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

by Candace Fleming

  The girls (including, later, Anastasia) detested languages. Calling them “piddle,” they did just enough work to get by and nothing more. While they spoke English fluently, their great-uncle King Edward VII of England once declared their accents atrocious. And even with Gibbes’s tutoring, they never mastered its spelling or grammar. As for Russian, some claimed they were hard to understand. “[The grand duchesses] had an accent that seemed English when they spoke in Russian, and Russian when they spoke English,” said one acquaintance. “Never before or since have I heard anybody talk with that strange … accent.” And French? “They never learned to speak it fluently,” confessed their French teacher, Pierre Gilliard.

  A courteous and observant man with a fastidiously trimmed mustache, Gilliard had arrived at the palace two years before Gibbes. In that time, he had grown to care for his young students. They, in turn, had come to trust him as a friend.

  Olga, he wrote, “possessed a remarkably quick brain. She had good reasoning powers as well as initiative.… She picked up everything quickly, and always managed to give an original turn to what she learned.” An avid reader, she was forever swiping novels and books of poetry from her mother’s table before the empress read them. One day, when Alexandra complained, Olga replied, “You must wait, Mama, until I find out whether this book is a proper one for you to read.” Still, for all her natural gifts, Olga did not fulfill Gilliard’s hopes.

  Less frank and spontaneous than her older sister, Tatiana liked painting, needlework, and playing the piano. Too bad, remarked Gibbes, “she showed no feeling when she played.” Gilliard agreed. “She was not so gifted,” he wrote, but she made up for it in “perseverance.”

  And then there was Marie. Unlike her two older sisters, who were at least diligent students, Marie paid little attention to her lessons. She preferred walking outside or painting pictures. In fact, according to Gibbes, she could paint with her left hand even though she was right-handed. More extraordinary, she could paint with her left hand while writing with her right. If that wasn’t unusual enough, Marie was incredibly strong. She showed off her strength by occasionally grabbing her flustered tutors around the waist and lifting them off the ground.

  Gilliard briefly pinned his academic hopes on little Anastasia. As a small child, she showed an interest in the classroom. But this fascination was short-lived. Just after her eighth birthday, she officially started school—and so did her teachers’ troubles.

  “A TRUE GENIUS IN NAUGHTINESS”

  Anastasia was a mischievous little girl, “wild and rough, a hair-puller and tripper-up of servants,” wrote one historian. She possessed, recalled one family friend, “a true genius in naughtiness” that extended into the classroom. Said Gibbes, “The little grand duchess was not always an easy child to instruct.… We had, as a rule, charming lessons, but sometimes there were storms.”

  Once, she snatched up a bottle of black ink and threatened to throw it all over Gibbes’s impeccable white shirt if he did not raise her English grade. The teacher refused, and the furious girl stormed out. Minutes later, she returned. This time, she was all smiles and sweetness, and she clutched a bouquet of flowers she’d grabbed from one of the palace’s many blossom-filled vases.

  Was this an apology for her earlier bad behavior?

  No, it was a bribe—a fistful of flowers for a raised mark. Again, Gibbes refused.

  Anastasia drew herself up. Chin high and with a loud huff, she marched into the classroom next door, where their Russian instructor sat. At the top of her voice, she said, “Peter Vasilievich, allow me to present you with these flowers.”

  Had Gibbes heard?

  She shouted again just to be sure.

  Anastasia was obviously a handful during Gilliard’s lessons, too. While the French teacher did not share details, clues to her behavior can be found in a letter to her father. “What we [children] did to Monsieur Gilliard—just terrible!” she confessed. “We were pushing him with our fists and in any other way, he had it from us.”

  Another time, Alexei gleefully reported to his father, “Anastasia was trying to strangle Monsieur Gilliard!”

  Anastasia’s distaste for school was clear. “Now I have to do an arithmetical problem,” she once grumbled in a letter to a friend, “and of course it doesn’t want to solve, such pig and filth!” School, she added in a burdened tone, was nothing but “horrid lessons.”

