Alix and Nicky. Copyright © 2011 by Virginia Rounding. All rights reserved.

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United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rounding, Virginia.
Alix and Nicky: the passion of the last tsar and tsarina / Virginia Rounding.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-38100-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-4090-0 (e-book)
1. Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1868–1918. 2. Alexandra, Empress, consort of Nicholas II,
Emperor of Russia, 1872–1918. 3. Russia—Kings and rulers—Biography. 4. Russia—
History—Nicholas II, 1894–1917. 5. Emperors—Russia—Biography. 6. Empresses—
Russia—Biography. 7. Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1868–1918—Marriage. 8. Alexandra,
Empress, consort of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1872–1918—Marriage. 9. Married
people—Russia—Biography. 10. Love—Russia—Case studies. I. Title.
DK258.R68 2012
947.08'30922—dc23
[B]
2011033222

First Edition: January 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 CHAPTER ONE
Setting the Scene: The Romanov Tercentenary

1913

The final curtain is about to drop,

Some fool in the gallery still clasps his hands;
Around their bonfires, cabmen stamp and hop.
Somebody’s carriage! Off they go. The end.

—Osip Mandelstam, 1913 (tr. Robert Tracy)

A
t nine o’clock on the morning of May 19, 1913, the firing of cannon,
the clashing of cathedral bells, and the cheering of expectant crowds
welcomed the stately appearance of the steamship Mezhen, flying the
imperial flag with its double-headed eagle, steaming up the Volga to the city of
Kostroma, birthplace of the three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty. As the
Mezhen slowly approached the specially constructed landing stage, a procession
bearing the wonder-working icon of the Fyodorovsky Virgin emerged from the
Cathedral of the Assumption, golden vestments glinting in the occasional rays of
morning sun breaking through the clouds. Everyone on the imperial ship crossed
themselves, as both procession and ship advanced slowly toward the Ipatyev
Monastery, the very place from which Mikhail Romanov was summoned in
1613 to become the Tsar of Russia.
At a quarter to ten the imperial family—Tsar (or Emperor) Nicholas II;
his wife the Tsarina (or Empress) Alexandra; their four daughters, the Grand

1
 virginia rounding

Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia; and their son, the Tsarevich,
Alexei—disembarked, to be greeted by the city’s official delegation and offered
bread and salt, traditional symbols of hospitality. They then climbed into the wait-
ing cars and were driven the short distance to the monastery, the road flanked by
a double line of soldiers, holding back the dense crowds.
At the monastery, the Emperor was greeted by another procession, this one
headed by Tikhon, the Archbishop of Kostroma and Galich. Here were also
gathered representatives of the local peasantry and descendants of those who had
come to beg Mikhail Romanov to accept the throne, at the end of the “Time of
Troubles,” three hundred years earlier. They carried objects dating from that
momentous occasion, including a cross and an icon that the Emperor and his fam-
ily duly kissed. They then followed the procession into the grounds of the monas-
tery and toward the Cathedral of the Trinity, in front of which they found other
members of the wider imperial family, the array of tall, imposing, and bearded
Grand Dukes, most in military uniform, with their assorted wives, mothers, and
children. The Empress and her son, both afflicted with physical ailments and
unable to stand for long periods, went straight inside the cathedral, while all the
other members of the family and their retinue set off again, this time to meet the
procession coming from the town with the wonder-working icon, followed by a
crowd of thousands. Absolute silence fell as Tsar and procession came face-to-
face, broken only by the discordant clashing of the ancient monastery bells.
The Emperor crossed himself, right to left in the Orthodox fashion, and
kissed the holy icon, as did his daughters. Then all entered the cathedral to hear
the liturgy, followed by a Te Deum. After the lengthy ser vice Nicholas and his
daughters went to visit the house of Tsar Mikhail, which had been turned into a
museum for the occasion, and where many objects that had belonged to the first
Tsar were on display. The Empress was not feeling well enough to go to the mu-
seum, and remained in the cathedral with her sister, the Grand Duchess Elisa-
beth (known to the family as Ella), dressed as usual in her elegant grey habit, as
the abbess of her own order of nuns. After a series of farewells, the immediate
family returned on board the Mezhen, where they lunched in private.
This brief glimpse of the imperial family afforded to the citizenry and eccle-
siastical dignitaries of Kostroma, when the last in the line of Romanov tsars
came to venerate the memory of the first, can be examined, like a photograph, to
reveal much about the apparently straightforward scene. Central to it is the fig-
ure of the forty-five-year-old Tsar himself. Slighter than many of his Romanov
uncles and cousins, of medium height, his brown beard and moustache carefully
tended, his face lined—sometimes he could look very weary, though the creases

