บท 6: Tsars and Bureaucrats
The "Extraordinary Committee for Famine Relief" was set up in November in the tense and complicated in the sea of paperwork ended.
Nicholas never imagined that he had traveled across the world and become the Crown Prince of the Russian Empire, but all he did was hold meetings all day long.
How is this different from the traveled novels I read.
Nicholas depressed scratch his head, good thing he is Slavic blood, not British blood, or now I am afraid to fall down a handful of hair.
But after all, Nicholas is now on the podium patting his head to decide the fate of many, many second uncle of the higher powers, so after the paperwork after his task is not much, Nicholas signed the document since countless civil servants conscientiously implement it.
"Nikki! Are you still thinking of marrying Alex?"
One day, Alexander III, who was strolling in the gardens of the Gatchina Palace, bumped into Nikolai, who was passing hurriedly from the corridor, and the former's loud voice made the latter almost miss the notebook in his hand in fright.
"Alex?"
Alexander III's sudden inquiry caused Nicola's mind, which was still thinking about work, to freeze, Alex, a strange yet familiar name.
Nicholas remembered Alex as a serious, formal and highly strung English lady who blushed when she was around other people, was prone to rashes and often suffered from painful sciatica and stomach cramps.
But she was tall, slim, elegant, with long thick blonde hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones, and a crystal beauty that bordered on fragility.
But Alex was the daughter of Ludwig IV, Archduke of Hesse and the Rhine, and her mother was Princess Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria.
"This ... me now ... well ... I don't think the marriage will be good for either side, Father, do you? "
The ex's obsession with Alex was deep, but Nikolai felt little for it, and he remembered that the woman seemed to give his offspring the hemophilia gene?
That being the case, then Nikolai expressed his choice after a brief moment of stuckness.
"Hmm? Good, that old woman doesn't like you either!"
Alexander III, who had little love for serious and neurotic Englishmen, brought the good news to Empress Minnie.
Minnie was Empress Maria's nickname, and Alexander III's nickname was Sasha; the Tsar couple called each other by their nicknames, and happy and faithful imperial marriages were quite rare.
"Sasha? What brings you here in such a hurry?"
The Tsar was practically a recluse in the Gatchina Palace, loathing the pomp and courtly balls of the social world, but Minnie was just the opposite, with a passion for clothes, diamonds, and balls.
When they attended balls, Nicholas, who was present, would always notice that the Tsar hid whenever he showed his face while the Empress always danced tirelessly.
When Empress Minnie's beloved Sasha arrived with heavy footsteps, the Empress waved the crowd of courtesans who had surrounded her to talk to her to make room for the "giant."
"Nikki has finally given up on that fragile Englishwoman of his!"
Sasha said happy at the return of her eldest son's prodigal son while still patting Nikolai's shoulder so vigorously it nearly made the Crown Prince grimace in pain.
"That is indeed a good thing, little Nikki."
Empress Minnie wanted Nikolai to marry Elena de Orleans, daughter of the Count of Paris, a French nobleman and exiled heir to the Orleans dynasty.
The Czar was likewise in favor of the marriage; it was just a few years before the relations between France and Russia drew sharply closer together, and in the larger scale of time, every Russian nobleman could speak poor Russian but never fail to speak French in the authentic old Parisian accent.
"You should go to Paris as soon as possible to finalize this marriage, Nikki!"
Alexander III's decision surprised Nikolai.
"But am I not at present in the midst of a good deal of work ...?"
Nikolai's doubts seemed to the Tsar a trivial and ridiculous thing.
"Remember who you are, Nikki! You are the future Tsar of Russia! Not a minister who comes and goes!"
Alexander III despised bureaucracy, "If I could, I'd drink champagne to celebrate its disappearance!" , which is how Nicholas remembered him speaking bluntly to his predecessor.
Nikolai's father was the first Russian tsar since Peter the Great to grow a long Russian beard, which signaled a decision to embrace tradition, a belief in the divine right of kings, and Slavicism.
It also meant being anti-intellectual, regressive and worshipping dictatorship.
It was when Nicholas was a boy, and when a minister recklessly threatened to resign, the tsar grabbed him by the collar and shouted, "Shut up! I'll tell you plainly when I want to kick you out!"
On Nicholas's reports, the Tsar's approval would read something like, "Watch out for these beasts who have seized your power!"
He often cried out, "Those ministers, let the devil take them all!"
