Nicholas and Alexandra: Hemophilia Destroys an Empire
Written: Sep 28 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A vivid description of how one blood disease destroyed an empire.
Cons: The bleeding did not stop after the Imperial collapse.
The Bottom Line: Prince Alexei, fortunately, did not live to see his beloved Russia drown in the blood of tens of millions of his subjects.
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| quipowerty's Full Review: Robert K. Massie - Nicholas and Alexandra: The Sto... |
If you've heard of the dreaded disease hemophilia, you'll know how painful and excruciating it can be to its victims and their families. Hemophilia is basically a hereditary disease that hinders a victim's ability to stop bleeding, since hemophiliacs lack adequate blood clot thingys called platelets, substances that harden into clots just outside (and sometimes inside) an open or internal wound.
It was this very disease that gave Robert Massie his well-deserved fame. Massie, whose son was being treated for the disease when he decided to put pen to paper, got very interested in the downfall of the Imperial family and in turn the Russian Empire, especially after learning that Crown Prince Alexei also had the disease. He had inherited this disease from his mom, the German-born Alexandra. She in turn, inherited the gene from England's Queen Victoria. Massie came to believe that it was this little disease that led to the collapse of an empire and outright destruction of its remnants. It was to be this disease that would destroy an empire and kill millions of its people.
Her marriage to Czar Nicholas Romanov was relatively happy and fruitful, but Nicholas came to the throne around age 30 after the death of his father; Nick wasn't fully prepared for the responsibilities of being the tsar. An incident during the coronation festivities didn't help matters. Massie described in the book how a large crowd of spectators charged forward when many realized there was little vodka in the cartloads of food that were sent to the ceremony. Hundreds died in the stampede, and a despondent Nicholas took it as a sign that his reign was to be at best unstable. The spectators were mostly miserable peasants, as were most of Russia’s inhabitants, and even many in the emerging middle class were ex-peasants and the children of peasants and many were bitter about this fact.
Massie describes the lifestyle of the Romanovs as following the Victorian way as much as possible. There are pictures Nicholas and his family standing in the royal yacht, which was steam powered and exceeded 130 feet in length. For the most part, the imperial family posed for the various pictures in extravagance, with fancy chairs, gorgeous dresses worn by the empress and her four daughters, and well-kept country estates. Massie also took care to include pictures of Alexei walking around in a sailor's uniform, in the view of sailors, often with crutches, since a hemophiliac often gets weak and needs crutches or a wheelchair to get around.
This is where Gregori Rasputin comes in. A self-proclaimed holy man from the Russian backwoods, Rasputin allegedly helped to cure Prince Alexei's uncontrolled bleeding, or at least helped to keep it in check. The art of advanced blood transfusion had not been developed in those days. After a miraculous spiritual healing where Rasputin stood over a weakened Alexei and chanted hymns, Alexandra kept the somewhat deranged monk in good company. Alas, Rasputin began to get more unbalanced, and his sexual deprivations and his overt influence on the imperial political system horrified everyone. Raspuitin quickly became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the empire. His healing powers, however, kept Nicholas from expelling Rasputin, since no one doubted his unusually spiritual ability to heal Alexei whenever he bled profusely.
Hoping to distract from the chronic problems at home, Nicholas in July 1914 began a war against Austria-Hungary after the latter began a campaign to crush Serbia. He hoped that the war would rally the Russian people around him and distract from the problems at home, but instead WWI turned out to be the a jet-fueled missile that directly struck the powder keg, so to speak. As one soldier stated before going off to fight, “There is a narrow road heading to war but only a narrow road heading back.”
In one passage, Massie describes how a large Russian army was split in two at the Battle of Tannenberg. Victory for the Germans was inevitable once they committed to keeping the two armies apart while attacking. One army was destroyed in a German assault, the other fled from the scene. At the end, General Samsonov said “They have their victory, we’ll have another.” and ‘rode off into the forest to shoot himself’. More mass deaths followed, since the Russians were superior in numbers but inferior in weaponry and military tactics.