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 Alix and Nicky

around his eyes also came from laughter—nearly always in military uniform and
often with a cigarette in his hand, he presented a picture of affable dignity. Very
conscious of his own status as autocrat, anointed by God, he nevertheless appeared
modest and—overwhelmingly—charming. So many people who met Nicholas
(or Nicky, as he was known within the family), whether friend or foe, testify to
that charm. “With his usual simplicity and friendliness,” wrote his Prime Minis-
ter, Vladimir Kokovtsov. “A rare kindness of heart,” commented Foreign Minis-
ter Sergei Sazonov. “A charm that attracted all who came near him,” wrote
British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan, who added that he always felt he was
talking “with a friend and not the Emperor.” “Charming in the kindly simplicity
of his ways,” said his niece’s husband, Felix Yusupov. Nicholas’s eyes, in particu-
lar, attracted people to him. His cousin, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinov-
ich (a poet, also known by his initials “KR”) wrote of “that clear, deep, expressive
look [that] cannot fail but charm and enchant.” Yet the color of these attractive
eyes seems to be in dispute. His early biographer Sergei Oldenburg refers to his
“large radiant grey eyes” which “peered directly into one’s soul and lent power to
his words”; Hélène Vacaresco, who met Nicky when he was still Tsarevich, also
wrote of his “large grey eyes.” The English historian and scholar Sir Bernard
Pares, on the other hand, who also met the Tsar, refers to the “beauty of his frank
blue eyes.” More strangely, Kokovtsov, who had the chance to stare into those
eyes many times, writes that they were “usually of a velvety dark brown.” In Se-
rov’s famous portrait, painted in 1900, the eyes are a grey-blue, matching the
color of his uniform.
Charm—the art of pleasing other people, and the desire to please—seems
never to have been a characteristic of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (Alix or
Alicky to friends and family). Though possessed of many fine qualities (the chief
of which consisted in wholeheartedness and utter loyalty toward any cause, or
person, in which she believed), she was also afflicted by self-consciousness and an
extreme shyness, which led her to hold herself aloof. Footage that has survived of
her at public ceremonies shows her repeatedly bowing her head at the crowds—
but stiffly, like a puppet, and only from the neck. Even taking into account the
jerky nature of early film, she looks strained, unnatural, ill at ease—quite unlike
her genial husband. An attractive woman with fine features and auburn-tinged
hair, she was too tense, her mouth too set, her gait too rigid, for her natural en-
dowments to be fully appreciated. And at intervals throughout her life—almost
constantly from 1908—Alix had been an invalid, spending much of her time lying
down (as can be seen in the family photograph albums) and frequently absent
from public occasions. The Romanov tercentenary was important enough for her

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 virginia rounding

to make an effort to overcome her physical debility and participate, but even here
she could not do so fully. And so, despite her great attachment both to her husband
and to the Russian people, she remains at a distance, detached, in her own private
space.
As is so often the case, Nicholas and Alexandra’s strengths were also their
weaknesses. Alix’s wholeheartedness and loyalty made her inflexible, unable to
adapt to changing circumstances, and tenacious in clinging to those in whom
she put her faith, unwilling even to consider opinions contrary to the ones she
had decided to adopt. Conversely, it was Nicky’s desire to please, to charm, that
contributed to his reputation for indecision, so anxious was he to make each per-
son he received feel that he had treated them well and listened to them atten-
tively. It was not until after a person had left his presence that he could act in
opposition to what he had just heard—and had appeared to agree with. On Au-
gust 15, 1905 the English journalist W. T. Stead met with Nicky’s mother, Dow-
ager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, and rather daringly told her a story that had
been going the rounds:

