The mystery of the last empress: Why the wife of Nicholas II was disliked in Russia. Extreme king
145 years ago, on June 6, 1872, a fourth daughter was born into the family of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine. She was named Victoria Alice Elena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darmstadt. Grandma, British Queen, called her Sunny - Sun. Pets - Alix. In Russia, where she was destined to become the last empress, upon baptism into the Orthodox faith she received the name Alexandra Fedorovna. Behind the scenes - the nickname “Hessian fly”.
The perception of rulers among the people, or, as is commonly expressed in the scientific community, the representation of power, is an important point in understanding certain historical periods. This is especially true for great upheavals such as revolutions or the era of reforms. Just now the power was exclusively from God and did not raise doubts about its legitimacy among the people. But then something happens, and people immediately begin to produce stories and legends about their leaders. Peter the Great becomes not only the king-carpenter, but also the Antichrist, and Ivan groznyj turns into “Ivashka, the bloody king.” The last Russian emperor was awarded the same nickname. Nicholas II. Something similar happened to his wife, Alexandra Fedorovna. With only one difference. If at first some hopes were still pinned on Nicholas, then we immediately and completely disliked the empress.
Voice of the people
After the family of the last Romanov was canonized, they try to obscure the memory of how exactly the people perceived Alexandra Fedorovna with leafy memories. For example, like this: “The Empress organized 4 large bazaars in favor of tuberculosis patients in 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914; they brought in a ton of money. She worked herself, painted and embroidered for the bazaar and, despite her poor health, stood at the kiosk all day, surrounded by a huge crowd of people. Small Alexey Nikolaevich stood next to her on the counter, holding out his hands with things to the enthusiastic crowd. The delight of the population knew no bounds.” However, literally a few lines later, the author of these memoirs, maid of honor and closest friend of the Empress Anna Vyrubova, makes a revealing disclaimer: “The people, at that time untouched by revolutionary propaganda, adored Their Majesties, and this can never be forgotten.”
Princess Vera Gedroits (right) and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in the dressing room of the Tsarskoye Selo hospital. 1915 Source: Public Domain
Interesting thing. In 1911, the people, according to the court, turned out to be full of enthusiasm for their queen. The blindness is amazing. Because the people themselves, who went through both the shame of the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905-1907, have a completely different opinion. Here is a fragment of one Ural tale: “After nine hundred and five, the queen could not see the red-colored stone. Either she was imagining red flags here, or something else was triggering her memory, but only from the age of five, if you didn’t approach the queen with a red stone, she would scream at the top of her lungs, lose all her Russian words and swear in German.”
There is no smell of delight here. More like sarcasm. And Alexandra Fedorovna should have observed such an attitude towards her person literally from the first day. Moreover, she herself, willingly or unwillingly, gave rise to this. Here is what the same Anna Vyrubova says about this: “When Alexandra Fedorovna had just arrived in Russia, she wrote countess Rantzau, maid of honor to his sister, Princess Irene: “My husband is surrounded by hypocrisy and deceit from everywhere. I feel that there is no one here who could be his real support. Few love him and their Fatherland.”
For some reason, this is viewed as an exclusively highly spiritual message, full of grief and sadness. In fact, it is full of arrogance and conceit. Having barely arrived in a foreign country and not yet having learned the language, the sovereign’s wife immediately begins to insult her subjects. According to her authoritative opinion, Russians do not love their Motherland and, in general, everyone is a potential traitor.
The wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The reverse side of “adoration”
The word is not a sparrow, and you cannot hide an awl in a sack. What was the property of the highest spheres, after a couple of days, through servants, stokers and coachmen, becomes the property of the general public. And it’s no wonder that after such a sparkling speech by the new queen, the police begin to register more and more cases classified as “lese majeste.”
Alexandra Fedorovna remembered everything. Even things that weren't her fault. Thus, the wedding of Nicholas and Alexandra, and their entire honeymoon, coincided with mourning for Nicholas’s recently deceased father, the emperor Alexander III. The people's conclusion was immediate. And partly prophetic: “This German woman, just like that, rode to us on her coffin, will bring misfortune.”
Subsequently, everything that came from Alexandra Feodorovna was ridiculed. All her endeavors—at times truly good and necessary—became the target of bullying. Sometimes - in an extremely cynical form. It is curious that the tsar himself was not touched upon and was even pitied. Here is a fragment of the protocol of one of the cases of “lese majeste”: “Vasily L., Kazan tradesman, 31 years old, pointing to the portrait royal family, said: “This is the first b... And her daughters b... And everyone goes to them... And it’s a pity for our sovereign - they, b... Germans, are deceiving him, because the son is not his, but a replacement! »
It will not be possible to attribute this “beauty” to the machinations of Freemasons or Bolsheviks. If only for the reason that 80% of convictions in such cases were handed down to peasants, among whom the same Bolsheviks will not begin agitation very soon - when the peasants are drafted and become soldiers.