  “ALEXEI THE TERRIBLE”

  Still too young for school, the youngest Romanov was the center of his parents’ world. They called him their “dear one,” their “wee one,” their “Sunbeam.” And they fussed over him endlessly. “[He] was … the focus of all [their] hopes and affections,” recalled Pierre Gilliard. “When he was well, the palace … seemed bathed in sunshine.”

  A handsome child with chestnut-colored hair and big blue-gray eyes, Alexei was, despite his fragile health, romping and full of mischief. Once, when he was five, he crawled under the dinner table and snatched off one of the female guest’s slippers. Carrying it above his head, he ceremoniously presented it to Nicholas.

  The tsar was not amused. He commanded his son to return it.

  Grudgingly, Alexei again crawled under the table.

  Seconds later, the lady shrieked. That’s because Alexei had stuffed a big, juicy strawberry into the shoe before putting it back on her foot.

  He laughed uproariously at the joke—until he was banished to the nursery. He was not allowed in the dining room for several weeks.

  Some guests wished Alexei’s exile from the dinner table had been made permanent. “He wouldn’t sit up, ate badly, licked his plate, and teased the others,” Cousin Konstantin wrote in his diary after lunching with the imperial family one day. “The Emperor often turned away, perhaps to avoid having to say anything, while the Empress rebuked her elder daughter [fifteen-year-old] Olga, who sat next to her brother, for not restraining him. But Olga cannot deal with him.”

  His parents could deny him nothing. They loved him passionately and found it impossible to be firm with him. Because of this, most of his wishes were granted. If the tsarevich wanted a toy rifle, they bought it. If he wanted pancakes for dinner, they served them.

  But nothing could substitute for what Alexei wanted most of all—to be like other boys. “Can’t I have a bicycle?” he once begged his mother.

  “Alexei, you know you can’t,” she replied.

  “Mayn’t I play tennis?” he persisted.

  “Dear, you know you mustn’t,” Alexandra answered.

  Alexei burst into tears. “Why can other boys have everything and I nothing?” he wailed pitifully.

  Sometimes he seemed almost defiant in the face of his illness. Once, during a review of the palace guard, he hopped onto one of the gardeners’ bicycles. Nicholas was in mid-salute when he spied his son zigzagging precariously across the parade ground. Frightened the boy might fall, Nicholas halted the review and ordered the soldiers to surround and capture the bicyclist. Squealing with excitement, Alexei led them on a merry chase. Another time, when he was seven, he sprang onto the tabletop during one of the few children’s parties he was allowed to attend. Waving the other young guests up alongside him, he burst into a frenzied game of follow the leader. Wildly, the boy hopped from table to chair and back to the table. Horrified, his sailor nannies, Derevenko and Nagorny, tried to stop him before he hurt himself. But Alexei just hollered, “All grown-ups have to go!” and shoved them out the door.

  The boy could be rude and domineering. As a six-year-old, he once walked into his father’s office, where the foreign minister sat waiting for the tsar. Alexei expected the minister to leap to his feet. When he didn’t, the boy stomped up to him and with fists clenched, shouted, “When the Heir to the Russian throne enters a room, people must get up.” Another time, he was playing in the nursery with his sisters when he learned a group of soldiers wanted to meet him. “Now, girls,” the six-year-old said dismissively, “run away. I am busy. Someone has just called to see me on
business.”

  No wonder Nicholas once joked that he “trembled for Russia” under the rule of “Alexei the Terrible.”

  FAMILY FUN

  The children found plenty of interesting things to do—playing tennis, hiking, dancing, bicycling, anything busy. All five of them adored animals, and at Tsarskoe Selo they had dozens of pets. Among them was Vaska the cat, and Ortipo, a French bulldog who snored so loudly he kept the girls awake at night. There was Vanka, a trained donkey from the Cinizelli Circus, who would snuffle through the children’s pockets in search of treats and who loved to chew rubber balls. There was an elephant with his own elaborate stable; two llamas; a mouse who lived in the “Little Pair’s” bedroom wall; and a parrot named Popov who resided—of all places—in the tsar’s bathroom. And there was a King Charles spaniel who earned the family nickname mersavetz (“rascal”) because, said Marie, he did his “governor-general” on the carpets. (Her parents gave the girls a little silver bucket and shovel with which to clean it up.)