Once two Ministers came to see the Emperor. He received first one
and then the other in the presence of his wife. Minister No. 1 brought
a long elaborate report, full of all the wearisome platitudes of such of-
ficial documents. (“Yes, indeed,” said [Maria Fyodorovna].) He read it
to the close and finished up setting forth definite recommendations
that this, that and the other should be done. The Tsar listened atten-
tively and then said: “Thank you so much for your excellent report.
I have heard it with much pleasure and your recommendations are ex-
actly in accord with my conclusions.” Exit Minister No.1 in high glee.
Enter Minister No. 2. Another long wearisome report concluding
with definite recommendations to do this, that and the other which
are exactly opposed to the recommendations of Minister No. 1. The
Tsar listened attentively and then said: “Thank you so much (‘Oh, how
wicked,’ [Maria Fyodorovna] cried.) for your admirable paper. I have
heard it with much pleasure and your recommendations are exactly in
accord with my own conclusions.” Exit Minister No. 2 in high glee.
Then the Empress said to her husband: “But this is nonsense. These
two Ministers have proposed exactly opposite things and you know it
is impossible to agree with both of them.” And the Emperor said: “My
dear. You are quite right. I absolutely agree with you.” And then they
both burst out laughing.

4
 Alix and Nicky

Having to negotiate the claims represented by both parents were their five
children. Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and to a lesser extent Anastasia and Alexei,
all shared something of their father’s need to please, and both parents had in-
culcated in them a strong sense of duty. This conflicted with a natural desire to
assert their own feelings and sense of independence, and as a result their rela-
tionship with their mother could be both stifling and, at times, stormy. Of the
five, the youngest girl, Anastasia (who, at the time of the visit to Kostroma, was
almost twelve years old), seemed the most free of their mother’s rather repres-
sive influence. She adored her father (so did they all, but Anastasia’s letters to her
“golden, good, darling Papa” are among the most eff usive; “Love you always,
everywhere,” she writes in a letter dated May 8, 1913), and she seems largely to
have avoided the fate shared by her sisters of being the one to keep her mother
company when she was not feeling well enough to join in family activities. She
was a mischievous, tomboyish child, often to be found up a tree or hiding in a
cupboard. She still enjoyed playing with toys, taking particular delight in a vari-
ety of little flasks and pots given to her and her brother by one of the imperial
doctors. She had no trace of her mother’s shyness; “If you happened to be sitting
next to her at table,” recorded one court official, “you had constantly to be ready
for some unexpected question. She was bolder than her sisters and very witty.”
She was also, according to one of the tutors of the imperial children, Pierre Gil-
liard, “extremely idle, though with the idleness of a gifted child.” The sister near-
est to her in age and her usual companion, Maria, was far less sure of herself. A
very sweet and loving girl, with something of the devotion of an affectionate
family dog (her sisters rather cruelly dubbed her “fat little bowwow”), she was
sturdy and pretty, with “large and beautiful grey eyes” and “a happy Russian
face.” She had a very good memory and whenever the girls needed to remember
something, they allotted the task to her. The oldest sister, Olga, was, at seven-
teen, a complex character, less amenable and tractable than at first appeared,
more than capable of holding her own in conversation. Pierre Gilliard considered
her very gifted intellectually—far more so than her sisters—and was disap-
pointed that she did not make the most of these gifts. She was also a very talented
musician—a talent inherited from her mother—and possessed the ability to play
the piano by ear. She showed little inclination to move from girlhood into adult-
hood, and took no particular trouble over her appearance. The daughter most
attentive toward Alix was the second oldest, the sixteen-year-old Tatiana. She
was in many ways most like her mother (in appearance she resembled her mater-
nal grandmother, Princess Alice of Hesse)—reserved, sensitive, her self-restraint
rather ineffectively concealing a desire to take the lead, to control others as she

