Nicholas and Alexandra (81 page)

At first, the Bolshevik Revolution had little practical effect on far-off Tobolsk. Officials appointed by the Provisional Government—including Pankratov, Nikolsky and Kobylinsky—remained in office; the banks and lawcourts remained open doing business as before. Inside the governor's house, the Imperial family had settled into a routine which, although restricted, was almost cozy.

"Lessons begin at nine," the Empress wrote in December to Anna Vyrubova. "Up at noon for religious lessons with Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei. I have a German lesson three times a week with Tatiana and once with Marie. . . . Also I sew, embroider and paint, with spectacles on because my eyes have become too weak to do without them. I read 'good books' a great deal, love the Bible, and from time to time read novels. I am so sad because they are allowed no walks except before the house and behind a high fence. But at

least they have fresh air, and we are grateful for anything. He [Nicholas] is simply marvelous. Such meekness while all the time suffering -intensely for the country. . . . The others are all good and brave and uncomplaining, and Alexei is an angel. He and I dine a deux and generally lunch so.

". . . One by one all earthly things slip away, houses and possessions ruined, friends vanished. One lives from day to day. But God is in all, and nature never changes. I can see all around me churches. . . and hills, the lovely world. Volkov [her attendant] wheels me in my chair to church across the street . . . some of the people bow and bless us but others don't dare. ... I feel old, oh, so old, but I am still the mother of this country, and I suffer its pains as my own child's pains and I love it in spite of all its sins and horrors. No one can tear a child from its mother's heart and neither can you tear away one's country, although Russia's black ingratitude to the Emperor breaks my heart. Not that it is the whole country though. God have mercy and save Russia."

A few days later, she wrote again to Anna: "It is bright sunshine and everything glitters with hoarfrost. There are such moonlight nights, it must be ideal on the hills. But my poor unfortunates can only pace up and down the narrow yard. ... I am knitting stockings for the small one [Alexis]. He asks for a pair as all his are in holes. . . . I make everything now. Father's [the Tsar's] trousers are torn and darned, the girls' under-linen in rags. ... I have grown quite grey. Anastasia, to her despair is now very fat, as Marie was, round and fat to the waist, with short legs. I do hope she will grow. Olga and Tatiana are both thin."

In December, the full force of the Siberian winter hit Tobolsk. The thermometer dropped to 68 degress below zero Fahrenheit, the rivers were frozen solid, and no walls or windows could keep out the icy chill. The girls' corner bedroom became, in Gilliard's words, "a real ice house." A fire burned all day in the drawing-room grate, but the temperature inside the house remained 44 degrees. Sitting near the fire, the Empress shivered and suffered from chilblains, with her fingers so stiff she could hardly move her knitting needles.

For Alexis, the winter weather and the family coziness were an exhilarating treat. "Today there are 29 degrees of frost, a strong wind and sunshine," he wrote cheerfully to Anna. "We walked and I went on skees in the yard. Yesterday, I acted with Tatiana and . . . [Gilliard] a French piece. We are now preparing another piece. We have a few good soldiers with whom I play games in their rooms. ... It is time to go to lunch. . . . Alexis."

Through the winter, the Tsarevich was lively and in excellent health. Despite the cold, he went out every morning, dressed in boots, overcoat and cap, with his father. Usually his sisters, in gray capes and red and blue angora caps, came too. While the Tsar walked back and forth with his fast military step from one side of the yard to the other with his daughters hurrying to keep up, Alexis wandered through the sheds attached to the house, collecting old nails and pieces of string. "You never know when they might be useful," he explained. After lunch, he lay on a sofa while Gilliard read to him. Afterward, he went out again to join his father and sisters in the yard. When he returned, he had his history lesson from his father. At four, tea was served, and afterward, Anastasia wrote to Anna, "We often sit in the windows looking at the people passing and this gives us distraction."

