How I spent part of the time during the COVID-19 pademic

 

The Family Romanov

Obviously, I am not related to Russian Royalty, but, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which, essentially, robbed the world of the year 2020, I began to do some reading on subjects I might not have considered looking into otherwise.    One of the topics I hit on was the murder of the entire Romanov family, and that caused me to remember something I had not thought of in many years.

I recalled a long ago Friday night when my father and his brother, my uncle, Art, were talking about the Romanov family over coffee—this was their weekly “get together to shoot the bull” night, before they changed it to Thursdays in later years. On that particular night, they had begun to talk about events from their boyhood and young adult years.  I should note that I ordinarily did not sit in the kitchen to listen to Daddy and Uncle Art's conversations, but I had never heard about that particular “topic of the night” at school, so it was new ground for me and I was interested.

Daddy was born in 1919, as I have said elsewhere in this blog, and the murders happened in 1918, but he seemed to know at least as much about it as Uncle Art, who was born in 1905.  I was impressed, and I must have said so, because I remember my father explaining that the Soviets had never acknowledged the execution of the entire Romanov family to the rest of the world until 1926, at which time he was 7 years of age and Uncle Art was 22 years old.

Based on their respective ages when the news came out, they handled it differently.  Uncle Art, who was only one year younger than Alexei Romanov, the youngest child of the Russian Royal Family, remembered being very troubled by it, yet Daddy said he had pretty much brushed it off, after his initial feelings of sorrow for the family.  It makes sense to me that a grown man who was already beginning to make his own way in the world might have felt worse than a kid who was busy playing every day.

With the passage of years, and with nothing ever being taught about the Romanov family during my school years, the horrible events drifted to the back of my mind, only to be reawakened at the point I started with—the pandemic.  There was not a lot to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I found Pinterest to be quite interesting. I was in the process of starting a new Pinterest board, to be titled Headlines & Haunting Photographs, when I rediscovered the Romanov family.  Pictures of the doomed family were among the suggestions that came up for inclusion as haunting photographs. Finally seeing their faces, and reading a bit of their history, made me want to dig deeper.

Obviously, the story is far more complex than I will relate here, but I am speaking in the proverbial nutshell style. The Family Romanov, by Candace Fleming, is an excellent source, as is Wikipedia, but neither is light, easy reading. Still, if you want more details than I am giving here, check out both of the named sources; they skip the emotions I know I will display later, and simply state the facts.  Joe Friday of Dragnet would be proud.

From what I have learned, Nicholas did not want to be Tsar...a simple accident of birth made him the eldest son. Having been forced into the role, I think he tried to do his best, but he made the huge mistake of listening solely to his advisors, and not going out to see for himself how his subjects lived. I suppose that was the way those things had always been done, and as we all know, that is a terrible reason for doing anything.

His advisors, most of whom were either cruel to start with, apathetic in general or completely misinformed—or maybe a combination of all three things plus a few more—told him the peasants were living happily in the country, enjoying fresh air and good food, and he believed it. I feel reasonably sure that he wanted to believe it; pursuing pleasant hobbies and spending free time with his own family seem to have been far more important to him than finding out how other people's families were living.

To move forward, the exact opposite of what Nicholas II chose to believe was true. The peasants' lives and working conditions were just this side of intolerable, but they did not know the Tsar was unaware of their plight.  As unbelievable as it may sound to our ears today, the peasants fully believed that the Tsar was so close to God that he knew everything. For over 300 years they had been taught that was so, even though it was no more true than the Tsar's belief that they were living wonderful lives.

To put this as succinctly as possible, Russia was ready for a revolution, and Nicholas II just happened to be the Tsar when the inevitable happened.  He was, perhaps, not a great leader, but the research I have done tells me that he was not as bad as history sometimes portrays him.

In any case, the Russian peasants, after being oppressed for over 300 years, were ready to believe a smooth talker named Lenin—a man some say was sent to Russia by Germany—when he told them, among other things, that their lives would be easier if the Tsar was no longer in power. While I doubt that any of the Russian people actually wanted the Romanov family to be murdered, that is what happened, and many historians believe that Lenin himself issued the order.

I recently saw a comment on Pinterest—I have not found any reference to this possibility on Wikipedia, and mention it only because it is an interesting theory—saying Lenin bore a grudge against the Tsar, as he was responsible, in some way, for the death of Lenin's brother.  The implication was that Lenin took the opportunity to punish the Tsar for his brother's death, and that the Tsarina and the children were killed for the same reason. If true, it would explain why simply sending the Romanov family into exile in another country was not good enough for Lenin.

Again, let me say I am sure there is a lot more to the story, but I am not writing a historical novel here; I am writing a simple blog. So, to continue in that vein and to display the emotionalism I previously mentioned, I want to repeat a comment I made on Pinterest myself; to wit:

“This family did not need to die; Nicholas had abdicated on his own behalf, and on behalf of his son. They were not going to rise up to again rule Russia. Nicholas never wanted to be Tsar in the first place. I am heartened that most people who left comments [on Pinterest] seem to feel the same way. I do feel bad when I hear people say that the Romanov family had to die, or there would always have been strife in the country. I do not think Russia is a country at peace now, and it has been 103 years since this unfortunate family was woken from sleep, taken to a cellar and murdered in cold blood. I read that the guards, or the execution squad, if you can stomach the term, actually took a break in the midst of the killings. I can imagine nothing more horrible than waiting to be killed while you sit near the murdered bodies of your parents. This was the heartless act of cowards.”

I know there must be a moral to this story, but I think pigs will fly before I ever figure out exactly what it is. I am tempted to think it could be as easy as, “Don't believe everything you hear”, but I am not positive of that; I was not there, and I do not know what other promises Lenin and his cronies may have made to people who were so hungry for change.

Part of me believes that if Nicholas had left the palace long enough to find out for himself what the peasants lives were really like, he might have done things differently. A good start would have been to overhaul the government as it existed. For all intents and purposes, Russia still had a feudal system. Perhaps better living conditions and the chance to have a real voice in their own government might have convinced the Russian people that they should not be so quick to believe their lot in life would improve under Bolshevik rule, but I am not sure. It could just as easily have been that people then were as gullible as some people are now.  The promise of a better life is always tempting.

Right now, as for the past 103 years, the real heart breaker here is that a completely innocent family, their loyal servants and even their pets, were murdered in the middle of a hot, summer night by people who were likely no better than common criminals.

I wish I were the 7-year-old child my father was when I learned about all of this so that I, too, might have been able to brush it off and enjoy playing games with my friends. Instead, I am an adult, like my uncle was when he heard about it, and am old enough to understand how it haunted him.  It haunts me the same way now.