Memories of the Russian Court

by Anna Aleksandrovna Vyrubova

Also, because the mind cannot fully realize the worst, I believed that the Russian chaos was a temporary manifestation. I thought I saw signs of a reaction in favor of the exiled Emperor. In this I was certainly encouraged by two of the oldest and most prominent Revolutionists known to the outside world, Bourtseff, a leader among the old Social Revolutionaries, and the novelist Gorky. It was in December, 1917, if I remember correctly, that I learned that Gorky was anxious to meet me, and as I preferred to keep my small corner of safety as free from visitors as possible, I made an appointment with the novelist in his own home, a modest apartment on the Petrograd side of the Neva, not far from the fortress. Gorky, whose gaunt features are familiar to all readers, is said to be a sufferer from tuberculosis, but as he has lived many years since the first rumors of this disease were circulated, there may be some reason to doubt his affliction. That he is a sick man none can doubt, for his high cheek bones seem almost to pierce his colorless skin and his darkly luminous eyes are deeply sunken in his head. For two hours of this first interview I sat in conversation with Gorky, strange creature, who at times seems to be heart and soul a Bolshevist and at other times openly expresses his loathing and disgust of their insane and destructive policies. To me Gorky was gentle and sympathetic, and what he said about the Emperor and Empress filled my heart with encouragement and hope. They were, he declared, the poor scapegoats of the Revolution, martyrs to the fanaticism of the time. He had examined with care the private apartments of the palace and he saw clearly that these unhappy ones were not even what are called aristocrats, but merely a bourgeois family devoted to each other and to their children, as well as to their ideals of righteous living. He expressed himself as bitterly disappointed in the Revolution and in the character of the Russian proletariat. Earnestly he advised me to live as quietly as possible, never reminding the Bolshevist authorities or any strangers of my existence. My duty, he told me, was to live and to devote myself to writing the true story of the lives of the Emperor and Empress. “You owe this to Russia,” he said, “for what you can write may help to bring peace between the Emperor and the people.”

Twice afterwards I saw and talked with Gorky, showing him a few pages of my reminiscences. He urged me to go on writing, suppressing nothing of the truth, and he even offered to help me with my work. But writing in Russia was at that time too dangerous a trade to be followed with any degree of confidence, and it was not until I was safely beyond the frontiers that I dared begin writing freely and at length. I wish to say, however, that it was principally due to Gorky’s encouragement and to the encouragement of an American literary friend, Rheta Childe Dorr, that I ventured to attempt authorship, or rather that I undertook to present to the world, as they really were, my Sovereigns and my best beloved friends. My casual acquaintanceship with Gorky was naturally seized upon by certain foreign journalists as evidence that I had gone over to the Bolsheviki, and much abuse and scorn were hurled against me. How little those writers knew of Gorky and his half-hearted support of the Lenine policies! He held an important office under the Communists, it is true, and his wife, a former actress, was in the commissariat of theatricals and entertainments. But no man in Bolshevist Russia has ever been permitted more freedom of thought and speech than Gorky. He has done things which would have brought almost any other man to torture and death. I know, for example, that he sheltered under his roof at least one of the Romanoffs, and that the man was finally assisted by him across the Finnish frontier. Gorky interested himself also in the fate of several of the Grand Dukes, Nicholai Michailovitch, Paul and George, who were arrested and later shot to death in Peter and Paul. Gorky did everything in his power to save these men, in whom personally he had no interest whatever. He simply believed their murder to be unjustified, and it is said that he actually induced Lenine to sign an order for their release and deportation, but the order was signed too late, and the men were brutally executed.

