Anna Vyrubova, after being taken by Kerensky from Tsarskoe Selo, was imprisoned for five months in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, released, then re-imprisoned several times, once in the stoker’s quarters of the former Imperial yacht Polar Star, whose polished decks she had walked with the Empress. For a while, she lived in obscurity in Petrograd and even became friendly with the revolutionary writer Maxim Gorky, who urged her to write her memoirs. Finally, pursued again, she escaped to Finland in 1920. She lived there quietly for forty-four years until her death in 1964 at the age of eighty.
Pierre Gilliard remained in Siberia for three years, assisting in the work of Sokolov’s investigation. With his wife, Alexandra Tegleva, who had been Grand Duchess Anastasia’s nurse, he returned to Switzerland by way of Japan and the United States and there, in his early forties resumed the education interrupted almost twenty years before when he went to Russia. He became a noted Professor of the French language at the University of Lausanne and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. To the end, through his writing and speaking, Gilliard defended the memory of the family he had served. He died in 1962 at eighty-three.
Iliodor, the fiery monk-priest who had been Rasputin’s arch-foe, went back to Russia after the revolution with a quixotic plan to revamp the Orthodox Church to suit the Bolsheviks and make himself the new “Russian Pope.” The Bolsheviks were uninterested, and in 1921, Iliodor came to New York City and became a Baptist. He lived in obscurity, working for a while as a janitor in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building on Madison Square. In 1952, at the age of seventy-one, he died of heart trouble in Bellevue Hospital.
Maria Rasputin, the starets’s eldest daughter, left Russia with her husband, Boris Soloviev, and became a lion-tamer. In the 1930’s, she toured Europe and the United States, billed as “the daughter of the famous mad monk whose feats in Russia astonished the world.” She now lives near the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles.
Now, in the winter of 1967, only a handful of the major characters in this immense historical drama remain alive. Mathilde Kschessinska, whose house was Lenin’s headquarters in Petrograd, left Russia in 1920 and married Grand Duke Andrei at Cannes in 1921. For thirty years, she conducted a ballet studio in Paris, instructing, among many others, Margot Fonteyn. In 1936, at the age of sixty-three, she danced in a jubilee performance at Covent Garden. Today, the young ballerina who rode through the snowy nights in a troika beside Nicholas II still lives in Paris. She is ninety-four.
Prince Felix Yussoupov and his wife, Princess Irina, have lived mostly in Paris, where Yussoupov’s generosity to other Russian émigrés has become legend. Two famous court cases have brought the Yussoupov name back into prominence. The first occurred in 1934, when Princess Irina sued Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for libel in London over a movie titled Rasputin the Mad Monk. The Yussoupovs won this case and MGM paid them $375,000. In 1965, Prince Yussoupov came to New York City to sue the Columbia Broadcasting System for invasion of privacy over a television play depicting the murder of Rasputin. This time, the Yussoupovs lost. Today, at seventy-nine, Prince Yussoupov lives in the Paris district of Auteuil in a small house converted from a barn.
Alexander Kerensky has lived in London, Paris, Palo Alto, California, and New York City. In the near half-century since leaving Russia, he has written a series of books, most of them an impassioned retelling of the story of the brief, hectic seven months in which he stood at the center of Russian history. Today, still vigorous at eighty-five, he lives in New York City and Palo Alto.
It is impossible to trace exactly the course of one of the overwhelming influences in this drama: the defective gene which Queen Victoria passed to her descendants. Until recently, when plasma and powerful plasma concentrates become available, hemophilia, like other recessive hereditary diseases, tended to die out of afflicted families by the process of attrition. In Queen Victoria’s enormous clan, this pattern has been followed. Among the fourth generation—the Queen’s great-grandchildren—there were six hemophiliacs. Alexis was one of these. Two of the others were Crown Prince Alfonso and Prince Gonzalo, the sons of Alfonso XIII, the last king of Spain. Both brothers were killed as young men in automobile accidents, Gonzalo in Austria in 1934 and Alfonso in Miami in 1938. In both cases, except for uncontrolled hemorrhaging, their injuries would have been minor. The fifth generation of Victoria’s family, which includes both Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, has been free of hemophilia, as has the sixth. It is possible that the mutant gene may still exist in the carrier state among Queen Victoria’s female descendants and could suddenly appear in a future boy. But with the passing of successive generations, that possibility, already distant, will become exceedingly remote.
