Dmitry was
thirteen when his uncle and guardian, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, was
assassinated by terrorists from the Socialist Revolutionary Battle
Organization. He was fourteen when he attended the opening of the inaugural
Duma. An intelligent young man, he shared the Romanovs’ love for all things
military, but his real passion was for politics, and always would be. He liked
to consider himself a free-thinker – a forward-looking man, open-minded and
able to set personal considerations aside. His ideal was the man of action, and
anyone who could show himself to be such would win Dmitry’s admiration,
whatever his political affiliations. But he, for his part, struggled with a
lack of self-confidence and an inclination to passivity, qualities he
recognized in himself and disliked. Another source of internal tension was the
fact that, despite his pride in his own broad-mindedness, he also had a highly
traditional side. His spiritual life provides an interesting illustration of
how he could manage to straddle two different worlds when need be. The
traditionalist in him would never have dreamed of a formal break with the
Russian Orthodox Church, but the free-thinker was absolutely enamored of
Hinduism, yoga, and “New Thought” philosophy, all of which he studied and
pursued throughout his adult life. The dominating persona in every facet of his
existence, the one that held the others together as well as holding them in
check, was that of the fervent patriot. Thus, for instance, in the religious
sphere, his traditionalism was bolstered by a belief that to be Russian was to
be Orthodox, making a split from the Church truly impossible.
Of course, it
would be all too easy to smirk at the precious, privileged young royal who
claimed to be a true son of the motherland above all else, but Dmitry, for his
part, sincerely believed that that
was who he was. He was neither a genius nor a saint. Indeed, he himself was all
too aware of his own shortcomings. But no one who reads his diaries can doubt
that he loved his country, and thought frequently and seriously about her
well-being. Thus it was all the more tragic that the efforts he made to act
upon his convictions always ended in failure. Everyone knows about the Rasputin
assassination, but it was merely the most dramatic of numerous efforts to turn
things around for Russia, a pursuit that involved such quixotic activities as trying
to talk Nicholas out of taking over as Commander-in Chief of the Russian forces
in August 1915, tampering with the Emperor’s wartime dispatches, trying to form
a coalition of conservatives and liberals within the divided émigré community
in post-revolutionary exile, speaking out publicly against Prince Vladimir
Kirillovich’s ‘friendship’ with the Nazi’s in January 1939, etc.
Nobody ever took
him seriously – that was the whole problem! From the very day of his birth,
when the attending midwife had left him for dead on a pile of linen, people
would consistently overlook and underestimate him. The politicians and
intellectuals whose friendship he tried to cultivate both before and after the
revolution were invariably patronizing and dismissive. No doubt it was
difficult for them to believe that any Romanov, let alone one with a handsome face,
a reputation for frivolity, and a lack of self-assurance, could ever be considered
a peer. One of the very few to give him credit was Hugh Dalton, the famous
socialist intellectual and lecturer at the London School of Economics, who gave
Dmitry private tuition in political economy in 1919, and found him to be a
diligent and gifted student.
Grand Duke Paul, Dmitry's absent father, painted by Serov also in typical Romanov martial style
Part of the
problem – perhaps the greatest part – sprang from his tumultuous childhood and
adolescence. Dmitry’s mother died giving birth to him. His father, Grand Duke
Paul Alexandrovich, though not one to challenge the rather constricted model of
childrearing typical of his class and generation, nonetheless might have been a
very good parent to his son and daughter, had not circumstances intervened in
1902 when Dmitry was ten and his older sister, Marie, was twelve. In love with a
woman who was both married and a commoner, Paul chose to defy the Emperor and
leave his children behind in Russia
to make a life with her in France.