5
 virginia rounding

controlled herself. Her sisters recognized this controlling tendency in her by

nicknaming her “the governess.”
In Kostroma, as throughout the tercentenary celebrations, the girls’ duty lay
in accompanying their father as much as possible, bolstering the idealized image
of the imperial family, rather than tending their invalid mother, which task was
relegated on this occasion to their aunt, the Grand Duchess Elisabeth. Alix her-
self, in a letter written a few months earlier to her old friend Bishop William
Boyd Carpenter, formerly a chaplain to Queen Victoria, alludes to the public role
her daughters are beginning to assume on her behalf: “My children are growing
up so fast and are such real little comforters to us—the elder ones often replace me
at functions and go about a great deal with their Father—they are all five touch-
ing in their care for me—my family life is one blessed ray of sunshine excepting
the anxiety for our Boy.” The four girls were dressed in their trademark identical
white dresses and picture hats (though they did take care to personalize their
outfits through the judicious addition of a ribbon or other minor detail); it was
chilly enough on the visit to Kostroma, however, for them to need to cover their
summer dresses with warm dark coats for at least part of the time. The two eldest
were now considered old enough to wear their hair up, though Tatiana had re-
cently had hers cut off after she had contracted typhoid fever as a result of drink-
ing contaminated water at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
Also staying behind with Alix, rather than engaging in all the activities at
Kostroma, was the boy about whom she was so anxious, the eight-year-old heir to
the throne, Alexei. A boisterous and energetic child when well—a fact that in
itself caused his mother endless anxiety—he already had a strong sense of him-
self as the future Tsar, and his natural inclination would have been to be along-
side his father. But, a sufferer from hemophilia, he had nearly died following a
series of minor accidents the previous autumn, and was still not able to walk
normally. So although he did his best to keep up with his siblings, he had to
spend part of his time lying or sitting next to his mother. In some ways this was
no hardship, as each enjoyed the other’s company. Despite his illness and the
constraints it placed upon him, the little boy was of a very sunny temperament
and loved by all. “Alexei Nikolaevich was the centre of this united family,” re-
called Pierre Gilliard, “the focus of all its hopes and affections. His sisters wor-
shipped him and he was his parents’ pride and joy. When he was well the palace
was, as it were, transformed.”
Curiosity, at least as much as adulation, had brought the crowds to the
landing stage at Kostroma (this was one of the few places on the triumphal prog-
ress that year where the crowds seemed genuinely enthusiastic and of a good

6
 Alix and Nicky

size), for the chance to glimpse the Tsar and his family in the flesh was rare. Por-
traits and photographs of the imperial family abounded, but the images were
carefully controlled (this being one aspect of public relations in which the Em-
press took an active interest—particularly as it did not involve actually having to
meet anyone). The family had spent the earlier part of 1913 at Tsarskoe Selo, fif-
teen miles outside St. Petersburg, in the intimacy of their own apartments in the
Alexander Palace. Existence at Tsarskoe Selo, and at the other royal palaces, was
highly ordered. For the children, it was dominated by lessons and outdoor ac-
tivities; for the Tsar it was similar, except that for lessons was substituted work.
The children’s lessons generally began at nine o’clock in the morning and contin-
ued for two hours, before a break of one hour that usually involved a walk,
ride, or drive (depending on the time of year and the weather). More lessons fol-
lowed, until lunch at one. Two hours of every afternoon were spent outside, the
Tsar joining in his children’s exercise and play whenever he had time—which
was not, in fact, very often, for he was extremely conscientious over his work and
his ministers tended to deluge him with reports; he also insisted on performing
quite menial tasks himself and refused to employ a personal secretary. When the
girls were not undertaking physical activity or lessons, they would be engaged in
reading, needlework, or some other improving pastime—for their mother, a Vic-
torian by conviction as well as by descent, believed in the adage “The devil makes
work for idle hands,” and hated to see her daughters sitting around doing noth-
ing. Except when prevented by ill health, she applied the same stricture to her-
self; even when lying on her sofa, she would be busy writing letters, stitching, or
reading. The girls also drew and painted, and loved amateur dramatics. Anasta-
sia was given to more original occupations; in 1913 she was preoccupied with
breeding worms.
This period, this year in particular, was a vibrant one in Russia; both the
economy and the arts were flourishing, new ideas were in the air, and there was a
sense that anything could happen. Against this background—when one looks
beyond the palace gates to see something of what was going on in the two Russian
capitals—the private life of the imperial family can appear remarkably circum-
scribed and insular. Many of Olga and Tatiana’s contemporaries were desperately
trying to achieve the perfect physique and (imaginary) flawless complexion of the
famous ballerinas, such as Tamara Karsavina and Anna Pavlova, by applying the
cold creams, scents, and soaps constantly advertized in Russian middle-class mag-
azines of the period, such as Field and Town and Country. And, rather than ama-
teur dramatics and needlework, it was the tango that fascinated the fashionable
young ladies of Moscow. “Our faces are like the screech of the streetcar warning

