Romanovs in the 21st Century
by Daniel A. Willis
May 2011 Edition
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Daniel A. Willis
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Chapter 1 - The Rise and Fall of Romanov Empire
Chapter 2 - The Alexandrovichi: Keeping the Imperial Flame Alive
Chapter 3 - The Constantinovichi: The Hardest Hit by the Revolution
Chapter 4- The Nikolaievichi - The Voice of the Family
Chapter 5 - The Mikhailovichi - The Future of the Romanovs
Chapter 6 - The Leuchtenbergs - The "Other" Branch of the Imperial Family
Chapter 7 - The Greek Royal Family: Cousins in Orthodoxy
Appendix: The Romanov Genealogy
Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of the Romanov Empire
When the Romanovs came to power in 1613, they inherited a very troubled Mother Russia. So much so, the period is officially known in Russian history as the “The Time of Troubles”. From 1598 to 1613 Russia was so filled with anarchy, constant overthrows of the government, war, famine and disease, that the population of the country was reduced by over a third. Moscow and many other of the major towns were pillaged and burned by foreign invaders, primarily the Mongols.
Furthermore, Russia was actually four Russias (Russia proper, Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine) each with their own administrative, religious, and military problems. By 1613, only main Russia and Belarus were under the Tsar’s control. Ukraine had recently been lost to Poland, and Western Rus (known in the west as Lithuania), was still an independent Grand Duchy and intermittently at war with the Tsardom. The Russias that had been united had only been so for about half a century and still only covered a fraction of the territory that the Russian Empire was yet to become.
It was into this madness that the zemsky sobor, an assembly of representatives of the various social classes, thrust Michael Romanov. Michael’s only real family tie to the previous dynasty was that he was a great-nephew to one of the wives of Ivan the Terrible. Michael’s less than impressive genealogical claims were largely overlooked due to the fact his father was recently installed as the Patriarch of Moscow, the Russian Orthodoxy’s equivalent to the Pope. However, it was this distance from the previous rulers, and the seal of approval from the Church, that made him the most acceptable candidate to most factions of the country. They even overlooked his age, only sixteen at the time of the election.
Michael, his son Alexei I, and grandson Feodor III, spent much of the remainder of the 17th century focusing on the internal problems of Russia, largely ignoring the rest of the world. While towns were rebuilt, the government more or less stabilized, and crops sown and harvested, the borders of Russia ultimately shrank due to the Tsars’ desire to avoid external involvements. This non-combative attitude lead to the loss of the Port of Azov, Russia’s only access to the Black Sea - and ultimately to the Mediterranean - to the Sultan of Turkey. Ukraine had come under the control of Poland during the Time of Troubles and despite the Orthodox Ukrainians’ wish to not be under Catholic control, it took until 1654 to convince Tsar Alexis that it was worth the fight to take it back. It was a battle ultimately won by Russia, resulting in the Treaty of 1667, which gave Ukraine to Russia but turned Belarus over to Polish hands to be fought for another day, over a century later.
The 17th century saw great advancements in Europe. The printing press was now in regular use in many cities; science, art, and machinery were flourishing throughout the continent; the Protestant Reformation had suc.cessfully swept through Northern Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland; and many of the Western European Powers were racing to claim new lands from across the Atlantic Ocean. Yet this was all lost on Russia who, through the Tsars’ isolationist policies, not only remained in obscurity, but retreated into what westerners regularly called “backward-thinking”.
In 1682, under the Regency of his half-sister Sofia, Peter I, age ten, became a co-Tsar with his elder mentally disabled half-brother (full brother to Sofia), Ivan V. During the first twenty years of his life, Peter spent his time learning. He traveled widely throughout Europe, where he befriended and recruited various craftsmen for the eventual physical rebuilding of Russia. During this time, he left the control of Russia in the hands of, at first Sofia, whom he overthrew in 1689, and then his mother, until her death in1694. It was at this point Peter took the reigns of government firmly in his grasp and dragged Russia, kicking and screaming, into Europe and the 18th century.
Peter was one of those rare rulers in history who truly deserved the sobriquet “the Great” appended to his name. His efforts to bring his country into the modern age were no less than Herculean. Between 1694 and his death in 1725, he built the city of St. Petersburg, took back the Port of Azov from Turkey, wrested most of the Baltic coast from Sweden, and expanded Russia’s eastern border right up to the toenails of the Mongols themselves, Russia’s traditional Asian nemesis. He also “westernized” the government, forming a Cabinet, and a very limited legislative body, the Duma. He declared himself “Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias” in 1721, a title to be carried by his suc.cessors until the end of the Empire in 1917.
For all of his “greatness,” Peter could have equally been remembered in history as “the Terrible.” Tens of thousands of Russians died building St. Petersburg in egregious conditions and under harsh task masters. Many thousands more died in the battles fought to expand Russia’s borders. He tortured and killed any who spoke against him or his ideas, including his own son and heir, Alexei. The Tsareveich, the traditional title of the heir-apparent, began making concessionary overtures toward the Holy Roman Emperor at a time when his father was battling Imperial forces for parts of Eastern Europe. Alexei’s actions were tantamount to treason. Peter personally oversaw Alexei’s death by torture. Towards the end of his life, Peter called himself a stern, perhaps even cruel, Father for his people, but said like any father he acted in their best interests.
Peter the Great’s final accomplishment was to write Russia’s first Law of Succession. It was an ill-conceived document which allowed each Sovereign to name his or her own suc.cessor. It was also a law that Peter was the first to break by dying without making such a provision. Therefore the succession to Peter the Great’s throne was the first of several to be decided by the threats of officers of the Preobrzhensky Guards. This particular military unit served as the House Guards and personal bodyguards of the Emperor, and were founded by Peter himself. Upon his death their loyalty fell to his widow, the bawdy, brandy-swilling, Russian equivalent of a saloon girl, Catherine. She, in due course, was crowned as Empress Catherine I, starting off a long line of reigning Empresses culminating with her much better known namesake, Catherine (II) the Great.
