The Last Tsar (11 page)

The daughters of the prince of Montenegro had been educated in Russia at the famous Smolny Institute for Well-Bred Young Ladies.

Militsa and Stana, those were the Montenegrins’ names (although at court they were sarcastically referred to as Montenegrin No. 1—Stana—and Montenegrin No. 2—Militsa). Both married
grand dukes: Militsa the weak-chested Peter Nikolaevich and Stana his brother. Nicholas Nikolaevich, or Nikolasha, as he was called in the large Romanov family. Nicholas the Long, as he was called in the army and at court, ironically by some, admiringly by others. Big, shrill, the army’s favorite: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich.

With the Montenegrins Alix felt like a tsaritsa. They showed her deference and admiration instead of the icy civility of the court. The Montenegrins surrounded her with deft servility. When she was stricken with a stomach ailment, they tended her like the lowliest of servants.

From their mysterious homeland the Montenegrins brought an unshakable belief in the supernatural. Witches and sorcerers had always lived there, in the high mountains grown up in wild forest, and some people there could talk with the dead and predict the fates of the living. All this was new to the granddaughter of the skeptical Queen Victoria; this mysterious new world intrigued her. But the main thing was that the Montenegrins promised the fulfillment of a dream. Alix longed for an heir? Nothing could be easier. It was merely a matter of finding the right person, someone who possessed the
power
. Alix, the exalted romantic, was drawn into the new game with all her being. The dark blood of Mary Stuart had stirred. They began with a foreigner, someone less exotic to the Hessian princess: a certain Monsieur Philippe from Lyons, who was famed in France for his miracles (the Montenegrins had learned about him in Paris from the military attaché at the Russian embassy).

It was Alix’s nature: if she believed in something, then she believed with all her heart, without reservation. She believed that this was the way she would get her wished-for son.

The Russian church condemned such perilous escapades with wizards and sorcerers, but the Montenegrins explained: “Monsieur Philippe is not a sorcerer. A sorcerer is a renegade from God, he is dangerous, he does not make the sign of the cross, he does not go to church. Through him the devil reveals his power. But a
znakhar
is something altogether different. A znakhar is a Christian. So he creates from God, not himself.” No one in the court could speak out against this not-so-innocent lie. Philippe arrived in Petersburg. Despite his dubious education and the warnings from the French authorities, Philippe received the title of doctor of medicine and the rank of full state councilor. At court an amusing story went around: Monsieur Philippe had moved into the tsar’s bedroom, ostensibly to hasten the birth of an heir with his prayers. The empress-mother was forced to have a talk with Nicky and demand that the Frenchman be sent away. As always, Nicky agreed, but Philippe remained. He could
not deprive his beloved Alix of hope. Philippe continued to play doctor.

And joy: Alix felt she was pregnant. She did not want to see the doctors for fear of breaking Monsieur Philippe’s spells. But the pregnancy was proceeding so oddly that she had to consult the doctors. It turned out to be a false pregnancy: she was pregnant with her dream. So much did she long for a son! But then, finally! And the doctors confirmed it: she was pregnant. Philippe predicted a boy.

On June 5, 1901, she gave birth to a fourth daughter, Anastasia. The Frenchman declared that this was a special sign: the birth of a daughter instead of a son, which the stars had promised, only proved the girl’s unusual destiny.

But the Frenchman was too civilized. The Montenegrins understood they needed something more mysterious and strange.

Mitka the Fool was brought to court. The Montenegrins explained to Alix: “fools for Christ’s love” existed only in this country. Feigning insanity, they engaged at times in indecent conduct and went around in rags and even naked to mock the pathetic visible world and extract alms from people. They revealed the contradiction between God’s profound truth and worldly, superficial common sense. One was to seek the word of God on their lips, in their indecipherable speech. They were blessed, given to prophecy and miracle working. But Alix had not yet been made over into a Muscovite tsarevna: she found Mitka’s incoherent speech irksome.

Daria Osipova appeared.