However, even then there was no need to campaign specifically against the empress. From the very beginning of the war, she was already declared a German spy and traitor. This popular opinion was so widespread that it reached ears that were not intended for it. This is what he writes British Vice Consul in Moscow Bruce Lockhart: “There are several walking good stories, concerning the Germanophile tendencies of the empress. Here's one of the best. The prince is crying. The nanny says: “Baby, why are you crying?” - “Well, when they beat our people, dad cries, when the Germans, mom cries, and when should I cry?”
It was during the war years that “Hessian Fly” appeared among Alexandra Fedorovna’s other nicknames. There really is such an insect - it is a serious pest that attacks rye and wheat, capable of killing almost the entire crop. Considering that February Revolution began precisely with the shortage of bread, you inevitably think that sometimes the voice of the people is really the voice of God.
Historians, archivists and numerous researchers of the life of the last empress of the Russian state seem to have studied and explained not only her actions, but every word and even every turn of her head. But here’s what’s interesting: after reading every historical monograph or new study, an unfamiliar woman appears in front of us.
Such is the magic of the beloved British granddaughter, daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse, goddaughter of the Russian sovereign and wife, the last heir to the Russian throne. Alix, as her husband called her, or Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova remained a mystery to everyone.
Probably, everything is to blame for her coldish isolation and alienation from everything earthly, mistaken by her retinue and the Russian nobility for arrogance. The explanation for this inescapable sadness in her gaze, as if turned inward, is found when you find out the details of childhood and teenage years Princess Alice Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Childhood and youth
She was born in the summer of 1872 in Darmstadt, Germany. The fourth daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt Ludwig and the daughter of the Queen of Great Britain, Duchess Alice, turned out to be a real ray of sunshine. However, Grandma Victoria called her that – Sunny – Sunshine. Blonde, with dimples, with blue eyes, fidgety and laughing, Aliki instantly filled her prim relatives with a good mood, making even the formidable grandmother smile.
The baby adored her sisters and brothers. It seems that she had especially fun with her brother Frederick and her younger sister Mary, whom she called May due to difficulty pronouncing the letter “r”. Fryderyk died when Alika was 5 years old. A beloved brother died of a hemorrhage resulting from an accident. Mom Alice, already melancholic and cheerless, plunged into severe depression.
But just as the sharpness of the painful loss began to fade, a new grief occurred. And not one. The diphtheria epidemic that occurred in Hesse in 1878 took away first her sister May from sunny Alika, and three weeks later her mother.
Thus, at the age of 6, Alika-Sunny’s childhood ended. She “went out” like a ray of sunshine. Almost everything she loved so much disappeared: her mother, her sister and brother, her usual toys and books, which were burned and replaced with new ones. It seems that then the open and funny Aliki herself disappeared.
To distract two granddaughters, Alice-Aliki, Ella (in Orthodoxy - Elizaveta Fedorovna), and grandson Ernie from sad thoughts, the imperious grandmother transported them, with the permission of her son-in-law, to England, to Osborne House Castle on the Isle of Wight. Here Alice, under the supervision of her grandmother, received an excellent education. Carefully selected teachers taught her, her sister and brother geography, mathematics, history and languages. And also drawing, music, horse riding and gardening.
The subjects were easy for the girl. Alice played the piano brilliantly. Music lessons were given to her not by anyone, but by the director of the Darmstadt Opera. Therefore, the girl easily performed the most complex works and... And without much difficulty she mastered the wisdom of court etiquette. The only thing that upset the grandmother was that her beloved Sunny was unsociable, withdrawn and could not stand noisy social society.
The Princess of Hesse graduated from the University of Heidelberg and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy.
In March 1892 new blow realized Alice. Her father died of a heart attack in her arms. Now the girl felt even more alone. Only the grandmother and brother Ernie, who inherited the crown, remained nearby. The only sister Ella has recently lived in distant Russia. She married a Russian prince and was called Elizaveta Feodorovna.
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
Alice first saw Nicky at her sister's wedding. She was only 12 years old then. The young princess really liked this well-mannered and subtle young man, the mysterious Russian prince, so different from her British and German cousins.
She met Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov for the second time in 1889. Alice went to Russia at the invitation of her sister’s husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Nikolai’s uncle. A month and a half spent in the St. Petersburg Sergius Palace and meetings with Nikolai turned out to be enough time to understand: she had met her soul mate.