The period from Peter’s death in 1725 until 1762 saw three Empresses who “mothered” Russia and helped her heal from the pain of Peter, the abusive Father, and eased the growing pains of becoming a Great Power in Europe. Each of these Empresses were briefly suc.ceeded by men who were either physically, or mentally, children. Therefore the running of the country was left to the ladies. This lead to a string of “favorites” who plied their charms over the Empress of the day. Several were even lovers of the Sovereign which often brought about enough palace intrigue to require even the French royals to keep a scorecard. And yet with all of this going on these highly capable ladies managed to expand the western frontiers of their country, including winning a three year war with Turkey in the 1730’s. But Russia’s greatest expansion was yet to come, and it too was again during the reign of an Empress: Catherine the Great.
The rise to power of Catherine II (the Great) is a most remarkable story. She began life very humbly, by royal standards, as the daughter of the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, a tiny German territory lying west and a little south of Berlin. The current Empress at the time, Elizabeth, decided it would be prudent for her inept nephew and heir, Grand Duke Peter, to marry young. So she set about the usual practice of scouring the Courts of Europe for a suitable bride. The biggest obstacle to her quest was Peter, himself. Although a young man of 17, he had the maturity level of a 10-year-old, preferring to play with his toy soldiers rather than court any young ladies who might be presented to him. Not surprisingly, many ladies of appropriate age suddenly found themselves betrothed to others, or promised to the Church as nuns. Catherine was not so fortunate. Her mother, who was more ambitious than her position really warranted, was only too happy to convince her husband to make the arrangements.
Catherine did not even meet her fiancé until she arrived in Russia. She quickly realized her intellectual superiority over the young dolt, but was convinced by her mother to make the best of it. It did not take Catherine terribly long after her wedding to take a lover (or two or three). In fact, it is gossiped, adultery became necessary for her to conceive an heir, which she dutifully produced in 1754. If this gossip is true, and Grand Duke (and later Emperor) Paul was not Peter’s biological child, it means no “Romanov” after the 18th century has a drop of Romanov blood.
Empress Elizabeth died in early 1762, leaving the country to a woefully ill-equipped Peter III. It was again the Preobrzhensky Guards, lead by Catherine’s lover of the day, Count Orlov, who lead a palace revolt, forcing the abdication of Peter in favor of Catherine. It was probably Orlov himself who murdered the deposed Emperor two weeks later, supposedly against the new Empress’s orders. Catherine was a shrewd politician who consolidated her power quickly and decisively. She met little resistance to her coup d’etat and was crowned Empress in short order. She and Orlov went on have more children, albeit illegitimate, who were granted the title Count Bobinskoy and who have many descendants living today.
Catherine’s reign is called “Great” mainly for the further expansion that happened during the period. It was Catherine who enlarged Russia’s borders, through mostly diplomatic means, to the Pacific Ocean and even onto the North American continent. She also pushed southward into central and western Asia, and westward to claim about half of what was once Poland, as well as the remaining Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Baltic territories not already under Mother Russia’s skirt. Her reign also saw a higher degree of enlightenment in Court life, and the final transformation of Russia into a Great Power. Catherine’s reign was the second longest of any in Imperial Russia, exceeded only by Peter the Great, and ending with her death in 1796. Like the Empresses before her she too was followed by an emotionally damaged man, her only legitimate child, Paul.
Tsarevich Paul had been raised away from his mother and by those who did not appreciate her way of doing things. Mother and son grew to detest one another and Catherine had been openly discussing the possibility of skipping him in the succession and going directly to his infant son, Alexander. It was a quirk of fate that her final, and ultimately fatal, stroke left her incapable of the necessary communication skills needed to make the change. Paul’s feeling toward his mother were made quite clear when he came to the Throne. He immediately set about undoing most of the policies she had put into place.
Emperor Paul, by most accounts, was mentally unhinged. He was prone to tantrums from out of nowhere which often lead to innocent bystanders being summarily exiled to Siberia or a fortress basement cell. But despite this madness, he did suc.ceed in passing one decree which continues to affect his family to this day: the Fundamental Law of Succession. He threw out the notion that an Emperor should pick his suc.cessor, and left it to Fate to determine the next ruler of Russia. His law made the eldest son the heir, and also placed requirements on who was eligible to suc.ceed. The requirements narrowly prescribed who would be a proper bride for a member of the Imperial Family. Furthermore, probably in direct response to his feelings about his mother, Paul’s Succession Law only allowed the succession of females to the Throne in the event all of the male lines had become extinct.
While many of his predecessors had produced multiple children, Paul was the first Romanov to have a large number live to adulthood: four sons and five daughters. Two of the sons would become Emperor in their turn, a third son renouncing the Succession to live out a quieter life in Poland, the fourth being consigned to a mostly forgotten corner of history. The daughters presented Paul, and later his son Alexander, an opportunity to forge great marital alliances throughout Europe, which they did quite suc.cessfully. The five sisters ultimately became: an Archduchess of Austria, the mother of a Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, a Grand Duchess of Saxony, a Queen of Wurttemberg, and a Queen of the Netherlands.
While it was fate that spared Paul from being skipped over in the succession, it was his own new Law that allowed his son to suc.ceed him. This, despite that son, Alexander, being at least partially responsible for Paul’s murder. The Emperor met his demise in 1801 at the hands of a group of soldiers who feared what the manic monarch might contrive in his next fit of insanity. Although Alexander was not the instigator of patricide, he knew of the plot and condoned it, an act that plagued his guilty conscience for the rest of his life.
