Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [7]
Alexander III had the nickname “Peacemaker.” He avoided wars, but the army loomed over society as imposing as ever. The army, which had always made Russia strong. “Not by its laws, nor its civilization, but by its army,” as Count Witte, the powerful minister and adviser to both Nicholas and his father, wrote. “Russia as a state is neither commercial nor agricultural but military, and its calling is to be the wrath of the world,” said a Cadet Corps textbook. The army meant obedience and diligence above all else. Both these qualities, which the shy youth already possessed, the army would foster ruinously.
The heir to the throne did his service in the Guards. Ever since the eighteenth century Russia’s wealthiest, most distinguished families had sent their children to Petersburg and the Guards. The richest grandees, having retired to live out their days away from Petersburg in hospitable Moscow’s magnificent palaces, sent their children off to Petersburg and the Guards. Drinking, gypsies, duels—these were the Guards’ gentlemanly occupations. The Guards had been responsible for all of Russia’s palace revolutions. Guards had brought the Romanov empresses—Elizabeth and Catherine—to the throne and killed Emperors Peter III and Paul I. But the Guards had done more than plot against the imperial court. In all of Russia’s great battles, the Guards had been in the van.
Nicholas began his service in a mixed regiment of a Guards battalion. The first half company was commanded by the heir, and the second by Alexander Volkov, who was a noncommissioned officer by then. At Alexandria, the tsar’s dacha, Volkov taught the heir the art of marching.
Nicholas adored physical exercise, and he was indefatigable. During his trials with Volkov in the art of square-bashing, his middle brother George would watch from the bushes. George, chronically ill and painfully ashamed of his persistent weakness, followed his brother’s every move ecstatically.
“6 May 1888. Am twenty and becoming quite the old man….
“7 May. Liked this costume ball very much. All the ladies wore white dresses, and the men wore red.… Danced the mazurka and cotillion.”
Balls, the regiment, a life without care.
Then on October 17, 1888, for the first time, miraculously, Nicholas eluded death when the tsar’s train had a terrible wreck at Borki, not far from Kharkov (and for the first time in his life the number 17 appeared in conjunction with calamity).
“A fateful day for us all. We might all have been killed, but by the Lord’s will we were not. During breakfast our train jumped the rails. The dining car and coach were demolished, but we emerged from it all unscathed. However, 20 people were killed and 16 injured.”
So the holiday resumed: 1889.
“Returned from the ball at half past 1. Slept through my first lesson….
“A gay old time getting an eyeful of that gypsy. Returned home at 2….
“Surprised at awakening in Gatchina. The sight of my room lit by sunshine. After tea fenced at Mama’s.
“Couldn’t help myself and began to smoke, assuring myself this is all right….
“At midnight went with Papa after grouse. Sat in the cabin, the mating place was remarkable. Slept until 10….
“6 May.… Was made a member of Council of State and Committee of Ministers.”
The pleasure with which gentle, retiring Nicholas threw himself into the unruly world of the Guards was striking. Nicholas’s regimental superior was his father’s brother Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. A powerful giant, the peremptory and strict commander was the unhappiest of men. Profoundly religious, he suffered endlessly from what he felt were unnatural inclinations: Sergei Alexandrovich was a homosexual.
The Guards, a closed male fraternity, encouraged pederasty and heavy drinking.
The tradition of the hard-drinking Russian Guards! The poetry of that famous hero and hard drinker the hussar Denis Davydov was set to music and his ballads sung all through the Guards’ barracks:
Old men! I remember you,
Draining dippers round the fire,
Your noses red and blue.
“Yesterday [during training at Krasnoe Selo]