  One passion shared by the entire family was photography. Everyone, even little Alexei, had his or her own Kodak Brownie camera. The cameras were lightweight and easy to use, and the family took them everywhere, snapping away indiscriminately—dozens of photographs each day. Anastasia even attempted a self-portrait. “I took [one] picture while looking in the mirror,” she told her father, “and it was hard, because my hands were shaking.”

  Most evenings after dinner, the family took time to carefully paste their photographs into special albums made of green Moroccan leather and engraved with the imperial eagle. Over the years, they filled album after album with snapshots, forming a detailed record of their everyday lives at Tsarskoe Selo … and wherever they went.

  BEYOND THE PALACE GATES:

  AN OCCUPATION FOR WORKERS DAUGHTERS

  Along St. Petersburg’s fashionable Nevsky Prospect stood shop after expensive shop—furriers, perfumers, jewelers—all catering to the city’s rich. Behind the shop’s counters stood thousands of girls between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Older women were rarely hired because shop owners preferred what one called good-looking girls. Overworked, underpaid, and often exploited by their bosses, they were still expected to dress attractively and smile brightly. This is how one shop girl named Aizenshtein described her life, in a letter written to a newspaper in 1908:

  The first thing the shop owner or manager says when you ask for a job is, “Are you ticklish?” If you bat your eyes or nod your head suggestively, the job is yours. But if you don’t … you might as well forget it.… For this you get an unforgiving job.… Our workday in the winter is thirteen and a half hours, and in the summer, fifteen hours. Before the store opens and after it closes we have to clean, sort and put away all the merchandise that was taken out during the day. When the store is open, we have to stand out on the street [in any kind of weather] to attract customers. If we let anyone go by, the boss swears at us in the choicest language. The customers also swear at us for trying to drag them in by the coat tails.

  We are very poorly paid; ten to fifteen rubles a month [about two dollars] is considered a good wage for a sales girl. [But] they don’t pay us each month, or even every two weeks, so we have to go to the boss each day and beg him for enough money for food. And when you ask the employer for [your pay] you are insulted: “You’re always asking for money, but you never sell anything. How much money did you earn today, eh? I’m asking you! Answer my question!” screams the employer. “If you want money, you have to work.” After a response like that, it’s hard to approach the boss again. But when you’ve gone hungry for a few days, you try once more. You look around timidly, then go up to the boss again, and he either insults you, or, in the best circumstances, he gives you [a few] kopecks, saying, “Don’t bother me again!”

  We don’t get time off for lunch. We eat behind the counter. A piece of bread and a cup of tea—that’s our meal. We’re not allowed to sit down, even when there aren’t any customers in the store.… After that, you follow in the footsteps of many other salesgirls [who] get sick and wind up in the hospital.

  THE ROYAL PROGRESS

  Like clockwork, the family traveled throughout the year on what was called the royal progress. Every March, the Alexander Palace was abandoned, and the Romanovs headed south to the Crimea and warm weather. By May, they were ready to move again, this time to their summer mansion at Peterhof, where they could catch the cool breezes coming off the Baltic Sea. Four weeks later, in June, they boarded their imperial yacht, the Standart, for a cruise around the Finnish islands. When August rolled around, they made their way to Poland and their hunting lodges. Come September, they returned to the Crimea for a short time, before heading back to Tsarskoe Selo to sit out the long Russian winter. But they avoided St. Petersburg. Even though it was the country’s capital and the seat of national government, the family never spent more than a few days a year in the cavernous Winter Palace, which Alexandra hated. In addition, with the hundreds of doors and passageways leading into the place, it was impossible to guarantee the family’s safety.

