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By Root 2127 0

right—that is, the camarilla—and the secret police. That is why when Alexander II was preparing the constitution the police failed to ‘keep an eye’ on him—and he was killed.… My friend used to talk about how back under Alexander III terrorists’ notes with threats against the tsar were always turning up at the carefully guarded Gatchina Palace. In this way they confirmed the tsar in his hatred for liberals, by planting these notes through the secret police.… My friend used to say that the Department of Police slipped the tsar’s leash at the end of the century, when the secret police began to place provocateurs in the revolution.… This allowed the police to shroud everything in the greatest secrecy. That was when the sinister practice began of provocateurs throwing the bombs of unsuspecting revolutionaries at tsarist officials the camarilla didn’t like.

“It was at that time, my friend used to say, that the camarilla and the secret police carried out an entire series of dangerous intrigues against the tsar and society.

“One of them was the Japanese war.”

“COMFORT HEAVEN-SENT”

The war began—and immediately the Russian bureaucracy’s steadfast rule went into effect: when something clever is conceived, the result will be its direct opposite. The war, contrived to avert revolution, encouraged it instead.

This was when—in the aftermath of terrible defeats, in the confusion of advancing revolution—it happened.

Alix’s sacred belief that Serafim would intercede with God in heaven had not been in vain.

It happened at the Alexandria Palace, that small summer palace where he, the fourteen-year-old Nicholas, had heard the song of the old hag death and where once they—a boy and a girl in love—had etched their names in the glass. And so, on the afternoon of July 30, 1904….

“The empress,” Anna Vyrubova recalled, “had scarcely gone upstairs from her little study when the heir was born.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“30 July. For us a great, unforgettable day on which God’s goodness was so clearly visited upon us. At 1:15 this afternoon, Alix gave birth to a son, whom in prayer we have named Alexei. Everything happened remarkably quickly, for me at least. There are not words to thank God properly for the comfort He has sent us in this year of hard trials.”

General Raukh, who commanded the Cuirassiers, recalled his conversation with Nicholas: “The empress and I have decided to give the heir the name Alexei. We must do this to break the chain of Alexanders and Nicholases,” so the happy father and honorary chairman of the Russian Historical Society joked.

Indeed, tsars with the names Nicholas and Alexander had ruled Russia for an entire century.

But it was not all that simple.

The name Alexei was out of favor in the Romanov family. Ever since Peter the Great had ordered his son and heir Alexei secretly murdered, the Romanovs had avoided giving this name to heirs to the throne. There was even a story about a curse on the Romanov line that the stricken Tsarevich Alexei managed to cry out before his death. But Nicholas was set on this name, since he had long been attracted by the image of another Alexei, the Romanov Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

Shortly before the heir’s birth, several grand historical balls had been held. The halls of the Winter Palace had been filled with boyars and their ladies from the times of the first Romanovs. Nicholas appeared in a costume from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that glittered with gold and gems. Alix wore a jewel-strewn dress from Alexei’s wife, Tsaritsa Natalia Kirillovna. For Nicholas this was not simply a costume ball but a remembrance of his favorite tsar. By his religiosity, goodness, and exemplary behavior, Tsar Alexei had earned the sobriquet “the Quietest.” He had done a great deal for the state—not with cruelty or fierce will, as Peter the Great had, but with meekness and gradual reforms. So Nicholas gave his son this name.

“Christening began at 11. The morning was clear and warm. In front of the house, along the sea road, appeared golden carriages, and in the convoy platoon—hussars and Cossack chieftains.