For the four Grand Duchesses, all active and healthy young women —that winter Olga was twenty-two, Tatiana twenty, Marie eighteen and Anastasia sixteen—life in the governor's house was acutely boring. To provide them with entertainment, Gilliard and Gibbs began directing them in scenes from plays. Soon, everybody was eager to participate. Both Nicholas and Alexandra carefully wrote out formal programs, and the Tsar acted the title role of Smirnov in Chekov's
The Bear.
Alexis gleefully joined in, accepting any part, overjoyed to put on a beard and speak in a hoarse basso. Only Dr. Botkin categorically refused to take part on stage, pleading that spectators also were essential. Taking Botkin's reluctance as a challenge, Alexis purposefully set himself to overcome it. After dinner one night, he approached the doctor and said in a serious tone, "I want to talk to you about something, Eugene Sergeievich." Taking Botkin's arm, the boy walked him back and forth through the room, arguing that the part in question was that of an old country doctor and that only Botkin could supply the necessary realism. Botkin broke down and agreed.

After dinner, the little group all huddled near the fire, drinking tea, coffee and hot chocolate, trying to keep warm. Nicholas read aloud while the others played quiet games and the grand duchesses did needlework. "In this atmosphere of family peace," said Gilliard, "we passed the long winter evenings, lost in the immensity of distant Siberia."

At Christmas, the group became especially intimate. "The children were filled with delight. We now felt part of one large family," recalled Gilliard. The Empress and her daughters presented to the suite and servants the gifts on which they had been working for many weeks: knitted waistcoats and painted ribbons for use as bookmarks. On Christmas morning, the family crossed the public garden for early

Mass. At the end of the service, the priest offered the prayer for the health and long life of the Imperial family which had been dropped from the Orthodox service after the abdication. Hearing it, the soldiers became angry and thereafter refused the family permission to go to church. This was a great hardship, especially for Alexandra. At the same time, soldiers of the guard were posted inside the house, ostensibly to make certain that the same prayer was not uttered again. Their presence led to closer surveillance and stricter supervision.

One night after the inside watch had been established, the guard on duty reported, "at about 11 p.m. ... I heard an extraordinary noise upstairs where the Romanovs lived. It was some family holiday with them, and dinner had lasted until far into the evening. Finally the noise grew louder, and soon a cheerful company, consisting of the Romanov family and their suite in evening dress came down the staircase. Nicholas headed the procession in Cossack uniform with a colonel's epaulets and a Circassian dagger at his belt. The whole company went into the room of Gibbs, the tutor, where they made merry until 2 a.m." In the morning, the guard reported the incident and the soldiers grumbled, "They have weapons. They must be searched." Kobylinsky went to Nicholas and obtained the dagger.

The same minor episode led to the affair of the epaulets. As the meaning of the Bolshevik Revolution penetrated through to Tobolsk, the soldiers of the 2nd Regiment became increasingly hostile. They elected a Soldiers' Committee which encroached increasingly on Ko-bylinsky's authority. Soon after Nicholas was seen wearing epaulets, the Soldiers' Committee voted 100-85 to forbid all officers, including the Tsar, to wear epaulets. At first, Nicholas refused to comply. He had been awarded his colonel's epaulets by his father and he had never taken a higher rank, even as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army. Kobylinsky did what he could to override the order, telling the soldiers that Nicholas could not be humiliated in that manner, that even if he no longer was Tsar he remained the cousin of the King of England and the Emperor of Germany. The soldiers brushed Kobylinsky rudely aside, threatening violence. "After dinner," Gilliard wrote, "General Tatishchev and Prince Dolgoruky came to beg the Tsar to remove his epaulets in order to avoid a hostile demonstration by the soldiers. At first it seemed as though the Tsar would refuse but after exchanging a look and a few words with the Empress, he recovered his self control and yielded for the sake of his family. He continued nevertheless to wear epaulets in his room and when he went out, concealed them from the soldiers under a Caucasian cloak."

To the faithful Kobylinsky, the affair of the epaulets seemed a

final blow. "I felt I could bear it no more," he said. "I knew that I had absolutely lost all control of the men and I fully realized my impotence. I . . . begged the Emperor to receive me . . . and I said to him, 'Your Majesty, all authority is fast slipping out of my hands. . . . I cannot be useful to you any more, so I wish to resign. . . . My nerves are strained. I am exhausted.' The Emperor put his arm on my shoulder, his eyes filled with tears. He replied: 'I implore you to remain. Eugene Stepanovich, remain for my sake, for the sake of my wife and for the sake of my children. You must stand by us.' . . . Then he embraced me. ... I resolved to remain."

