Once A Grand Duke by Alexander Grand Duke of Russia. Alexander Mikhailovich
discovered that the “heavy losses” sustained by the “rapidly retreating enemy” were invariably accompanied by still heavier losses of our “glorious advancing troops.” I suppose nothing will ever change the repertory of euphemisms used by the authors of military communiqués, nor their beastly habit of gloating over the gloomy sight of corpses found in the captured trenches. To the contrary, it has to be frankly admitted that the ethics of warfare have undergone a considerable change within the last forty years. Even that sufficiently thin veneer of chivalry which was still noticeable in 1877 and 1878 gave way to guerrilla-like methods by the time proud humanity had decided to bury 400,000 of its sons around the city of Verdun. Reading the reports describing the foul conditions prevailing in the prisoners’ camps during the World War, I always thought of the refreshing sympathy and consideration with which the Turkish prisoners were treated by us in 1877. Emperor Alexander II thought it advisable to grant a personal audience to Osman-Pasha, the famous commander of the captured Turkish fortress Plevna; he returned him his sword and praised his courage and military genius in high terms. So much for the pre-the-Tribunal-of-The-Hague days. Thirty-seven years later, General Korniloff, when imprisoned by the Austrians in the Carpathians, was given a reception usually reserved for petty thieves and common criminals.
4
The comparative freedom enjoyed by the sons of the viceroy during his prolonged absence at the front, gave us now an opportunity to mingle with the different classes of the Tiflis population and to observe the real nature of the social structure.
During our visits to the hospitals and while walking in the streets, we were brought face to face with dire poverty. We noticed the misery, the sufferings, the hardships, that lay hidden in the neighborhood of the palace. We listened to life-stories that had the effect of upsetting all our previous plans and ambitions. My wearing a blue silk shirt and red-leather boots seemed shameful in the presence of boys of my own age whose shirts were torn and whose feet were stockingless and swollen. Some of them complained of hunger; all of them cursed the war that had deprived them of their fathers. We mentioned it to our tutors; we asked to be provided with means to help those gray-faced youngsters. We received no answer, but shortly afterwards our walks were once more restricted to the palace grounds, this measure failing, however, to check the activity of our awakened minds. The world had become quite a different place from what it had been up to that time.
“It’s pretty soft for you, the sons of a grand duke,” said one of our new acquaintances, “you have everything, you are living in luxury.”
We remembered that strange phrase and we were wondering: what was luxury? Could it be true that while we had everything, these others had nothing?
There was a sentinel in front of our palace, a handsome cheerful lad, who welcomed us each morning with a wide smile which clashed somewhat with the strict procedure of presenting arms. We grew accustomed to him, and his sudden disappearance made us speculate whether he had been sent to the front. Then, during the luncheon, we overheard a conversation between the two aides-de-camp. The young sentinel had committed suicide, a letter from his home village found in his pockets and announcing the death of his wife providing the only explanation for his desperate action.
“You know how these village lads are,” said the elder aide-de-camp, “they always want to attend the funeral of their relatives, and unless given leave to do it they grieve terribly.”
That was all. Nothing else had been said about the smiling soldier who stood on his post in far-away Tiflis counting the days separating him from a reunion with his wife; but this single death impressed me more than the daily passing of thousands of Turks and Russians mentioned in the army communiqués. Again and again I went to inspect the spot where he had kept vigil each morning. His successor, a middle-aged veteran wearing several medals on his breast, looked at me curiously. He glanced at his boots and counted his buttons, thinking there must be something wrong in his appearance to attract such attention from the young grand duke. I wanted to talk to him and to ask him when he had seen his wife last. I knew, of course, that one was not supposed to engage a sentinel in conversation, so I just stood in front of him, both of us trying to read each other’s thoughts: I looking for sorrow, he trying to guess whether one of his buttons was missing. I am quite certain that were I to be transported to Tiflis this moment, I would have no difficulty in locating the spot where a Russian village youth grieved over the death of his wife in 1878.
GRAND DUKE MICHAEL NICHOLAEVICH, FATHER OF GRAND DUKE ALEXANDER, IN 1865 WHEN VICE-ROY OF THE CAUCASUS.
GRAND DUCHESS OLGA FEODOROVNA, MOTHER OF GRAND DUKE ALEXANDER. FROM A PAINTING MADE IN THE EARLY 60’S.
5
Peace was signed in the summer of 1878. The following autumn we went to St. Petersburg to attend the wedding of my sister Anastasia to Friedrich, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
It being my first trip to European Russia, I was naturally the most excited member of our party. Glued to the window of the car I watched the endless panorama of the plains of Russia, so monotonous and distressing for a child raised in the vicinity of the snow-covered mountains and rapid rivers of the Caucasus. I did not like this strange country and refused to recognize it as my own. The subdued faces of the peasants, the shabbiness of the villages, the dusty towns—twenty-four hours after our train pulled out of Vladicavkas (where we arrived in carriages) I wished to be back in Tiflis. My disappointment did not escape father’s attention.
“Do not judge Russia by the appearance of its provinces,” he remarked rather apologetically, “wait till you see Moscow with its sixteen hundred churches and St. Petersburg with its palaces.”
I sighed deeply. I had heard so much about the cathedrals of the Kremlin and the luxury of the imperial court that I knew in advance I was not going to like it.
We were supposed to remain in Moscow just long enough to worship at the shrine of the miraculous ikon of the Virgin Mary of Iveria and to visit the tombs of the saints buried in the Kremlin, it being almost the official duty of every member of the imperial family passing through the ancient capital of Russia.
The Iverskaya Chapel—a decrepit, small structure—was thronged with dense crowds of people anxious to see the powerful viceroy. The depressing smell of burning candles and the very squeaky voice of the priest reciting a short Te Deum robbed me of all feelings supposed to be inspired by the sight of the miraculous ikon. I did not believe that God would choose such surroundings to reveal Himself to his children. There was nothing Christian about the whole procedure. It rather suggested a sort of gloomy paganism. I had to pretend I was praying from fear of being punished but I knew that my God, the God of golden fields, prime forests and melodious waterfalls, would never visit Iverskaya Chapel.
Next we drove to the Kremlin and had to kiss the brownish foreheads of numerous saints lying in state in silver coffins and wrapped in luxurious silver-and-gold tissues. An elderly monk dressed in black escorted us from coffin to coffin, raising their lids and pointing to us the exact spot we were expected to kiss. My head started to ache. On moment more in that stuffy atmosphere and I would have fainted.
I do not want to appear sacrilegious, nor am I trying to offend the fanatical followers of the Greek Orthodox Church; I am merely relating this episode in order to show what an awful impression this medieval performance left on the soul of a boy thirsting for a religion of beauty and love. Since my first visit to Moscow and during the following forty years spent in Russia I must have kissed the skulls of those saints many hundreds of times. On each occasion I suffered acutely and never experienced even an inkling of religious ecstasy. Today, at the age of sixty-five, I am still fervent in my conviction that God should never be worshiped in the manner bequeathed to Christianity by the pagans.
The four hundred miles between Moscow and St. Petersburg were