Emperor Alexander I inherited a Russia which had expanded to her greatest size to date, stretc.hing from present-day central Poland and Finland, through Siberia and ending only at the Yukon in Canada, and from the frozen Artic Ocean to the Mongolian Empire, a waning force in central Asia. Russia had become, by far, the largest nation in the world in terms of landmass. The population was relatively meager in comparison. Only 4 percent of the Russian population lived in towns and cities in 1801, the rest being farmers who worked the land to grow potatoes, turnips, and wheat. Over the next hundred years, Alexander’s heirs would add the remaining portions of Finland, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and all of Central Asia, down to Persia, to their territories.
With this vast Empire to manage, Alexander introduced the concept of ministries to streamline the administration of the nation. However, Russia remained an autocracy and the ministers served purely at the pleasure of the Emperor and were expected to carry out his dictates regardless of how frivolous they might be.
Alexander also inherited a very European Russia, complete with European problems. The big one was the rise of Napoleon. The Napoleonic Wars raged throughout Europe during most of Alexander’s reign. Ultimately the Corsican was able to drive into Russia all the way to Moscow which he occupied briefly in 1812. A combination of fresh troops coming from the east and the bitterly harsh Russian winter drove the French troops out. Alexander and his forces pursued and, joined by other European troops, pinned Napoleon in for his final defeat at Waterloo.
Alexander entered Paris as a hero, but his troops entered, not as well-paid professional military men, but as virtual slaves who had been pressed into service. They got to see how the rest of Europe functioned, which put ideas of a constitutional government and general freedom for the people in their heads. It was these seeds that would grow into rebellious uprisings throughout the 19th century and culminate in the October Revolution in the 20th.
The defeat of Napoleon definitively defined Russia as a World Power. Ties to the rest of Europe remained close and were improved through generations of marriages with the royal families of other countries. Alexander himself had married a German princess from the House of Baden, but his only children, two daughters, both died while still in the crib. He carefully cultivated the families of his numerous younger siblings and ultimately it was his brother, Nicholas who would be the progenitor of the future generations of Romanovs.
European history is filled with stories of Princes being spirited away, only to show up later and try to claim their rightful Crown. A similar story arose from the death of Alexander I. Towards the end of his life he became more and more a religious recluse, leaving the government in the hands of his ministers. The official story is that he died after a brief illness in southern town of Taganrog, on the Black Sea in late November 1825. However, after his death a story that would not die suggested he actually faked his death to follow a religious calling, living in seclusion in Siberia. A mysterious monk named Feodor Kuzmich was touted as a possible “Alexander in hiding” and lived until 1864. Though this incredible story has never been proven, the Soviet government did claim in 1925 to have opened the Emperor’s coffin only to find it empty.
Alexander’s death also brought about a confusion in the succession. Under the Pauline Law, Alexander’s next younger brother, Constantine, should have suc.ceeded to the Throne, prompting the nation, including third brother, Nicholas, to swear allegiance to Constantine as the new Emperor. Constantine had been installed as Governor of Poland for several years and had married to a Polish commoner. The situation of his marriage had caused him to renounce his succession rights, but this information was not made public. When Constantine revealed this, the Throne was duly passed onto his younger, unsuspecting, brother who suc.ceeded as Nicholas I.
Nicholas had lead a military career up to this point and had already developed a reputation as an absolutist in his thinking. With the men under his command, the only way was his way, period. Several officers of the military, concerned about Nicholas applying this philosophy to running the nation, lead an attempted coup d’etat, nominally claiming to support Constantine for the Throne. Constantine, for his part, had no role in this plot, but he was more constitutionally minded than the born autocrat, Nicholas. Emperor Nicholas put down the revolt swiftly and with an iron fist. The officers (now known as the Decembrists) who organized it were hanged while their followers were exiled to the frozen Siberian wastelands. Keeping in mind that this took place in mid-winter, the officers probably got the easier sentence.
Nicholas turned out to be an able administrator for the Empire over which he ruled for thirty years. True to his nature, his word was law with no room for compromise or debate. But on the whole his policies improved the lot of the nation. However, much of Europe was facing revolutionary winds during this period. Nicholas did nothing to appease the reform-minded by using Russian troops to help other countries quell uprisings in their own kingdoms. In preparation for a revolution that Nicholas was always sure was just a few weeks away, he fine-tuned his military to be a force to be reckoned with and one that was generally feared throughout Europe. However, this was not enough to repel an invasion of British and French troops sent to protect the Crimean from further expansion by Russia. The Crimean War did keep Russia at bay for another twenty years, but ultimately the Crimea was annexed into the empire.
In his family life, Nicholas was far more suc.cessful. His marriage in 1817 to Princess Charlotte of Prussia was a love match. He had to ask for her hand several times before her father, King Friedrich Wilhelm III, finally gave in, and then only after intercession on the couple’s behalf by Charlotte’s mother, Queen Luise. Like his father, Nicholas fathered a large brood of healthy children: four sons and three daughters. The four boys, Alexander, Constantine, Nicholas, and Michael went on to form the four primary branches of the Romanov family. Their sister, Maria - the only sister to survive having children of her own – produced a fifth line of the Imperial House, the Romanovsky Dukes of Leuchtenberg.
The senior line of the family, founded by the future Alexander II, retains the succession to this day. Alexander followed his father as Emperor in 1855. His style of government being almost the complete opposite of his father’s. He, like his Uncle Constantine, was much more reform minded and ultimately emancipated the serfs. Serfdom in Russia had become a form a slavery. However, unlike American slavery, the slaves were not imported from far away lands. They were generally the original occupants of land that was annexed into the Russian Empire and were made up of a very wide and diverse group of cultures, ethnicities, and religions.
