The Romance of the Romanoffs

by Joseph McCabe

But his industry and attention to affairs are differently represented. Conservatives picture him a model of severe self-sacrifice. He worked, they say, without secretaries, ten or twelve hours every day. He minutely studied and annotated every document. He wore his pencil to the stump—the conservative pen records this with awed amazement—and then gave the stump gravely to his son. One imagines him relaxing from the cares of Empire but for an hour in the evening. The revolutionary writers, however, depict him differently. They represent that he attended impatiently to serious affairs and spent an abnormal proportion of the day in the petty amusements of the domestic circle. The truth lies between the extremes. Nicholas II was industrious, and he attempted to discharge his functions very seriously within the limits of his narrow and mediocre conceptions.

His people were not long in doubt as to the nature of his ideal. It was the ideal which each Romanoff of the century had naively conceived afresh; a complete retention of the autocracy coupled with a benevolent intention to help his people. On the day of his father’s death Nicholas issued a manifesto in which he promised to promote “the progress and peaceful glory of his dear Russia and the happiness of his faithful subjects.” To the deputies who came to congratulate him he said that—as his foreign minister, M. de Giers, also assured foreign Powers—he would maintain his father’s policy. Plainly the young Emperor approached his task with the customary confidence of youth. He would avoid the error of his predecessors and, by wise moderation, disarm the malcontents and sustain a benevolent despotism.

But Nicholas soon discovered that the last reign still survived in such power as to admit no new experiments. His mother, the Dowager-Empress, was a harsh and arrogant woman, uniting to her political ignorance and incompetence a fierce resolution to have her husband’s policy sustained. Nicholas’s uncles, the Grand Dukes Sergius and Alexander, were of the same harshly despotic temper, and Pobiedonostseff, the head of the Holy Synod, was the enthusiastic supporter of their wishes. These four, with the reactionary ministers Plehve, Muravieff, and Brezobrazoff (later Admiral Alexieff and others), whom they gradually discovered and promoted, formed what came to be known as the “Immortal Seven,” the caucus which led the dynasty to its destruction.

Nicholas was not married at the time of his accession. It was not until November that he married Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, who entered the Orthodox Church and adopted the name of Alexandra Feodorovna. It is said that at the last moment the Dowager-Empress took a violent dislike to her and enlivened the palace with lamentable exhibitions of her violent temper. It is at least clear that in the earlier years the Tsarina had no influence. Only in the last phase did she, by her pro-German leanings and her ignorant susceptibility to the intrigues of religious adventurers, contribute to the downfall of the monarchy.

Nicholas was crowned at Moscow on May 26th, 1895, and a terrible catastrophe clouded the very opening of his reign. Hundreds of thousands of peasants flocked to Moscow for the festivity, and for the presents which were promised them, and they spent the night packed into the field of Khodynski. A panic arose amongst them, and about a thousand of them—some say several thousand—were trodden under foot or cast into the ditch and perished. It was a bad beginning, and the Tsar soon made matters worse. In July nearly two hundred delegations brought to his palace the congratulations of every class of his people, and faint and respectful suggestions of reform were inserted in the bouquets of traditional compliment. From the province of Tver, especially, came a demand for liberal institutions, and the Emperor received it with a smiling disdain which showed how little he understood his country. These were “foolish dreams,” he said; he would devote all his strength to the welfare of his country, but he would, “with equal firmness, maintain the autocracy.”

A few reforms were introduced. Count de Witte fought his way to the head of the Treasury and improved the finances. The immense flow of paper money was checked, and gold was accumulated at the banks or put into circulation. Ukases were passed which directed the building of model houses for the workers, and regulated to some extent their condition in the growing industries of Russia. New railways were built and canals projected. The army was partly reorganised; the administrative and judiciary institutions of the Empire extended to Siberia, the development of which was energetically pushed; a measure to give separated married women the control of their property was passed; education was further enforced, though in this respect the reform was weakened or undone by the desperate efforts of the clergy to wrest the elementary schools from the Zemstvos.

These reforms, however, like those of the preceding reigns, were trivial in comparison with the mighty needs of Russia, and it was now felt by all but the incurable conservatives and the parasites of the autocracy that self-government, through popular institutions, was the first and essential condition of reform. On this issue the dynasty, or the misguided group who undertook to guide its fortunes, staked its existence. How far any of the reactionaries really believed that the autocracy was for the welfare of the Russian people it is not our place to consider here. The antagonistic forces moved slowly toward the field of battle.

With the general policy and personal adventures of Nicholas II I am not concerned. The whole interest of the story is now concentrated in the growth of the conflict which will presently put an end to the Romanoffs. It suffices to say that Russophilism and Pan-Slavism continued to act together, and were equally responsible for the fall of the dynasty. Nicholas II professed a humane dislike of the coercive policy of his father, and in some respects, in the early years, the zeal of officials in persecuting dissenters was moderated. But the facts of the entire reign are within the memory of my readers and their ghastly inconsistence with this humane profession need scarcely be emphasised. Never since the Middle Ages had the Jews suffered so brutally at the hands of their Christian masters. Unscrupulous officials and bodies of ignorant men like the “Black Hundreds” soon learned that massacre and pillage of the Jews were looked upon with favour at the palace, and the repeated “pogroms” are in themselves an indelible disgrace upon the name of Nicholas II. The Russianisation of the Poles—for which Russia pays heavily to-day—and the Lithuanians was maintained with all the earlier brutality, and in regard to the Finns Nicholas II incurred a peculiar stigma. He had at his accession sworn to respect the rights and the constitution of the Finns, but before long his officials tore up his oath and began to strip the vigorous little people of its nationality. Hardly a year of the Tsar’s reign passed without some callous violation of his solemn promise, done with his express authority. The whole Empire must, in spite of every obligation, be squeezed into the Russian mould. The only extenuating feature of this section of the Tsar’s work that one can suggest is that the Russian people generally were in accord with this harsh and unjust procedure.

The imperialistic tendency which led to this injustice equally shaped the disastrous foreign policy of Nicholas II. There can be little doubt that the Tsar desired a continuance of the peace which Russia had enjoyed during his father’s reign, and for my part I am ready to recognise his sincerity in issuing a summons to a Peace Congress (August 24th, 1898), the aims of which Nicholas defined in a personal letter (January 11th, 1899). It was, as we now know, Germany which chiefly frustrated that well-meant effort. The Tsar remained friendly with Germany, which then wavered between a Russian and an English entente, while further strengthening his alliance with France.

But the Tsar’s desire of peace was, from the general practical point of view, rendered nugatory by his imperialistic policy. In the Balkans he maintained that policy of secret and subtle infiltration which prepared the way for a conflict with Austria. Alexander III had in effect retired from the Balkans, disgusted at the ingratitude of the principalities Russia had helped to set up. Nicholas II resumed the policy of disguised penetration, and it is not too much to say that the southern Slavs felt almost as much apprehension at the shadow of Russia as at the encroachments of Austria. It was, however, the imperialist adventures in the Far East which contained the gravest danger and were least respectable in principle.