By the time he took that step, he and his lover already had a little boy of
their own, and it was that child, not Dmitry, who grew up with a father’s love
and example. For the
little Grand Duke and Grand Duchess left behind in Russia,
Paul’s disappearance from their lives amounted to a devastating rejection. Not
only that, but they were uprooted from their St. Petersburg home and sent to
Moscow to live with their childless uncle and aunt, Grand Duke Serge
Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, in what can only be
described as a highly dysfunctional household. Serge was affectionate and
frightening by turns. He could be almost “maternal” toward the children, whom
he genuinely wanted, but his temper was short, he was rigid, bullying, and had
a need to exert total control over all those who came into his orbit.
Elisabeth, meanwhile, did not want
the children and was jealous of her husband’s affection toward them.
Marie, a
strong-willed girl who had always dominated her younger brother, responded to
this ongoing trauma by becoming difficult, defiant, and hostile toward
outsiders (i.e. anyone but herself and Dmitry).
Marie Pavlovna junior, his beloved sister, as a child wearing formal Russian court dress
Dmitry, meanwhile, learned
early on that his best strategy for
survival was to make full use of the natural charm with which his personality
was imbued. He sought, at all cost, to endear himself to those around him,
whether they were servants or royalty. Humor, often self-deprecating, was
something he wielded expertly. Light-hearted flirtation likewise served him
well, and it didn’t hurt that he was very good looking, with his father’s tall,
slender build and his mother’s soulful eyes.
Disaster struck
anew on 4 February, 1905,
when Grand Duke Serge was killed by revolutionary terrorists just outside his
palace. The reaction of the children was mixed. They were horrified, of course,
and Dmitry wished to be allowed to stand guard at his uncle’s tomb, but he also
expressed the hope that he and his sister might now be happier. And, indeed,
Elisabeth finally embraced the children, and apologized for her previous
coldness toward them. She and Dmitry would go on to have a good,
genuinely affectionate relationship, but her decision to take holy orders
disturbed both children, who desired her full attention for themselves, and
resented having to share it with the ailing soldiers who became the focus of
Elisabeth’s hands-on charitable activities. When Marie married a Swedish prince
in 1908 and left Russia,
Dmitry found it difficult to adjust. They had always had each other, and now,
despite Elisabeth’s affection, he felt alone in the world. There remained only
General G.M. Laiming to provide him with a semblance of the paternal care and
family life he so craved. This the General did admirably – so admirably, in
fact, that Dmitry would later confess in his diary that he cared more for
Laiming than for Paul. But there were limits to how effective that relationship
could be. Laiming had a son of his own – a son for whom he could truly be a
father and role model in a way he never could for Dmitry. He was not, after
all, a grand duke, and in that sense could never be an equal. With Sergei dead,
Paul far away, and Laiming poorly suited to the paternal role, Dmitry was
nobody’s son. In the midst of a highly patriarchal society, he lived in a
female headed household (that of Grand Duchess Elizabeth), and that at a time
(i.e. adolescence) when he most needed male guidance. Then came Nicholas II.
Nicholas, as
Emperor, was the ultimate role model for a young grand duke, even one with
little hope of coming to the throne through the conventional route of direct
primogeniture inheritance. More importantly, Nicholas, who took a strong
interest in the two Pavlovich children after Serge’s murder, was capable of
being a loving, nurturing surrogate father, and that, to Dmitry, was truly all
in all! The relationship developed slowly. Both children were invited to Tsarskoe
Selo on occasion between 1905 and 1907, and both loved the attention they
received there. But they were still Ella’s responsibility, and lived with her
full time in Moscow. That changed
for Dmitry in 1908 when he moved to St. Petersburg
to attend the cavalry school, taking up residence in Paul’s vacant palace (he
would later take possession of the Sergei
Palace on the Neva,
left to him by Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich). Laiming looked after him from
day to day, but Nicholas and Alexandra, to his enormous delight, invited him to
Tsarskoe every weekend, and sometimes included him on their holidays in the
Crimea or cruising in the Gulf of Finland. From then
until the war years, when Dmitry became devastatingly disillusioned with
Nicholas’s ability to fulfill the role of ‘man of action’ and advancer of
Russian prestige, he absolutely worshipped the Emperor. That, however, did not
prevent him from developing early antipathies toward the two most important and
beloved members of Nicholas’s household – Alexandra and Alexis. In an undated
1909 letter to Marie, congratulating her on the birth of her son, Prince
Lennart of Sweden,
Dmitry expresses the sincere wish that his new nephew will not turn out to be
anything like Alexis, in behavior or even in looks! Alexandra is treated
equally as harshly. Writing Marie from Tsarskoe Selo on 7 February, 1910,
Dmitry not only notes his utter revulsion for Rasputin, but calls Alexandra a
fool and accuses her of idiotic behavior for what he regards as her incautious
treatment of Alexis after one of the child’s hemorrhages!