Only their sister Ella-Elizaveta Fedorovna and her husband were happy with their desire to unite their destinies. They became a kind of communicators between lovers, facilitating their communication and secret correspondence.
Grandmother Victoria, who did not know about her secretive granddaughter’s personal life, planned her marriage to her cousin Edward, Prince of Wales. Elderly woman I dreamed of seeing my beloved “Sunny” as the Queen of Britain, to whom she would transfer her powers.
But Aliki, in love with a distant Russian prince, calling the Prince of Wales “Eddie-cuffs” for excessive attention to his manner of dressing and narcissism, confronted Queen Victoria with a fact: she would only marry Nicholas. The letters shown to the grandmother finally convinced the disgruntled woman that she could not keep her granddaughter.
The parents of Tsarevich Nicholas were not delighted with their son’s desire to marry a German princess. They hoped for their son's marriage to Princess Helena Louise Henrietta, daughter of Louis Philippe. But the son, like his bride in distant England, showed persistence.
Alexander III and his wife surrendered. The reason was not only Nicholas’s persistence, but also the rapid deterioration of the sovereign’s health. He was dying and wanted to hand over the reins to his son, who would have his personal life organized. Alisa was urgently called to Russia, to Crimea.
The dying emperor, in order to meet his future daughter-in-law as best as possible, with the last of his strength got out of bed and put on his uniform. The princess, who knew about the state of health of her future father-in-law, was moved to tears. They began to urgently prepare Alix for marriage. She studied Russian and the basics of Orthodoxy. Soon she accepted Christianity, and with it the name Alexandra Feodorovna (Feodorovna).
Emperor Alexander III died on October 20, 1894. And on October 26, the wedding of Alexandra Fedorovna and Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov took place. The bride's heart sank from such haste and a bad feeling. But the Grand Dukes insisted on the urgency of the wedding.
To preserve decency, the wedding ceremony was scheduled for the empress's birthday. According to existing canons, deviation from mourning on such a day was allowed. Of course, there were no receptions or big celebrations. The wedding turned out to have a mournful tint. As Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich later wrote in his memoirs:
“The couple’s honeymoon proceeded in an atmosphere of funeral services and mourning visits. The most deliberate dramatization could not have invented a more suitable prologue for the historical tragedy of the last Russian Tsar.”
The second gloomy omen, from which the heart of the young empress again sank in anguish, happened in May 1896, during the coronation of the royal family. A famous bloody tragedy occurred on the Khodynka field. But the celebrations were not cancelled.
Young spouses most spent time in Tsarskoe Selo. Alexandra Fedorovna felt good only in the company of her husband and her sister’s family. Society received the new empress coldly and with hostility. The unsmiling and reserved empress seemed arrogant and prim to them.
To escape from unpleasant thoughts, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova eagerly took up public affairs and became involved in charity work. Soon she had several close friends. In fact, there were very few of them. These are Princess Maria Baryatinskaya, Countess Anastasia Gendrikova and Baroness Sofia Buxhoeveden. But my closest friend was the maid of honor.
The happy smile returned to the empress when her daughters Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia appeared one after another. But the long-awaited birth of an heir, the son of Alexei, returned Alexandra Feodorovna to her usual state of anxiety and melancholy. My son was diagnosed with a terrible hereditary disease - hemophilia. It was inherited through the empress's line from her grandmother Victoria.
The bleeding son, who could die from any scratch, became a constant pain for Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II. At this time, an elder appeared in the life of the royal family. This mysterious Siberian man really helped the Tsarevich: he alone could stop the bleeding, which the doctors were not able to do.
The approach of the elder gave rise to a lot of rumors and gossip. Alexandra Fedorovna did not know how to get rid of them and protect herself. Word spread. Behind the empress's back they whispered about her supposedly undivided influence on the emperor and public policy. About Rasputin's witchcraft and his connection with Romanova.
Started First World War briefly plunged society into other concerns. Alexandra Fedorovna threw all her resources and strength into helping the wounded, widows of dead soldiers and orphaned children. The Tsarskoye Selo hospital was rebuilt as an infirmary for the wounded. The Empress herself, together with her eldest daughters Olga and Tatiana, were trained in nursing. They assisted in operations and cared for the wounded.
And in December 1916, Grigory Rasputin was killed. How Alexandra Feodorovna was “loved” at court can be judged from a surviving letter from Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich to the empress’s mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. He wrote:
“All of Russia knows that the late Rasputin and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna are one and the same. The first one is killed, now the other one must disappear too.”
As Anna Vyrubova, a close friend of the Empress, later wrote in her memoirs, the Grand Dukes and nobles, in their hatred of Rasputin and the Empress, themselves sawed off the branch on which they sat. Nikolai Mikhailovich, who believed that Alexandra Feodorovna “must disappear” after the elder, was shot in 1919 along with three other Grand Dukes.