His next great feat after freeing the serfs was going to be granting a constitution and beginning the process of converting autocratic Russia into a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. However, Fate again took a hand in shaping Russian history. The very revolutionaries who would have welcomed such a constitution, did not know of its existence or that a final version was sitting on the Emperor’s desk for approval when, on a March evening in 1881, they threw a bomb at the Imperial coach, killing most of the guards. When Alexander emerged from the overturned coach to attempt to assist his men, a second bomb removed large portions of the Emperor’s lower body, leaving him to die slowly and painfully over the next few hours.
Alexander’s family life had been a little unorthodox as well. He was duly married in 1841 to Hessian Princess Marie and they had six sons and one surviving daughter. However, he also had begun a secret second family in the early 1870’s with Princess Catharina Dolgoruky, from a old noble Russian family. When Marie died in 1880, Alexander raised a lot of eyebrows, and a few tempers amongst his family, by marrying, morganatically, Catharina a mere six weeks later. He legitimated his three surviving children by Catharina and granted them the title Prince or Princess Yourievsky. There was speculation at the time of his death the following year that he may have been considering declaring them to be dynastic members of the family and elevating them to the rank of Grand Duke and Grand Duchesses. His son and suc.cessor threw out this idea just as he did the proposed constitution.
Alexander’s eldest son, the Tsarevich Nicholas, had been a promising young man, very reminiscent of his father. He was a well-liked youth, physically attractive, and artistically talented. His parents had no trouble finding any number of suitable young princesses to be potential brides. But he contracted tuberculosis in his late teenage years. Despite being sent to the South of France for the warmer sea air, he ultimately suc.cumbed to the illness in 1865 at the age of only 21.
Alexander II was therefore suc.ceeded by his second son, and namesake, Alexander III. This Alexander was much more from the mold of his grandfather than his father. He favored autocracy with his country and his family. He was the first Romanov to face heading up an ever-increasingly large family. By the time of his accession in 1881, there were 27 living Grand Dukes among the children and grandchildren of Nicholas I, many of them on the brink of starting a new generation of Romanovs. Realizing that Russia was on its way to becoming like Austria with its never-ending list of Archdukes, Alexander issued Imperial decrees to reduce the number of Grand Dukes running around. He decreed that the Imperial title would only extend to the children of the Emperor and the children of the sons of the Emperor. Subsequent generations would be titled Prince or Princess of Russia with the great-grandchildren being styled Highness and further relations Serene Highness. And just to add one more piece of confusion, the eldest son of each male-line great-grandson would also enjoy the style of Highness.
Alexander III was also more like his grandfather in temperament. Prone to a short fuse, especially with his large number of cousins, he was fortunate to have the steady guiding hand of his wife on his arm. In 1866, Alexander had married Princess Dagmar of Denmark, who was rechristened as Maria Feodorvna upon her marriage. The physical differences between Alexander and Maria were almost disturbing. He was a hulk of a man, both tall and broad, while she barely came up to his shoulder, and then only when she pinned her hair up on top of her very slight build. Yet, she carried herself with an air of authority that could silence any room she entered or tame the wildest tempers of her husband. Many royals have been referred to as “regal”, but Maria bore the mantle better than most.
Alexander’s autocratic policies did nothing to stem the rising revolutionary tide in Russia. However, the swift and severe treatment of those even remotely associated with the assassination of his father drove this tide to mostly underground grottos. Nonetheless, Alexander’s end would come partially as a result of their earlier activities. In 1879, a prior, but unsuc.cessful, attempt had been made on the life of Alexander II, again with a bomb, but this time thrown at his train. The force of the blast derailed the Imperial compartments. The Emperor was unharmed, but then-Tsarevich Alexander, his wife and small children, were caught in a collapsing train car. By sheer brute force the younger Alexander managed to hold up the roof to allow his family to escape to safety, followed by himself. Although he was able to save his family, the damage to his back and nervous system was done and he was never again in full health. The lingering effects of this incident ultimately lead to the premature death of Alexander III at age 49 in 1894.
It is probably the biggest avoidable tragedy of Russian, even world, history that Alexander died so young. Being the bull-moose of a man that he was, he clearly believed he would have plenty of time to accomplish things such as training his son and heir, Nicholas, in how to run the country. But as it turned out he failed in this endeavor. Therefore, in 1894, Nicholas II found himself an ill-prepared Emperor of the powder keg that was Russia.
The first eleven years served as a honeymoon for Nicholas and his new subjects, but when that honeymoon was over, it was really over! 1905 saw a complete turnabout for the Emperor. The year started off badly with the recent discovery that his only son, the one for whom he waited so long, through the birth of four daughters, was diagnosed with hemophilia, the “bleeding disease” that had affected so many other members of his wife’s family. The news of the baby’s illness was kept quiet. 1905 also saw the one-year-old Russo-Japanese war go from bad to worse with humiliating naval and military defeats being handed to Russia by the Japanese Imperial forces.
On January 9th of this year of woes, a procession of unarmed workers approached the Winter Palace to express their displeasure with the war against Japan. At the order of Nicholas’s advisors, they were met by guards shooting at them, killing hundreds of people. The day is recorded as Bloody Sunday in history and earned Nicholas the nickname “Bloody Nicholas”. The remainder of the year saw sporadic small acts of violence against the government, work stoppages, and full-fledged worker strikes, bringing the nation to a virtual standstill.
By the following year, Nicholas had suc.cessfully used the military to bring his country back under control, but the damage was done. It then became a death march to the inevitable Revolution. It was only a question of when. Nicholas did manage to buy some time by finally granting the elective State Duma his grandfather tried to create 25 years earlier. But this Duma was a very weak body and if they got too “carried away” with their power, the Emperor would merely dissolve the Duma, which he did in 1906 and again 1907. Finally, a stable Duma was elected in 1907 and served its full five-year course until 1912. The slow crawl towards a constitutional monarchy started again.