The Empress, Alexandra, and her son Alexei, objects of Dmitry's jealousy, 1907
There were
certainly things in both Alexandra and Alexis’s behavior that genuinely
disturbed Dmitry, but his antipathy toward them undoubtedly sprung in large
part from jealousy. As fond as Nicholas was of him, he knew he could never
compete with either of them. He may, of course, have tried to gain his sister’s
approval through his critical attitude toward Alexandra, among others. It would
have been like him to do so, and it could well be that Marie felt a strong antipathy toward Alexandra (as she did toward
many of the adult women in her life), which Dmitry chose to echo. Such appears
to have been the case with regard to Paul’s wife. In his letters to Marie,
Dmitry makes cruel comments about her looks and behavior, but in his diaries he
spoke with some fondness of her and called her “mamochka”.
The same was true of Alexandra, whom he called “mamasha”, and referred to as
his “foster mother”. But in her case instead of improving (as it did with his
stepmother), his attitude toward her grew more negative over time, and it is
easy to see how the two could have viewed each other as rivals since both were
highly jealous of Nicholas’s affection.
At any rate, in
all of his pre-war letters, no matter to whom they were written, Dmitry’s
attitude toward Nicholas was uniformly uncritical and adoring – a thing which
made the Emperor’s eventual fall in his esteem all the more dramatic.
That fall,
exemplified by Dmitry’s willing participation in the Rasputin assassination,
belongs to a chapter in his life not covered by this article. The assassination
is, beyond all dispute, the episode that has garnered him the most attention,
and not without reason -- that event remains one of history’s most bizarre and
dramatic footnotes. But Dmitry himself deserves more than to be remembered
merely as one of the five conspirators. He was a complex man with a complex
view of Russia
– his greatest love.
The letters translated
and reproduced here come from a little-known volume entitled Nicholas II and the Grand Dukes, issued
for public consumption by the Soviet state publisher in Leningrad
in 1925, and edited by V.N. Semennikov. Dmitry is one of several Grand Dukes
whose letters were seized after the revolution and included in this book, with
the sole purpose, avowedly, of revealing just how stupid, venial, and devoid of
patriotism or humanity the Romanovs were. In referring to Dmitry, Semennikov
wrote:
This book also includes another “pretender
to the Russian throne” – Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. A
favorite of Nicholas II, D. Romanov became a strange “hero” after he, together
with Purishkevich and Yusupov, murdered Rasputin.
In the letters printed here, Dmitry
Romanov comes across as a typical high society ne’er-do-well. All the interests
of this “pretender to the throne” were centered upon automobile and horse
racing, and various worldly amusements. In his own words, Dmitry felt drawn
only “to my horses, to jumping.” When he wanted to pour out his heart to
Nicholas II, to “share [his] thoughts,” he positively could not write anything
but empty chatter and various banalities. Moreover, the Grand Duke, as is
evident from his letters, was absolutely UNEDUCATED. A complete intellectual
squalor, a total lack of meaning, are present in every stroke, and if we print
these letters it is only because in Dmitry Pavlovich we find the general type
of the “grand duke”. The very tone of these letters – their coarse and banal
witticisms, their unprintable expressions – characterize both the grand duke’s
own ignorance, and that of his old friend Nicholas II.
