Page 44 of The Unseen
“Lucky you.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it. They know a catch when they see one,” he joked and winked at her happily. “So Gabe tells me you have some questions about Imperial Russia. Well, pull up a chair and let me put the kettle on because no conversation about Imperial Russia can be rushed. And if I drone on long enough, your little one will fall asleep out of sheer boredom. You can thank me later.”
Quinn made Alex comfortable, got settled in Monty’s guest chair, and waited patiently until Monty’s electric kettle boiled. He made two mugs of strong, sweet tea and pushed a tin of chocolatebiscuits toward her before sitting down at his cluttered desk. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his head to the side, looking remarkably like a wise owl.
“What do you want to know, my lovely?”
“I’m working on a storyline for a new episode ofEchoes from the Past,” Quinn began.
“I saw the first episode last week. Riveting. Absolutely riveting. I even shed a tear, I must admit.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Monty, I need to know about the Russian Revolution and its impact on the inhabitants of Petrograd.”
“Do you have a few hours to spare?” Monty chuckled.
“Just give me a comprehensive summary,” Quinn suggested, knowing that if given free rein, Monty would indeed go on for a few hours.
“Well, that city has seen its share of tragedy, I’ll tell you that. It started out as Sankt-Peterburg, of course, named by Peter the Great after himself. If you build a beautiful city, you should have every right to name it after yourself, I always say,” Monty joked. “It was renamed Petrograd in 1914.”
“Why?”
“Because the original name sounded too German, and given what was going on at the time, with World War I raging all around and wiping out thousands of beautiful young men, it seemed prudent to cut all associations with anything German, especially given the opposition to the war by the Russian people. The city was renamed again, to Leningrad in 1924, after Vladimir Lenin, who was one of the most important Bolshevik leaders of the Russian Revolution. You’ve heard of the Leningrad Blockade, of course, or the Siege of Leningrad, as it’s referred to in the West. It lasted two and a half years. Thousands of civilians slowly starved to death. They say there wasn’t a rat left alive by the time theblockade finally came to an end. Anyway, it remained Leningrad until 1991, when it returned to its original name and is now known as St. Petersburg.”
“And during the Revolution?” Quinn prompted.
“On November seventh, 1917, which was actually October twenty-fifth by the Gregorian calendar, the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace and ousted the provisional government, which had been in place since the February Revolution. They proclaimed Russia to be the first communist state.”
“Was it a very violent rebellion?” Quinn asked.
“Darling, no revolution is without bloodshed. Of course, there were many casualties, before, during, and after, including the royal family, which was shot in July of 1918, along with four servants in a cellar of the house where they were kept under house arrest. Their remains were thrown down mineshafts to erase any proof of the crime, and discovered decades later. It was a brutal way to deal with the Romanovs, especially the children, but Nicholas II was not a popular tsar. He was known as ‘Bloody Nick’ among the common people.”
“What earned him such a flattering nickname?”
“Nicholas’s father, Alexander III, died quite suddenly at the age of forty-nine, leaving his twenty-six-year-old son to rule the vast empire. Alexander III was very distressed, as he lay dying, since he didn’t believe Nicholas, who was spoiled and immature, was up to the task, and made Nicholas promise to heed his ministers before making any important decisions. Alexander had been correct, of course. Nicholas was a weak and ineffectual ruler whose ill-informed decisions led to the deaths of millions, but worse than that, he was unsympathetic and often cruel. He was blamed for the Khodynka Tragedy, where over a thousand people got trampled to death, anti-Semitic pogroms against poor, defenseless people who posed no threat to him whatsoever, a brutal and disproportionate response to the 1905 revolution, and Bloody Sunday, where soldiers of the Imperial Guard opened fire on acrowd of peaceful protesters as they marched toward the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Tsar.”
Monty took a noisy slurp of tea and continued. “His wife, Alexandra, was no better, by all accounts. She wasn’t a sympathetic woman and was often heard saying that Russians needed to feel the sting of the whip in order to remember their place. She formed an unsavory relationship with a self-proclaimed mystic named Grigori Rasputin, who she believed had the power to heal her son, Alexei. The Tsarevich was afflicted by hemophilia, which was passed on to him by his mother, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who herself carried the defective gene. Rasputin was able to worm his way into the family and began to exert undue influence on Empress Alexandra, which didn’t go unnoticed. Alexandra urged her husband to listen to the advice of the man many believed to be a clever charlatan. She became increasingly unpopular, especially once rumors of an affair with Rasputin began to circulate among the highest levels of society. With her reputation in tatters, Alexandra’s credibility came into question at a time when Russia was already teetering on the brink of an armed rebellion.”
“Rasputin was murdered, wasn’t he?” Quinn asked.
“He was, indeed. Rasputin was assassinated in December of 1916 by a band of noblemen who feared his influence on the royal family, but the damage had already been done. The Empress Alexandra was viewed with suspicion and contempt, and her refusal to curtail her spending at a time when the country was grossly in debt didn’t help her image. Historical accounts report that she spent thousands of rubles on fresh flowers for the palace every week when the common people were starving. Compassion was not something the Romanovs were ever known for, so no compassion was shown to them at a time when it might have made all the difference.”
“Do you think they knew what was about to befall them?” Quinn asked, shuddering at the thought of five children being gunned down in cold blood, especially the sickly Alexei, whoseshort life had been plagued by near-death bouts of hemophilia that left him hovering on the brink of death.
“Oh, I think Nicky had an inkling. It is said that in March of 1901, he went to Gatchina, accompanied by Baron Fredrichs and several other courtiers. The journey was undertaken in order to fulfill the wish of Tsar Paul I, who decreed that a chest he left behind for future generations be opened on the one-hundredth anniversary of his death. The chest contained a prophecy by a monk called Abel, the Russian Nostradamus, as he was nicknamed, that foretold the fate of the Tsar and the house of Romanov. No copies of the original prophecy or books written by Abel have survived, but the prophecy was pieced together from journal entries and personal letters, and went something like this:
“‘A royal crown he shall exchange for a crown of thorns, and his people shall betray him, just as God’s Son was. There shall be a great war, a world war… People shall fly through the air, like birds, and swim under water like fishes; they shall begin to destroy each other with evil-smelling Sulphur. The betrayal of the Tsar shall increase and grow in scale. On the eve of victory in the war the Royal throne will collapse. Blood and tears will soak the wet earth. Crazed common folk will seize power, and truly, an Egyptian sentence will dawn.’ It’s said that after that fateful trip, the Tsar became obsessed with the year 1918, believing it to be a crucial year for himself and the future of Russia.”
“What became of the aristocracy after the Revolution?”
“Some remained but didn’t fare very well. Many fled, mostly to France, where they lived in obscurity and often poverty. The forty-seven surviving members of the Romanov family lived in exile for the rest of their lives.”
“Are there any living descendants?”
“Of course, but they are smart enough to keep a low profile. There was nothing to be gained by proclaiming their heritage during the communist years except a bullet between the eyes.”
“And after?”
“In 1998, the royal family was buried with all the pomp and circumstance due them at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg. I believe several of their descendants attended the funeral, but that was the last anyone has seen of them. The Romanovs were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and declared martyrs in 2000, so that’s something, I suppose.”