Personal life
There are still many rumors about the royal family and the joint life of Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II, which go back to the distant past. Gossip arose in the immediate circle of the monarchs. Ladies-in-waiting, princes and their gossip-loving wives happily came up with various “defamatory connections” in which the Tsar and Tsarina were allegedly caught. It seems that Princess Zinaida Yusupova “tried” the most to spread rumors.
After the revolution, a fake came out, passed off as the memoirs of a close friend of the empress, Anna Vyrubova. The authors of this dirty libel were very respected people: Soviet writer and history professor P.E. Shchegolev. These “memoirs” talked about the empress’s vicious connections with Count A.N. Orlov, with Grigory Rasputin and Vyrubova herself.
There was a similar plot in the play “The Empress’s Conspiracy,” written by these two authors. The goal was clear: to discredit the royal family as much as possible, remembering which the people should not regret, but be indignant.
But the personal life of Alexandra Feodorovna and her lover Nika, nevertheless, turned out great. The couple managed to maintain tremulous feelings until their death. They adored their children and treated each other with tenderness. The memories of this were preserved by their closest friends, who knew firsthand about the relations in the royal family.
Death
In the spring of 1917, after the Tsar abdicated the throne, the entire family was arrested. Alexandra Fedorovna with her husband and children was sent to Tobolsk. Soon they were transported to Yekaterinburg.
The Ipatiev House turned out to be the last place of the family’s earthly existence. Alexandra Fedorovna guessed about the terrible fate prepared for her and her family by the new government. Grigory Rasputin, whom she believed, said this shortly before his death.
The queen, her husband and children were shot on the night of July 17, 1918. Their remains were transported to St. Petersburg and reburied in the summer of 1998 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, in the Romanov family tomb.
In 1981, Alexandra Feodorovna, like her entire family, was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in 2000 – by the Russian Orthodox Church. Romanova was recognized as a victim of political repression and rehabilitated in 2008.
Alexandra Feodorovna (nee Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt) was born in 1872 in Darmstadt, the capital of the small German Duchy of Hesse. Her mother died at thirty-five.
In 1884, twelve-year-old Alix was brought to Russia: her sister Ella was marrying Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. The heir to the Russian throne, sixteen-year-old Nicholas, fell in love with her at first sight. The young people, who were also quite closely related (they were second cousins through the princess’s father), immediately fell in love with each other. But only five years later, seventeen-year-old Alix reappeared at the Russian court.
Alice of Hesse in childhood. (wikimedia.org)
In 1889, when the heir to the crown prince turned twenty-one, he turned to his parents with a request to bless him for his marriage to Princess Alice. The answer of Emperor Alexander III was brief: “You are very young, there is still time for marriage, and, in addition, remember the following: you are the heir to the Russian throne, you are engaged to Russia, and we will still have time to find a wife.” A year and a half after this conversation, Nikolai wrote in his diary: “Everything is in the will of God. Trusting in His mercy, I look calmly and humbly to the future.” Alix’s grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, also opposed this marriage. However, when Victoria later met Tsarevich Nicholas, he made a very good impression on her, and the English ruler’s opinion changed. Alice herself had reason to believe that the beginning of an affair with the heir to the Russian throne could have favorable consequences for her. Returning to England, the princess begins to study the Russian language, gets acquainted with Russian literature, and even has long conversations with the priest of the Russian embassy church in London.
Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna. (wikimedia.org)
In 1893, Alexander III fell seriously ill. Here a dangerous question for the succession to the throne arose - the future sovereign is not married. Nikolai Alexandrovich categorically stated that he would choose a bride only for love, and not for dynastic reasons. Through the mediation of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, the emperor's consent to his son's marriage to Princess Alice was obtained.
However, Maria Feodorovna poorly concealed her dissatisfaction with the unsuccessful, in her opinion, choice of an heir. The fact that the Princess of Hesse joined the Russian imperial family during the mournful days of the suffering of the dying Alexander III probably set Maria Feodorovna even more against the new empress.
Nikolai Alexandrovich on the back of the Greek Prince Nicholas. (wikimedia.org)
In April 1894, Nikolai went to Coburg for the wedding of Alix's brother Ernie. And soon the newspapers reported the engagement of the crown prince and Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt. On the day of the engagement, Nikolai Alexandrovich wrote in his diary: “A wonderful, unforgettable day in my life - the day of my engagement to dear Alix. I walk around all day as if outside of myself, not quite fully aware of what is happening to me.” November 14, 1894 is the day of the long-awaited wedding. On the wedding night, Alix wrote in Nicholas’s diary: “When this life ends, we will meet again in another world and stay together forever...” After the wedding, the Tsarevich will write in his diary: “Incredibly happy with Alix. It’s a pity that classes take up so much time that I would so much like to spend exclusively with her.”
The wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna. (wikimedia.org)
Typically, the wives of Russian heirs to the throne were in secondary roles for a long time. Thus, they managed to carefully study the mores of the society that they would have to manage, managed to navigate their likes and dislikes, and most importantly, managed to acquire the necessary friends and helpers. Alexandra Fedorovna was unlucky in this sense. She ascended the throne, as they say, having fallen from a ship to a ball: not understanding the life that was alien to her, not being able to understand the complex intrigues of the imperial court. Painfully withdrawn, Alexandra Fedorovna seemed to be the opposite example of the affable Dowager Empress - she, on the contrary, gave the impression of an arrogant, cold German woman who treated her subjects with disdain.
The embarrassment that invariably engulfs the queen when communicating with strangers, prevented the establishment of simple, relaxed relationships with representatives of high society, which were vital for her. Alexandra Feodorovna did not know how to win the hearts of her subjects at all; even those who were ready to bow to members of the imperial family did not receive a reason to do so. So, for example, in women's institutes, Alexandra Fedorovna could not squeeze out a single friendly word from herself. This was all the more striking, since the former Empress Maria Feodorovna knew how to evoke an unconstrained attitude towards herself in institute girls, turning into enthusiastic love for the bearers of royal power.
The Romanovs on the yacht "Standart". (wikimedia.org)
The queen's intervention in the affairs of government did not appear immediately after her wedding. Alexandra Feodorovna was quite happy with the traditional role of a homemaker, the role of a woman next to a man engaged in difficult, serious work. Nicholas II, a domestic man by nature, for whom power seemed more like a burden than a way of self-realization, rejoiced at any opportunity to forget about his state concerns in a family setting and gladly indulged in those petty domestic interests for which he had a natural inclination. Anxiety and confusion gripped the reigning couple even when the empress, with some fatal sequence, began to give birth to girls. Nothing could be done against this obsession, but Alexandra Feodorovna, who had internalized her destiny as a queen, perceived the absence of an heir as a kind of heavenly punishment. On this basis, she, an extremely impressionable and nervous person, developed pathological mysticism. Now any step of Nikolai Alexandrovich himself was checked against one or another heavenly sign, and public policy imperceptibly intertwined with childbirth.
The Romanovs after the birth of their heir. (wikimedia.org)
The queen's influence on her husband intensified, and the more significant it became, the further the date for the appearance of the heir moved forward. The French charlatan Philip was invited to the court, who managed to convince Alexandra Feodorovna that he was able to provide her, through suggestion, with male offspring, and she imagined herself to be pregnant and felt all the physical symptoms of this condition. Only after several months of the so-called false pregnancy, which was very rarely observed, the empress agreed to be examined by a doctor, who established the truth. But the most important misfortune was that the charlatan received, through the queen, the opportunity to influence state affairs. One of Nicholas II’s closest assistants wrote in his diary in 1902: “Philip inspires the sovereign that he does not need other advisers except representatives of the highest spiritual, heavenly powers, with whom he, Philip, puts him into intercourse. Hence the intolerance of any contradiction and complete absolutism, sometimes expressed as absurdity.”
The Romanovs and Queen Victoria of England. (wikimedia.org)
Philip was still able to be expelled from the country, because the Police Department, through its agent in Paris, found indisputable evidence of the French subject’s fraud. And soon the long-awaited miracle followed - the heir Alexey was born. However, the birth of a son did not bring peace to the royal family.
The child suffered from a terrible hereditary disease - hemophilia, although his illness was kept a state secret. The children of the royal Romanov family - Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and the heir Tsarevich Alexei - were extraordinary in their ordinariness. Despite the fact that they were born into one of the highest positions in the world and had access to all earthly goods, they grew up like ordinary children. Even Alexei, for whom every fall threatened a painful illness and even death, was changed from bed rest to normal in order for him to gain courage and other qualities necessary for the heir to the throne.
Alexandra Fedorovna with her daughters doing needlework. (wikimedia.org)
According to contemporaries, the empress was deeply religious. The church was her main consolation, especially at a time when the heir’s illness worsened. The Empress held full services in the court churches, where she introduced the monastic (longer) liturgical regulations. The Queen's room in the palace was a connection between the empress's bedroom and the nun's cell. The huge wall adjacent to the bed was completely covered with images and crosses.
