Nicholas and Alexandra

I just finished reading Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert Massie's telling of the end of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of Bolshevism and Soviet communism in Russia. It is a fascinating story, truly compelling and multi-faceted. Massie captures the tragedy, ironies, and historical particularities of that moment so well. For a 600 page history book it read like a novel.

I will give a short rundown of the basics. Nicholas, heir to the throne, is suddenly made Tsar when his father, Alexander III, dies unexpectedly. He hastily marries Alix of the German house of Hesse who becomes Tsaritsa. Nicholas is not as strong-willed as his father, but is a competent manager and loyal Russian patriot. The Tsar and his wife have four daughters before having a son and heir, the Tsarevich Alexis who is diagnosed at a young age with hemophilia.

Nicholas is a loving father, but in over his head when it comes to leading a nation through tumultuous times. He had little training, his father thinking that there would be more time to instruct his son in the way of leadership. His wife is a religious mystic, driven mad by her son's disease. She is attended to by Gregory Rasputin, a peasant monk who has a number of uncanny visions and prophecies which wind up coming to fruition. Alexandra becomes devoted to Rasputin and when Nicholas goes to the Eastern front to lead the Russian army in World War I, Alexandra becomes the de facto leader of Russia. Rasputin, by this time firmly established in the household, pulls the strings of ministerial appointments in the government and causes great unrest among the ruling class. Nicholas, too uxorious for his own good, defaults to his wife in a number of disastrous policies. Alexandra is so focused on her hemophiliac son becoming the supreme autocrat of Russia that she refuses to allow any small reforms in the governing structure of Russia, increasing hostilities towards the royal family especially as the war drags on.

Attempting to free the Romanovs from the taint of Rasputin, a number of monarchist gentry stage the murder of Rasputin. It is bungled, but ultimately successful, but by this point the damage is done. Too many people are too upset with the Tsar who reluctantly abdicates his throne. Fearing the breakup of his family, he does not abdicate to his son, the heir, but to his younger, dissolute brother. Hoping to wait out the war in Russia and then retire to England, the royal family is imprisoned in their palace outside of St. Petersburg (Petrograd at the time). When the provisional government falls to the Bolsheviks, they are removed to Siberia. As the white army encroaches on the head city of Soviet Siberia the entire Romanov family, even the dog, is taken to the basement of their prison and executed in gruesome fashion. They are then chopped up into small pieces, burned with fire, melted with sulphuric acid and dropped into an abandoned mine shaft.

One drum that I continually beat is the difficulty of speaking monolithically about history. Reading over my short summary I am struck by how simple that rendering is for something that is anything but simple. Too often we want to impose an easy narrative on past events that makes them readily discernible to us, despite their often infinite complexity. Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, has been portrayed popularly as an impotent man who ceded power to his arrogant wife and through pusillanimity allowed the autocracy and monarchy to be wrenched away from Russia. By the revolutionaries he was bloody Nicholas, the tyrant who entered World War I in a perverse attempt to kill off Russia's revolutionary workers in bloody battle, the very symbol of proletariat suppression.

An irony of the case is that if Nicholas had been the bloodthirsty tyrant the Bolsheviks made him out to be, he would have tamped out their small flame in a number of days. As it was, he was merely an ardent patriot who abdicated in a doomed attempt to save his beloved Russia. He was feckless in a certain sense and unprepared for the wave of hostility that came upon the monarchy in his time. He deferred to his wife too often and should have been willing to make more concessions to popular government. His cousin, King George V of England, willingly saw the powers of the monarchy decrease in his nation and finished his life happily as more of a figurehead than an autocrat.

As for the Empress Alexandra, she was undoubtedly driven mad to a certain degree by the illness of her son. She was a loyal Russian though, and not the German spy of the anti-monarchical propaganda. As for her relationship with Rasputin, it is only fair to say that she had a different religious constitution than most people. A number of Rasputin's prophecies were eerily fulfilled, and though the man himself was a deviant and manipulator, he steadfastly showed to Alexandra his holy side. It is easy to see how she was duped; where some would see mere coincidence she saw miracles of God. Where some saw a lecherous opportunist, she saw the holy man who saved her son.

The first time Clara saw me reading the book she asked me why I was reading it. I told her it was because I love Russia. She said, "I think you just love reading." Which is so true. The reason I love reading is because it unsettles me. It is no secret that I love and admire John Milton, the English poet. Milton, living during the English Civil War, wrote defenses for the revolutionaries who had killed the English king, Charles I. Not in a battle, but through the charade of a show trial. Maybe the case is entirely different and Charles was the tyrant Milton and others made him out to be. Maybe his death was justified. But then again maybe not. At the very least it was more complex than it seemed in Milton's propaganda tracts. The Charles I know is Milton's Charles. How different would Nicholas seem to me if all that I read was Lenin's account of his life? Maybe I should read something a bit less biased about Charles.

As any earnest college freshman will tell you, History is written by the victors, yada yada, that is mostly true. But what is even truer is that history is written by people--people with limited knowledge, biases, and flawed reasoning, about people with limited knowledge, biases, and flawed reasoning and the things they do that often show very little logic and no arc of progression. Yet it is fascinating all the same, and often illuminating. Nicholas and Alexandra and the entire Romanov family are tragic figures of a tragic era, a tragedy made all the more palpable by the horrors of Leninism and Stalinism that followed their demise. Could it have been different? Sure. Was it? Nope. Historical what-ifs are a fun parlor game, but what happened in Russia happened. And while we will never fully grasp all the factors at work that brought everything to bear on that proud people, we can acknowledge that event in its complexity and humanity. Long live Holy Russia.