Vodka Politics (37 page)

Uncle Sergei Aleksandrovich was one of the four grand dukes. When the junior officer Nicholas was drinking himself into thinking he was a werewolf, Sergei was his major general and “actively encouraged the depraved debauchery” of the regiment.
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At Sergei’s urging, Nicholas married princess Alix of Hesse—younger sister of Sergei’s wife—becoming the tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna. Sergei was the “favorite uncle and brother-in-law of the tsar,” and used his leverage over the tsar to great effect.
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When Alexander III died in 1894, Grand Duke Sergei was the powerful governor general of Moscow, a position that put him in charge of planning a grand celebration for all Muscovites following the coronation of their new tsar, Nicholas II. This attempt to foster popular goodwill backfired spectacularly. Following the solemn coronation in the Kremlin’s Uspensky Cathedral in May 1896, a lavish, free banquet was to be held on the Khodynskoe Pole (Khodynka Fields) northwest of Moscow. Today, the fields have been overrun by drab Soviet-era apartment blocks, Dinamo Stadium, and the Khodynka Megasport Ice Arena, but in 1896 the Khodynka Fields, replete with trenches and gullies, served as training grounds for the imperial Moscow garrison. Nevertheless, it was thought that the fields were the only place that could reasonably accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Muscovites expected to celebrate the newly crowned tsar.
A massive royal pavilion was erected, along with twenty pubs to dispense hundreds of barrels of free beer and souvenirs.

From Moscow and villages throughout central Russia, thousands of peasants—many already drunk—showed up the night before the festivities. By morning, their numbers had swelled to almost
a half million
. Among the boisterous crowds a rumor spread that there was not enough alcohol for everyone, prompting a massive stampede across the uneven ground. Men, women, and children were knocked over and trampled underfoot. Thousands of injured people clogged the city’s few hospitals, but they were the lucky ones: 1,389 people were trampled to death at Khodynka Fields, which more closely resembled a European battlefield strewn with casualties than a celebration of the “mystical bond of mutual devotion and love uniting tsar and ‘people’.”
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The new tsar was understandably distraught. Nicholas planned to cancel the remaining activities, call for national mourning, and retire to a monastery to pray for the victims. Yet the callous grand dukes urged him not to offend Russia’s sole European ally, France, by spurning the lavish ball already planned by their ambassador, the Marquis de Montebello. While Nicholas and the Tsarina Alexandra later visited survivors at area hospitals, doling-out a thousand rubles to each, the Grand Duke Sergei—Moscow’s Governor General and orchestrator of the event—neither visited the victims, nor the scene of the calamity, and denied any responsibility for the outcome. The superstitious peasantry saw this drunken tragedy an omen of an unhappy reign. For revolutionaries, the sight of the young emperor and his “German woman” celebrating amidst such a disaster underscored the shallowness of the tsar, and the glaring disconnect between the heartless autocracy and the needs of the people. Even at the very beginning of his reign, Russians referred to the tsar as “Bloody Nicholas” and Sergei as the “Duke of Khodynka.”
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Ironically, if Sergei had one redeeming feature it was his patronage of temperance. In addition to holding figurehead positions with the state-sponsored Guardianship for Public Sobriety, the grand duke and duchess actively promoted temperance through generous donations, public appearances, and even establishing clinics to treat alcoholics. Yet many—even within the royal family—found Sergei obstinate, arrogant, an antisemitic “reactionary chauvinist,” and “a complete ignoramus in administrative affairs.”
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In that regard, at least, Sergei was hardly unique among grand dukes who combined incompetence and inebriety to unwittingly undercut the legitimacy of the tsarist government itself.