In the eyes of Alexander III, the ministers were "mannequins at the mercy of men", mere "clerks" of the Tsar.
"Niki! What you have to do is to rule! Not work!"
Alexander III rudely indoctrinates Nikolai with his philosophy of rule, but these statements only confuse Nikolai's mind and leave him in a state of conflict.
"But ...," Nicholas retorted with a terse voice, "these jobs are clearly meaningful, and if I don't do them then the ministers won't make progress with me so concertedly. "
"Foolish mediocrity!"
The Tsar thinks that Nikolai is like a small clerk who can only run around and will be led around by the nose.
And so the conversation between father and son broke up in a rude shouting match between Alexander III and the Tsar.
"You seem to be in a depressed mood, Your Highness."
After the annoying exchange, Nicholas sat behind his desk without saying a word, which allowed Veit, who had submitted a report on the handling of the railroad issue, to be the first to break the dreariness.
"I don't know what to say, Veit." Nikolai's depressing feelings did need to be confided in someone now, "Did my father treat you all with the same yelling attitude?"
"Well ... his majesty does get into arguments with me ..."
But Veit added that he and His Majesty got along quite well, which surprised Nikolai all the same.
"Have the ministers grown accustomed to father's rudeness?"
"It is accurate to say that the ministers respect Alexander III because he is a frank and honest administrator. His anger extended for a short time, but came suddenly, and he could be charming when he wanted to be."
To explain this phenomenon, Witte talked about a past event he had learned about.
A journalist published an article about Alexander III yelling at his own family while vacationing at the Polish hunting estate of Spava.
The tsar was furious when he read the article and severely reprimanded Vorontsov, the minister of court affairs, who had authorized its publication: "I have never read anything so stupid, hurtful and wrong in a newspaper, what silly details!"
"I am responsible for it," replied Vorontsov, who wanted to resign his ministerial post, "and I would give everything if I could get back the fact that it never happened."
But the Emperor soothed him with a short letter, "Dear Ilarion Ivanovitch, are we really going to part company over such a trifling matter? If this unfortunate incident makes you want to resign, then you know how difficult it will be to find a replacement for you! If it were still possible, I am sure you would give up the idea of resigning, stay in your high position, and continue to be my assistant and friend."
The tsar, according to Veit, was "magnanimous, good-natured, and steadfast," but Nikolai knew that his father could also be brutal.
Once a female political prisoner insulted a gendarme, and Alexander III ordered, "Whip her."
The minister requested that the sentence be reduced from a maximum of 100 lashes because the criminal was weak, but the tsar insisted, "Lash her 100 lashes."
She was beaten alive.
"Well, you're right." Nikolai wasn't here to debate with Viktor about what kind of man his father really was, he was just diffusing his stress by talking, "Has something come up on the railroad again?"
"Your Highness, you should know that His Majesty only possesses a childlike bluntness at times," Viktor quickly changed into a work-on-track conversation after the last mention of small talk, "The railroad network in the Famine Regions is thin, fragmented, and has low transportation capacity. Most of the railroads in these places consist of single tracks, so the amount of freight that can be moved per unit of time is very limited. And these railroads also lacked adequate locomotives, wagons, and competent staff."
Veit's proficiency in the railroad side of the business was admired by Nikolai.
"So what is there for me to do?"
"We must overhaul our transportation schedules to accommodate changes in freight demand, and theoretically the above difficulties could have been overcome under the effective and uniform directives of the committee headed by His Highness."
Veit's words revealed a decisive, confident undertone, as if he wasn't seeking Nicholas's support, but rather that Nicholas must support himself, "But the leaders of the Ministry of Transportation are either administrative bureaucrats or military men, and do not possess the technical knowledge required for the position they should have, and with the fact that the Ministries of Finance and Transportation are still fighting over who will have power over the railroads, I need Your Highness to be able to push for the position of Minister of Transportation to be held by me."
"Well ..."
Nikolai had heard about the long-standing feud between Finance Minister Vishnegradsky and Transportation Minister Hubenet for some time now, but he had not expected Witte to be so direct in asking for his support for a ministerial position.
"Does Vishnegradsky also support having you as Minister of Transportation?"
"Precisely, Your Highness."
Veit added a few more words, and such a naked appeal for power would have inclined Nikolai to reject it had it not been for the fact that he did impress Nikolai as a man of great talent.
But perhaps that was why Viktor got along so well with his father? Two equally rude and forthright men!