However, all life and politics of a normal nature were suspended in 1914 when Russia entered World War I with the Allies to fight against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria and Italy. Midway into the War, Nicholas went off to command his troops personally, leaving his wife Alexandra, probably the most detested woman in Russia, at the helm of the government. The War, that dragged on for too many years and cost too many Russian lives, and “That Woman” being in charge was more than the Revolutionaries could stand. However, as they plotted their final thrust to gain control, the Imperial government actually collapsed under its own weight without them.
In February 1917, food shortages had grown in St. Petersburg to the point that Cossacks and military personnel alike – usually loyal to the Emperor - were protesting with the townsfolk. Having lost the military, there was no one to put down the protesters and the government essentially shut down. After nearly a month and no hope of restoring order in sight, the Emperor was forced to abdicate. He sought to protect his 12-year-old son by abdicating for him as well and named his brother, Grand Duke Michael, as his suc.cessor. Upon receiving the news, Michael refused to take the Crown.
A provisional government was established with leading members of the State Duma in charge. However, it became clear by late summer that administering this vast Empire was beyond their abilities. It was then, in October 1917, that the revolutionaries, called Bolsheviks and led by Vladimir Lenin, struck. They now numbered in the thousands and were able to physically take control of the capitol and, after three years of Civil War, the country. In the years to come this relatively small band of revolutionaries turned the splendor of Imperial Russia into the Soviet Regime of the USSR.
After his abdication, Nicholas was taken back to the Alexander Palace in St. Petersburg where he joined his wife and children under house-arrest. In August of 1917, the family was moved to Tobolsk, where they still continued to live in relative comfort at the Governor’s Mansion. After the Bolshevik Revolution, their lives got much harder and they were moved again to Yekaterinburg in central Russia in the spring of 1918. On the night of 16/17 July 1918, the last Emperor, his wife, all five of his children, along with four servants were shot to death on the direct orders of Lenin.
Lenin’s desire to eradicate the Russian Tsardom did not stop with Nicholas’s immediate family. Nicholas’s only surviving brother, Michael, the de jure Emperor since March 1917, was taken into the woods near Perm and shot, three nights before his brother met the same fate. Several Romanov cousins were rounded up and either killed near Alapaievsk the same night as Nicholas and his family, or imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, to be executed the following January.
The Revolution and the Rest of the Imperial Family
Nicholas’s mother and sisters, Olga and Xenia, worked in the Red Cross during the War and were in the area of Kiev at the time of the Revolution, they made their way to the Crimea, where they waited until 1919 before being evacuated by the British. Xenia, the elder sister had married a Romanov second cousin, Grand Duke Alexander, the son of Alexander II’s youngest brother, Michael. They, with their seven children, were evacuated with the Dowager Empress. Olga, the younger sister, had, after a brief unhappy marriage to an Oldenburg Duke, married an army officer she fell in love with named Nicholas Kulikovsky. They left the Crimea to assist the White Army, eventually making their own way to Denmark.
Emperor Alexander III was the eldest surviving of five brothers, the other four of whom were Vladimir, Alexei, Serge and Paul. Vladimir was one of those fellows who was totally eclipsed by his wife. In 1874 he had married Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg, a very haughty lass who wasted no time setting up her own “court” of influential and gossipy friends. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, as she was known in Russia, was also the foremost critic of the Emperor’s wife, Alexandra, born Princess Alix of Hesse. Vladimir and Marie had three sons and a daughter: Cyril, Boris, Andrew and Helena, all of whom survived the Revolution.
Grand Duke Alexei was outside the realm of the Revolution and the events leading up to it as he was living in exile at the time. In 1870, he had eloped with Alexandra Zhukovskya, a lady far beneath his station. It has never been determined if they actually married, but it has been alleged they did so in Italy. They remained abroad, a common practice for Romanovs who married “improperly”, with their infant son, also named Alexei. The Grand Duke died in 1908, nine years after Alexandra, both being spared the worst of the events in Russia. Their son, Alexei, though, did return to Russia where he was ennobled with the title Count Belevsky-Zhukovsky and, in 1895, married Princess Maria Troubetskoya. They had a son and three daughters. Alexei and Maria divorced, she fleeing to Paris with the children in the early days of the Revolution. Alexei remained in Russia and survived the first wave of Romanov murders but was eventually executed during the early Stalin years along with other Russian nobles who stayed behind.
In the previous quieter years, Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich was placed in charge of the police force of St. Petersburg. In that “mini-revolutionary” year of 1905 it had been his forces that were called on to put down the rioting crowds. Revolutionaries took their revenge by killing him with a bomb a month after Bloody Sunday. His widow was Elizabeth, the sister of Empress Alexandra. After the murder of her husband, she devoted herself to religious work and helping the poor, founding an abbey and hospitals which were pressed into service during the War. Her good works did not spare her life though. She was among the Romanov relatives who were thrown into a mine shaft and killed by the Bolsheviks near Alapaievsk in July 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church later canonized her as St. Elizabeth the New Martyr. Serge and Elizabeth had no children, but they did have guardianship of the two older children of Grand Duke Paul when he went into exile.
Grand Duke Paul, the youngest “imperial” son of Alexander II, lead a military life, common to many of the younger sons of the Romanov clan. In due course, he married a cousin, Princess Alexandra of Greece and had two children with her, Maria and Dmitri. Sadly, Alexandra died within hours of giving birth to Dmitri. Later, Paul entered into a morganatic marriage with Olga Karnovich, a marriage which Nicholas II had already refused permission for. The couple were exiled from Russia, during which time Maria and Dmitri were raised by Paul’s brother Serge. Eventually, Nicholas allowed his uncle to return to Russia and ennobled his wife as Princess Paley. Of the three Paley children, the two daughters, Irina and Natalia were able to escape Russia with their mother. The son, Vladimir, was not spared by the Bolsheviks despite his youthful age of twenty-one. He was among the relatives murdered at Alapaievsk.