Reading telegrams with wishes of recovery to the Tsarevich. (wikimedia.org)
During the First World War, rumors spread that Alexandra Feodorovna defended the interests of Germany. By personal order of the sovereign, a secret investigation was carried out into “slanderous rumors about the empress’s relations with the Germans and even about her betrayal of the Motherland.” It was established that rumors about the desire for a separate peace with the Germans, the transfer of Russian military plans by the Empress to the Germans were spread by the German general staff. After the abdication of the sovereign, the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry under the Provisional Government tried and failed to establish the guilt of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of any crimes.
University, where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy. The culture of journaling and correspondence characterized Princess Alice from childhood.
The crowned family became a model of a truly Christian, united family. The imperial couple had 4 daughters: passion-bearers Grand Duchesses Olga Nikolaevna (November 3), Tatiana Nikolaevna (May 29), Maria Nikolaevna (June 14), Anastasia Nikolaevna (June 5). On July 30 of this year, the long-awaited heir to the throne, begged from God, was born - the passion-bearer Tsarevich Grand Duke Alexy Nikolaevich, to whom the hereditary disease of the descendants of Queen Victoria was transmitted - hemophilia. The empress took care of the upbringing and education of children, passed on to them her culture of correspondence and diary-keeping, and her religiosity. It is no coincidence that the royal family, according to historians, is “among the best documented in history.” In addition to written sources, more than 150 thousand photographs of the imperial family, in which everyone had a personal camera, have been preserved; More than a thousand albums with photographs are known.
The Empress took care of the health of all family members, especially her son. She conducted the initial training of the heir independently, later invited outstanding teachers to him and observed the progress of the teaching. Thanks to the empress's great tact, the Tsarevich's illness was kept a family secret. Constant concern for the life of Alexy became the main reason for the appearance at the court of G. E. Rasputin, who had the ability to stop bleeding with the help of hypnosis, so in dangerous moments of illness he became last hope to save the child. The maternal torment of the empress and the desire to maintain peace in the family on the part of the tsar determined the role of Rasputin in the life of the court.
According to contemporaries, the empress was deeply religious. The church was her main consolation, especially at a time when the heir’s illness worsened. Lady-in-waiting S.K. Buxhoeveden noted that Empress Alexandra believed “in healing through prayer,” which she associated with her origins from the House of Hesse from Elizabeth of Thuringia (Hungary) (1207-1231), who established hospitals in Marburg, Eisenach, and Wartburg in the name of Great Martyr George and Saint Anna and who treated lepers. The Empress held full services in the court churches, where she introduced the monastic liturgical regulations. Alexandra Feodorovna’s room in the palace was “ connection of the empress's bedroom with the nun's cell. The huge wall adjacent to the bed was completely covered with images and crosses". Under the images stood a lectern covered with ancient brocade. In July of the year, Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna participated in the celebration of the glorification and opening of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov; a shrine and a canopy for the relics were built at the expense of the imperial family. A year before this, the Empress sent a lamp and church vestments to the Sarov Hermitage with a request to serve a daily prayer service for her health in the chapel built over the grave of St. Seraphim. She was sure that thanks to the prayers of the saint, Russia would receive an heir.
Through the efforts of the imperial family, several Orthodox churches were erected. In the homeland of Alexandra Feodorovna, in Darmstadt, a temple was built in the name of St. Mary Magdalene in memory of the first Russian Empress from the House of Hesse - Maria Alexandrovna. On October 4 of the year in Hamburg, in the presence of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the Grand Duke of Hesse, in memory of the coronation of the Russian Emperor and Empress, a temple was founded in the name of All Saints. At their own expense, the imperial family, according to the design of architects S. S. Krichinsky and V. A. Pokrovsky, created the Feodorovsky town in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoye Selo with a court cathedral in the name of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God, consecrated on August 20 of the year, where a prayer room with a lectern and a chair was built for the empress. The underground church in the name of St. Seraphim of Sarov was a genuine treasury of ancient icon painting and church utensils; it contained the Gospel of Tsar Theodore Ioannovich. Under the patronage of the empress, committees worked to build churches in memory of the sailors who died in the Russo-Japanese War, and the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Petrograd.
