As Russia struggled from medieval feudalism to industrialisation, the country was
clamouring for reform. For centuries peasants in remote rural communities had accepted the distant Tsar as God’s holy, anointed ruler but now, as they flocked into the overcrowded cities, attitudes were rapidly changing. Workers toiling in appalling conditions; peasants half-starving in the countryside and radicals in the universities, were demanding an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Tsardom. Even the most conservative thinkers were forced to accept the inevitability of a shift to a more democratic form of government.
Conditions at home were fraught and, in foreign affairs, too, the Tsar’s ministers had their share of problems. If Russia were to compete with the rest of the industrialised world, she needed access to the Pacific but even the major port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for several months each year. The ideal solution would be to extend the Trans-Siberian railway eastwards through Korea, but the Japanese, seeking to expand their own empire, were totally opposed to such a plan.
It occurred to some of the Tsar’s advisors that it might be possible to take advantage of the situation in the east, not only to secure Korea and Manchuria, but also to improve the Tsar’s standing. The vast Russian ranks easily outnumbered the small Japanese army and an early victory would restore a sense of national pride and reunite the people behind their Emperor. Heedless of the warnings of the Finance Minister, Count de Witte, the ministers and Nicholas’ uncles painted an image of a glorious Tsar leading his heroic army through a blaze of glory behind the Romanov double-headed eagle.
The dull reality was quite different from that dream. The Japanese had no desire for war and would willingly have settled the matter through negotiation but as Russian troops continued to move through the region, they had no alternative but to take up arms. In January 1904, they struck the first blow, attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and, with self-righteous indignation, the Russians declared war. A tide of patriotic fervour swept the country and crowds gathered to cheer the troops setting out on their long journey east.
Although already in the later stages of her final pregnancy, Alix threw herself wholeheartedly into the war effort. She opened a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo where she paid daily visits to the wounded and arranged for the men to learn various crafts during their recuperation.
“The great salons of the Winter Palace were turned into workrooms and there every day society flocked to sew and knit for our soldiers and sailors fighting such incredible distances away, as well as for the wounded in hospitals at home and abroad…Every day the Empress came to inspect the work, often sitting down at a table and sewing diligently with the others.”
In the Kremlin, her sister, Ella also established workrooms and employed hundreds of women of all classes to arrange packages of icons and gifts to send to the Front. As the wounded returned to the city, she made daily visits to the military hospitals taking the time to talk to each man in turn.
“There is no end of work to be done,” wrote the Tsarina, “but it is a great comfort to be able to help one’s poor sufferers a little…All work hard…We work for the army hospitals (apart from the Red Cross) and for the well who need clothes, tobacco ... and then we furnish military trains...I like following all and not to be a mere doll. Yes, it is a trying time, but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage.”
The Tsarina’s sincere efforts made little impression on the vast majority of her people and as the lists of Russian casualties grew, the enthusiastic cheers turned to cries of anger. Far from being a weak little enemy, the Japanese were well-disciplined, efficient soldiers capable of inflicting terrible losses on the massive Russian army. The ‘short’ war was rapidly turning into a prolonged fiasco.
By autumn, after nine months of fighting, the disillusioned Russians had grown weary of sacrificing their sons in the hopeless campaign. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the reactionary Minister of the Interior was assassinated. Strikes threatened to bring St. Petersburg to a standstill and the unrest was in danger of spilling into greater violence.
“Revolution is banging on the door,” wrote the Tsar’s cousin, Konstantin Konstantinovich, “A constitution is being almost openly discussed. How shameful and how terrifying.”
For Nicholas and Alix, the suggestion that Tsar should hand over his authority to an elected council (the Duma) was unthinkable. At his Coronation, Nicholas had taken an oath to uphold the autocracy and, regardless of the personal cost, he felt duty-bound by the promise made before God. From the seclusion of Tsarskoe Selo, Alix urged her husband to be strong, dismissing the ministers’ reports of imminent revolution as scare-mongering and assuring him that the ordinary Russians loved their Emperor.