Of course, readers of this article
will immediately perceive that the young man described herein as intelligent,
patriotic and earnest, cannot be the same Grand Duke Dmitry vilified by
Semennikov as a selfish, ignorant lout! One of the accounts must be wrong, and
it is my belief that the letters will speak for themselves. Certainly every
careful reader will recognize how grossly the Grand Duke’s words about being
drawn to his horses have been misrepresented – he meant only to tell Nicholas
that he could not practice jumping on the horses he occasionally rode while
visiting his father in Paris, because he didn’t know the animals well enough to
risk it, and looked forward to getting home to his own mounts. It is true that
he loved horses and was a serious equestrian athlete, representing Russia in
the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, but the 6000+ pages of his frank and
detailed post-revolutionary diary contain very few references to horse racing,
none to automobile racing. In fact, his great passion was for model railroading
– a hobby difficult to represent as wild, reckless or hedonistic!
Certainly the
teenager/young adult writing to Nicholas between 1909 and 1914 comes across as
somewhat shallow here and there, but he also expresses some very heartfelt
emotions. Semennikov picks up on the fact that he had difficulty in doing so,
and also denigrates his recourse to crude jokes, but what he does not perceive
is how desperately the grand duke wished to endear himself to Nicholas (who
clearly enjoyed his humor), how much he wished to be considered a “man” (and
real men make lewd jokes about women, right? Or so most adolescent boys
believe), and how terrified he was that Nicholas would, sooner or later, reject
him. One might thus easily see his self-denigrating language and stumbling for
words as an endearing trait rather than proof of ignorance and low-character!
But that, of course, is up to the reader to decide.
1908
General Alexander
Spiridovich, a close observer of the life of Nicholas II, called the period
from 1909-1911 “les annees de grande
amitie entre l’empereur et Dimitri Pavlovitch”. But it was in 1908 that the
groundwork for that relationship was laid, so it is there that we begin.
Dmitry turned
sixteen on September 6, 1907 (o.s.), and would spend the next year of his life
as a child, still mothered by Marie (until her marriage to William of Denmark
in April 1908), and still closely supervised by Ella, who insisted that her
ward accompany her when she travelled to an Estonian health resort (Gapsal) in
June 1908, and then to the Crimea in August.
Three men loomed
large in Dmitry’s life during his 16th year. The first was G.M.
Laiming, who continued to oversee his education and upbringing, and would
remain with him as a friend and advisor even after his official role as
preceptor had ended.
The second
figure, nowhere near as constantly present as Laiming but still enormously important,
was Grand Duke Paul. 1908 marked an opportunity for father and son to get
reacquainted after several years of very limited contact. Paul visited Russia
twice that year, and Dmitry made two visits to Paris.
In the intervals between trips, father and son wrote one another regularly
(something which Paul and Marie, by comparison, did not do).
Dmitry's half-brother, the poet prince Vladimir Palei (or Paley)
While a guest at his
father’s house, Dmitry could scarcely have failed to notice the real bond between
Paul and his other son, Vladimir,
called “Bodya” (a baby-talk form of the diminutive “Volodya”). The little boy
was just about the age Dmitry himself had been when Paul left Russia
to remarry, but unlike Dmitry he had all his father’s attention. Paul, who had
been a very busy man when his eldest two children were small, now led a
retiring existence, dominated by routine. He read every morning before lunch,
took a nap afterwards, and went for a walk with Bodya when the weather was
nice. A favorite occupation was reading out loud to the family in the evening,
whether they appreciated it or not (and Dmitry usually did not). Thus
Paul’s attention was something of a mixed blessing. Naturally one wanted a
close relationship with one’s father – Bodya was to be envied in that respect –
but for a sixteen-year-old boy who idolized men of action, Paul could hardly
excite much enthusiasm as a role model, and Dmitry tended to get on better with
his father when they were not living under the same roof.