At Christmas, 1917, I had a great happiness, nothing less than letters and a parcel of food from the exiles in Tobolsk. There were two parcels in fact, one containing flour, sugar, macaroni, and sausage, wonderful luxuries, and the other a pair of stockings knit by the Empress’s own hands, a warm scarf, and some pretty Christmas cards illuminated in her well-remembered style. I made myself a tiny Christmas tree decorated with bits of tinsel and holly berries and hung with these precious tokens of affection and remembrance. Nor was this the only Christmas joy vouchsafed me after a year of sorrow and suffering. Under the escort of my good old servant Berchik I ventured to attend mass in the big church near the Nicholai station, a church built to commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanoff succession. After the service an old monk approached me and invited me to accompany him into the réfectoire of his monastery. I followed him, a little unwillingly, for one never knew what might happen. Entering I saw, to my astonishment, about two hundred factory women who almost filled the bare and lofty room. The old monk introduced me to the women, and to my bewilderment their leader came forward bowing, and holding in her outstretched hands a clean white towel on which reposed a silver ikon. It was an image of Our Lady of Unexpected Joy, and the kind woman told me that she and her fellow workers felt that after all that I had unjustly suffered in the fortress I ought to have from those who sympathized with me an expression of confidence and good-will. She added that were I again in trouble I might feel myself free to take refuge in the lodgings of any one of them. Overcome with emotion, I could utter only a few stammering words of thanks. I kissed the good woman heartily, and all who could approached and embraced me. Knowing that I longed for more tangible expressions of gratitude, the good old monk pressed into my hands a number of sacred pictures and these I gave away, as long as they lasted, to my new friends. No words can tell how deeply I felt the kindness of these working women who, out of their scanty wages, bought a silver ikon to give to a woman of whom they knew nothing except that she had, as they believed, been persecuted for others’ sake.

I needed the assurance that in the cruel world around me there were those who wished me well, for in the first months of the new year came one of the bitterest sorrows of my life, the death of my deeply loved and revered father. He died very suddenly, and without any pain, on January 25, 1918, leaving the world bereft of one of the kindest, most gifted, and sympathetic men of his generation in Russia. I have described my father as a musician and a composer, as well as a lifelong friend and functionary of the Imperial Family. His years of service as keeper of the privy purse might have made him a rich man, but so utterly honest was he that he accepted nothing except his moderate salary and he died leaving almost nothing, nothing but an unfading memory and the deep affection of my friends, including scores of poor students whose musical education and advancement he had furthered. At his funeral his own compositions were sung by volunteer choirs of his musician friends, and these followed his coffin in long procession the length of the Nevski Prospekt to the cemetery of the Alexandra Nevskaia Lavra, a monastic burial place where many of our greatest lie in everlasting repose. My mother came to live with me in my obscure lodgings, and together we faced our desolate future.

One thing alone lightened the darkness of those days. This was a correspondence daringly undertaken with my beloved friends in Siberia. Even now, and at this distance from Russia I cannot divulge the names of those brave and devoted ones who smuggled the letters and parcels to and from the house in Tobolsk, and got them to me and to the small group of faithful men and women in Petrograd. The two chiefly concerned, a man and a woman, of course lived in constant peril of discovery and death. Yet they gladly risked their lives that their Sovereigns might have the happiness of private communication with their friends. At this time their Majesties were permitted to write and receive a few letters, but every line was read by their jailers, and their list of correspondents was rigidly censored. Even in the letters smuggled out from Tobolsk the utmost precautions had to be observed, and the reader can see with what veiled and discreet phrases the sentences are couched.

I give these letters exactly as they were written, suppressing only certain messages of affection too intimate to make public. Most of the letters were written by the Empress, but one at least came from the Emperor, and a number are from the children. To me these letters are infinitely precious, not only as personal messages, but as proofs of the dauntless courage and deep religious faith of these martyrs of the Russian Revolution. Their patriotism and their love of country never faltered for a single moment, nor did they ever utter a complaint or a reproach against those who had so heartlessly betrayed them. It seems to me impossible that anyone, reading these letters, intended only for my own eyes, can continue to misjudge the lives and the characters of Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. What they reveal is their secret selves, unknown except to those who knew them best and knowing them loved them as they deserved to be loved.

The first communication to reach me was a brief message from the Empress, dated October 14, 1917, a short time after the news of my liberation from the fortress reached her in Siberia.

My darling: We are thinking constantly of you and of all the suffering you have had to endure. God help you in the future. How are your weak heart and your poor legs? We hope to go to Communion as usual if we are to be allowed. Lessons have begun again with Mr. Gibbs also. So glad, at last. We are all well. It is beautifully sunny. I sit behind this wall in the yard and work. Greetings to the doctors, the priest, and the nurses in your hospital. I kiss you and pray God to keep you.

A week later the Empress wrote me a long letter in which she ventures a few details of life in Tobolsk.

October 21, 1917.