactionary Governor General of Moscow, a man so narrow and despotic that he forbade his wife to read Anna Karenina for fear of arousing “unhealthy curiosity and violent emotions.” Only Paul, a mere eight years older than his nephew, made no trouble for Nicholas.

“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, 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 outsider—down on the table would go with a bang the weighty fist 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 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.”

It was not surprising that the uncles had a powerful influence; all were vigorous, relatively young men when their inexperienced twenty-six-year-old nephew suddenly became Tsar. Three of them had been present in Darmstadt to steer Nicholas through his proposal to Princess Alix; later it was they who decided that Nicholas should marry publicly in St. Petersburg, not privately at Livadia; at the coronation, the uncles insisted that Nicholas go on to the French ambassador’s ball after the disaster at Khodynka Meadow. The uncles’ influence continued over the first decade of the reign. It was not until Nicholas had gone through the fires of war with Japan and the 1905 Revolution and was himself thirty-six that their influence began to fade.

Along with becoming Tsar of Russia, Nicholas had suddenly become head of the House of Romanov and manager of the vast Imperial estate. His income, totaling 24 million gold roubles ($12 million) a year, came partly from an annual Treasury appropriation and partly from the profits of the millions of acres of crown lands—vineyards, farms and cotton plantations—purchased mainly by Catherine the Great. In 1914 the value of these Romanov lands was estimated at $50 million. Another $80 million was frozen in the form of the immense treasures of jewelry bought in three centuries of rule. Along with the fabulous Russian Imperial Crown, these included the Orlov Diamond of 194.5 carats, which was set in the Imperial Scepter; the Moon of the Mountain diamond of 120 carats; and the Polar Star, a superb 40-carat ruby.

Despite this wealth, the Tsar’s private purse was often empty. There were seven palaces to be kept up: the Winter Palace and the Anitchkov Palace in St. Petersburg; the Alexander and Catherine Palaces at Tsarskoe Selo; Peterhof; Gatchina; the Imperial apartments in the Kremlin; and Livadia Palace in the Crimea. In these palaces, fifteen thousand officials and servants required salaries, food, uniforms and appropriate presents on holidays. There were the Imperial trains and yachts. Three theatres in St. Petersburg and two in Moscow, the Imperial Academy of Arts and the Imperial Ballet with its 153 ballerinas and 73 male dancers, all were maintained from the Tsar’s private purse. Even the little students at the Ballet School, wearing dark blue uniforms with silver lyres on their collars, and training in leaps and entrechats, were considered members of the personal household of the Tsar.

In addition, every member of the vast Imperial family received an allowance from the Tsar. Each of the grand dukes was given $100,000 a year and every grand duchess received a dowry of $500,000. Innumerable hospitals, orphanages and institutions for the blind depended on the Imperial charity. A flood of private petitions for financial aid poured in each year to the private chancery; many were worthy and had to be satisfied. Before the end of the year, the Tsar was usually penniless; sometimes he reached this embarrassing state by autumn.

In running his family and empire, Nicholas looked to his father and the Russian past. Nicholas preferred to be Russian down to the smallest details of personal life. At his desk, he wore a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy breeches and soft leather boots. Once he toyed with the idea of converting formal court dress to the ancient long caftans of the days of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. He gave up the project only when he discovered that the cost of ornamenting these robes with jewels in the style of the ancient Muscovite boyars was more than any modern purse could bear. Although Nicholas’s English, French and German were excellent, he preferred to speak Russian. He spoke Russian to his children and wrote in Russian to his mother; only to the Empress Alexandra, whose Russian was awkward, did he speak and write in English. Although French was the popular language of the upper classes, he insisted that his ministers report to him in Russian and was displeased even by the insertion of a foreign phrase or expression. Even culturally, Nicholas was intensely nationalistic. He liked to read Pushkin, Gogol and the novels of Tolstoy. He was fond of Tchaikovsky and went to concerts, opera and ballet several times a week; his favorite ballet was The Hunchback Horse, based on a Russian fairy tale. Of all the tsars, Nicholas most admired Alexis the Mild, last of the purely Muscovite tsars and father of Peter the Great. In 1903, Nicholas’s interest led to a lavish costume ball at which everyone present appeared in robes and gowns of the seventeenth century and danced old Russian dances which they had rehearsed for weeks. Once when an aide was talking enthusiastically about Peter the Great, Nicholas replied thoughtfully, “I recognize my ancestor’s great merits, but … he is the ancestor who appeals to me least of all. He had too much admiration for European culture.… He stamped out Russian habits, the good customs, the usages, bequeathed by a nation.”

