The Last Tsar Read Free Page B

the tsar’s boat was another guard with a convoy.
    In the tsar’s boat the huntsman held up a lantern, the fish swam toward the light, and the huge, heavy tsar speared the surfacing fish.
    Fishing and hunting at times even pushed back affairs of state. “Europe can wait while the Russian tsar fishes.” This aphorism of the powerful monarch, the master of one-sixth of the earth’s surface, circulated through the newspapers of the world.
    Nicholas was taken hunting and fishing, but more often his father took Michael, the younger brother. The hardy rascal Michael was his father’s and mother’s favorite.
    The tsar is drinking tea with guests on the balcony, and below Misha, as Michael is called, is playing. The father gets an idea for a bullyish prank: he takes a watering can and douses the boy from above with water. Misha is pleased. Misha laughs, the tsar laughs, the guests laugh.
    But suddenly, an unexpected cry: “And now, Papa, your turn.”The tsar obediently presents his bald spot—and Misha douses him with the watering can from head to foot.
    But the father’s iron will broke Michael’s childish independence. Both brothers would grow up good, gentle, and timid, as often happens with children of strong fathers.
    This was when Nicholas grasped what is for an adolescent the bitterest truth: They don’t love me, they love my brother! His adolescent insight did not make him mean, sullen, or less obedient. He simply became reticent.
    Alexander appointed the distinguished K. P. Pobedonostsev, chief procurator of the Holy Synod, Nicholas’s tutor.
    Alexander III ascended to the throne with an understandable logic: there were reforms under my father, and what was the result? His murder. So Pobedonostsev was called to power. The desiccated old man with protruding ears had the dry wheeze of a grand inquisitor wasted away from fasting.
    Pobedonostsev would explain that Russia was a special country where reforms and a free press would inevitably result in decadence and disorder. “Like frost he inhibits any further decay, but nothing will grow under him,” a Russian commentator pinpointed Pobedonostsev. But the frost-man was then already feeling the heat of the fiery luminescence advancing on the empire: revolution. Who was going to stand up to it? This kind boy whose nature was anything but that of a tsar? Pobedonostsev respected Nicholas as the future monarch, but he could not love him. Nicholas found no love in his tutor.
    Instead of love he got—the army!
    Alexander III had the nickname “Peacemaker.” He avoided wars, but the army loomed over society as imposing as ever. The army, which had always made Russia strong. “Not by its laws, nor its civilization, but by its army,” as Count Witte, the powerful minister and adviser to both Nicholas and his father, wrote. “Russia as a state is neither commercial nor agricultural but military, and its calling is to be the wrath of the world,” said a Cadet Corps textbook. The army meant obedience and diligence above all else. Both these qualities, which the shy youth already possessed, the army would foster ruinously.
    The heir to the throne did his service in the Guards. Ever since the eighteenth century Russia’s wealthiest, most distinguished families had sent their children to Petersburg and the Guards. The richestgrandees, having retired to live out their days away from Petersburg in hospitable Moscow’s magnificent palaces, sent their children off to Petersburg and the Guards. Drinking, gypsies, duels—these were the Guards’ gentlemanly occupations. The Guards had been responsible for all of Russia’s palace revolutions. Guards had brought the Romanov empresses—Elizabeth and Catherine—to the throne and killed Emperors Peter III and Paul I. But the Guards had done more than plot against the imperial court. In all of Russia’s great battles, the Guards had been in the van.
    Nicholas began his service in a mixed regiment of a Guards battalion. The