Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [30]
The young tsar was behaving rather strangely. He scarcely mourned. It was as if he immediately forgot about his dead ministers.
The solution to the riddle was in his diary: “We must endure the trials the Lord sends us for our good with humility and steadfastness” (after the murder of Sipyagin).
“Thus is His sacred will” (after the murder of Plehve).
One and the same principal feature in his outlook: God determines everything in this world, the fate of nations and men. It is not for us to guess at God’s intent or the good that each of His actions conceals.
This belief helped Nicholas reconcile himself to the strange impracticability of all his beginnings. He was already getting the feeling that no matter what he did, no matter what he undertook, no matter how good his intentions, it would all either come to naught, turn into its opposite, or simply go to rack and ruin.
As his father had instructed, immediately after his ascent to the throne Nicholas passed a law against drunkenness. Drunkenness—the “Russian disease,” as it was called in Europe. The law was good, but drunkenness did not disappear. People simply paid more for vodka. They continued to drink and ruin themselves as before. The next law was proposed by the irrepressible Witte, who put the Russian ruble on the gold standard so that Russian currency would rise to a level with European currencies (which it did). Now rich Russians created a furor in Europe, losing their fortunes and squandering their estates in Parisian restaurants: “Russian beluga began to spawn gold.” But as a result, many people of good birth, scions of the best families, were ruined. And those same gold coins on which Nicholas’s profile was stamped came to rule his country more and more.
THE RUSSIAN TSAR GOES TO THE PEOPLE
It was at this time that Alix developed her mistrust for the rich. Then, on the threshold of the century, he had an idea: “the tsar and the people—and no one between them.” On the threshold of the century his strange preoccupation with truth seeking first manifested itself.
One day in conversation with one of the grand dukes he learned of an impoverished Novgorod landowner with a very funny name, Klopov—“Bedbugson.” This Klopov was always writing the grand duke eloquent letters about the embezzlement of public funds in the flour milling business. These first letters naturally did not reach Nicholas, but the indefatigable truth seeker continued to write. Nicholas told Alix about him, and they read the letters aloud, amazed at the purity of this unknown, simple man. Perhaps he was found, the man of the people, perhaps he had come to them himself? The people and the tsar—and no one between them!
The titular councilor was brought to the tsar. The quiet, shy little Klopov, with his gentle eyes, was very much like the not very tall, shy man who met him in his office. Indeed, they were alike—the pathetic titular councilor and the ruler of one-sixth of the world.
Nicholas sent Klopov on a secret mission, giving him broad, confidential authorities. Klopov was going to inspect Russia. He was to understand the reasons for the crop failures, clarify officials’ abuses, and bring the tsar back the truth. Moreover, not the “governor’s truth”—the truth of the bureaucracy—but the genuine, popular truth they were hiding from the tsar. So Klopov went.
“In Russia, everything is a secret but there is no secrecy.” Very soon afterward the whole country knew about the mysterious Klopov. Crowds of people besieged the tsar’s emissary with petitions.
But Klopov was after all merely a minor landowner who knew the flour milling business. High officials chatted courteously with him and promised to see to all the problems in the flour milling business. Klopov, deeply