  Most of their traveling was done by imperial train—a chain of luxurious railroad cars “more like a home than a [locomotive],” recalled family friend Anna Vyrubova. It included a lilac-and-gray sitting room for the empress, a study of mahogany and green leather for the tsar, and a children’s car filled with white painted furniture and chests of toys. There was also a kitchen with three stoves, a dining room that seated twenty, and a small room where the servants laid out zakuski (“appetizers”) before every meal. Here Nicholas and the children helped themselves to small but savory delicacies—caviar, smoked herring, pickled mushrooms, and, a family favorite, reindeer tongue.

  During these times, the empress “was frequently absent from … view,” said Pierre Gilliard. This was because Alexandra, weakened by her five pregnancies and exhausted from the strain and worry over Alexei’s illness, had grown sickly. Closing herself up in her sitting room with a backache, migraine, or some other ailment, she often spent days locked away from her children.

  Her daughters especially missed her. Feeling isolated, and longing for any kind of contact, they ended up writing wistful little notes that they sent to Alexandra’s sickroom. Some expressed love. Others apologized for being naughty. But all begged for Mama’s attention.

  “My sweety darling Mama,” thirteen-year-old Olga wrote a bit ungrammatically in January 1909 after receiving a long note from Alexandra exhorting her to be gentle, kind, polite, and patient. “It helps me very much when you write to me what to do, and then I try to do it better as I can.”

  Just days later, eleven-year-old Tatiana wrote, “My darling Mama! I hope you won’t be very tired and you can get up to dinner. I am always so awfully sorry when you … can’t get up. I will pray for you my darling Mama in church.… Please sleep well and don’t get tired.… Perhaps I have lots of faults, but please forgive me.… Many, many kisses to my beloved Mama.”

  In May 1910, Marie, then eleven, longed for some motherly advice. “Mama, at what age did you have your own room … at what age did you start wearing long dresses?”

  And Anastasia just wanted to share her day’s events. “Madam dearest, I am afraid to go [to my bedroom] in the dark so I sat down on the W.C. picking my toe in the dark,” her quirky, undated letter reads. “I hope you’re well soon. Go to bed and be quiet. Good night. Sleep well.”

  Alexandra’s response to her daughters’ notes was always the same. Her suffering was a heavy cross they each must bear, she told them. “I know it’s dull having an invalid mother,” she wrote Marie in December 1910, “but it teaches you all to be loving and gentle. Only try to be obedient, then you make it easier for me.”

  The girls tried, always hoping that “darling Mama” would feel better tomorrow and rise from her sofa to join them.

  THE LADIES LOVE RASPUTIN

  Rasputin had become all the rage in St. Petersburg society. With Cousin Militsa’s help, he’d gotten to know ma
ny members of the nobility. Now, when he wasn’t expected at the Imperial Palace, the starets attended parties and soirées at some of the finest mansions in the city. Introduced as a man of God, he strode into opulent drawing rooms, wearing his peasant blouse and boots, his black hair hanging to his shoulders. Taking his hostess’s soft hands in his rough ones, he gazed deep into her eyes. Was it hypnosis that swept so many noblewomen off their feet? It certainly wasn’t his fine manners. Rasputin spoke with “coarse barnyard expressions,” wrote one historian. If that wasn’t enough, he bragged constantly about his relationship with the imperial couple. “See the gold cross?” he would say. “It’s got ‘N’ stamped on it. The tsar gave it—did it to honor me.” Or “Her Majesty sewed this shirt for me. I got other shirts she sewed.”

  Despite his crudeness, the ladies swooned over him. Dissatisfied with their pampered lives, many were searching for something new and exciting to fill their time. Rasputin fit the bill. Soon they formed a sort of fan club. Every day, dozens of noblewomen climbed the narrow, creaking stairs to his upper-floor apartment in St. Petersburg. Ignoring the stink of rancid butter and cabbage soup that filled the dark rooms, they gathered around him. Some even sat at his feet. Those unable to attend telephoned with tearful excuses, while one—an opera singer—called every afternoon just to sing him an aria. Telephone in his hands, the receiver pressed to his ear, he danced around the room.