One of the first undertakings of the empress, who became famous for her charitable activities, was the patronage of the imperial women's Patriotic Society, according to a rescript from Emperor Nicholas II dated February 26 of the year. An unusually hard worker who devoted a lot of time to needlework, the empress organized charity fairs and bazaars where homemade souvenirs were sold. Under her patronage there were many charitable organizations: the House of Diligence with training workshops for cutting and sewing and a children's boarding school; Society for Labor Assistance to Educated Persons; House of hard work for educated women; Olginsky shelter of hard work for children of persons being treated at the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene; Trusteeship of the Imperial Humane Society to collect donations for the vocational education of poor children; Labor Aid Society "Uley"; Tsarskoe Selo Society of Handicrafts and School of Folk Art for teaching handicrafts; All-Russian Guardianship for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy; Brotherhood in the name of the Queen of Heaven in Moscow (with it there was a shelter for 120 children - feeble-minded, crippled, epileptic - with a school, workshops, and a craft department); Shelter-nursery of the 2nd Temporary Committee for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy; Shelter named after Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in Harbin; nursery of the Peterhof Charitable Society; 4th Petrograd Committee of the All-Russian Guardianship for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy with a shelter for mothers and a nursery; “Nanny School” in Tsarskoe Selo, established at the personal expense of the Empress; Tsarskoye Selo Community of Sisters of Mercy Russian Society Red Cross (ROKK) and the House of the Sovereign Empress for charity for crippled soldiers; Holy Cross Community of Sisters of Charity ROKK; 1st Petrograd Ladies' Committee of the ROCC; Mikhailovskoye, in memory of General M.D. Skobelev, a society for medical assistance to low-income wives, widows, children and orphans of soldiers (it had an outpatient clinic, an inpatient department, and a shelter for girls - orphans of soldiers); All-Russian Alexander Nevsky Temperance Brotherhood (with its school, kindergarten, holiday village, book publishing house, folk choirs).
Of exceptional interest for Russian culture, history, and science are objects of palace life, collections of antiquities, collections of books and works of art compiled by the empress and the august family. All imperial orders intended for palaces were unique, and duplicates were not allowed. The library of the Empress and Grand Duchesses in the Winter Palace consisted of about 2 thousand volumes, and manuscripts were also kept there. Alexandra Feodorovna’s books were also in Livadia, Tsarskoye Selo, they are marked with a bookplate and are works of publishing and bookbinding art. The support of Alexandra Feodorovna and the entire imperial family of the Faberge company became a prerequisite for the emergence of a new direction in applied art - the “imperial style”, “Faberge design and style”. The Empress collected antiquities and assisted scientists. She received an honorary diploma from the Archaeological Institute, the committee for the construction of the Museum of Fine Arts named after Emperor Alexander III in Moscow elected her an honorary member for her active assistance to the museum, and the Pergamon Hall of the museum was named in honor of the empress. Under the patronage of the empress was the Imperial Society of Oriental Studies, which had the goal of “ disseminating accurate and correct information about Russia among the eastern peoples, as well as familiarizing Russian society with the material needs and spiritual life of the East". Alexandra Feodorovna was a skilled artist; icons embroidered by her were preserved in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Darmstadt. By the beginning of the year, she made drawings of a Russian costume for a charity ball in the Winter Palace, in consultation with the director of the Hermitage I. A. Vsevolozhsky. The Empress was dressed in gold brocade clothes, created according to sketches from the clothes of Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna. Another work of Alexandra Feodorovna is a drawing of a sign for parts of the imperial convoy. The Empress collected works of laminated glass and personally gave production instructions to the imperial porcelain and glass factories.
IN last years reign, especially during the First World War, Alexandra Feodorovna became the subject of a ruthless and baseless smear campaign led by revolutionaries and their collaborators in both Russia and Germany. Rumors were widely spread about the empress's adultery, about her allegedly unchaste relationship with Rasputin, about her betrayal of the Motherland in favor of Germany. This lie, whipped up in order to overthrow the royal house and embarrass the Russian people, at one time spread widely not only in the popular, but also in scientific publications. However, despite the fact that the sovereign knew about the purity of the empress’s personal life, he also personally ordered a secret investigation into “slanderous rumors about the empress’s relations with the Germans and even about her betrayal of the Motherland.” Although in the pre-war period the Empress did support improving relations with Germany, it was established that rumors about the desire for a separate peace with the Germans, the transfer of Russian military plans by the Empress to the Germans, were spread by the German General Staff. After the abdication of the sovereign, the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry under the Provisional Government tried and failed to establish the guilt of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of any crimes.
However, the denigration of the image of the royal family, the widespread loss of faith and loyalty to it, and the obvious desire of broad layers of the empire's elite to abandon the monarchical structure of the state led to the removal of the imperial family from power. On March 2 of the year, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne for himself and for Tsarevich Alexy.
Imprisonment and martyrdom
By decision of the secular authorities of Russia, the reburial of the remains was carried out on July 17 of the year in the Peter and Paul Cathedral of St. Petersburg, the funeral service was led by the rector of the cathedral.The Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints of the Moscow Patriarchate, chaired by Metropolitan Yuvenaly of Krutitsky, found “ it is possible to raise the question of canonizing ... Empress Alexandra Feodorovna as a holy passion-bearer". By the resolution of the Holy Synod of October 10 of the year and the determination of the Council of Bishops on February 18-22 of the year, this position was approved. The canonization of Alexandra Feodorovna and other royal passion-bearers in the Council of New Martyrs of Russia took place at the Council of Bishops of the year.
