Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The books were not brand-new—Crime and Punishment came out eleven years earlier, The Devils, six—but they still had far to go to before taking a place in the cultural canon, so the emotionally charged reading by a young naval officer was interesting from a purely sociological point of view. More notably, the young seaman was Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov, grandson of Nicholas I and nephew of the ruling tsar, and his cousin Sergei was Alexander II’s son.

Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov (1858–1915) was a remarkable figure. He was the only Romanov to become a well-known poet (signing his verse K.R.). His father was a liberal and an advocate of Alexander II’s reforms. Konstantin grew up a liberal too. He and his cousin Sergei were tall, slender, and handsome, with a dreamy gaze, and they were close friends. But their political views were diametrically opposed, which was probably a sign of the times.

In 1879, Grand Duke Konstantin noted in his diary,

I argued with Sergei, we talked about what if we have a revolution. What will we do, the Romanovs? Would we have to leave Russia? That would be the worst disaster for me. I tried to expound the idea to Sergei that revolutions bring harm only to those against whom they are directed but they have a beneficial effect on the country. I gave him France as an example. Sergei was horrified by my theory and said, “Tu es à plaindre avec de pareilles idées” (“You are pathetic with such ideas”).⁶

Subsequently, both cousins became important bureaucrats. Grand Duke Sergei (who married for the sake of decorum but was a homosexual) was appointed Moscow’s general governor in 1891 by his brother, Emperor Alexander III, who valued his strict conservative views and administrative zeal. In 1905, Sergei was killed by a terrorist, but few people regretted it, among them Leo Tolstoy, who exclaimed upon learning of the assassination, “A horrible thing!” adding perspicaciously, “And it will be worse.”

K.R., a model family man and father of seven children, died mourned by many, as general inspector of the country’s military schools and also president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He was shattered by the death of his son, Oleg, twenty-three, also a gifted poet, in the First World War.

In 1918, after the victory of the Bolshevik revolution, three of his children who had been exiled to the Urals were executed together with the widow of Grand Duke Sergei (who had become a nun after her husband’s assassination): they were thrown down a mine shaft, and then grenades were thrown in after them. The victims did not die right away. Legend has it that even a few days later, feeble sounds of church hymns could be heard coming from the shaft.

In their letters, the great figures of Russian culture who knew him (Tchaikovsky, Fet, Dostoevsky) used the same words—“dear,” “charming,” “pleasant”—to describe the poetry and personality of K.R. His poems (love lyrics and religious meditations) are professional, traditional, sincere, and easily set to music, which many Russian composers did, including Tchaikovsky.

Amusingly, K.R.’s most famous work today is not his play King of Judea (with music by Alexander Glazunov), which he wrote on Tchaikovsky’s advice and which was very controversial in its time, nor his translation of Hamlet, long considered exemplary, but a simple poem he wrote in 1885, which begins with the words: “He’s dead, poor fellow! He lay a long time / In the military hospital …”

I remember the doleful song—whose authors no one knew; it was considered a folk song—being sung by Russian veterans begging in trains after World War II. It is still performed today, at tipsy parties, and now there is always some expert to inform the group that the words were written by Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov.

There is a curious episode in the complex history of Dostoevsky’s relationship with members of the Romanov family. In early 1878 the writer was visited by Admiral Dmitri Arsenyev, tutor of Alexander II’s sons, who came “in the name of the Sovereign, who would like Fedor Mikhailovich to have a beneficial effect with his conversations on the young grand dukes.”⁷

There is reason to assume that the flattering visit was prompted by a recent mini-scandal in the royal family. On December 25 the twenty-year-old Grand Duke Sergei recorded the following plaintive lines in his diary: “I recently had a very unpleasant story: Papa accused me of depravity and that Sasha V. aided me in it, and the slander insulted me bitterly. Lord help me! Amen!”⁸