Kobylinsky's decision was fortunate, for on February 8, the Soldiers' Committee decided that Pankratov and Nikolsky must reign. Simultaneously, the Bolshevik government issued an order demobilizing all older soldiers of the Imperial Army. "All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us," Gilliard wrote in his diary on February 13. "The Tsar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us." Two days later, he added: "A certain number of soldiers have already left. They came secretly to take leave of the Tsar and his family."

Their effort to say goodbye to the men of the 4th Regiment of Sharpshooters cost the family heavily. In January, amid the heavy snows, Nicholas and his family had begun to pile up a "snow mountain" in the courtyard. For ten days they worked, shoveling snow and carrying water from the kitchen to pour on the snow and freeze it into a small toboggan run. Everybody helped—Dolgoruky, GilUard, the servants and even members of the guard. Often they had to run from the kitchen to pour the water before it froze solid in the bucket. When it was finished, the children were delighted. A number of wild games were developed by Alexis, Anastasia and Marie, involving pell-mell racing down the slide and tumbling and wrestling in the snow, all accompanied by shrieks of laughter. Then, early in March, Nicholas and Alexandra used the hill to stand on in order to see over the stockade and watch the departure of the 4th Regiment. The Soldiers' Committee immediately declared that the Tsar and the Empress, exposed in this manner, might be shot from the street, an event for which they would be held responsible. The committee ordered that the hill be demolished. The following day, Gilliard wrote in his diary, "The soldiers with a hang-dog look, began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate."

The new guards sent from the regimental depots at Tsarskoe Selo were younger men, strongly affected by the currents of revolutionary excitement. Many enjoyed offering little insults to the captives. On a

pair of swings used by the Grand Duchesses, they carved obscene words into the wooden seats. Alexis spotted them first, but before he could study them Nicholas arrived and removed the seats. Thereafter, the soldiers amused themselves by drawing lewd pictures and inscriptions on the fence where the girls could not avoid seeing them.

Through the winter, Kobylinsky's increasing difficulty with the soldiers had stemmed as much from problems of pay as those of politics. He had arrived in Tobolsk entrusted by the Provisional Government with a large sum of money out of which to pay the expenses of the Tsar's table and household. The soldiers were to be paid from separate funds to be forwarded later. When the Provisional Government was replaced by the Bolsheviks, the sums promised by Kerensky stopped coming and Kobylinsky had to pay the soldiers from his original sum. When it was gone, he and General Tatishchev twice visited the local District Commissioner and each time borrowed fifteen thousand roubles. Meanwhile, in Petrograd, Count Benckendorff visited government offices pleading for money to maintain the Tsar and his family. As news of the Tsar's circumstances spread, offers of money began to flow in. One foreign ambassador anonymously offered enough to keep the Tsar's household for six months. A prominent Russian quietly offered even more. Eventually, Benckendorff collected two hundred thousand roubles, which was sent to Tobolsk. Unhappily, it fell into other hands and never reached the Imperial family.

In Tobolsk, meanwhile, the captives were living on credit which soon began to wear thin. Just as the cook announced that he was no longer welcome or trusted in the local stores, a strongly monarchist Tobolsk merchant advanced another twenty thousand roubles. Finally, the matter was settled by a telegram which announced that, as of March i, "Nicholas Romanov and his family must be put on soldier's rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate." As the family consisted of seven, that meant 4,200 roubles a month to support the entire household. Nicholas, facing the novel task of drawing up a family budget, asked for help. "The Tsar said jokingly that since everyone is appointing committees, he is going to appoint one to look after the welfare of his own community," said Gilliard. "It is to consist of General Tatishchev, Prince Dolgoruky, and myself. We held a 'sitting' this afternoon and came to the conclusion that the personnel must be reduced. This is a wrench; we shall have to dismiss ten servants, several of whom have their families with them in Tobolsk. When we informed Their Majesties we could see the grief it caused

them. They must part with servants whose very devotion will reduce them to beggary."