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich has his own claim to fame in history, ultimately one that spared his life during the Revolution. Shortly after the birth of the Tsarevich in 1904, the Emperor and Empress came under the influence of the monk Rasputin, who seemed to be able to alleviate the pain and suffering of the Tsarevich’s internal bleeding. Over time they grew very reliant on this character, who in truth was a womanizing drunkard when he was not in the Imperial presence. His influence over the Empress became most disturbing to many members of her husband’s family and government ministers. After the outbreak of World War I , Nicholas II went to oversee the military efforts in person leaving Alexandra in charge back in the capitol. It was believed by most that Rasputin was controlling the Empress and therefore in charge of the Empire. Whether this was true remains a matter of debate, but it was the common assumption of the time.
A small group of men decided to rid Russia of Grigori Rasputin once and for all. The group selected Prince Felix Yousoupov to be the assassin. He was picked due his close relationship to the Imperial Family; he was married to the Emperor’s niece, Princess Irina. He selected as his Imperial co-conspirator, the Emperor’s cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri. The murder was carried out in 1916 at Yousoupov’s home after quite a bit of difficulty. Rasputin simply refused to die. He was poisoned and then shot and yet still managed to stagger out into the night on his own. Cutting his throat seemed to do the trick and his body was thrown into a canal. When the autopsy was done it was discovered he actually died drowning, indicating he was still alive when he went into the water.
It did not take long for the word to get out that Rasputin was murdered and very quickly Yousoupov and Dmitri were named the culprits. Nicholas II could not bring himself to have members of his own family executed so instead he imprisoned Yousoupov and exiled Dmitri to the Persian front. It was this exile that prevented Dmitri from being in the capitol at the time of the Revolution and allowed him to survive.
Alexander II’s second family, the Yourievskys, were made rather unwelcome in Russia during the reign of their half-brother, Alexander III. They relocated to France and lived on a quite generous pension granted by their half-brother to encourage staying away. Catherine, known as Katya, gave the Emperor four children, but one died as a small child. The surviving ones were George, Olga and Katherine. They each married into noble families and have descendants remaining in Europe.
The Constantinovichi are the descendants of Nicholas I’s second son, Constantine. Like most junior Grand Dukes, Constantine pursued a military career and entered into an arranged marriage with an appropriate princess. In his case, the bride was Alexandra, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg. They had six children, the youngest of which, Viatchslev, died as a teenager. The two daughters married into foreign houses. The elder, Olga, became the first Queen of a modern Greece and the matriarch of a large Royal House of her own. The younger, Vera, married a junior member of the Royal House of Württemberg.
Constantine’s eldest son, Nicholas, was always the black sheep of the Romanovs. He had been an unruly youth, often getting into trouble with the local girls. The family finally could not take any more of him when he stole some of his mother’s jewels to give to some girl of questionable values. Alexander II was Emperor at the time and displayed unusual firmness with his family this time, banishing Nicholas to live in Tashkent, then little more than a nomadic haven in the wilds of present-day Uzbekistan.
Nicholas’s life in Tashkent was hard, but also rewarding. He was able to use his education as a Grand Duke to improve the lives of his Uzbeki neighbors. He still chased women, despite marrying the daughter of the local equivalent to law enforcement, and reportedly fathered several children, recognizing at least three of the illegitimate ones. His wife also gave him two sons, Artemi and Alexander, to whom the Emperor (now Alexander III) granted the surname Iskander.
Nicholas’s death was for years attributed to the Bolsheviks as it happened in 1918 when attempts to wipe out all Romanovs were under way. But in actuality, he died a common death, by pneumonia. His widow made her way to St. Petersburg, now called Petrograd, dying there in 1929. Artemi joined up with the White Army to fight against the Bolsheviks but was killed in action in 1919. Alexander was able to make his way West, leaving behind an ex-wife and two children, Cyril and Natalia.
Grand Duke Constantine’s second son and namesake married his cousin, Princess Elizabeth of Saxe-Altenburg. If the happiness of a marriage is judged by the number of children it produces, theirs was most happy with nine children: six boys and three girls, although one daughter lived only two days. Tragically, this happy family life would also be shattered the most brutally by the Bolsheviks. The Grand Duke was spared the slaughter, having died in 1915. But Elizabeth was left to mourn the murder of three of her sons, Ivan, Constantine, and Igor, at Alapaievsk, as well as a fourth son, Oleg, who was killed in action fighting the Germans. Most of these young men were not married when they died, but Ivan had recently married Princess Elena of Serbia and left behind two small children Vsevelode and Catherine. Elena and the children were able to escape to the West along with Ivan’s surviving siblings, Tatiana, Gabriel, George, and Vera.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaievich the Elder was so called to differentiate him from his son of the same name. He is also the patriarch of the Nikolaievichi line of the Romanov family. This branch got off to a bad start when Nicholas was unwillingly married off to a second cousin, Duchess Alexandra of Oldenburg. The Grand Duke was a boisterous and active man while the new Grand Duchess was quiet and retiring. They did their “royal duty” and produced two sons, Nicholas the Younger, known in his family as Nikolasha, and Peter, but that was about the extent of their married life. Ultimately Alexandra retired to Kiev and left Nicholas to his mistress.
Nicholas had developed a relationship with dancer Katherina Chislova early in his marriage and lived openly with her through the remainder of her life. They had five children, formally acknowledged by their father and given the surname Nikolaiev. The illegitimacy of their birth spared them from the wrath of the Bolsheviks, so those descendants who had not already moved to the West at the time of the Revolution remained in Soviet Russia and are now quite numerous.
