Nicholas And Alexandra, The Movie and History, Part Two/End

Russian law required the autocratic ruler to be male, unless all possible male heirs were deceased or unable to assume the throne. This all came about in the late 1790s under Tsar Paul I, the son of Empress Catherine the Great and "supposedly" Tsar Peter III, the grandson of Peter the Great.* While eldest sons of rulers "often, but not always," took the thrones to replace their fathers, Paul, the only son of Peter III, was not guaranteed to succeed his father by law at that time, and his mother, Catherine, had the necessary support and became Empress and Tsarina of Russia when Peter III was assassinated, likely with the support of Catherine, after only a few months as Tsar. Catherine ruled for more than three decades, leaving her embittered son's hatred of her to fester. Not long after assuming the throne, Paul issued the new law about succession. This is important, because Nicholas and Alexandra had four daughters during the early years of their marriage, making them, and the nation, anxious about a direct heir for Nicholas, but if Nicholas had no son, the throne would have passed to another branch of the Romanov family. The desire to perpetuate Nicholas's direct line led Alexandra to begin associations with people who were thought to be able to bring about male children. Hey, I'm not making this up. While Alexandra had resisted conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, once she chose to do so and marry Nicholas, she increasingly became a religious fanatic. The movie begins with the birth of the couple's only son, Alexei. Within just a short time, however, it was found the boy was suffering from hemophilia, an affliction where most external wounds are not usually life threatening, but where internal bleeding can cause excruciating pain and possibly death. The defective gene is carried and passed along in the female line to some, but not all, males.** The "guilt" carried by some mothers is a tremendous emotional burden, and this was so with Alexandra. The boy's condition consumed much of Alexandra's energy at times, and added to her intense shyness and judgmental nature, she very much limited herself to a few friends, none of whom were really from the upper reaches of Russian society, which caused tremendous resentment toward her from that high society, where being associated with the Tsarina was a status symbol. With Nicholas's mother being relatively young when her husband died, she often became the center of attention, as unlike Alexandra, she loved social functions, which only showed others how distant and cold Alexandra was. With no reservoir of good will from others, this proved to be a problem later when Alexandra was heavily criticized by many, including many in high society.  

With no medical treatment for the boy's condition, Alexandra turned even more to her religious beliefs to sustain her and to keep her son alive. She eventually was introduced to a peasant holy man from western Siberia, Grigory Rasputin. This man was thought by some to have tremendous healing powers through a special connection to God, and through the years he was called upon to bring the young Russian heir out of his bouts of bleeding. One thing you must understand, the Russian public, and very few people even around the imperial family, knew the nature of Alexei's illness, as it was a closely guarded secret. This never allowed the Russian people to express sympathy with Alexandra, nor to understand her association with Rasputin. Rasputin was not an official of the Russian Orthodox Church, nor was he an official of the Russian government, thus he is a highly controversial figure in history, for while there are some official records about him from those times, much of the other information about him comes from personal stories and recollections from people who knew him, or "knew of him." As I mentioned in "Part One," Russian society was highly stratified, and the idea that the Tsarina, and even the Tsar himself, to some extent, would associate so closely with a peasant was a scandalous story to begin with, but stories about Rasputin's earlier life, as well as his contemporary life, circulated and cast a major shadow over the dynasty, as those stories often had to do with promiscuous sexual adventures, conflicts with religious leaders and later with drunkenness. I'm not sure the movie quite conveys the importance of Rasputin to undermining the dynasty's prestige, although it does try.

The film has several very good scenes, including "something of a reenactment" of what came to be called "Bloody Sunday," where thousands of workers peacefully marched from various parts of the capital of St. Petersburg in order to present a petition to the Tsar about dealing with their wretched working and living conditions. Police and military units opened fire, killing and wounding many, and while Nicholas had not authorized the slaughter, it brought many Russians to call the Tsar, "Bloody Nicholas," which was used to some extent to recruit revolutionaries to overthrow the government. A revolution broke out, but was gradually suppressed, although the Tsar finally relented and signed off on reforms, including the establishment of a body of elected representatives, called the "Duma," which began to place limits on his power, thus beginning a move into constitutional monarchy. After peace was restored, however, Nicholas began to retreat from some of these reforms, but with peace, some land reforms which began to give some peasants control over their own land, and a large presence of secret police (the "Okhrana"), the dynasty seemed to have righted itself, so much so, that the film veers off to show a demoralized Lenin living in exile, pining for what he believes is a never to be revolution.

Russian involvement in World War One gradually brought turmoil to Russia and to the dynasty, as defeats mounted, the lack of weapons and ammunition became acute and a lack of food, especially in the major cities, brought hungry people to question the authority of the Tsar. The Tsar made an ill-fated choice to take direct control of the Russian army, although in reality it was more symbolic, but by remaining at the military headquarters for long periods, he was gone from the capital, leaving Alexandra in charge of day to day governmental matters. Remember, Alexandra was born a German, and with Russian armies suffering devastating defeats at the hands of the Germans, Russians looked for a reason, a reason which seemed all too obvious to many; that is, Alexandra was a German spy, passing along valuable military information to her cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (remember both were grandchildren of Queen Victoria). Further, her association with Rasputin, who had taken to heavy drinking, tainted matters even more, as he associated with people thought to be German agents by some. Those in government who criticized Rasputin soon earned the enmity of Alexandra, who saw in the, by then, famous peasant, the only way to keep her son alive. Government officials were replaced at an alarming rate, all with Nicholas's consent, but the public saw the changes as Rasputin dictating to the Tsarina, who was in the public mind, running the country. Many of the changes proved unpopular, as men were appointed who had no confidence from the elected representatives of the Duma. Revolution moved closer and closer.  