There is a durable legend that an immense pile of Romanov gold lies somewhere in a sealed bank vault awaiting the arrival of any member of the Tsar’s immediate family who can positively identify himself or herself. The facts do little to support the legend. Nothing was left of the Imperial family’s wealth inside Russia. Even before the Bolshevik Revolution, all the Romanov estates and properties were taken by the Provisional Government. When Nicholas abdicated, his personal capital in Russia amounted to a million roubles, or $500,000; the Empress’s capital was one and a half million roubles, or $750,000. Portions of these sums were withdrawn by Count Benckendorff and used to pay the expenses of the Imperial family at Tobolsk; the rest was seized by the Bolsheviks. The jewelry belonging to the crown became the property of the state. Part of it was broken up and sold by the Soviet government; the residue makes up a dazzling permanent display in the Kremlin. Most of the personal jewelry taken by the Empress and her daughters to Tobolsk was discovered during the destruction of their bodies. The broken fragments later found by Sokolov were preserved as relics and later buried in the Russian cemetery outside Paris. Empress Marie’s personal jewelry, once estimated at a value over $2 million, was sold after her death for a fraction of that sum. A number of pieces found their way into the collection of Queen Mary. Today, Queen Elizabeth II often wears the Empress Marie’s spectacular diamond necklace and diamond tiara.
Before the First World War, the Russian Imperial family had deposits abroad, and it is here that many glowing expectations have been focused. There were funds in a bank in Berlin, but after the war, with the collapse of the mark in runaway inflation, the sum became insignificant. Today, there might be $1,500, but the bank is in East Berlin. The remaining hopes center on the Bank of England, but these too appear groundless. During the war, Nicholas and Alexandra devoted their private fortunes to the war effort. Deposits in England were withdrawn and brought back to Russia to help pay for the network of hospitals and hospital trains under the Empress’s patronage. The money was transferred through the British Embassy in Petrograd; on August 26, 1915 (O.S.), Alexandra wrote to Nicholas: “I see [Sir George] Buchanan tomorrow as he brings me again over 100,000 p. [pounds] from England.” By the end of the war, there was nothing left.
In 1960, the late Sir Edward Peacock, Director of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1924 and again from 1929 to 1946, discussed the question with a Canadian writer, Ian Vorres, who was collaborating with Grand Duchess Olga on her memoirs. Peacock had been personally instructed by King George V to look after his cousin Olga’s financial affairs. From this vantage, he wrote:
“I am pretty sure there never was any money of the Imperial family of Russia in the Bank of England nor any other bank in England. Of course, it is difficult to say ‘never’ but I am positive at least there never was any money after World War I and during my long years as director of the bank.”
Nevertheless, despite all evidence to the contrary, the alluring idea that a lost fortune exists has continued to stimulate extraordinary activity. As in every case of the death of royal persons in mysterious circumstances, rumors persisted that some or all members of the Imperial family were still alive. In 1920, the Tsar himself was said to have been seen in the streets of London, his hair snow white. Another story placed him in Rome, secr
etly hidden in the Vatican by the Pope. The entire Imperial family was said to be aboard a ship, cruising eternally through the waters of the White Sea, never touching any land.
Over the years, dozens of claimants have stepped forward, proclaiming themselves this or that member of the Imperial family. The Tsarevich Alexis reappeared for the first time in Siberia soon after the murder. Gilliard saw him and found a young man who looked vaguely like Alexis but understood only Russian. Eventually, the boy admitted that he was an impostor. The pathetic story of Mrs. Anna Anderson’s lifelong attempt to prove herself the Grand Duchess Anastasia has become world famous. Nevertheless, she has been challenged by numerous other Anastasias living in far corners of the globe. It was the fate of Grand Duchess Olga, who had been closer to her niece Anastasia than any other Romanov survivor, to meet many of these women. Occasionally, she met them willingly, as in Berlin in 1925 when she interviewed Mrs. Anderson and, after four days at her bedside, sadly pronounced her false. More often, the pretenders pursued Olga relentlessly and flung themselves upon her, loudly crying, “Dear Aunt Olga!” Olga endured these intrusions, recognizing them as the inevitable consequence of public fascination with an exciting tale of miraculous escape from death. “My telling the truth does not help in the least,” she once said, “because the public simply wants to believe the mystery.”