It was true that many thousands of his subjects still revered their Tsar. He was their ‘Little Father’ who loved his people and only permitted the injustices they endured because he was unaware of their sufferings. If they could only reach him and tell him of their plight, he would surely deal kindly with their grievances. Encouraging such thoughts was a socialist priest, Father Gapon, who, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed, offered to lead a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace so that the people could petition the Emperor.
On Saturday 21st January 1905, Gapon, unaware that the Tsar was several miles away in Tsarskoe Selo, informed the Minister of the Interior, Prince Mirsky, that the following day he would lead over one hundred thousand people to the palace. At the thought of so vast a crown, Mirsky panicked. He warned the Tsar that violence may erupt and advised him to stay out of the city, before summoning mounted troops to guard the bridges over the frozen River Neva to prevent the crowds from reaching the palace.
The next day, Sunday 22nd January, thousands of men, women and children walked peacefully through the streets of St. Petersburg with the sole intention of presenting Nicky with their petitions. As the orderly procession neared the Neva bridges, many of the marchers held aloft icons and portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina to demonstrate their fidelity to the Orthodox Church and trust in their ‘Little Father.’
With absolute faith in their anointed Emperor, the crowds ignored the soldiers’ warnings to turn back and as the vast horde continued to advance, the terrified generals ordered the troops to open fire. Within minutes over a thousand of the Tsar’s most devoted subjects were gunned down, dropping their bloodstained icons beside the corpses of little children.
As news of the massacre spread through the country, Moscow exploded in violence. The city had long been a hot bed of sedition and now, as outraged revolutionaries incited the ordinary citizens to take up arms against ‘Bloody Nicholas the Butcher,’ barricades rose in the streets. The entire Romanov family became a symbol of oppression and tyranny and the most obvious target for the revolutionaries’ anger was Ella’s much-maligned husband, Grand Duke Serge.
The one member of the Imperial family to escape the revolutionary wrath was Ella. Before the outbreak of war, her charitable works had earned her a saintly reputation and once the hostilities started, her popularity soared. Even as the barricades rose in the streets, she ignored the police warnings, to make her daily round of the hospital wards. But Ella was not blind to the dangers. Serge had received several death threats while she herself was sent anonymous letters warning her, for her own safety, not to appear with her husband in public.
The strain of such an existence was enormous, and a final blow to reactionary Serge was the realisation that the Tsar was planning to grant limited reforms. Unable to accept the changes and worn down by the stress of his position, Serge finally decided to tender his resignation as Governor General of Moscow.
In the early afternoon February 18th 1905, as her husband left the Kremlin for the Governor General’s residence to clear his papers, Ella was working on her Red Cross projects, when an explosion shattered the silence.
“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, and rushing from the palace summoned a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square the gathering crowd tried to hold her back, but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone - all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was laid on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“Drops of blood fell on the floor, slowly forming a dark pool,” wrote Serge’s niece, Maria Pavlovna. “My aunt was on her knees beside the litter, her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her…
…Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep…When she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her.
‘He loved you so, he loved you so,’ she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that, low on her right arm, the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers in which she tightly gripped [Serge’s] medals…”
That evening, though barely recovered from the shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured, and as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar issued an order forbidding the Imperial family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Victoria hurried to Russia to be at her sister’s side, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, ‘Baby Bee.’ Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime. Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev had to tell her that he felt no remorse and believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
“I will not conceal,” he wrote to his friends, “that we looked at each other with a kind of mystical feeling.”
Newspapers later reported that she had even petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of revolution sweeping through Russia and by August it was clear that there was no point in prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organizing schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages. But again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicky realized he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the revolutionary fervour cooled but the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, revolutionaries were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had deeply loved, was about to make a more revolutionary change in her life, than even the most committed Bolsheviks could have imagined.
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