Despite these and other setbacks, the Imperial family remained dedicated to the war. Massie included pictures of the Czar going off personally to observe the fighting, and more photos of the four sisters in nurses’ outfits, with white shawls; they helped with a time treating wounded soldiers from the front.
A group of disgruntled noblemen finally assassinated Rasputin in December 1916. He was poisoned, and when the poison did not kill him they shot him 8 or 9 times before finally dumping his body in a nearby river. This act failed to save the empire.
Then came the Russian Revolution in February 1917, where massive crowds grieving over huge numbers of dead soldiers and furious over high food and fuel prices openly condemned the Imperial government: “Down with the Tsar! Down with Protopopov! Down with the War!” Just for the record, Protopopov was the prime minister of the government at the time. The protests quickly spun out of control, and it reached a climax when many of the troops sent to quell the uprising ended up joining it instead.
The Tsar was ultimately forced to abdicate, and after the Bolshevik coup that brought Vladimir Lenin to power, they were confined to certain places; hence a photo of Nicholas being confined at Tsarkeye Selo, which served as the Imperial family’s country house.
In July 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were being confined in a safe house in Yekaterinburg. One day a captor named Yurovsky told them to get out of bed and walk down to a basement. After half an hour, Yurovsky came in, accompanied by 8 or 9 other men: "Your friends have tried to save you. They have failed and now we mush shoot you." With these words Yurovsky whipped out a pistol, and all his accomplices did the same. You know the rest.
One more point about the execution of the Tsar's family that Massie should have mentioned a bit more. The killings were only one incident in a brutal Civil War where Bolsheviks systematically rounded up and killed millions of political opponents in the Red Terror. The Whites engaged in their own White Terror, killing hundreds of thousands of their opponents, especially huge numbers of Bolsheviks and their supporters, and even tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms. Atrocities, massacres committed by every side, sackings and burnings of farms, towns, and even whole cities, and battles with high casualties amongst both Reds and Whites were rife. The Civil War erupted in March 1918 when the Bolsheviks signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which effectively acknowledged Russia's crushing defeat in World War I.
The rivers of blood flowed for a full three years before the Bolsheviks finally won: between 1918 and 1921, more than 15 million people all over the former Imperial Russia were massacred, shot execution-style, killed in battle, or cut down by disease and starvation. Some 5 million women and children died in one famine. The death toll included hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks who did not live to see their movement's ultimate triumph. Even Lenin didn't escape the horrors; a Bolshevik hater shot and badly wounded him in an assassination attempt, and the stress of revolution, war, and the total collapse of Russia's economy, society, and political system further damaged his health. He died of a brain hemorrhage in January 1924 (he was 53), and Joseph Stalin (whom Lenin himself had come to hate because of Stalin's thuggish personality and greed for power) quickly moved in to take over.
By then Russia had bled itself dry faster than a hemophiliac victim could ever do, and it didn't end there. Stalin and his cruel Soviet regime would continue to bleed the country dry during the 1930's, killing some 11 million innocents in forced collectivization programs in the early 1930's. It was followed by some 4 to 6 million more deaths in brutal purges in the late 1930's; hundreds of thousands perished every year in slave labor camps called gulags. Altogether he and his minions killed some 20 million people, perhaps more.
During World War II, Hitler decided to send 3 million troops into Russia's vast territories in 1941. His brutal ambition to destroy and subjugate Mother Russia and its Communist regime failed but resulted in an even bigger torrent of blood (over 28 million dead in just four years). The Soviet Russians were forced to expend huge numbers of armed men to drive the Germans back, and millions of civilians got caught in the crossfire. Even today no Russian can speak of June 22, 1941 without shaking with terror in his fur boots.
Altogether Russia lost over 60 million people over 30 years, its economy, society, and political system was devastated, and its society, political system, and population has yet to fully recuperate. Perhaps it's fortunate that Prince Alexei and his parents and sisters didn't live to see this continuous bloodletting that turned Russia into what is now an undeniably disheveled, anemic, diseased, and corrupt version of its former self. And that is the ultimate tragedy of all.
Recommended:
Yes
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quipowerty
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