The third man, of
course, was Nicholas II, who may, in truth, have been as much a homebody and
creature of habit as his Uncle Paul, and scarcely more dynamic. But Nicholas
was the Emperor of Russia, and that in itself imbued him with a high degree of
excitement and charisma, especially to a young man like Dmitry who was passionate
about politics and determined to make his own mark upon history.
There were, on
the periphery of the young man’s life, a handful of other potential father
figures, but none of them posed any threat to Nicholas’s preeminent position. Marie’s
father-in-law, the King of Sweden, went out of his way to be kind and congenial
toward Dmitry on the latter’s visits to his sister’s new homeland, and that
effort appears to have been noticed and much appreciated by its recipient,
though, of course, there was little opportunity for any real relationship to
develop between the two. George, the Duke of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, was nearer
at hand in St. Petersburg, and he
too took a fatherly interest in the young man. As an officer of the Horse
Guard, Dmitry’s own future regiment, he was ideally placed to assume the role
of mentor, but his life was drawing to a close – he would pass away in 1909.
Grand Duke Alexis
Alexandrovich, Paul’s older brother (and after Serge’s death the one closest to
him in age), was another potential surrogate, but he would not even last as
long as George “Mecklenbergsky”, dying in November 1908 at the age of
fifty-eight. A life-long bachelor and notorious womanizer and bon vivant, Alexis had apparently
offered to share his St. Petersburg
palace with Dmitry, and the latter had every expectation of moving in with his
uncle in the autumn. Unfortunately we do not know the details behind this
tentative arrangement, or why it later fell through. It may be that Nicholas
approved the plan, thinking that Dmitry would bring a breath of fresh air into
the older Grand Duke’s life. Alexis suffered from poor health, and still lived
beneath a dark cloud of disgrace and widespread unpopularity, the aftermath of
his incompetence as General Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy during the
Russo-Japanese War. As for Dmitry himself, he certainly seems to have been
willing to live with his uncle, and may have anticipated learning a thing or
two that would never appear on the curriculum of the cavalry school – at least
not the official curriculum! In the event, however, October saw him taking up
residence not with Alexis but as an independent young officer-scholar at the
vacant palace of his father, Paul Alexandrovich. Ella came with him, but stayed
just long enough to help him redecorate his rooms. Then he was on his own –
with Laiming, of course, but without any aunts or uncles to order his daily
life.
From the start he
was a popular figure on the St. Petersburg
social scene, and received many invitations. He got on well with his fellow
students at the cavalry school, but the most significant friendship he would
form was undoubtedly that with Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Jr. Felix was
only slightly older than Dmitry, but a good deal more worldly, and in that
respect would become a kind of mentor to the young Grand Duke, albeit not necessarily
a ‘good’ one! Dmitry, though he had
known Felix superficially all his life, only began to seek a real relationship
with the Prince toward the end of 1908. He had encountered Yusupov in the Crimea
that summer, was intrigued, and wrote Marie that he would like to get to know
him better.
The friendship with
Felix would, indeed, become a very important one. All his life Dmitry tended to
have more female confidantes than male, but Felix, before the Rasputin
assassination and its aftermath, grew as close to him as anyone of either sex
would ever be, including Nicholas. Indeed, the break between the Grand Duke and
the Emperor, preceding that between the Grand Duke and Yusupov, was, arguably,
a by-product of Dmitry’s friendship with Yusupov insofar as it led him to
participate in the plot against Rasputin (though there is no reason to believe
that Dmitry’s hatred of Rasputin was, in itself, dependent upon Yusupov’s
influence). But in 1908, Felix Yusupov’s growing appeal notwithstanding, it was
Nicholas who dazzled and delighted the young Grand Duke, Nicholas, and no one
else, who held out the promise of fulfilling his ultimate desire for a powerful,
dynamic, affectionate and understanding father.