In another of the great scenes of the film, Nicholas's mother travels to see him at his headquarters. This scene never happened in real life, but it is used by the script writers to depict the real historical attempts by several Romanov family members to convince Nicholas of the changes he needed to make, including the sending of Alexandra to their vacation palace in the Crimea*** to keep her from real and perceived meddling in governmental matters. No question about it, Nicholas had great difficulty opposing his wife. In the movie, Nicholas's mother questions all of the replacements to the officials by incompetents, as well as telling her son how she wished his father were still alive, because, "he knew how to be a tsar." There's the unfavorable comparison to his father. She also tells her son that his father would have known how to deal with Rasputin, which brings a defense of the peasant by Nicholas, but his mother's further questioning of Alexandra's close association with Rasputin brings the admission by Nicholas that his wife "needs him (Rasputin)," and that she believes "he keeps my son alive." In my opinion, this whole scene, which is more extensive than I have noted here, sums up Nicholas's rule in just a few minutes. Not long thereafter, Rasputin is killed in a conspiracy involving Nicholas's nephew, Grand Duke Dmitry, and his friend, Prince Felix Yusupov. The Duma celebrates, but the problems don't go away. Revolution breaks out and Nicholas's train is halted as he tries to get back to his family at one of their palaces just outside St. Petersburg.**** Faced by representatives of the Duma, Nicholas abdicates, and in a legally questionable move, abdicates for his son, thus ending the Romanov dynasty. There is a great deal of historical basis for these film scenes.

Nicholas is allowed to return to his family and they are held as prisoners at the palace until they are sent off to Siberia by the "Provisional Government," as the replacement government was called. In the meantime, Lenin is helped to enter Russia by the Germans, with whom he promises to make peace, as Russia still remained at war at that time. The Bolsheviks plan and execute a revolution of their own against the Provisional Government, whose unpopular decision to continue the war undermines their hold on power. The Bolsheviks overthrow the government and new revolutionary guards are sent to take control of the Romanov family in Siberia. Again, all of these scenes have basis in history, as does the end, as the family is awakened and told they are leaving. They are led to the basement of the house and as they wait, the door opens and Bolshevik guards enter and begin firing. When the movie was filmed, the bodies of the family had not been located, but in more recent times the remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, a doctor and three servants have all been recovered and identified by DNA and other tests.*****

There are many books and articles about the Romanovs and specifically about Nicholas and Alexandra, but I consulted: "Nicholas and Alexandra," by Robert K. Massie,originally published by Atheneum, New York, 1967, with an edition published in 2000 by Ballantine, New York, and another edition published by Random House, New York in 2011.

* The actual father of Paul has long been in question. For one recent perspective see:  "Catherine the Great, Portrait of a Woman," by Robert K. Massie, published by Random House, New York, 2011.

** Queen Victoria had four sons, with only one, Leopold, suffering the from the bleeding disorder.

*** This palace, Livadia, near Yalta, was later used near the end of World War Two for the meeting of the "Big Three," Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, often called, "the Yalta Conference." .

**** Because of the German name of the capital, early in the war the official name of the city was changed to the Russian form, "Petrograd."

***** The movie does not have the servants with the family. Also, there has been a dispute between some scientists over which remains are the Tsar's daughter Maria, and which belong to daughter Anastasia. The bulk of the remains were recovered in the early 1990s, but the remains of the last two children, including Alexei and one daughter (either Maria or Anastasia) were recovered and identified just a few years ago, not far from the location which had held the other remains. The Bolsheviks had long said they had buried two of the bodies separate from the others.

Photo of the 1999 Columbia Pictures DVD

WORD HISTORY:
Tarry-This word, related to "tear" (the form pronounced as if "tare," and meaning "rip"), and now generally meaning "stay somewhere, linger," goes back to Indo European "deregh" (from the root "der"=tear, rip, flay), with the notion of "pull, tear," with the additional meaning "excite, irritate," a meaning that "may" come from the idea of tugging at someone "irritating" them ("exciting," in the broad sense). This sense seems to only have been retained in the West Germanic branch of Old Germanic,^ as "tergjan(an)," with the same general meanings. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tirgan" (the Brothers Grimm^^ also give it as "tyrgan"), which meant "excite, worry, irritate" ("worry'' is something that "tugs" at your mind, and also "irritates"), as obviously the former secondary meaning of Old Germanic was retained as the primary meaning in English, although the "pull" meaning "may" have remained among the common people, as the word eventually became "terien" (before the modern version) and the meaning retained the "irritate" meaning, and thus by extension, "to tease, to harass," but also "to delay, to hesitate," perhaps from the old notion of "pulling, tugging;" thus "holding back, delaying." The modern word certainly conveys the sense of "linger for a certain purpose, or expectation," thus that purpose "pulls at" one, keeping one from moving on. Relatives in other Germanic languages: German has "zergen," which is now somewhat dated, but means, "to provoke, to bring to anger;" Low German Saxon "targen," meaning "to provoke;" Dutch "tergen," meaning "to provoke, to taunt." West Frisian once had "tergje," which might still be used by some, but is no longer common from what I've been able to find, and Danish, Norwegian and Swedish (all from the North Germanic branch of Germanic) borrowed forms from Low German, although the Danish form, "terge," has apparently died out, and the Swedish form, "targa," has either died out or is purely dialectal, while Norwegian "terge/terga," means "rile;" that is, "provoke."

^ The main modern languages of the West Germanic branch of Germanic are: English, German, Low German, Dutch, West Frisian, East Frisian (only a small number of speakers still exist), and North Frisian (a very small number of speakers).

^^ While most of us likely think of fairy tales when we see "the Brothers Grimm," the brothers also compiled an extensive German dictionary, complete with many word histories, often including the links of those words to English and other Germanic languages, which they began publishing in the mid 1800s.