7
 virginia rounding

the hurrying passersby, like the drunken sounds of the great tango,” declared the
cubo-futurist manifesto of 1913 called Why We Paint Ourselves. Several avant-
garde artists (including David Burliuk, Natalia Goncharova, and Mikhail Lari-
onov) had taken to painting the jagged, geometric forms of so-called rayonist
art on their faces and other body parts and then walking around the city streets,
in an attempt to shock and make (literal) exhibitions of themselves. Late in the
year the futurist fi lm Drama in the Futurists’ Cabaret No. 13 was made, and De-
cember saw the production of the cubo-futurist antiopera, Victory over the Sun,
in St. Petersburg’s Luna Park. The libretto of this notorious piece was written by
the radical Futurist poet Alexei Kruchenykh with a prologue by fellow Futurist
Velimir Khlebnikov; the music was by avant-garde composer Mikhail Matushin
and the costumes and sets designed by the artist Kasimir Malevich. “Some ac-
tors spoke only with vowels, others only with consonants, while blinding lights
and ear-splitting sounds rocked through the theatre in an effort to give man ‘vic-
tory over the sun’: freedom from all dependence on the traditional order of the
world.” The performances were sponsored by the Union of Youth and, along
with Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, were the sensation of the sea-
son, selling out despite the extremely high prices. All this was indeed worlds
away from the domestic entertainments at Tsarskoe Selo, where the girls performed
extracts from the French classics for their own close circle where “traditional order”
reigned supreme, and where the reading matter of even the seventeen-year-old
Olga was carefully censored by her tutor. In Paris The Rite of Spring was pre-
miered by the Ballets Russes, featuring the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky, while in
Russia Leon Bakst designed the costumes for the ballet Jeux, which concerned a
flirtation during a game of tennis. Late in 1913 Vsevolod Meyerhold opened a
new studio in St. Petersburg, where actors and students of drama explored experi-
mental theater and where Meyerhold adopted his alternative persona of “Doctor
Dapertutto” to distinguish his experimental from his official self as director of
the imperial theater. In the field of literature, notable events of 1913 included the
publication in book form (it had previously appeared as a newspaper serializa-
tion) of Andrei Bely’s symbolist novel Petersburg, and of Osip Mandelstam’s first
collection of verse, Stone. The journal Argus, which specialized in accounts of
exotic and far-flung adventures (including that of Captain Scott’s to the Antarc-
tic) appeared for the first time. And during that year the writer Maxim Gorky
returned to St. Petersburg from exile.
1913 was also a year marked by technological progress and vision; to name
but three examples, experimental shafts were dug in Moscow to explore the feasi-
bility of an underground railway, the Romanov irrigation canal was opened in