Vera Leonidovna:

“At that time everyone lived for miracles. This mystical feeling is probably common at the end of a century. Perhaps it was a premonition of Atlantis’s collapse.… We adored séances, we sniffed cocaine.… At that time we had taken up with Daria Osipova.… This Osipova writhed on the floor—and then exclaimed her prophecies. We wrote down her exclamations; I still have them somewhere.… Swimming in the river ‘during a storm and the new moon’—that was her recipe for conception.… She also talked about how to prepare a potion to turn into a witch and fly at night. I remember the simple, ordinary way she talked about this: ‘Ramson … thorn apple … witch’s grass.’ …

“By the way, it was she who predicted that under the last three Russian tsars Russian history would take a sharp turn every twelve years. Judge for yourself, my friend: 1894, Nicholas ascended to the throne; in the twelfth year of his reign the constitution of October 17, 1905, put an end to Russian autocracy; and another twelve years later, in 1917, the empire came to an end. Another twelve years later,
in 1929, a new tsar came to power at last: Stalin. In 1941, the war began. In 1953, Stalin died and Khrushchev came to power. How interesting it would be for me to live long enough to find out what happens to us twelve years after that.”

Vera Leonidovna did not live that long. Twelve years later Khrushchev was overthrown and Brezhnev came to power, but he was not a tsar. He was a parody, a puppet. And with him, evidently, the twelve-year rule of the last Russian tsars ceased to apply.

Revelations stretching back into pagan Russia. The weighty mutterings of a znakhar would teach Alix to find meaning later on in the mutterings of Rasputin, and the vague stories about fools’ indecent conduct would become the justification for Rasputin’s debauch. All these magicians were preparing her for the coming of the “Holy Devil.”

The whole pernicious game alarmed Ioann of Kronstadt.

Father Ioann of Kronstadt told them about a true saint and his miracle working, about Serafim of Sarov, whose posthumous glory was already thundering across Russia.

Serafim was a holy man who died in 1833 in the Sarov wilderness. “Fortifying himself in devout thought, in ceaseless incantations of God, and in readings of holy books, Serafim was granted many spiritual visions,” Ioann wrote. “He healed and prophesied.”

At age eighteen, Serafim (at that time he was still Prokhor Moshnin; he became Serafim after he entered the cloister) left his home and went to worship in the great city of Kiev, at the Holy Monastery of the Caves. Afterward he lived for a long time in the Sarov wilderness under a vow of silence. He taught: “The soul must be given the Word of God—the bread of angels. It is this that nourishes the soul.”

The holy man was meek and filled with light and joy.

“The soul replete with despair goes mad; he who conquers passion conquers despair as well.” Sadness and despair are sinful.

Serafim went about surrounded by nuns, those happy brides of Christ.

But there were rumors about Serafim and the nuns. The secular authorities grew concerned and instructed the spiritual authorities to question Serafim—and the mystery of holiness became the object of a police investigation. Soon after, the case was put on hold for lack of evidence, but Serafim apparently said at that point: “This
event signifies that the end of my life is near.” He quietly passed away.

This is how, in connection with the investigation, Father Serafim’s prophecies found their way to the Department of Police.

Alix believed immediately: Serafim the holy man, standing by God’s throne, would intercede for them, and Holy Russia would get its heir. Meek Serafim had entered their life.

Alix did everything in her power to get him canonized. She succeeded, and it was decided that the entire family would travel to Sarov for the canonization ceremony. How Alix believed in that trip! She would bow to the powers of the saint and pray for a son, for the continuation of the line.

On July 16, 1903, the imperial train pulled into the Arzamas station, and from there the family set out for the Sarov wilderness and the monastery.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, under Minister Plehve, had been preparing for this trip for a long time. As usual in Russia, the secret police turned everything into a gigantic farce. Orders were issued to the inhabitants of the settlements along the tsarist family’s route: “Decorate the entrances to the settlement with arches, your houses with flags, line up along both sides of the road to greet … and so on.” Huts were immediately painted, covered with boards and even iron. The strictest security measures were taken. Even the welcome had been carefully conceived. During the formal ceremony at the station, a loaded revolver “accidentally” fell out of Minister Plehve’s coat, which his servant was carrying, and a shot rang out. The scheming Plehve had played it exactly right. The sound of the shot was supposed to evoke terrible memories, so that the tsar would properly appreciate the precautionary measures undertaken by the concerned minister.