The “official” children of Grand Duke Nicholas followed their father into military careers, with differing results. Nikolasha was most suc.cessful, ultimately becoming the commander-in-chief of the Russian forces during World War I. Peter was nearly a wash-out due to a malformed foot. The two brothers married a set of sisters, Anastasia and Militza, daughters of the King of Montenegro. Nikolasha and Anastasia married later in life and had no children. Peter and Militza had three children, Marina, Roman and Nadaejda.
This branch of the family had been luckiest during the Revolution. When the Bolsheviks took control, they were quickly able to retreat to their palaces in the Crimea. From there they were also able to give refuge to the Dowager Empress and her daughters and grandchildren until they were all evacuated by the British in 1919.
The descendants of the youngest son of Nicholas I, Grand Duke Michael, are now the most numerous. They got a good start with Michael and his wife Princess Caecilie of Baden who had seven children. Michael and Caecilie, renamed Olga when she entered the Orthodoxy upon marriage, were somewhat cold parents to their children, leaving them to be brought up mostly by governesses and tutors. They did, however, insist on them behaving properly at all times including when selecting spouses. This did not go quite as well as they would have hoped.
The eldest son, yet another Grand Duke Nicholas, devoted much of his life to the study and publication of historical works. By far the most scholarly of the entire Romanov family, he was also one of the most outspoken. Towards the end he implored the Emperor to make reforms that might have diverted the disaster of 1917. Regardless of his efforts, like many of the cousins who were in St. Petersburg when the Revolution came, he too was arrested and confined in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Several leading figures of the day begged Lenin to spare this intellectual giant, but Lenin’s oft-quoted response (which he probably never really said) was merely that the Revolution had no need of historians. Nicholas was one of the four family members to be lined up in their fortress prison and shot by a firing squad in January 1919. He had never married.
The only daughter, Anastasia, was the second child. She was duly married off to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, becoming a common ancestress to the current Queen of Denmark and the claimant to the Prussian Throne. However, it was her activities after the death of her husband that caused the biggest stir. A few years after the Grand Duke’s death, Anastasia dropped out sight on the pretense of a contagious illness. When next seen in public, it was clear she had given birth to an illegitimate son by her lover and private secretary, Vladimir Paltov. Anastasia raised the boy, named Alexis Louis de Wenden, herself, an unusual practice for the royal mother of a bastard. The boy’s name was granted by her son-in-law, the King of Denmark, and referred to Wenden Castle which Anastasia had inherited when her husband died. The Louis de Wenden family still thrives in lines of female descent in France.
The second son was the one to cause the biggest upset to the Mikhailovichi clan. As he approached the age where it would be proper to marry, he did the dutiful thing and approached several available princesses, only to be rebuffed each time. He then started looking at the Russian nobility, which instigated great fights between him and his parents. In 1890, they sent him abroad and away from the “temptations” of St. Petersburg in hopes he would finally find a suitable princess to marry. He came close. He fell completely in love with Countess Sophie von Merenberg, daughter of Prince Nikolaus of Nassau and his morganatic wife, Natalia Pushkin (daughter of the famous poet and author, Alexander Pushkin). Despite Sophie being from the same family that rules in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, her mother’s morganatic status prevented her from being high-enough born for a Russian Grand Duke. Knowing full well he would not be granted permission to marry Sophie, he simply did not ask for it and married her anyway. In addition to being banished from Russia for life, he was also blamed for causing the subsequent heart attack his mother suffered, killing her. His banishment prevented him from even attending her funeral. However, it also prevented him from being arrested and executed like much of the rest of his family.
Michael and Olga’s third son, George, was born in Georgia while his father was Governor-General there and his family always remained close to the region in spirit. After a few other tries at romance, including the future Queen Marie of Romania, George finally married Princess Marie of Greece. They had two daughters, Nina and Xenia. When World War I broke out, George broke with custom and sent his wife and children to England where they would be safer. This ultimately saved their lives but sadly not George’s. After the abdication he was permitted to take up residence in Finland, where he had hoped to work his way to his family in England. It was not to be, though. In April 1918, he was arrested and returned to St. Petersburg, only to end up with his brother Nicholas in front of a firing squad the following January.
Of the three remaining sons of Grand Duke Michael, the youngest, Alexei, died of tuberculosis at age 19 and the next youngest Serge, after living an adventuresome life, was arrested and eventually murdered with several more distant members of his family at Alapaievsk. Much of what we know about the ins and outs of the Romanov family we know because of the two-part autobiography, written in the early 1930’s, by the remaining Mikhailovichi child, Grand Duke Alexander.
Alexander Mikhailovich was raised, like so many other cousins, in a military household and he served his stint in the armed services as well. His biggest claim to fame is that he managed to persuade his second cousin, Grand Duchess Xenia to marry him, and even more amazing, persuaded her parents to give their consent. Thus, the marriage of these two Romanovs produced the youngest male line of Romanovs, but who, at the same time, are the most closely related to the last Emperor, being his niece and nephews. Alexander and Xenia had seven children, a daughter followed by six younger brothers. It was this one daughter, Princess Irina, who was married to Prince Yousoupov, the murderer of Rasputin. Alexander, his wife and their children were among the group of Romanovs who, with the Dowager Empress, were able to escape to the Crimea and later be evacuated to England.
The remainder of this book follows the stories of these survivors and their descendants today.
Chapter 2: The Alexandrovichi
Keeping the Imperial Flame Alive
The Russian Revolution radically changed the structure of not only Russia, but the whole world. By the post-World War II era, Europe was split decisively between East and West, each side growing more suspicious of the other with each passing year. Anti-monarchical sentiments toppled the thrones within the German and Austrian empires and eventually the Balkans, Italy, and Spain as well, the last being the only one to see a restoration. Communism spread from Europe to China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and even into the Western Hemisphere with the take over of Cuba.
