The Family Romanov: Part Four

Otherwise, he reveled in spending time with his family and having “plenty of [hours] to read for my own pleasure.”

Now the family had the sickly Alexandra back. Her features suddenly aged and gaunt, her hair almost completely gray, she constantly grumbled about the hardships imposed on the family.

Footmen in elaborate livery still bowed and served meals; expensive wines from the imperial cellar still appeared on the table; maids still came to help her change into lace gowns and lengths of pearls.

Angry mobs carrying guns and banners denounced the foreign minister.

They declared the government deceitful and hypocritical.

Recalled one soviet member, “[Lenin] was followed unquestioningly as [the Bolsheviks’ chosen] leader...a man of iron will and indomitable energy, capable of instilling fanatical faith in the movement and the cause.”

The offensive began in early July and soon turned into a rout, not for the Austrians and the Germans who helped them, but for the Russians, as hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers were killed.

“Behave like gentlemen, not like cads,” he advised them.

Knowing he could not transport the family in their easily recognizable blue imperial train, he had an ordinary one fitted out with Japanese flags and placards that read “Japanese Red Cross Mission.”

Already, the rooms felt empty, the dustcloth-covered furniture looking like forlorn ghosts.

Now the Romanovs sat among the detritus of their lives, and waited.

He found the grand duchesses huddled together “weeping copiously” while the tsar stood at one of the windows stonily smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Even the usually stoic Alexandra was affected by the nerve-racking delay.

Eighteen-year-old Marie, however, was as earnest and open as ever.

But the October Revolution was a well-organized and quiet coup.

At first, the new Bolshevik-controlled government had little effect on the Romanovs, and their days went on as before—meals, books, card games...boredom! Then winter roared in, bringing both snow and a break in the monotony.

They demanded that Nicholas remove his officer’s epaulets from his uniforms and jackets. Since they bore his father’s monogram, their forced removal was a deep affront to the entire family.

As they marched, former landowners and factory owners angry over Bolshevik seizure of their property joined them. So did devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church who still believed the tsar was God anointed; supporters of the Provisional Government who wanted democracy rather than communism; and twenty-five thousand Czech prisoners of war who were fighting their way out of Russia in hopes of being reunited with Czech troops on the front.

“To think they called [Alexandra] a traitor,” he cried indignantly one moment, only to moan in the next, “How much longer will our unfortunate motherland be torn and ripped apart?"

The sight of the former heir lying so still in his bed shook the commissar. “The yellow-complexioned, haggard boy seemed to be passing away,” he later wrote.

“The dresses...of wanton women,” shrieked a woman, pointing toward the train.

“Nagorny the sailor...passed my window, carrying the sick [Alexei] in his arms; behind him came the grand duchesses, loaded with valises and small personal belongings....Tatiana Nikolaevna came last, carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining, and I saw her feet sinking into the mud at every step.”

Instead, their luggage had been tossed unopened and haphazardly into a storage shed located behind the house.

When the revolution came, he backed the Bolsheviks with zealous enthusiasm, rising up quickly through the party ranks.

Nicholas had to be “liquidated” before the city fell. But Lenin and other high-ranking Bolsheviks in Moscow refused to authorize an execution.

Even though most officials believed Alexandra was to blame for much of the country’s disintegration, they had no intention of charging her—or the children—with any crimes. Lenin was adamant on this last point.

He vehemently opposed murdering the entire imperial family, not because he cared what happened to them but because he believed it would have a bad effect on public opinion across Russia and abroad.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he never took his eyes off the group as the priest moved through the liturgy.

But when Yurovsky explained what was expected of them, at least two of the men balked.

And rumors that the rest of the family had been killed didn’t elicit much emotion either.

Citizens became subject to “labor conscription”; that is, they had to work where, when, and at what the government told them.

Disillusioned by the treatment workers and peasants had received under Lenin’s dictatorship, they took to the streets, demanding freedoms the soviet government had taken away: free elections, free speech, freedom of the press, free trade unions, and freedom for the peasants to harvest their own land for their own benefit.

He immediately embarked on what he called a purge, eliminating all his old Bolshevik friends and rivals by exile, execution, or assassination.

But here too I had no luck: there was a long [line] of hopeful eaters, tedium and vexation written on their faces; the [line] was not moving at all....

But here too I had no luck: there was a long [line] of hopeful eaters, tedium and vexation written on their faces; the [line] was not moving at all....

In a poignant twist, this same series of tests also identified one of the grand duchesses as being a carrier of hemophilia.

Most agreed they should be buried in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg, where all tsars since Peter the Great had been buried. But there were some touchy issues to sort out first. Should the whole family be interred together?

Traditionally, only the tsar and his wife were given tombs in the central part of the cathedral, while children were relegated to spots farther back.

A year later, they concluded that neither Nicholas nor his family deserved sainthood. “His life, his actions...all of this is regarded by the Church and Society in a very ambivalent way,” explained one church leader.

Built in the Russian style, each with its own gold cupola and green roof, they are individual shrines, one for each of the now haloed Romanovs.