emperor.
But the blood was not merely in the historical past. Blood had already been shed in Nicholas’s own lifetime, too, on his very first steps to the throne. He had become heir on the death of his grandfather Alexander II, who had been assassinated by revolutionaries. Blood surrounded him.
The Long-Suffering Job
Nicholas had been taciturn and reserved from early childhood. And possessed from youth by a mystical feeling of predestined unhappiness. He considered the very date of his birth an indication of his terrible future. He was born on the day of the long-suffering Job. The French ambassador Maurice Paléologue quotes a conversation of Nicholas’s with Prime Minister Stolypin: ‘“Do you know the date of my birth?” he asked. “How could I fail to, 6 May.” “And what saint’s day is that? The long-suffering Job’s. I have more than a presentiment. I have a deep certainty that I am doomed to terrible ordeals.”’
There are some lines in the memoirs of the tsar’s sister Olga that soundlike an echo of this conversation: ‘He would frequently embrace me and say, “I was born on the day of the long-suffering Job and am prepared to accept my destiny.”’ And a line from one of the tsarina’s letters continues this melancholy theme: ‘you were born on the day of the long-suffering Job too, my poor Sweetheart’ (4 May 1915).
A feeling of coming destruction haunted his highly-strung wife, as well. Which is why the shy princess from Darmstadt was so tormented, weeping for no reason, when replying to the proposal of the heir to the Russian throne that she become the future Russian tsarina. ‘She wept the whole time and from time to time said only, “I cannot,”’ Nicholas wrote in his diary.
And as evidence of the justness of their presentiments there was the abundant blood spilled during the principal event of their lives — their coronation, that mystical betrothal with Russia, that transformation of a mere man into a holy tsar. During a public distribution of souvenirs in the coronation’s honour on Khodynka Field near Moscow, there had been such a crush of people that the whole of the following night was occupied with carting hundreds of trampled victims from the bloodied field. It is not hard to imagine how that affected a couple so inclined to mysticism.
And then with the start of the new twentieth century their presentiments became a reality. Blood became a part of Russian life. The bombs of Russian terrorists began exploding cruelly and frequently. And his dignitaries perished. In just the first years of the new century the minister of education, the governor-general of Finland, and, one after the other, two ministers of internal affairs died at the hands of terrorists. As if in proof of the fact that now no security branch could save anyone from death. The long-suffering Job’s days of sorrow were approaching. His resigned entries after the deaths of the ministers remain in his diary: ‘One must endure with humility and steadfastness the trials sent to us by the Lord.’ ‘It is His holy will.’ A calf destined for sacrifice.
But his wife was a person of entirely different character. She would struggle against her fate. And from the very beginning she sought protection from future misfortunes.
In Search Of A Redeemer
It was the idea of her then inseparable friends, the Montenegrin princesses. Born in a poor country where, as Feofan said in the File, ‘the aristocracy was much closer to the common people,’ the Montenegrins had brought to the palace this idea: that truth, miracle and strength are hidden in thesimple folk, in the common people. An alliance must be forged with the people, bypassing the venal officials and the arrogant court. The people and the tsar with no one between them.
Oddly enough, this was an idea that united all Russian intellectuals, even the most radical, who hated the tsars and who were hated by them in turn. All the famous dominant Russian thinkers
But the blood was not merely in the historical past. Blood had already been shed in Nicholas’s own lifetime, too, on his very first steps to the throne. He had become heir on the death of his grandfather Alexander II, who had been assassinated by revolutionaries. Blood surrounded him.
The Long-Suffering Job
Nicholas had been taciturn and reserved from early childhood. And possessed from youth by a mystical feeling of predestined unhappiness. He considered the very date of his birth an indication of his terrible future. He was born on the day of the long-suffering Job. The French ambassador Maurice Paléologue quotes a conversation of Nicholas’s with Prime Minister Stolypin: ‘“Do you know the date of my birth?” he asked. “How could I fail to, 6 May.” “And what saint’s day is that? The long-suffering Job’s. I have more than a presentiment. I have a deep certainty that I am doomed to terrible ordeals.”’
There are some lines in the memoirs of the tsar’s sister Olga that soundlike an echo of this conversation: ‘He would frequently embrace me and say, “I was born on the day of the long-suffering Job and am prepared to accept my destiny.”’ And a line from one of the tsarina’s letters continues this melancholy theme: ‘you were born on the day of the long-suffering Job too, my poor Sweetheart’ (4 May 1915).
A feeling of coming destruction haunted his highly-strung wife, as well. Which is why the shy princess from Darmstadt was so tormented, weeping for no reason, when replying to the proposal of the heir to the Russian throne that she become the future Russian tsarina. ‘She wept the whole time and from time to time said only, “I cannot,”’ Nicholas wrote in his diary.
And as evidence of the justness of their presentiments there was the abundant blood spilled during the principal event of their lives — their coronation, that mystical betrothal with Russia, that transformation of a mere man into a holy tsar. During a public distribution of souvenirs in the coronation’s honour on Khodynka Field near Moscow, there had been such a crush of people that the whole of the following night was occupied with carting hundreds of trampled victims from the bloodied field. It is not hard to imagine how that affected a couple so inclined to mysticism.
And then with the start of the new twentieth century their presentiments became a reality. Blood became a part of Russian life. The bombs of Russian terrorists began exploding cruelly and frequently. And his dignitaries perished. In just the first years of the new century the minister of education, the governor-general of Finland, and, one after the other, two ministers of internal affairs died at the hands of terrorists. As if in proof of the fact that now no security branch could save anyone from death. The long-suffering Job’s days of sorrow were approaching. His resigned entries after the deaths of the ministers remain in his diary: ‘One must endure with humility and steadfastness the trials sent to us by the Lord.’ ‘It is His holy will.’ A calf destined for sacrifice.
But his wife was a person of entirely different character. She would struggle against her fate. And from the very beginning she sought protection from future misfortunes.
In Search Of A Redeemer
It was the idea of her then inseparable friends, the Montenegrin princesses. Born in a poor country where, as Feofan said in the File, ‘the aristocracy was much closer to the common people,’ the Montenegrins had brought to the palace this idea: that truth, miracle and strength are hidden in thesimple folk, in the common people. An alliance must be forged with the people, bypassing the venal officials and the arrogant court. The people and the tsar with no one between them.
Oddly enough, this was an idea that united all Russian intellectuals, even the most radical, who hated the tsars and who were hated by them in turn. All the famous dominant Russian thinkers
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