Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport Page B
Authors: Helen Rappaport
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but he persisted in wearing his
gimnasterka
– a khaki soldier’s shirt and officer’s belt fastened by a buckle round his waist. But his boots were worn and down at heel. After two months of close confinement at Ekaterinburg he was spent – both physically and mentally.
For months now he had calmly and knowingly been on the edge of the abyss. But he never complained, even in his diary. His own fate andthat of his family was in the hands of God. Several observers have remarked that Nicholas at this time demonstrated a puzzling lack of interest in what was going on around him. Commissar Yakovlev had noted during the journey from Tobolsk that there were only three things that preoccupied the Tsar: ‘his family, the weather, and food’. The rest of the world – power, politics, affairs of state – was past history and excised from his brain.
Such necessary and onerous preoccupations had, for Nicholas, been imposed as an accident of birth, and in that lay his tragedy. He had never wanted to be tsar and had been in a state of perpetual denial at the prospect until the moment the role was thrust upon him. As a boy he had had a conventional, authoritarian upbringing at home with tutors, growing up in awe of his great bear of a father, Alexander III, and his charming but controlling mother, Maria Fedorovna. Alexander was disappointed in Nicholas’s smallness of stature – he was only 5′ 7″ and had narrow shoulders and short, stocky legs. He derided his son’s weakness, his feminine laugh and handwriting, referring to him as a
devchonka
– ‘a bit of a girl’ – capable of nothing other than ‘infantile judgements’ with regard to affairs of state and not one to be entrusted with them.
Nicholas met his father’s criticisms, and both parents’ patent disappointment in him as heir to the throne, with what would become his familiar passiveness and diffidence. His natural timidity grew in the face of Alexander’s charisma and his mother’s smothering indulgence. Knuckling down to his studies of mathematics, history, geography and chemistry, he displayed a natural flair for languages, becoming fluent in English, French and German. He certainly was not without intellectual gifts and the ability to read – fast – and absorb facts and issues very quickly, but he lacked any natural curiosity about most of the subjects he was obliged to tackle. His youthful diary demonstrates limited powers of self-expression and empathy and a chilling lack of interest in anything other than the most bourgeois, personal and domestic trifles. Political or cultural observations are almost entirely absent. But his photographic memory for names, faces, facts, dates was something that put him in good stead for the mountains of official documents with which he would have to deal as tsar, and it enabled him to read and digest endless volumes of the classic works of Russian fiction and history, including his favourite historians Karamzin and Solovev. For years, the Imperial Librarian had provided the Tsar monthly with 20 of the best books from all countries, military history being a particular favourite.
Nevertheless, educated as he was in seclusion without the luxury of the free exchange and exploration of ideas with others, Nicholas’s worldview remained narrow and unchallenged. Worse, he lacked any real friends of his own. His thoughts and opinions about issues in which he remained untutored were not solicited or broadened, leaving him often surprisingly ingenuous. A selection of professors and generals were later recruited to teach him the complexities of military science, political economy and international law. But amidst the circle of servile bureaucrats, army men and aristocrats who made up his entourage, none were capable of teaching him the true qualities of statesmanship. Nicholas’s natural intelligence was dissipated in the dull and stultifying curriculum imposed upon him, and in response he was a dull and dutiful student.
gimnasterka
– a khaki soldier’s shirt and officer’s belt fastened by a buckle round his waist. But his boots were worn and down at heel. After two months of close confinement at Ekaterinburg he was spent – both physically and mentally.
For months now he had calmly and knowingly been on the edge of the abyss. But he never complained, even in his diary. His own fate andthat of his family was in the hands of God. Several observers have remarked that Nicholas at this time demonstrated a puzzling lack of interest in what was going on around him. Commissar Yakovlev had noted during the journey from Tobolsk that there were only three things that preoccupied the Tsar: ‘his family, the weather, and food’. The rest of the world – power, politics, affairs of state – was past history and excised from his brain.
Such necessary and onerous preoccupations had, for Nicholas, been imposed as an accident of birth, and in that lay his tragedy. He had never wanted to be tsar and had been in a state of perpetual denial at the prospect until the moment the role was thrust upon him. As a boy he had had a conventional, authoritarian upbringing at home with tutors, growing up in awe of his great bear of a father, Alexander III, and his charming but controlling mother, Maria Fedorovna. Alexander was disappointed in Nicholas’s smallness of stature – he was only 5′ 7″ and had narrow shoulders and short, stocky legs. He derided his son’s weakness, his feminine laugh and handwriting, referring to him as a
devchonka
– ‘a bit of a girl’ – capable of nothing other than ‘infantile judgements’ with regard to affairs of state and not one to be entrusted with them.
Nicholas met his father’s criticisms, and both parents’ patent disappointment in him as heir to the throne, with what would become his familiar passiveness and diffidence. His natural timidity grew in the face of Alexander’s charisma and his mother’s smothering indulgence. Knuckling down to his studies of mathematics, history, geography and chemistry, he displayed a natural flair for languages, becoming fluent in English, French and German. He certainly was not without intellectual gifts and the ability to read – fast – and absorb facts and issues very quickly, but he lacked any natural curiosity about most of the subjects he was obliged to tackle. His youthful diary demonstrates limited powers of self-expression and empathy and a chilling lack of interest in anything other than the most bourgeois, personal and domestic trifles. Political or cultural observations are almost entirely absent. But his photographic memory for names, faces, facts, dates was something that put him in good stead for the mountains of official documents with which he would have to deal as tsar, and it enabled him to read and digest endless volumes of the classic works of Russian fiction and history, including his favourite historians Karamzin and Solovev. For years, the Imperial Librarian had provided the Tsar monthly with 20 of the best books from all countries, military history being a particular favourite.
Nevertheless, educated as he was in seclusion without the luxury of the free exchange and exploration of ideas with others, Nicholas’s worldview remained narrow and unchallenged. Worse, he lacked any real friends of his own. His thoughts and opinions about issues in which he remained untutored were not solicited or broadened, leaving him often surprisingly ingenuous. A selection of professors and generals were later recruited to teach him the complexities of military science, political economy and international law. But amidst the circle of servile bureaucrats, army men and aristocrats who made up his entourage, none were capable of teaching him the true qualities of statesmanship. Nicholas’s natural intelligence was dissipated in the dull and stultifying curriculum imposed upon him, and in response he was a dull and dutiful student.
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