Ella’s decision,
back in April, to stay on in Tsarskoe Selo after Marie’s wedding for a visit
with the Empress gave Dmitry a chance to spend time with Nicholas in an
informal setting, playing billiards and going for walks. The two encountered
each other again that summer in the Crimea, though
Dmitry remained firmly within Ella’s orbit. The real breakthrough came when
Dmitry moved to St. Petersburg in
October, beginning preliminary classes at the cavalry school the following
month. November brought Paul to St. Petersburg
for Alexis’s funeral, and Dmitry genuinely enjoyed spending time with his
father during that brief sojourn. It may be that Nicholas, who had, after all,
been responsible for Paul’s banishment, felt a little guilty on Dmitry’s behalf
when the elder Grand Duke departed. That, of course, is pure speculation. But
whatever the case may be, it was then that Dmitry received his standing
invitation to participate in family dinners at Tsarskoe Selo every Saturday evening,
a thing which he exulted about in his letters to his sister. And thus began his
life as the Emperor’s surrogate son.
Aleksei
Nikolaevich was, of course, technically a Grand Duke, but his role as
Tsesarevich totally superseded that lesser designation. Vladimir Kirillovich’s
title was, in this author’s opinion, dubious at best.
For an
in depth discussion of this topic see: William Lee, Grand Ducal Role and Identity as a Reflection on the Interaction of
State and Dynasty in Imperial Russia, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University
College, London,
2000
Dmitry
actually attended some preliminary classes at the school in November 1908, but
did not embark upon his full course load until 1909.
Perrins,
Michael, “The Council of Imperial Defense, 1905-1909: A Study in Russian
Bureaucratic Politics,” Slavic and East
European Review, 58 (3), 1980
Dmitry’s
diaries, particularly the 1918 volumes, give a very clear picture of his
political, spiritual, and patriotic beliefs and opinions, and it is from them
that I have derived the information presented in this paragraph.
The boy
was Vladimir Pavlovich, later Prince Palei. He was killed by the Bolsheviks in
January 1919, along with Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duke Serge
Mikhailovich, and the Princes Ioann and Igor Konstantinovich.
See Education of a Princess (Blue Ribbon
Books, New York, 1930), Marie Pavlovna’s first volume of memoirs, for her own
account of the relationship between the children and their uncle and aunt, and
the aftermath of Serge’s assassination.
This
word (“mamochka”), which appears to have been coined by Dmitry himself, was
certainly affectionate, but also a little bit teasing. A “ka” ending, when
appended to a name (e.g. Sashka), implies a tone of gentle and winking
disapproval on the part of the giver.
There is
some truth to Semennikov’s claim that Dmitry was a pretender to the throne. He
himself claimed not to want that position, but he was admitted to England
in 1918 specifically as the next likely Emperor of Russia, and set about
preparing himself for that future role by undertaking a study of international
law and political economy. He did not, however, promote himself very
aggressively, and by 1921 had given up that ambition altogether.
Laiming
and Dmitry would not be permanently parted until the revolution at last drove
an insurmountable wedge between them. Laiming accompanied Dmitry into Persian
exile in December 1916, but soon returned to Russia
to take charge of the Grand Duke’s affairs. The two remained in constant
contact until late in 1918 when Laiming was arrested by the Bolsheviks and
consigned to a Petrograd prison, where he appears to
have perished.
Paul’s
daily routine is very well depicted in his unpublished diaries, some, but not
all volumes of which are part of the Mainau collection of the Bernadotte
family.
1909 >
Such a thing would simply have been unthinkable a generation before. But this
was post-1905 Russia, an Empire with an elected legislative body, and one which
had only recently witnessed an attack in the Duma upon grand ducal military
service, as exemplified by the Council of Imperial Defense, a body led by Grand
Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Jr., and comprising several Romanov members. The
attack by Duma President Alexander Guchkov led to a public outcry against the
grand dukes, from which they never truly recovered. Nikolai himself considered
grand ducal prestige to be “fatally” compromised as a direct result of Nicholas
II’s failure to support the Council, which, ironically, was a genuinely useful
and efficient military administrative body, and might have contributed greatly
to 