8
 Alix and Nicky

the steppe of Samarkand, and Captain Boris A. Vilkitsky took two icebreakers
on the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition, during which a huge uncharted
archipelago was discovered, which he named Nicholas II Land. (It is now known
as Severnaya Zemlya, or Northern Land.) The economy was buoyant, there had
been bumper harvests in the previous two years, and the state treasury was in
very good shape. Five years earlier, the then prime minister Pyotr Stolypin had
said: “Give us twenty years of peace, domestic and foreign, and you will not rec-
ognize contemporary Russia,” and it looked as though his prediction was on the
way to being fulfi lled. On the other side of the coin, however, there were over
twenty-five thousand homeless people in St. Petersburg, the populations of both
the capital and of Moscow, the old capital, having nearly doubled since the be-
ginning of the century.
The use of modern publicity methods had reached its height during the
tercentenary celebrations. Pictures of the Tsar and his family had appeared on
postage stamps, commemorative coins, and other souvenirs, including written
accounts of the Tsar’s everyday habits. Unfortunately, such publicity could in it-
self be a double-sided coin, running the danger of associating the loft y image of
the Tsar with the commonplace. As Richard Wortman has pointed out, “De-
scriptions of the tsar’s personal life gave him an aspect of the ordinary that was
devastating to the worshipful admiration the tsar still hoped to command.” The
imperial couple themselves, however, remained oblivious to such ambivalences.
As many as one and a half million commemorative roubles were issued on
the occasion of the tercentenary, making them accessible to a far wider public than
had been the case for any previous imperial celebration. But unfortunately the
rise in production brought a concomitant decline in quality. The coins portrayed
a bust of Nicholas in the uniform of the Imperial Rifles, with his brother, Grand
Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich (known to the family as Misha) on the obverse,
wearing the Monomakh Cap, the crown of the Russian Grand Princes and Tsars
from Dmitry Donskoy to Peter the Great. A breakdown of the die after the mint-
ing of the first fi ft y thousand resulted in Misha’s image being flattened, giving
him a ghostly look. The tercentenary medal, which also bore images of Nicholas
and Mikhail, was judged by at least one commentator, Alexander Spiridovich,
the chief of palace security, to be “as ugly as possible.”
The issue of postage stamps on January 1, 1913, bearing portraits of the tsars
was a first for the Russian Empire, though faces of monarchs had begun to be
printed on stamps in other countries in the middle of the previous century.
Nicholas, a keen philatelist, had happily given his consent to the practice being
introduced in Russia. A problem emerged with the fact that the stamps had to be

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postmarked when used on an envelope, and many postmasters felt this would be
a desecration of the face of the Tsar and so left the stamps uncanceled. The news-
paper Zemshchina (Populace) the organ of the extreme right-wing Union of the
Russian People, even pointed out that the law specified sentences of penal servi-
tude for anyone defi ling the imperial image. In response, the government sus-
pended the series in February 1913, but resumed printing later that year.
Similar problems were connected with other artifacts. Permission was
granted, for instance, for the production of scarves bearing a portrait of the Tsar,
but only with the proviso that the scarves should not be of the right size to be used
as handkerchiefs—there should be no blowing of noses on the Tsar!
Nicholas was particularly attracted to the medium of fi lm, as through it he
was able to establish direct visual contact with a mass audience without jeopar-
dizing either privacy or security. Between 1911 and 1914 the censors approved
more than a hundred requests submitted by firms such as Pathé, Khanzhonkov,
Drankov, and Gaumont to screen newsreels of the Tsar. The fi lms showed the
Tsar at various ceremonial occasions, including the tercentenary celebrations in
St. Petersburg and Moscow, military reviews, launching of ships, and receptions
of foreign dignitaries.
The censors wanted to ensure that the screening of such fi lms should take
place with appropriate dignity, and therefore prescribed that newsreels of the
Emperor and his family should be presented separately from other fi lms and
without musical accompaniment. The curtain should be lowered before and after
a showing of the imperial family and the fi lms should be projected by hand, at a
speed that ensured the characters did not look comical in their movements.
The danger for the Tsar was that all these modern genres of publicity held
the possibility of demeaning his image and associating him with the everyday
and the ordinary. Again, as Richard Wortman has pointed out, such devices may
have been appropriate in helping to popularize Queen Victoria’s “homey grand-
motherly character,” but she was not, like Nicholas, seeking to uphold an abso-
lute autocracy.

10