"Well, I'll speak to father about it ..."
Nikolai was now a little curious as to how his father would handle things between these ministers.
Gatchina Palace was one of the Tsar's many palaces and courtyards, and was as plain as a barracks, which was to Alexander III's liking.
As a prince, Alexander III was a regiment commander, so he used to call himself "Sasha, the perfect regiment commander", and now Minnie often calls him that too.
Gatchina's gardens also had an original artistic style in line with this austere orientation, but for the aesthetically uneducated Nicholas it was just a matter of plants, and all he could think about was the ideal of a simple orientalist for a monarch, for a ruler.
Diligence, for Nicholas, was certainly a complimentary word for a ruler, but everything the Crown Prince did was met with taunts from his own father.
"Look who's here! Our book-dropper!"
Alexander III's voice echoed throughout the interior space as he saw Nikolai pushing through the door.
The Book Drop was the Tsar's new nickname for Nikolai; he didn't like the Crown Prince's current rational-as-an-intellectual demeanor, mild-mannered, shy and polite, with his mouth full of data, reports, records and files.
It was almost the antithesis of Alexander III, who held his coarseness up as a national virtue, a vulgarian proud of his crude and raw but plain Russian qualities.
Beside Alexander III sat another Grand Duke of the Romanov royal family, brother of the Tsar and uncle of Nicholas, Sergei Alexandrovich, the present Governor of Moscow.
Uncle Sergei was the most intimidating of Nikolai's several uncles, with thin lips, solid, almost cruel lines, and iron-gray eyes with pupils as narrow as a cat's, but the predecessor was on good terms with Sergei.
"My wife is greatly disappointed in you, Nikki! She asked me to tell you that she thinks the matter is absolutely finished ..."
Sergei complained to Nikolai, who was fuming at the abrupt end of Nikolai's romance with Alex, as Sergei was the middleman in the marriage.
It was at Uncle Sergei's wedding that Nikolai and Alex first met, and Sergei's wife was Alex's sister, Elizabeth Feodorovna.
Elizabeth was a natural beauty with blonde hair, gray eyes, fair skin, a delightful sense of humor, immense patience and generosity.
Her predecessor liked Elisabeth, even Wilhelm II, then Crown Prince of Germany, and Sergei's marriage to Elisabeth caused him to lose his temper, spreading rumors that Sergei was a "sodomite of handsome young priests".
"Neither of us can go against our conscience in this matter, and I, Alex, have strong beliefs, so we understand each other."
Prepared for this, Nikolai pulled up a reason that was quite appropriate in this day and age: faith.
Any woman marrying into the Romanov royal family had to be Orthodox, and Alex was a staunch Lutheran, so the matter had been unresolved for the past few years, deadlocked until now.
"This is because you don't have a strong character or will!"
Sergei grumbled some more to Nikolai, but Alexander III yelled down to his brother, "That too serious girl is not fit to be queen!"
That was what put an end to Sergei's whining.
"So Nikki, you've come over here with your scrap of paper in your arms again?"
Alexander III snickered as he looked at the notepad Nikolai held in his hand, which caused Sergei to look around at the Crown Prince with amusement as well.
"Nikki is indeed not quite the same as before!"
"... Ahem, uncle, aren't you the governor in Moscow?"
Nikolai didn't want to say much on this topic, too many words would be lost, so he chose to digress.
"Yes, exactly."
Sergei bragged about closing down the great synagogues in Moscow, sending Cossacks to raid Jewish homes, and not allowing Jewish women to stay unless they registered themselves as prostitutes.
"Isn't that cruel?"
Nikolai was not an arch-Russian nationalist or a Christian to the bone, and he had no natural ill-will toward the Jews.
"Their situation is indeed pitiful," Alexander III said, "but it was predicted long ago in the Gospels that the Jews deserved to be tortured because they themselves wanted the blood of Christ."
"When it comes down to business, it's like this." Not knowing how to take up the subject, Nicholas stiffly told his father directly what he had come to say, "The Famine Commission, which I head, has suffered a railroad crisis, the grain cannot be shipped in, and there has been a dispute between the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Finance, which has brought the work to a halt."
"Voila! Nicky, all this trouble! That's why I don't want to go to Moscow as governor." Sergei shook his head and sighed when he heard this, but he added, "But the thought that I could wipe out the Jews in Moscow, that energizes me."
"What is your idea? Nicky."
Alexander III was silent for a moment, which was not quite like the Tsar's straightforward style.