In his work habits, Nicholas was solitary. Unlike most monarchs and chiefs of state—unlike even his own wife—he had no private secretary. He preferred to do things for himself. On his desk he kept a large calendar of his daily appointments, scrupulously entered in his own hand. When official papers arrived, he opened them, read them, signed them and put them in envelopes himself. He once explained that he placed things exactly because he liked to feel that he could enter his office in the dark and put his hand on any object he desired. With much the same sense of privacy, Nicholas disliked discussions of politics, especially in casual conversation. A new aide-de-camp, galloping at the side of the Tsar near Livadia on a morning ride, supposed that his duty was to amuse the Tsar with small talk. He chose politics as his subject. Nicholas replied reluctantly, and quickly switched the conversation to the weather, the mountain scenery, the horses and tennis. When the aide persisted, Nicholas put spurs to his horse and galloped ahead.

This sense of privacy, along with an unwillingness to provoke personal unpleasantness, created perennial difficulty between the Tsar and his ministers. Ministers were appointed and dismissed directly by the crown. In theory, they were the servants of the Tsar, and he was free to give these posts to whomever he liked, to listen to or ignore a minister’s advice, and to hand down dismissals without explanation. In practice, the ministers were the heads of large government departments where continuity and coordination were administrative necessities. In addition, the ministers were also ambitious, proud and sensitive men. Nicholas never mastered the technique of forceful, efficient management of subordinates. He hated scenes and found it impossible to sternly criticize or dismiss a man to his face. If something was wrong, he preferred to give a minister a friendly reception, comment gently and shake hands warmly. Occasionally, after such an interview, the minister would return to his office, well pleased with himself, only to receive in the morning mail a letter regretfully asking for his resignation. Not unnaturally, these men complained that they had been deceived.

The major lines of Nicholas’s character as Tsar were set in these early years of the reign. Coming to the throne unprepared, he was forced to develop his administration of the office as he went along. Because he was influenced at first by his mother, his uncles and his tutor (Pobedonostsev remained Procurator of the Holy Synod until 1905), his enemies declared that he had no will of his own. It would be more accurate to say that he was a man of narrow, special education; of strong and—unfortunately—unchanging conviction; of soft-spoken, kindly manner; and, underneath, of stubborn courage. Even Sergius Witte, whose abrupt dismissal from office later bred in him a venomous hatred of Nicholas, nevertheless wrote of the early years: “In those days, the young Emperor carried in himself the seeds of the best that the human mind and heart possess.”

   To the despair of Russian liberals who had hoped that the death of Alexander III would mean a modification of the autocracy, Nicholas quickly made it clear that he would closely abide by his father’s principles. Even before the coronation, he struck this note. In sending to the new Tsar the traditional address of congratulation on his accession, the Zemstvo of Tver, a stronghold of liberalism, had voiced an appeal “that the voice of the people and the expression of its desires would be listened to” and that the law would stand “above the changing views of the individual instruments of supreme power.” In this mild language Pobedonostsev discovered a dangerous challenge to the principle of autocracy, and with his help the young Tsar drafted a reply which he delivered in person to the Tver delegation. Admonishing them for their “senseless dreams of the participation of the Zemstvos’ representatives in the affairs of internal administration,” Nicholas added, “I shall maintain the principle of autocracy just as firmly and unflinchingly as it was preserved by my unforgettable dead father.”