States:
“At dinner tonight, H.I.M. [His Imperial Majesty] talked about empires and republics. His own ideas as a young man were that he had a great responsibility and he felt that the people over whom he ruled were so numerous and so varying in blood and temperament, different altogether from our Western Europeans, that an Emperor was a vital necessity to them. His first visit to the Caucasus had made a vital impression on him and confirmed him in his views.
“The United States of America, he said, was an entirely different matter, and the two cases could not be compared. In this country [Russia], many as were the problems and the difficulties, their sense of imagination, their intense religious feeling and their habits and customs generally made a crown necessary, and he believed this must be so for a very long time, that a certain amount of decentralizing of authority was, of course, necessary but that the great and decisive power must rest with the Crown. The powers of the Duma must go slowly, because of the difficulties of pushing on education at any reasonably fast rate among all these masses of his subjects.”
As for the personal role of the Autocrat, Nicholas admitted that, while he could give any order he liked, he could not ensure that it was carried out. Often, when he found that something he had asked had not been properly done, he said wistfully to Hanbury-Williams, “You see what it is to be an autocrat.”
At Headquarters, the Tsar took long afternoon walks along country roads thoroughly scouted in advance by Cossack patrols. In warm weather, he rowed on the Dnieper, often removing his blouse so that the sun could tan him. Occasionally, for variety, he challenged other officers to a race. Nicholas liked to win, but he would row only against men who had a chance of beating him.
In November 1914, the Tsar left Headquarters for a long journey to the southern Causasus, where his troops were fighting the Turks. “We are passing through picturesque country,” he wrote to Alexandra, “… with beautiful high mountains on one side and the steppes on the other. At each station, the platforms are crowded with people … thousands of them.… We are running along by the Caspian Sea. It rests the eyes to look on the blue distance, it reminded me of the Black Sea … not far off are the mountains, beautifully lit by the sun.” In Kuban province, passing Cossack villages, he admired the people and their rich orchards. “They are beginning to be wealthy, and above all they have an inconceivably high number of small infants. All future subjects. This all fills me with joy and faith in God’s mercy. I look forward in peace and confidence to what lies in store for Russia.”
On trips, when outdoor exercise was impossible, Nicholas solved the problem by rigging an apparatus inside the train. “My hanging trapeze has proved very practical and useful,” he wrote. “I swung on it many times and climbed it before meals. It really is an excellent thing for the train, it stirs up the blood and the whole organism.” From this description arises a piquant image of the Imperial train rolling through dusty villages, past platforms crowded with curious and worshipful peasants, while inside, hidden from view, the Little Father hangs by his heels, swinging back and forth on his trapeze.
In the autumn of 1915, the Tsar brought his son, the eleven-year-old Tsarevich, to live with him at Army Headquarters. It was a startling move, not simply because of the boy’s age but also because of his hemophilia. Yet, Nicholas did not make his decision impetuously. His reasons, laboriously weighed for months in advance, were both sentimental and shrewd.
The Russian army, battered and retreating after a summer of terrible losses, badly needed a lift in morale. Nicholas himself made constant appearances, and his presence, embodying the cause of Holy Russia, raised tremendous enthusiasm among the men who saw him. It was his hope that the appearance of the Heir at his side, symbolizing the future, would further bolster their drooping spirits. It was a reasonable hope, and, in fact, wherever Alexis appeared he became a center of great excitement.
Perhaps more important, the Tsar was thinking of the distant future and the day his son would sit on the throne. Alexis’s education, up to that point, had been anything but normal. As a prince, he lived in a restricted world; because of his illness, it was primarily a world of adoring women. By taking his son from the muffled, silken- pillowed atmosphere of the palace and bringing him into the bracing air of beards, leather and uniforms at
It was enormously difficult for the Empress to let Alexis go. During his entire lifetime, he had not been out of her sight for more than a few hours; whenever he was gone, she imagined dangers which others would never dream of. On his trips to Headquarters, the Tsarevich was surrounded with protection by his personal retinue: Fedorov and Derevenko the doctors, Gilliard the tutor, Derevenko and Nagorny the sailor bodyguards. Yet real risks were involved and the Empress was acutely aware of them. In traveling on the Imperial train, there was danger of stumbling and falling in the corridors as the carriages lurched. Bouncing in automobiles over dirt roads, traveling in a zone where German airplanes might appear, walking long distances and standing for hours as thousands of men marched by—no doctor would permit this activity for any other hemophiliac. While he was away, Alexandra’s letters to the Tsar were filled with concern for him: “See that Tiny [Alexis] doesn’t tire himself on the stairs. He cannot take walks.… Tiny loves digging and working and he is so strong and forgets that he must be careful.… Take care of Baby’s arm, don’t let him run about on the train so as not to knock his arms.… Before you decide, speak with Mr. Gilliard, he is such a sensible man and knows all so well about Baby.” Every night at nine p.m., the Empress went to Alexis’s room as if he were there saying his prayers. There, on her knees, she prayed to God that her son would come home safely.
Once when Gilliard had returned alone to Tsarskoe Selo, leaving Alexis at Headquarters, the Empress explained to him why she had let her son go at all. “After the meal, we went out on the terrace,” wrote the tutor. “It was a beautiful evening, warm and still. Her Majesty was stretched on a sofa and two of her daughters were knitting woollen clothing for the soldiers. The other two Grand Duchesses were sewing. Alexis Nicolaievich was naturally the principal topic of conversation. They never tired of asking me what he did and said … with a candor which utterly amazed me [the Empress then] said that all his life the Tsar had suffered from his natural timidity and from the fact that, as he had been kept too much in the background, he had found himself badly prepared for the duties of a ruler on the sudden death of Alexander III. The Tsar had vowed to avoid the same mistakes in the education of his own son.” Suppressing her own terrible fears, the Empress agreed with her husband.
Alexis himself was longing to escape from the Alexander Palace. For months, his greatest excitement had been a series of afternoon automobile drives taken within a radius of twenty miles of Tsarskoe Selo. “We used to start out immediately after lunch,” wrote Gilliard, who arranged the excursions. “[We] often stopped at villages to watch the peasants at work. Alexis Nicolaievich liked questioning them, and they always answered him with the frank, kindly simplicity of the Russian
For a lively, intelligent eleven-year-old boy, the chance to visit Army Headquarters was a promise of high adventure. On an October morning in 1915, the Tsarevich, dressed in the uniform of an army private, delightedly kissed his mother goodbye and boarded his father’s train. Even before reaching Headquarters, Alexis saw his first review of front-line troops. As the Tsar walked down the ranks, Gilliard wrote, “Alexis Nicolaievich was at his father’s heels, listening intently to the stories of these men who had often stared death in the face. His features, which were always expressive, became quite strained in an effort not to lose a single word of what the men were saying. His presence at the Tsar’s side greatly interested the soldiers … they were heard whispering their ideas about his age, size and looks. But the point that made the greatest impression on them was the fact that the Tsarevich was wearing the uniform of a private soldier.”
A series of German victories in the summer of 1915 had forced relocation of
“It is very cosy sleeping side by side,” Nicholas wrote to Alexandra. “I say prayers with him every night.… He says his prayers too fast and it is difficult to stop him.… I read all [your] letters aloud to him. He listens lying in bed and kisses your signature.… He sleeps well and likes the window left open.… Noise in the street does not disturb him.… Yesterday evening when Alexei was already in bed, a thunderstorm broke out; the lightning struck
