Published in The Evening Star in Washington, D.C. on March 14, 1909, by Curtis Brown
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1909-03-14/ed-1/seq-49/#date1=1894&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=czarina+Czarina+CZARINA&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=7&state=&date2=1918&proxtext=Czarina&y=14&x=13&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=6
The article:
Empress of All the Russias Is a Most Unhappy Woman
CZARINA PRAYS DAILY FOR DEATH TO RELIEVE HER FROM THE TERRIBLE BURDENS WHICH HAVE MADE HER A PHYSICAL WRECK — HAS TO BE WHEELED ABOUT IN A BATH CHAIR — LIVES IN CONSTANT FEAR OF HER OWN DEATH OR THAT OF HER HUSBAND OR CHILDREN BY THE DAGGER OR BOMB OF AN ASSASSIN — IS A HIGH-SOULED, LIBERAL-MINDED, GENEROUS AND LOVING WOMAN.
Special Correspondence of The Star.
ST. PETERSBURG, March 4, 1909.
Empress Alexandra of Russia, the czar's wife, is the unhappiest woman under the sun. Her life is nothing more than prolonged misery, and she prays fervently for death to relieve her from the crushing burdens of her pitiable existence at the imperial court of Russia. Her fate may well excite the deep sympathy of the civilized world, for although she is a victim of that unholy system of government that still prevails in her husband's dominions, she is an innocent sufferer for the terrible wrongs perpetrated by others.
The Empress Alexandra is a high-souled, liberal-minded, generous and loving woman. She is a woman of the most refined tastes and generous instincts; she loves the common people and their sorrows appeal to her with tremendous force. She is in deep sympathy with the progressive movement in Russia, and she abhors the crimes that have been committed during her husband's reign and are still being perpetrated in Russia day by day. Yet far from being able to terminate them she herself has been struck down and her happiness destroyed by that very system which she would gladly abolish in the interest of others. Both her mental and physical condition are truly pitiable. She is suffering from the most extreme form of nervous depression and exhaustion. She cannot sleep and she cannot eat. The prolonged loss of appetite and systematic lack of nourishment have reduced her to a condition of physical prostration.
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After the long summer cruise in the Baltic sea undertaken primarily in the hope of restoring her health, the czarina was so weak that she could not walk ashore, but had to be carried in an arm chair. Now she rarely ventures outside the palace, but is generally wheeled about the private grounds in a bath chair. She is only thirty-six years of age, but she is a complete wreck. Much of her time is spent in fits of depression during which she lies motionless in apathetic despair. Sometimes the terrible calm of her profound melancholy is varied by passionate fits of weeping, which horrify and alarm the members of her family and the ladies of her suite. At nights she cannot sleep, but sees awful visions of the thousands of unhappy men and women who during her husband's reign and by virtue of the death warrants signed by his hand have died on the gallows simply because they held political opinions which were considered objectionable by the recognized and accredited representatives of law and order as these terms are understood in Russia. When she falls into fitful slumbers her sleep, such as it is, is disturbed by gruesome dreams and nightmares — dreams of blood and hellish horrors, visions of an inferno created not by the imagination of a great horror, but by the revolting realities of the predominant political system in Russia.
Day and night she broods over the condition of Russia and over the unhappy isolation of the imperial family. Often she starts up from her gloomy reveries in a sudden gust of fear that assassins who have so often chosen the rulers of Russia as the victims of their cruel murders may be close at hand, intent on terminating with one decisive blow that system of oppression which is incorporated in the czar's imperial person. At other times she storms into the nursery to make sure that her beloved children are all alive, having imagined in her mental agony that they had already been felled by the dagger of a terrorist or destroyed by the fragments of a revolutionary bomb. She realizes with an awful clearness of comprehension that death hovers over her husband and her family, so that every morning she cannot know whether she will be able to clasp them in her arms in the evening, and every evening she fears that they may be torn from her side before the sun rises again.
No words can adequately describe the profound depths of the unhappiness of this imperial woman. No tragedy conceived in the imagination of poets is so truly tragic as the fate of the Czarina Alexandra
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Her life at the Russian court, which has now extended for a period of fourteen years, has been one long series of ruthless disillusionments. Her childhood and girlhood were spent in the happiest possible circumstances. Her mother was Princess Alice, the favorite daughter of the venerable Queen Victoria of England, and the father was the royal crown duke of the little German state of Hesse. Her earlier years were divided between the delightful parental home in the vicinity of Darmstadt, in the genial atmosphere of southern Germany, and in the keen, refreshing air of English liberty at Windsor. She was brought up with perfect simplicity, and as a child she was encouraged to forget the fact that her grandmother was a queen and her father a ruling sovereign. She played games and she rode and enjoyed with hearty good spirits all the pleasures in which a healthy girl can participate. Up to the age of twenty-two her happiness was unclouded. She had lived almost an ideal life full of happiness and contentment, characterized by joyous gayety and the light-heartedness of innocence.