Consider another of the tsar’s uncles, Grand Duke Alexei Aleksandrovich Romanov. With a lifelong interest in maritime affairs, Alexei was made commander-in-chief of the Russian navy even though he preferred the life of a drunken playboy. “Fast women and slow ships” aptly summarized his military career.
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Of all the grand dukes, Alexei Aleksandrovich was certainly the best known to Americans of the day, thanks in large part to his raucous visit to the United States in the 1870s. The highest ranking Russian royal to ever visit the United States, Alexei was wined and dined by the cream of East Coast society, including President Ulysses S. Grant. The grand duke declared his desire to participate in an authentic “Wild West” buffalo hunt. His American host—former Civil War general Philip Sheridan, famous for carrying out a scorched-earth policy similar to that of William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea—graciously obliged, going so far as to create “Camp Alexis,” a veritable Potemkin village on the Nebraska plain. The “authentic” frontier conditions at the sumptuous camp included a brass band, the finest foods and wines, and crate upon crate of champagne. The once-fearsome chief Spotted Tail and his Lakota tribesmen were paid to act as stereotypical Indian savages, and Alexei was taught how to hunt on the open prairie by none other than Gen. George Armstrong Custer and “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Their “genuine” Wild West hunts were interrupted promptly at lunchtime by caterers with wagonloads of sandwiches and champagne.

American newsmen followed Custer and Cody as they taught their royal guest to hunt buffalo on his twenty-second birthday. (Apparently nursing a hangover from the previous day, General Sheridan couldn’t keep pace with the others.) Upon bagging his first buffalo, the grand duke cut off its tail and whirled it around his head with joy. “Within moments, champagne corks were popping again,” described one journalist in tow. “The fun continued with displays of Indian dancing, feasting and drinking copious amounts of liquor,” which strengthened the camaraderie between the Americans and their guest but also threatened to tear them apart: completely wasted, Alexei and Custer openly competed for the affections of Spotted Tail’s daughter—much to the anger of the proud Lakota chief.
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After a week of drunken hunting, the grand duke continued westward to Denver, the camp was dismantled, and the Sioux went home. But Alexei had so much fun that he demanded another hunt and even shot at buffalo from the window of his train car. Custer spared no time in telegraphing Fort Wallace for horses, wagons, food, provisions, and most importantly, “every kind of liquor and champagne” they could find, as the Russian delegation was running low on booze. At their camp near Kit Carson, Colorado, even the servants, soldiers, and cooks joined the hunters in their revelry. In a scene reminiscent of Russian defeats in Crimea and Manchuria, reporters noted that “Champagne bottles, liquor bottles, and every other kind of bottle littered the ground. That battlefield showed more ‘dead ones’ than the hunting-ground did buffaloes.”
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Happier to raid a brothel than an armada, Alexei somehow became commander of the entire Russian navy. Like the other grand duke, he wasn’t afraid to use his leverage over his tsar-nephew, who was scared that even mentioning
the need for military reforms would upset his favorite uncle.
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Together with the tsar, Alexei welcomed the war with Japan as a cakewalk in which he’d surely bask in his navy’s glorious victory. It was Alexei who authorized the quixotic mission of the Baltic Sea Fleet that ended at the bottom of the Tsushima Straits. Drunk and indisposed at key moments in the Japanese War, Alexei was a commander in no sense of the word—forever blaming anyone but himself for the drunken and inept performance of his sailors.
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Following the destruction of his entire fleet at Tsushima, Alexei resigned in disgrace in June 1905 and spent his remaining years living the playboy lifestyle in Paris.

The unresponsiveness of the monarchy and the demoralizing defeat to the Japanese prompted the workers’ strikes, peasant riots, and military mutinies that led to the full-blown Revolution of 1905. Ironically, it was Nicholas’ temperance-minded uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei, who caught the full fury of the uprising. As the powerful governor general of Moscow, Sergei felt himself to be a high-profile target for terrorist revolutionaries who had already claimed scores of high-ranking military and government officials. He resigned the governorship and fled to the security of the Kremlin under the cover of night. On the afternoon of February 17, 1905, his worst fears were realized when Sergei’s carriage entered the Kremlin and passed by the Chudov Monastery (yes, the same “Miraculous” Monastery where vodka was alleged to have been born), when a member of the so-called Combat Detachment of the Socialist Revolutionary Party lobbed a nitroglycerin bomb into his lap, blowing the grand duke to bits. His wife, the grand duchess, was one of the first arrivals to the horrific scene of blood-soaked snow littered with shrapnel, flesh, and “a ghastly crimson mess where the torso had been.” Still adorned with his royal rings, the grand duke’s fingers were later found on the roof of a nearby building.
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The Hangover Of 1905