The police games went right past the imperial couple, though. They saw only the ecstatic crowds lining the road and the sea of people—150,000—who had gathered at the monastery. These people were not driven away. The people who had come to worship Serafim were inclined to be especially devoted to Nicholas. He saw the enthusiasm of the immense crowd that greeted him.

——

The Sarov trip made an enormous impression on Nicholas and Alexandra.

They spent three days in prayer on the Sarov grounds.

At night the empress bathed in the holy pond, imploring Serafim for the birth of a son, while Nicholas sat on the bank. Her body was white in the silver water.

A sense of quiet well-being at the saint’s grave and these peaceful days in Sarov.

At Sarov Alix grasped the astounding concept of the “holy man.” A holy man is your intercessor before God. You entrust your will to him, your cunning reason, and he, sensing the continuous link with Him, guides you. The holy man is your guide; he delivers the bread of the angels to your soul. Serafim the holy man was at their side; they could sense his presence and hear his quiet voice speaking to them in his teachings: “Man corporeal is akin to a lighted candle: it must burn and he must die. But his soul is immortal, and our concern must be the soul, not the body.”

Venerable Serafim was proclaimed the protector of the tsar’s family.

They say when Serafim was dying he asked that his body be tossed out like carrion—for the wild animals to eat, so meek and humble was he.

In 1920 his relics were unearthed and confiscated. Thus after death, he, along with the entire Russian church, “accepted insult and humiliation.” The trail of his relics was hopelessly lost—they were believed to have been destroyed. Yet seventy years later, they were discovered in the cellar of the Museum of Atheism, which is housed in Kazan Cathedral, a once renowned Russian Orthodox church.

One museum worker noticed a large rectangular object encased in canvas standing in a corner heaped with tapestries. When they opened the canvas, under it they saw a wooden box, where under the gauze and cotton wool the astonished workers of the Museum of Atheism laid their eyes on unrotted relics. It was the complete frame of a man: the beard and hair were preserved, as were bits of muscle. On the skull was a monk’s cowl, on his chest a bronze cross, on his crossed arms satin gauntlets embroidered in gold: “Holy Father Serafim, pray God for us.”

Seventy years after his death Serafim was canonized.

Seventy years after his outrage, his relics were returned. And all this he had prophesied.

Prophecies.… In Sarov Nicholas learned several of the saint’s amazing prophecies. Witte recounted them in his
Memoirs
. When
Witte was leaving to conclude the peace treaty with Japan in Portsmouth, an infuriating message was sent after him: he should not worry but know that Saint Serafim had
prophesied
that the peace treaty would be concluded.

The Department of Police, too, presented the tsar with Serafim’s prophecies.

Among them was one that stunned Nicholas. Here is what the amazing elder prophesied about Nicholas’s rule: “At the beginning of this monarch’s reign there will be national disasters, there will be an unsuccessful war, and great confusion will ensue within the government. Father will rise up against son and brother against brother. But the second half of his reign will be bright, and the sovereign’s life long.”

What did Nicholas feel when just a year later the prophecy began to come true: first an unsuccessful war, then great confusion. Was it because he knew the holy elder’s prophecy that the mystical tsar was so calm during the very worst calamities?

When did he cease to believe in the prophecy? And when did he understand that those last words had simply been added by the Department of Police for his benefit?

We do not know what Serafim of Sarov in truth prophesied for him—and we never will.

His first war—the Russo-Japanese War—began in 1904. The Peacemaker’s son, who so hated war, found himself at war. Subsequently Witte recalled that Nicholas was pushed into seizing lands in Manchuria, having been assured that little Japan would not dare attack Russia.

Witte and his mother explained to him the risk involved. Nicholas agreed and instructed Witte to write a proposal for normalizing relations with Japan. The tsar left for Poland and his hunting lodge.

Witte wrote a memorandum that disappeared in the depths of the archives. The negotiations with Japan that his mother and Witte had fought for fell through.

Nicholas’s diary: