Alexander II Read online

  ALSO BY EDVARD RADZINSKY

  The Rasputin File

  Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives

  The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II

  FREE PRESS

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  Copyright © 2005 by Edvard Radzinsky

  English translation copyright © 2005 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Radzinsky, Edvard.

  Alexander II : the last great tsar/Edvard Radzinsky; translated by Antonina W. Bouis.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, 1818–1881. 2. Russia—History—Alexander II, 1855–1881. 3. Emperors—Russia—Biography. I. Title.

  DK220.R33 2005

  947.08'1'092—dc22 [B]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8197-3

  ISBN-10: 0-7432-8197-7

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  A Note on Dates

  Russia did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until January 31, 1918. Earlier dates, in the Old-Style Julian Calendar, are thirteen days behind Gregorian-calendar dates in the West. For example, the October Revolution of 1917, which took place on October 25, is now celebrated on November 7. All the dates in this book are in the Old-Style Julian Calendar.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prelude

  PART I: GRAND DUKE

  CHAPTER 1 The Harsh Fate of Heritage

  CHAPTER 2 Heir to the Throne

  CHAPTER 3 His Father’s Empire

  CHAPTER 4 How to Bring Up a Caesar

  PART II: EMPEROR

  CHAPTER 5 The Great Time

  CHAPTER 6 An Awakened Russia

  CHAPTER 7 Anni Horibiles

  CHAPTER 8 Love

  PART III: UNDERGROUND RUSSIA

  CHAPTER 9 The Birth of Terror

  CHAPTER 10 The Lonely Palace Cliff

  CHAPTER 11 A Hollywood Story

  CHAPTER 12 Unprecedented in History

  CHAPTER 13 War on Terror

  CHAPTER 14 The Mysterious and Great EC

  PART IV: THE RETURN OF THE TSAR LIBERATOR

  CHAPTER 15 Fox Tail and Wolf Jaw

  CHAPTER 16 Death of the Tsar

  Postlude

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Photographic Inserts

  Introduction

  This may be the most important era in the thousand-year existence of Russia.

  —GRAND DUKE KONSTANTIN NIKOLAYEVICH DIARY, JANUARY 1, 1861

  If we perish, there will be others.

  —TERRORIST ANDREI ZHELYABOV

  The history of Tsar Alexander II is paradoxical. Alexander II dreamed of bringing Russia into the circle of European states, leading the country toward a European constitution. He gave the eternal Russian pendulum that swings between West and East a definite push to the West. Yet this Westernizing tsar is little known in the West.

  Nevertheless, Alexander II was the greatest reformer tsar since Peter the Great. The Russian Lincoln, he put an end to a thousand years of Russian slavery by emancipating the serfs.

  He did more than free 23 million Russian slaves; he reformed Russian life by changing the justice system, the army, and the very form of government. He was the father of the first Russian perestroika, which brought about a great spiritual awakening. “The Thaw”…“The Great Icebreaker”…“The Russian Renaissance” were some of the terms for Alexander’s reign used by the press. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Mendeleyev only begin the list of stars in the galaxy of famous writers and scientists who created their masterworks in the days of Alexander II.

  “This may be the most important era in the thousand-year existence of Russia,” wrote the tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, in his diary.

  “What a novel his life makes!” wrote a contemporary. His turbulent life encompassed everything from great reforms, to victorious wars, to the sexual exploits of a royal Don Juan, to his final, great love. Yet this hot blood in Russia’s leader, echoed in that of his country, flowed dangerously. Once Alexander quickened Russia’s pulse, he could not contain its circulation.

  Like all reformers who followed him, including Mikhail Gorbachev, he failed to understand this basic truth: “Starting reforms in Russia is dangerous, but it is much more dangerous to stop them.”

  The young radicals, the children of his perestroika, decided to hasten Russian history. The great tsar was forced to see the bitterest change: His Russia became the home of terrorism, a terrorism previously unparalleled in scope and bloodshed in Europe.

  Bombs and gunshots exploded all over the country. Tsarist officials were killed. Alexander II survived six attempts on his life. The terrorists managed to blow up his Winter Palace. The tsar saw the blood of dead and wounded victims in his own home.

  For the first time the fate of the country was decided not only in the magnificent royal palace but in the impoverished hidden apartments of the terrorists.

  Underground Russia, with its secret life and bloody exploits, is an important character in this book.

  “Our work is destruction, a terrible, total, universal and ruthless destruction” proclaimed one of the fathers of Russian terrorism. “The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests, no work, no feelings, no ties, no property, not even a name. Everything is consumed by the single, exclusive interest, the sole thought, the sole passion: revolution. Poison, dagger, and noose—the Revolution sanctifies everything.”

  The Russian terrorism of Alexander II’s reign remarkably presaged the terrorism of our day. The words and slogans that agitated the long-buried and decomposed Russian terrorists can be read in newspaper articles today.

  “The basic lesson of history is that people do not learn from history,” is a trite but—alas—true aphorism.

  Alexander II had to learn to fight against a previously unknown evil (the “new barbarians,” as he called them). The tsar declared a war on terror, for the first but not the last time in history.

  His war broke off in March 1881.

  PRELUDE

  “Caesar, Beware the Ides of March”

  The warning spoken two thousand years ago in ancient Rome would be an ominous prophecy for the Russian caesars as well.

  The month of March turned out to be significant for Russian tsars. The greatest and most horrendous of the ancient Moscow tsars, Ivan the Terrible, died in March—perhaps poisoned.

  Emperor Paul I was killed on March 11, 1801.

  Nicholas II, the last tsar, abdicated from the throne in March, ending a three-century-old dynasty.

  The first Bolshevik tsar, Josef Stalin, also died in March, perhaps killed by his comrades.

  On March 1, 1881, one of the most mysterious events in Russian history took place.

  St. Petersburg, 2:15 P.M., Emperor Alexander II leaves Mikhailovsky Palace, where he was visiting his cousin. The emperor is sixty-three. Even though he has aged in recent years, he is still in fine shape. Wearing a red cap, a red-lined overcoat with beaver collar, and gold epaulets with his father’s crest, tall and with a guardsman’s military bearing, he is the last handsome tsar in the Romanov dynasty.

  The carriage is waiting before the marble columns of the palace, surrounded by unprecedented security for Russian sovereigns. Six Cossacks ride on horseback, another one with the c
oachman, and two sleighs with guards travel behind the carriage.

  The imperial cavalcade—the carriage and two sleighs—pulls away from the Mikhailovsky Palace. The horses gallop merrily and the sleighs have trouble keeping up with the carriage.

  The carriage turns onto the Catherine Canal. With it, turns Russian history.

  The Venice of the North is still covered with March snows. Snow lies on the cobbled street along the embankment. There are few people out: The bone-chilling March wind has blown all the strollers away from the canal. Policemen patrol the sidewalk, guarding the passage of the imperial carriage.

  For some reason they do not notice a young man hurrying toward the carriage. He is clearly nervous. He is carrying a suspicious package about the size of a box of Landrin chocolates, wrapped in a white handkerchief.

  The young man waits for the approaching carriage. He throws the package under the horses’ hooves.

  The echo of the powerful explosion rocks along the canal.

  In its wake, the body of a dead Cossack guard lies on the sidewalk. Next to the corpse is a boy who was carrying a basket with meat, screaming in pain. Blood and pieces of cloth lie on the snow-covered cobblestones.

  The imperial cavalcade stops, and the unharmed sovereign leaves the carriage. The young man threw the bomb too late—he must have been very nervous.

  Next comes something inexplicable. The guards and the tsar know that the assassin was probably not alone. The coachman and the guards beg the tsar to leave the canal as quickly as possible. But to their total amazement, the tsar, who has survived six assassination attempts, is in no hurry to go. On the contrary, he starts pacing along the Catherine Canal. As if waiting for something.

  THE ROMANOV DYNASTY

  PART I

  Grand Duke

  CHAPTER 1

  The Harsh Fate of Heritage

  Alexander was born in Moscow, in the Kremlin, on “the wonderful spring day of 17 April 1818…during Easter Week, when the bells rang to glorify the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection,” recalls Alexandra Fedorovna in her memoirs. Despite her happiness and the holiday, the newborn’s mother adds the surprising words, “I remember that I sensed something important and very sad at the thought that this tiny creature would someday be emperor.”

  There was reason for the former German princess to be strangely sad at the thought of her son becoming emperor of a boundless country. And there was reason why Alexander’s future tutor, the celebrated poet Vassily Zhukovsky, in a poem dedicated to his birth, advised the infant “not to quail before harsh Fate.”

  Blood and violence accompanied the history of his ancestors, the tsars of the Romanov dynasty. Murdering their own tsars became a Russian tradition in the eighteenth century. Alexander inherited a secretive autocracy and an army that knew how to use force to get its way.

  It all began with two events, not related at first.

  At the very end of the seventeenth century, the great-great-grandfather of Alexander, Peter the Great, created the Russian guards. Then, in the very beginning of the eighteenth century, the great emperor invaded the Baltic region.

  It was the occasion for a story that makes all Cinderella stories pale by comparison. It is probably the most magical tale of the magical eighteenth century.

  In Liflandia, in a humble room in the house of Pastor Gluck, lived a cook named Marta, daughter of a local peasant. As expected from an extremely pretty maid, she washed, cooked, and provided other pleasant services. Marta was married, even though she lived without her husband. A passing dragoon had married her. The sly fellow had had his fun with the pretty cook and then gone off to war. He never returned, either dying in battle or having forgotten about her. Our little beauty would have grown old in the pastor’s kitchen if not for the Russian troops, who conquered the area and took Marta prisoner.

  Thus started the magical ride of the former cook—first into the bed of the commander, Count Sheremetyev, and then her buxom charms led her to a higher bed, belonging to Peter the Great’s all-powerful favorite, Prince Menshikov. From there it was a straight (and very frequent) path to the tsar’s bed.

  There was a popular folk drawing on the subject. It depicted the tsar feasting, with a man bringing a big-bosomed, dumb beauty to his side. The caption read: “A loyal subject gives his most precious possession to the tsar.”

  Usually these passing fancies quickly moved out of the fiery Peter’s bedroom. But Marta remained forever. Her charms and good nature wrought the impossible: The emperor of Russia married a married cook. Marta was baptized as Catherine Alexeyevna. Peter crowned her empress.

  In 1725, Peter grew deathly ill. All the mighty gathered at his deathbed. The emperor could only manage to say: “Give everything—” But he did not have time to say to whom.

  At the instant of his most important command, mocking Death took away the tsar.

  While the body was being prepared, the courtiers gathered in the next room to decide who would get “everything,” that is, the great empire that stretched across half the world, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. To their amazement, they found guards officers in that room. The commanders of the regiments founded by Peter the Great had come in.

  The courtiers demanded, “How dare you!” The response was drumming from the street. They looked out the window and saw massed regiments in the courtyard. All the palace exits were manned by the guards. The guard commanders declared Catherine I, the former cook, empress of all Russia. (If the first husband dragoon had showed up then, it would have been quite a story.)

  Catherine I’s reign was extraordinary. Her account books remain. The expenditures on fools and feasts equal the expenses for the rest of the kingdom.

  Yet her reign marks the entrance of Peter the Great’s child—the guards regiments—into the political arena. They would not leave for the rest of the century. Not much later, the guards created yet another empress, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I.

  After the death of Catherine I, her daughter, Elizabeth, found herself in reduced circumstances. The elderly associates of Peter the Great turned to the prince and princess Braunschweig, the children of Peter’s brother, Ivan, to rule the country. Their infant son, Ioann Antonovich, still in his cradle, was pronounced emperor. The regent during his childhood was to be his mother, Princess Anna Leopoldovna.

  The visitors from Braunschweig did not appreciate how dangerous the Russian guards could be, but the daughter of Peter the Great did. Elizabeth had been born before her parents’ marriage. She was declared legitimate only after the wedding, as the legal daughter of Peter. The love child was very attractive, with thick red hair and divine porcelain skin with a rosy blush. Her figure was most tempting: she was tall, with a high bosom and long legs. One German diplomat fainted when he first beheld her.

  She was extremely passionate. The Cossack Rozum, a handsome chorister in the palace church, captured her heart. She turned the ordinary Rozum into Count Razumovsky, who remained her lover for many years.

  Elizabeth’s portraits show a strong, willful jaw—her ruthless father’s jaw. She gave herself up to love, but the red-haired Elizabeth did not forget about power. Peter’s child did not want to live in obscurity. So she turned to the guards.

  On a cold November night in 1741, a sleigh surrounded by three hundred guardsmen rode down Nevsky Prospect. Elizabeth was in the sleigh, headed for the royal palace.

  Along the way, the guardsmen cheerfully arrested the sleepy aristocrats who lived along the palace embankment. With jokes and jibes, they sent Regent Anna Leopoldovna’s main associates from their beds straight to prison. As they approached the palace, Elizabeth stopped the sleigh, to reduce the noise. The guardsmen carried the beauty the rest of the way to the palace. When the watchman tried to sound the alarm by beating his drum, an officer ran his sword through the drumhead. The palace was taken without resistance.

  “Time to rise, sister!” Elizabeth said, awakening the regent of the Empire. The
nocturnal revolution was victorious. The regent was sent to the fortress along with the rest of her family. Elizabeth herself brought the child emperor in her own sleigh. The boy laughed happily, reaching for the guardsmen. Elizabeth kissed him and sighed, “Poor child!” He suffered life imprisonment in the Shisselburg Fortress. The former emperor of all Russia grew up in a prison cell (a Russian version of the Man in the Iron Mask), not knowing why he had ended up there. The fortress guards eventually killed him. His wretched parents rotted to death.

  The morning after the coup, Elizabeth declared herself empress and colonel of the guards regiment. She had respect for them. It was not to be their last taste of regime change.

  Empress Elizabeth I ruled the country as a Russian landowner—in a willful, madcap, cruel, and yet simultaneously kind manner. She had no legal spouse or children, so Elizabeth decided to make her nephew the heir to the throne. He was the son of her older sister and a Holstein prince, Karl Peter Ulrich, who became known as Grand Duke Petr Fedorovich.

  Elizabeth found him a wife, a German princess named Sophia Fredericke Augusta, the daughter of one of the innumerable German princes in the service of Frederick the Great. Little Sophia was sent to distant Russia. On the way to St. Petersburg, she passed through Riga where the unfortunate Braunschweig family, overthrown by Elizabeth, were imprisoned.

  In St. Petersburg the Lutheran Sophia Fredericke converted to Russian Orthodoxy and became Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna. Thus began the Russian life of the fourteen-year-old girl who was to become Empress Catherine II the Great, Alexander’s great-grandmother.

  Subsequently, she described her early years in Russia in her famous “Notes,” which would be read after her death by all the following tsars of the Romanov line. As we will see, they read them with horror.