"Me? Well ...," Nikolai organized his words for a moment then continued, "I think that Viktor's talents are outstanding and that he could take the position of Minister of Transportation."
"Veit? The technocrat? He's in league with Vishnegradsky!"
Sergei, who also knew that fast-rising minister in the government, said it wouldn't be long before Vishnegradsky could control both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transportation.
"No," said the Tsar, swinging his head directly after hearing this, with certainty, "that boy will have his eyes on the throne of the Minister of Finance as soon as his ass is in the seat of the Minister of Transportation."
"Because he's ambitious?"
"Because that's what he is, I've known it for a long time."
Alexander III told Nicholas with an intuitive answer.
"When you become tsar, you too will understand," Sergei told a confused Nikolai, "that the moment you are crowned with a crown on your head in the Cathedral of the Assumption, God will impart to you all the talents a ruler needs."
It sounded irrational.
Nikolai mentally shook his head.
But Sergei continued to point out to Nikolai, "Sasha told me, you're living like a minister now."
"That's just some work."
Unable to understand the mysterious thinking of these people, Nikolai could only patiently reply.
"Yes, work." Sergei couldn't help himself, "You're a born ruler, you should learn to get rid of these annoying things, just like your father!"
Sergei's words are to be considered in the context of the memories his predecessor left Nikolai with.
When Nicholas had an unpleasant argument with the Tsar, he did try to recall how Alexander III had handled political affairs, and then Nicholas was shocked to realize that Alexander III hardly handled political affairs!
Just in line with what the Tsar said, he hated bureaucratic government.
So Alexander III left all of the day-to-day government to his own cronies, bypassing the ministers he hated, who converged on the Tsar's office in temporary positions, working only by virtue of the Tsar's appointment of them, with no qualifications or educational requirements.
For Alexander III, his ideal was that Moscow tsarist state which had been the most traditional of the past centuries, an empire in which the Slavophile ideal consisted only of ruled peasants and landed aristocrats as rulers.
This was because there was a current in Russian intellectual culture that saw the link between the tsar and the people weakened by the bureaucrats in the middle.
The Tsar meant well, he loved the people, it was only the ministers around him who read the scriptures badly.
It was difficult for a modern man to understand this particular Russian culture inherited from centuries of authoritarian tradition, so Nikolai was not at all prepared to carry this historical baggage.
"Yes, I suppose, I'm working now just to gain experience." Knowing that there was no need to popularize any modern political logic with these old timers whose minds lived in feudalism, Nikolai simply emphasized, "At least to know how our ministers do their jobs, so that I won't be fooled."
This was something that made Alexander III nod in agreement.
"That is indeed fine, but you must remember who you are! Do not put the cart before the horse."
"So ... about what happened on the railroad?"
"You make the decision!"
With a wave of his hand, Alexander III was about to dismiss the Crown Prince without letting Nicholas say more, for he was about to have a drink with his own brother, whom he had not seen for a long time.
"Mother told you to drink less ..."
Alexander III's severe alcoholism had caused the doctors to raise the red light on his health many times, and for that reason Empress Minnie was worried, but Alexander III didn't care.
"Nikki! You know why you're a sissy? It's because you don't drink like a man!"
Alexander III bashfully tipped his head back with Uncle Sergei and poured a high number of brandy spirits.
The Tsar, once drunk, was up to no good, sometimes lying on the floor trying to grab the servants' boots for fun, so Nikolai could only stagger away from the drunkards' antics.
Before he knew it, Nicholas was celebrating his first Christmas in the world, but this one was on January 8, which is Orthodox Christmas.
What have I done in the last six months?
Nikolai took stock of his schedule:
He met the Emperor in Japan in May, then was urged by the Tsar to return home, and did receive compensation from the Japanese afterward.
In June, he arrived in Vladivostok and attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Great Siberian Railway.
After that, has been in the blindfolded rush, along the way the scenery Nicholas do not remember too much, except the vast taiga forest and sparsely populated Siberia let him some impression.
After arriving in St. Petersburg, his father arranged a few jobs for Nikolai, and he was supposed to be a handful and then go to Paris to get engaged. ...
And then it turned out that in the midst of meetings and daily work, over two months passed then New Year's Eve?
Nicolas couldn't believe it, he did seem to be a cog in the bureaucracy?
After putting himself in his shoes and empathizing, Nikolai seemed to have some understanding of how his father's way of ruling came to be.
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