But the world did continue to spin. And after the Bolshevik holocaust devastated their family, the remaining Romanovs stood up, took stock, and continued ever onward. Whether they were in Europe, America, or Asia, some Romanovs survived and their story continues.
In the initial months following the Revolution, there was a lot of confusion and little concrete information about what had happened to the Imperial Family, where the various members were, and who had actually survived. Within days of the murder of Nicholas II and his family, the Bolshevik government announced they had indeed executed the former Emperor, but also stated that his wife and children had been moved to an undisclosed location. This was in light of the fact that the White Army was very close to taking Yekaterinburg. When this happened a week later, the Whites tried to locate the family, to no avail.
By August, British Military Intelligence had gathered enough details that King George V was told his cousins were all dead and had likely been murdered at the same time as the Emperor. However, the Soviet government, as it was soon to be called, kept spreading false information both officially and through “back door” channels which kept hope alive at least for the fate of the Emperor’s four daughters. It was not until 1924 that anything resembling a formal statement appeared publicly. It was published in the form of the findings of Nicholas Sokolov, who had been the chief investigator of the White Army. He concluded that all six family members, and their final four servants, were murdered by firing squad in the Ipatiev House, their prison in Yekaterinburg, and that their bodies were taken to the nearby woods and destroyed in bonfires. The Soviet government finally acknowledged what they had done in 1926.
The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna would never believe that her family was murdered. She held out hope until her own death in 1928. Her daughters, Olga and Xenia, were more practical about the matter but let their mother hang on to an old woman’s last hope. The Empress, after being evacuated with most of the Romanov survivors from Yalta, went first to Paris, which had become a haven for many displaced Russians. She eventually retired to her native Denmark and was allowed to live at one of the royal estates, Villa Hvidore, by her nephew, who was now King Christian X. Empress Maria died in November 1928 at this home-in-exile, and was interred at Roskilde Cathedral. In 2006, her remains were transferred to St. Petersburg to be re-interred next to those of her husband, and near her beloved Nicky who had been belatedly interred there, with the rest of the Yekaterinburg victims, a few years earlier in 1998.
Maria’s elder daughter, Xenia, was evacuated with her mother and many other Russians from the Crimea aboard the warship HMS Marlborough sent by Maria’s nephew, King George V of Great Britain. The family went immediately to Malta and from there to England. It was from here the various Romanov relatives went their separate ways. It was also here that Xenia parted from her cousin and husband, Grand Duke Alexander, called “Sandro” by the family, after years of a deteriorating marriage. Sandro settled in Paris, Xenia continued to live in England with her younger children. She was given a “grace and favor” residence by her cousin, the King, at Frogmore Cottage. She, like other surviving Romanovs, had been forced out of her homeland with no money. Though she lived for another four decades, her life was reduced to a shell of its former glory. Her cousins, now called the Windsors, helped here and there, but she often found herself relying on the generosity of her children, a situation she simply hated.
Xenia’s younger sister, Olga, had left the Crimea with her husband in April 1919, before her mother and sister were evacuated. It was their intention to try to help the White Army against the Bolsheviks. She and her husband, Col. Nicholas Kulikovsky, set out for Rostov in the Caucasus with their toddler son, Tihon, in tow and another one on the way. Ultimately, they ended up in Novominskya, the commander of the White forces telling them in no uncertain terms that their presence was not wanted at Command HQ. Here Olga gave birth to her second son, Guri. She and Nicholas lived a simple life in Novominskya, he working as a farmer and she caring for two small boys and cooking and cleaning and doing all the things that had always been done for her. She would later recall it being one of the best summers of her life.
Olga’s idyllic life as a farmer’s wife ended abruptly that November when word came the Red Army was advancing and was already very near their town. Thus, they began a trek of five months in horrible conditions, often starving and sleeping in derelict barns. Eventually, Olga, with her family, was evacuated by the British to a Turkish island, and then to Belgrade, where the Serbian King welcomed her with open arms and tried to persuade her to live in his country. As tempting as it was, her mother wanted Olga with her, so she went on to Denmark, where she would remain until after World War II, raising her children on a farm near Villa Hvidore.
Olga moved her family to Canada in the years right after the war due to a threat against her from the Soviet government. The Soviet occupation of East Germany was just too close for comfort. She and Nicholas settled in a suburb of Toronto, where he died in 1958 and she followed in 1960, seven months after the death of her sister, Xenia. For those seven months, Olga had the distinction of being the last Grand Duchess of Russia, which was aptly used as the title of her authorized biography, published after her death.
Olga’s two sons, Tihon and Guri, both began their adult lives with military service in Denmark. Tihon married first to Danish-born Agnete Petersen in 1942 but the marriage ended childless in 1955. His military duties over, Tihon went to Canada with his parents, where he lived the rest of his long life. He found employment in the Canadian Department of Transportation, which provided a livable wage and reasonable retirement fund. In 1959 he married a second time to Hungarian exile, Livia Sebesteyn, and they had his only child, named Olga for the imperial grandmother she never met. Livia fought cancer twice in her life, defeating it once and being defeated by it the second time in 1982. In the later years of his life, Tihon found companionship with a third wife, Mrs. Olga Burton, herself a widow and the child of Russian émigrés. She brought to the marriage a step-daughter for Tihon, Tania. When the Soviet government collapsed, Tihon and his wife used Grand Duchess Olga’s foundation to funnel humanitarian aid to the poorest of the people of Russia.
After the death of Prince Vassili, his cousin, Tihon found himself to be the last nephew of Nicholas II and last grandchild of Alexander III, to whom he always felt a special connection. He therefore decided to keep the name alive a little longer by legally changing his name to Kulikovsky-Romanoff. It was with this name that he, the last member of his generation, died in 1993 following a series of heart attacks.