Then she was marked down as the prey of Russian oppression. The Russian government, in its search for a suitable bride for Nicholas, the heir to the throne, decided that Princess Alix of Hesse was the most eligible young lady to be found among all the royal families of Europe. Formal proposals were accordingly made to the court of Hesse, and no end of pressure was brought to bear on the reluctant Princess Alix to accept the future czar as her husband. Nicholas came to visit her family at Darmstadt, and created a most unfavorable impression on his future bride. She found him dull and uninteresting and rather unsympathetic. He did not appeal to her interest in any way, and it seemed to her that life with this quaint little man as her husband offered no charms at all. The pictures that were drawn to her of the magnificence of the court of Russia left her unmoved, for she was a pure, natural girl who wanted to marry for love, and to her the idea of making a political match was abhorrent in every sense. But finally her opposition was overcome. The persuasion of her relatives and her friends broke down her opposition. Reluctantly and against her own will she became the wife of Nicholas, and no sooner were they wedded than the death of Alexander III elevated her husband to the throne of all the Russias.
It was a terrible experience for a high-spirited and independent young girl to leave the surroundings of her youth to plunge into the corrupt and fetid atmosphere of the Russian court. From the very beginning she was disliked by the Russian court party and she disliked them in return. Her unconventional habits and her progressive tendencies made her an object of suspicion to all the grand dukes and duchesses and aristocratic magnates who formed the bulwarks of the reactionary system of government in the country. The old gang at court despised and ridiculed her; she was exposed to petty humiliations and annoyances. Her lack of knowledge of the Russian language, which she has since learned to perfection, at that time made her the subject of unseemly jests and gibes. It is true that she was the czar's wife, but in the strange surroundings of the Russian court she was made to feel like an intruder and almost like an impostor.
All this would have been bearable if she had loved her husband and could have enjoyed a happy family life. But that love which was wanting before marriage never came afterward, for the revelation of Nicholas II's character came as a fearful shock and deep disappointment to this energetic and ambitious woman. She soon found that the czar was nothing more than a weakling, who was driven hither and thither by the different cross currents as though he were a feather in a whirlpool. Moreover, his everyday actions showed a shameless disregard of morality. The czar did not even take the trouble to conceal in any way his flirtations. The czarina resolutely opposed the immoral tendencies of the Russian court. Her own life has been blameless above the least reproach and she excluded from her own circle all those women who could be identified as participants in scandalous affairs. She could not overcome the customs and traditions of centuries, but her influence was felt and it promoted the purity of the imperial court.
***
It was not only the personal immorality of the Russian court and of the highest circles of the Russian aristocracy that the Empress Alexandra opposed and combated. Year after year she struggled in a futile effort to liberate her husband from the yoke of his reactionary advisers and to convince him that the safety of Russia lay in the adoption of those measures of political progress which had so long been introduced in western countries. The executions, the persecutions, the unjust punishments meted out to political offenders harrowed the soul of the czarina and stirred up in her a burning hatred of the system which the czar was upholding. Time after time she intervened to wring from her husband a free pardon of political prisoners condemned to death or at least commutation of the capital sentence to terms of penal servitude. Again and again she raised her voice on behalf of unhappy exiles and caused their release. Year after year she reasoned and argued and pleaded with the czar to abandon his reactionary methods of government, pointing out to him that the perpetuation of cruelty and injustice could only bring ruin on the Romanoff dynasty.
Her reforming tendencies brought her into collision with the entire environment of the Russian court. Her mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Marie, denounced her as wicked and scheming, and battles royal took place between the czar's mother and the czar's wife. All the grand dukes and grand duchesses were up in revolt against her. It was a case of one woman fighting against the established order of things defended by all the powerful elements in the country. But the czarina never flinched. With clear intelligence she saw disaster approaching, and, undeterred by opposition and undismayed by calumny and ridicule, she steadily pursued her way and sought to reform Russia. Unhappy in her married life and disappointed in regard to the political development of the country which she had adopted as her own, her only consolation was offered her by her children.
***
When the storm of revolution burst over Russia four years ago the warnings which the czarina had uttered were justified. Her prophecies had come true. She alone among the statesmen and magnates of Russia had realized the awful consequence of systematically oppressing a great nation. Her relatives outside of Russia, including some of the most influential members of the English royal family and her own brother, now the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse, urged her to turn her back on the accursed country and to seek safety in a foreign refuge; but the czarina, who alone had seen the danger and who had sought to avert it, could not be persuaded to leave her husband's side. The grand dukes fled to Paris to drown care in dissipations, and the grand duchesses dispersed to the pleasure resorts of Europe, but the czarina remained at home, even although it seemed certain at many times that death at the hands of the exasperated rebels would be the only reward for her courageous determination.
Since the first outbreak of revolution, at the end of 1904, the czarina has been living in bondage. Her prison is gilded, but her incarceration is hardly less terrible than that of the Siberian exiles. There has been no moment in which the danger of assassination was absent. Plots and conspiracies to murder the entire imperial family were discovered and frustrated. Bombs were found in the imperial palace and poison in the food destined for the imperial table. Day after day news came from all parts of the empire of bloodshed and war between the old and the new order. Throughout the period of revolutionary disorder in Russia the czarina continued to work with frantic energy for the introduction of progressive measures and for a conciliatory policy toward the nation.
It is one of the ironies of fate that this noble woman, who spared no effort to save the country, should be the primary victim of Russian tyranny. She is a martyr to the cause of liberty and civilization. Her name will be handed down to future generations of Russia as that of a great and noble woman, who performed her duty unflinchingly and who with courageous determination opposed all the forces of corruption and reaction in the Russian empire.
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