Then the solemn religious procession began, moving through all the halls to the Jordan doors and out to the Neva River, the Jordan.1
And here is his Majesty the Emperor whom I longed to see. He is the epitome of modesty and simplicity, despite the glittering surroundings and haughtiness of the courtiers. His sky-blue eyes are plain, tender and familiar as if they were the eyes of thousands and thousands of Russian people. There is something very Russian, something dear in them and, strange as it may seem, something attractively shy. And his rank is only that of a colonel, something immediately apparent amidst hundreds of high-ranking generals. The thought flashes through my mind that he ought to be a general rather than a colonel. But it is also pleasing that he modestly declines higher ranks. But will this be understood, perchance, by the giants in the Preobrazhenskii Regiment who stretch like a wall down the corridors. But what thoughts don’t enter the mind of a provincial youth at his first time at court. The chief thing is to prolong time and to gaze at him intensely. His Majesty walks by slowly and looks kindly and attentively into the eyes of each. And his gaze stopped at me for a moment and filled me with pride, as if I had become known to the tsar.
The empress walked next to him, slowly nodding to everyone with a benevolent and intelligent expression. . . .
Overall, the impression was magical and overwhelming, and later in the tea hall, answering everyone’s questions, I spoke with enthusiasm of the court, parade, and of His Majesty. . . .
Oleg Pantiukhov, A Student’s Summer
53
The next time we saw the emperor was when he came to inspect the academy. There was only one adjutant with him, but he kept to himself, and we all felt as if His Majesty was our personal guest. Nor did the academy administration surround the emperor except for general Shatilov, who, out of breath with joy, pranced behind the emperor trying to explain everything with his hissing, flu-ridden voice.
The emperor was obviously pleased with everything and perhaps most of all with the fact that he was out of his usual environment and in touch with Russia’s youth which had just come from all corners of his extensive empire. Who knows, but perhaps we from Siberia, the Urals, the Caucasus, Pskov province brought with us the air of all the Russian borderlands and His Majesty unexpectedly became immersed in our youthful high spirits and sensed that very connectedness with the people which he so needed.
This was the time of the greatest flowering of our Russian state. There were Russian troops at far-off Kushka and even farther in immense Manchuria. His Majesty was the most powerful monarch in the world. Yet, here he was with us and we could see him up close and examine all the features of his Preo-brazhenskii Regiment tunic and the historic adjutant’s epaulets with the interwoven silver monograms of Alexander II and Alexander III, his grandfather and father. A gilded adjutant’s braid ran down his sleeve from an epaulet. He approached us with tenderness, occasionally posing brief questions. At the doors, where everyone rushed to see him off, His Majesty put on his gray overcoat, wiggling a shoulder as if the coat was tight in the armpit, and said that he was glad to have seen our academy in such exemplary order and that he wished us success in our studies and training.
We were given silent consent to go out onto Spasskii Street and run alongside the emperor’s conveyance. We shouted Hurrah! Then the driver went faster and the sleigh disappeared in the mists of St. Petersburg.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the day and that made us doubly happy.
1. In the Eastern Orthodox Church Epiphany celebrates the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist in the river Jordan. The ceremony, which includes a blessing of the waters (hence the exit to the Neva River), occurs on the twelfth day of Christmas.
Chapter Five
Aleksandra Tyrkova-Williams, A Woman’s Autonomy
Tyrkova-Williams’s memoirs provide an indication of the mindset of idealistic (and frequently revolutionary) Russian youth. The author was much influenced by her mother who, she says, was a person of the 1860’s—one who obtained her liberal views from Christian ethics and from broad reading. Her grandfather’s copy of Lamartine’s work on the Girondists was also very influential. She read it several times when she was thirteen. The poetry of Nekrasov found even more resonance in the young Aleksandra. The events of the day, disputations, political literature, and the arrest and exile of her brother to Siberia made certain that her path would become an oppositional one. Ultimately her own high sense of morality and justice made her turn away from what the Revolution spawned. Taken from Aleksandra Tyrkova-Williams, Na putiakh k svobode [On the Paths toward Freedom]. New York: Izd. Imeni Chekhova, 1952.
I am not writing a history. I do not have any books, or documents at hand, not even the notes which I occasionally jotted down. This is merely a remembrance, a story of what I saw and heard, of the setting in which I grew and lived. I write only of that which has remained in my memory. I began writing at the end of 1940 in Pau, a small town in the south of France with a beautiful view of the Pyrenees. Currently, I am writing in Grenoble with no less a gorgeous view of the Alps. Where will I end? Will I be able to complete this? Who knows? At the age of 73, one looks at tomorrow carefully, especially now, in 1943. But I will try to preserve in human memory that which I witnessed, sometimes as a participant, and relay the development and spirit of the events over which future historians will puzzle. Unless history, publishing, libraries, and archives, the building blocks of culture, are swept away by storms.
Aleksandra Tyrkova-Williams, A Woman’s Autonomy
55
I have chosen to write my memoirs because I think it essential to retain a remembrance of our era which concluded a specific period of Russian life, perhaps not even just the Russian. I will try to speak less of myself, though I do so. I was a part, even though small one, of that oppositional ferment which was called the liberation movement. Now after all that Europe is going through, and all that Russia is suffering, I have different perceptions regarding that which occurred and the events in which I participated in one way or another. Our weaknesses, errors, and delusions have become clearer. But I do not disavow my past and those ideals which I served as well as I could— human rights, freedom, humaneness, and respect for the individual. I bitterly regret that our generation was unable to translate them into life, could not effect in Russia the free and democratic order for which we strove. Catherine II once said that she set the well being of each and everyone as her goal. There is much wisdom in these words. The term “each and everyone” denoted Russia to her. We transferred the center of gravity onto the person, each individual, forgetting the dictum of another great sovereign, Peter I: If Russia were only to live . . . We forgot this, not that we wanted Russia’s destruction, but because of a childish, unthinking confidence in its stability.
The basis of our concern was a striving for universal well being, not for our personal bliss or enrichment, as was frequently the case with European politicians. Therefore, in the Russian opposition, there was much that was immature, naïve, unreasoned and, what turned out to be most dangerous, much simple-mindedness about the nature of statecraft.