The Russian Royal Family

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 4

The Russian Royal Family

Nicholas and Alexandra. By Robert Massie. Gollana. 584 pp. With index and photograph*. When Robert Massie discovered that his son had haemophilia, he became interested in all other families with the same problem and this interest led him eventually to the most famous haemophiliac of all— Tsarevicb Alexis—the only son and heir of Nicholas 11, last Tsar of all the Russia*. The discovery of the disease that afflicted their longawaited son (after four daughters) was not only a blow to the hearts of the Royal parents but a tragedy that would change the history of Russia and the world. The author presents this absorbing history from the unusual viewpoint of a family tragedy. Although surrounded by opulent splendour, Nicholas and his family lived in Spartan simplicity. Nicholas dreaded becoming Tsar, and after the death of his father, Alexander lll—an overpowering personality he leaned heavily on his mother, the Empress Marie. Intensely nationalistic, underneath a soft-spoken gentle manner, Nicholas was a man of strong unchanging conviction and stubborn courage. The early years of his reign were marked by rich cultural and intellectual achievements.

In 1894, he married the German Princess Alexandra, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who felt the event to be a mystic marriage between herself and Russia. Socially gauche, she gathered about her many strange friends but none so strange or sinister as the wandering holy man, Rasputin. The incredible hold Rasputin gained on the Empress’s life can only be explained through the suffering of young Alexis, who was the centre of his united and utterly devoted family. Alexis was closely guarded against falls because a slight knock caused • bleeding into the joints and excruciating pain.

In her agony and frustration, Alexandra determined to wrest from God the miracle which science denied, and once when Alexis was so ill that the last rites had been said, the despairing mother sent for Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who was reported to have miraculous powers of healing. Back came the message, “The little one will not die." The next day the haemorrhage stopped and the boy recovered. From then on Rasputin could do no wrong in the eyes of the Empress and even up to the time of hi* brutal murder and after it, she refused to believe stories of his debauchery. A repulsive, unkempt man with extraordinary hypnotic eyes, Rasputin dominated the political scene through the enigmatic power he wielded

over the highly emotional Empress. Not that he wanted power himself, he merely wished people who hated him out of the way and soon he was persuading the Empress te influence the Tsar’s choice of ministers.

The Russian people hated Alexandra bitterly, not only because of her devotion to Rasputin, but because she was German. Alexandra was tern between Russia and her native Germany during the 1914-18 war, but her allegiance was fervently Russian. “What ha* happened to the Germany of my childhood?” she asked in despair a* she worked feverishly tending the sick and wounded in hospitals.

Alexandra wished the nature of her son’s illness to be kept secret and the Russians who are a compassionate people, being unaware of her private anguish, had wrongly ascribed her remoteness to distaste for them. Nicholas in his turn was torn between loyalty to his wife who urged him to “be the autocrat” and those who warned him that one cannot govern a country without listening to the voice of the people. The climate in this corrupt and crumbling system was menacing and the stage was set for the revolutionary Kerensky to play his part in the downfall of the Romanovs. The story of the royal family’s last days in exile before their final execution makes poignant reading. Nicholas endured captivity with courteous dignity, while Alexandra remained proud and irreconcilable.

History has it that Nicholas was a good man but a bad Tsar, and the author suggests that had he inherited an English throne, Nicholas could have been a good constitutional monarch like his cousin George V, to whom he bore a striking resemblance. In the word* of Pushkin, “Woe to that country where only the slave and the liar are near to th* throne." This is history at its most personal, and reader* will become involved in the Intimate details of the fated family. The book should have immense popular appeal, and 34 historic photographs add interest