Infinitely more remarkable and more fatefully enigmatic than the riddle of Anastasia is the awesome, overwhelming drama of the Russian Revolution itself. The rise of Communism, brought by Lenin to Russia, its rooting there and the spreading of its doctrines and power around the globe are the pivotal historical events of our time. Ironically, the two great Communist nations, Russia and China, are the only world powers with which the United States has never warred. The current struggle dividing the world is not over trade or territory, but over ideology. This is the legacy of Lenin.
And also the legacy of Rasputin and hemophilia. Kerensky once said, “If there had been no Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin.” If this is true, it is also true that if there had been no hemophilia, there would have been no Rasputin. This is not to say that everything that happened in Russia and the world has stemmed entirely from the personal tragedy of a single boy. It is not to overlook the backwardness and restlessness of Russian society, the clamor for reform, the strain and battering of a world war, the gentle, retiring nature of the last Tsar. All of these had a powerful bruising impact on events. Even before the birth of the Tsarevich, autocracy was in retreat.
Here, precisely, is the point. Had it not been for the agony of Alexis’s hemophilia, had it not been for the desperation which made his mother turn to Rasputin, first to save her son, then to save the pure autocracy, might not Nicholas II have continued retreating into the role of constitutional monarch so happily filled by his cousin King George V? It might have happened, and, in fact, it was in this direction that Russian history was headed. In 1905, the Russian people had had a partial revolution. Absolute power was struck from the hands of the Tsar with the creation of the Duma. In the era of Stolypin and the Third Duma, cooperation between the throne and parliament reached a level of high promise for the future. During the war, the nation asked not for revolution but for reform—for a share of responsibility in fighting and winning the victory. But Alexandra, goaded by Rasputin, passionately objected to any sharing of the Imperial power. By giving way to his wife, by fighting to save the autocracy and denying every plea for responsible government, Nicholas made revolution and the eventual triumph of Lenin inevitable.
Why Lenin triumphed, why Nicholas failed, why Alexandra placed the fate of her son, her husband and his empire in the hands of a wandering holy man, why Alexis suffered from hemophilia—these are the true riddles of this historical tale. All of them have answers except, perhaps, the last.
Family Trees
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
IN WRITING this book I worked in and drew material from the New York Public Library, the Butler Library of Columbia University, and the Beinecke Rare Book Library of Yale University. I am grateful to the staffs of these institutions for their courtesy and efficiency. I especially appreciate the assistance of Miss Margery Wynne for making available the unique collection of Romanov albums and papers at the Beinecke Library. Without the help of Mr. Richard Orlando, who painstakingly traced numerous volumes, my research would have been thinner and more difficult.
I am greatly indebted to Mr. Dimitry Lehovich and to Professor. Robert Williams of Williams College, each of whom read the entire manuscript and offered numerous helpful suggestions. Neither is responsible for any errors of fact or judgment which may appear in the book. On specific points, I drew on the knowledge of Father James Griffiths of the Orthodox Church, Mrs. Svetlana Umrichin, and Mrs. Evgenia Lehovich. These three also gave their constant encouragement to the project as a whole.
My understanding of the medical problems of hemophilia has been guided by a succession of interviews and conversations with Dr. Kenneth Brinkhous, Dr. Martin Rosenthal, the late Dr. Leandro Tocantins, Dr. Oscar Lucas, Dr. David Agle and Dr. Ake Mattson. For specific questions relating to this book, and for their devoted support over the years, I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Leroy Engel and Dr. Herbert Newman.