On the site of Ipatiev’s former house, a temple-monument “on the blood” was built in the name of All Saints who shone in the Russian land. On September 23, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II served a prayer service on the site of the temple under construction and placed a mortgage deed at its foundation.
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Used materials
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She was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad of the year. A.V. Kolchak was entrusted with the investigation of the murder of the royal family.
Gilliard, 162.
Alexandra Feodorovna, Diary entries, correspondence, 467.
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ZhMP, 1998, № 4, 10.
"Report of Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsky and Kolomna... on the issue of the martyrdom of the royal family, proposed at a meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 10, 1996."
Today is the holiday of the image of “Unexpected Joy”, I have now started to always read it, and you, darling, do the same. It’s the anniversary of our last trip, remember how cozy it was. The good old lady also left, her image is always with me. Once I received a letter from Demidova from Siberia. Very poor. I really want to see Annushka, she will tell me a lot. Yesterday it was 9 months that they were locked. More than 4 that we live here. Was it the English sister who wrote to me? Or what? I’m surprised that Nini and the family did not receive the image that she sent them before we left... It’s a pity that kind Fedosya is not with you. Hello and thanks to my faithful, old Berchik and Nastya. This year I can’t give them anything under the tree, how sad. My dear, well done dear, Christ is with you. I hope we can unite in prayer. Thank you to Father Dosifei and Father John for not forgetting.
I'm writing in bed in the morning and Jimmy sleeps right under my nose and prevents me from writing. Ortipo is on his feet, it makes them warmer. Think about it, good Makarov (commissar) sent me 2 months ago Saint Simeon of Verkhoturye, the Annunciation, from the “Mande” room and from the bedroom above the Madonna washstand; 4 small engravings above the “Mande” couch, 5 Kaulbach pastels from the large living room, I assembled everything myself and took my head (Kaulbach). Your enlarged photo from Livadia, Tatiana and I, Alexey near the booth with a sentry, watercolors of Alexander III, Nicholas I. A small rug from the bedroom - my straw couch (it now stands in the bedroom between other pillows, the one from the roses from Side Mufti-Zade , who did the whole journey with us). Last night I took it from Tsarskoe Selo and slept on it on the train and on the ship - the wonderful smell pleased me. Have you heard from Gaham? Write to him and bow. Syroboyarsky visited him in the summer, do you remember him? He is now in Vladivostok.
22 degrees today, clear sun. I would like to send a photo, but I don’t dare by mail. Do you remember Claudia M. Bitner, a nurse at the Lianozovsky hospital, she gives lessons to children, such happiness. The days fly by, it’s Saturday again, all-night vigil at 9 o’clock. We settled comfortably with our icons and lamps in the corner of the hall, but this is not a church. During these 3.5 years, we got used to being at the infirmary near Znamenya almost every day - it’s sorely missed. I advise Zhilik to write. The pen has been filled again! I'm sending pasta, sausages, coffee - although it's fasting now. I always take the greens out of the soup so that I don’t eat the broth, and I don’t smoke. It’s all so easy for me to be without air, and often I hardly sleep, my body doesn’t bother me, my heart is better, since I live very calmly and without moving, I was terribly thin, now it’s less noticeable, although the dresses are like bags and without a corset even more skinny. Hair also turns gray quickly. All seven are in good spirits. The Lord is so close, you feel His support, you are often surprised that you endure things and separations that would have killed you before. Peaceful in your soul, although you suffer greatly, greatly for your Motherland and for You, but you know that in the end everything is for the better, but you absolutely don’t understand anything else - everyone has gone crazy. I love you endlessly and grieve for my “little daughter” - but I know that she has become big, experienced, a real warrior Christov. Remember the Bride of Christ card? I know that you are drawn to the monastery (despite your new friend)! Yes, the Lord leads everything, I still want to believe that we will see another temple, the Intercession with its chapels in its place - with a large and small monastery. Where are sister Maria and Tatyana. General Orlov's mother wrote: You know, Ivan was killed in the war, and the bride killed herself out of despair, they are lying with their father. Alexey is in the South, I don’t know where. Hello to my dear lancers and Father John, I always pray for them all.
After the anniversary, in my opinion, the Lord will have mercy on the Motherland. I could write for hours, but I can’t. My joy, always burn the letters, in our troubled times it is better, I also have nothing left of the past, dear. We all kiss you tenderly and bless you. The Lord is great and will not leave His all-encompassing love... stay awake... I will especially remember on the Holiday, pray and hope that we will see each other when, where and how, only He knows, and we will surrender everything to Him, who knows everything better than us.