The assassination of Grand Duke Sergei was only part of the roiling Revolution of 1905 that threatened to overthrow the entire autocratic order. The tsar and tsarina dared not even leave their residence at Tsarskoe Selo to attend the funeral, so real was the threat that they too would be cut down. All Russia was in disorder following the events of “Bloody Sunday,” January 22, 1905—when the Imperial Guard opened fire on thousands of peaceful protesters outside the Winter Palace as they delivered a petition for better pay, better working conditions, and an end to the disastrous war with Japan.

Nicholas could not understand why his meager concessions and unfulfilled promises were not enough to quiet the strikes, rebellions, insubordination, and assassinations. In May, the Baltic Fleet was mauled by the Japanese at Tsushima.
Just as Grand Duke Alexei resigned his naval command in disgrace in June, insurrections rocked the naval bases of Sevastopol, Kronstadt, and Vladivostok before culminating in the famous mutiny aboard the battleship
Potemkin
in Odessa harbor. The slain Grand Duke Sergei’s replacement as governor general of Moscow was likewise assassinated by the combat detachment. Things were getting out of hand, and fast.

The last line of defense for the royal family was the St. Petersburg military district and its commander, the Grand Duke (yes,
another
grand duke) Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov (the younger), first cousin of the tsar. Growing up, cousin Nikolai was given the affectionate diminutive “Nikolasha” to differentiate him from little “Niki”—the future tsar. “Microcephalitic in figure, a hunter by inclination, a fool and incorrigible alcoholic,” Nikolasha was colonel of the Hussar regiment where werewolf Niki also learned to drink. Older than the tsar by twelve years, like the other grand dukes the conservative, military-schooled Nikolasha wielded tremendous influence over the young tsar as a trusted confidant and advisor, and their relationship bred jealous intrigues among the royal family. Rightly or wrongly, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich was blamed for much of the misfortune under the reign of the last tsar.
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With riotous (and frequently drunken) mobs threatening outright revolution, Nicholas II faced a stark choice: accede to popular demands for a legislature and constitution or violently crack down on his own people. With the military on the verge of complete mutiny, Nicholas implored Grand Duke Nikolasha—the only figure who commanded the soldiers’ respect—to assume the role of military dictator. Refusing, Nikolasha drew his service revolver to his temple and threatened to shoot himself on the spot if the tsar did not acquiesce to a constitutional monarchy to end the unrest. This dramatic display was instrumental to adopting the historic October Manifesto, which granted Russia a weak representative parliament (the Duma) based on universal suffrage and a bill of rights protecting basic civil liberties. The concessions staved off the demise of tsarism… at least for the time being.
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Inching back from the brink of disaster, educated segments of Russian society and government took stock of what had just happened. When it came to laying blame, many faulted alcohol: military experts focused on the drunken mobilization, the ineptitude and intoxication of the armed forces, and the vodka-fueled pogroms that targeted state liquor stores at the outset of the Revolution of 1905. Financiers looked at the sporadic liquor boycotts of 1905–6, where socialist-minded workers swore off vodka and picketed taverns to strike at the government’s purse. Across the board tsarist officials agreed that alcohol was enemy number one.
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Grand Duke Nikolasha obsessively set about remedying these deficiencies—abolishing the traditional vodka ration (
charka
), forbidding alcohol sales in military stores, and limiting the hours of restaurants near military
encampments. Should the need arise, the military was prepared to take even more drastic actions to prevent the drunken disorder of the past.
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It was not just the Russians who had learned the lesson. In what I have elsewhere described as “the cult of military sobriety,” the high command of virtually every army on earth viewed alcohol as public enemy number one. Even the tsar’s cousin—Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany—boldly proclaimed in 1910 that victory in the next European war would go to the army that was most sober.
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