Among those who by word and deed gave me steady encouragement during the many long months of writing were Suzanne and Maurice Rohrbach, the late N. Hardin Massie, Simon Michael Bessie, Alfred Knopf, Jr., Robert Lantz, and Janet Dowling, who, along with Terry Conover, typed the manuscript. My children have sustained me with their unfailing optimism and with dozens of cheerful drawings.
The contribution made by my wife, Suzanne, is immeasurable. Along with her own career in journalism, she produced a constant flow of research for this book. At nights and on weekends, she read and edited every line. Her ideas and suggestions, carefully recorded by me on hundreds of hours of tape, provided a constant environment of creative stimulus. Without this help, the book would never have been written. Now that it is finished, it is hers as much as mine.
ROBERT K. MASSIE
Notes
Four primary sources are cited in abbreviated form throughout these Notes. Nicholas II’s Journal Intime is cited as “N’s Diary.” The Letters of the Tsar to the Tsaritsa 1914–1917 is cited as “N to AF,” and Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar 1914–1916 is cited as “AF to N.” The Secret Letters of the Last Tsar: The Confidential Correspondence Between Nicholas II and His Mother, Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna is cited as “N to MF” for letters from Nicholas to his mother, and as “MF to N” for letters from the Empress to her son.
CHAPTER I 1894: IMPERIAL RUSSIA
1 “This curious conglomeration”: Paléologue, I, 93.
2 “Cleaving the city down the center”: Kennan, 3.
3 River breezes and salt air: Paléologue, I, 348.
4 “Fashionable décolletage”: Dehn, 44. “Nobody thought of leaving”: ibid., 44.
5 Receptions and balls: Meriel Buchanan, 13; Vorres, 99.
6 Imperial balls: Mosolov, 192–202; Vorres, 100–1; Alexander, 55–6, 161–2.
7 “That is what I’m going to do to your … army corps”: Alexander, 67.
8 Alexander III: Mosolov, 4. “A sovereign whom she does not look upon”: Bainbridge, 13.
9 “On the point of striking you”: Kaun, 130.
10 The bassoon: Pares, 30
11 Dagmar engaged to Alexander’s brother: Vorres, 21.
12 Empress Marie: Alexander, 73; Mosolov, 65; Vorres, 53, 57.
13 “They danced the mazurka for half an hour”: MF to N, 44.
14 “He is feted, he is stuffed”: MF to N, 45. The Imperial train derailed: Alexander, 168; Vorres, 29.
CHAPTER 2 THE TSAREVICH NICHOLAS
1 An older brother, Alexander: Alexander, 165; Vorres, 21.
2 Nicholas admired George’s humor: Vorres, 34. George’s tuberculosis: Alexander, 120.
4 “Nicky was so hungry”: ibid., 36. Pelting each other with bread: Mosolov, 5.
5 Dancing tutor: Vorres, 35.
6 “The High Priest of Social Stagnation”: Mazour, 36. “The dominant and most baleful influence”: Charques, 51. Coldly ascetic: Vorres, 38.
7 “Abode of the ‘Bad Man’ “: Alexander, 188.
8 “Among the falsest of political principles”: Pobedonostsev, 32.
9 “Parliament is an institution”: ibid., 34–5. “Providence has preserved our Russia”: ibid., 49.
10 Pobedonostsev’s philosophy: Pares, History, 426–7. The Jewish problem: Harcave, 21. “We must not forget”: Florinsky, 1119.
11 Pobedonostsev excommunicated Tolstoy: Introduction to Pobedonostsev, ix.
12 Anna Karenina: Paléologue, I, 314.
13 “It is too early to thank God”: Pares, History, 403. “To the palace, to die there”: ibid., 403.
14 The death scene: Alexander, 59–61.
15 “Their red lances shining brightly”: ibid., 61.
16 “With faith in the power and right of autocracy”: Pares, History, 407.
17 A slender youth, five feet seven inches: Alexander, 173. “His usual tender, shy, slightly sad smile”: ibid., 77.
18 Languages: Alexander, 165.
19 N’s Diary: Pares, 15. The cryptic, emotionless style of Nicholas’s diary often is cited as evidence of a shallow character. “It is the diary of a nobody,” writes Charques, “of a man of transparently immature and of patently insignificant interests … triviality piled on triviality.”
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