The Bolshevik Revolution - The Romanovs

Two of my primary spirit guides are Rusty and Claryssa. In their most recent incarnations, Rusty was a biker and a mechanic, and Claryssa was a budding fashion designer. Both lives terminated in accidents while they were in their mid-twenties. Their paths did not cross in these incarnations.

In the prior lifetime, they were Nicholai and Alexandra Romanov, the last reigning monarchs of Imperialist Russia. They, and their children, were assassinated in a hail of gunfire in an enclosed room, where they were ostensibly gathered for a family portrait before embarking on a life of political exile in the United States.

I was out of body, a guiding spirit for Alexia, their son and future hope of Russia.

At the turn of the last century, the system of government by monarchy was already being seriously questioned and challenged. In Russia, an almost 300 year-old empire (made strong by Catherine the Great and successive monarchs), the problems of supply and demand in this vast nation were beginning to reach crisis proportions. It was difficult to oversee municipal affairs and to manage logistics in a timely manner.

To put it simply, it was almost impossible to get "daily bread" to the outer reaches of Russia. If there was enough bread, there weren't enough trains running. If the trains were running, there wasn't enough coal to keep the engines going. If there was enough coal to keep the engines going, there weren't enough drivers to keep the trains going. If there were enough drivers to keep the trains going, there weren't enough people on the other end to get the bread off the trains, and to get that bread to the people who were starving.

In short, it was starvation that created a revolution. It was politics that created a coup - a bloody revolution.

Nicholai was the last of the direct male Romanov descendants. He and his German bride, Alexandra, had four daughters, and last, a son, Alexia. The son - and only heir to the throne - was born with hemophilia - a rare and dangerous blood disorder that can be fatal because bleeding does not clot.

Today, hemophilia can be managed with platelet and plasma transfusion, but this medical science was simply not available at the turn of century. In short, any one suffering from hemophilia could suffer the slightest injury - or even no injury at all - and the body was prone to bleed profusely - even to death - because no interference was known that could staunch the bleeding.

It was not common knowledge in that day and age what contributed to hemophilia. It was suspected among the very educated (including most of royal or monarchical status) that hemophilia was somehow related to in- or over-breeding. Hemophilia is a recessive gene carried on the maternal side.

It had been customary for centuries for monarchs to attempt to "keep the power in the family", and thus married and intermarried first and second cousins for the purpose of keeping "alliances" between nations through intermarriage of families.

It was a double tragedy for Nicholai and Alexandra, because they were rare among their kind in society for being true mates of the Soul; they had the dubious honor of being well suited, in love - and "properly" related to keep the balance of power between their familial empires.

When Alexia was born, and his condition - and threat of his standing as heir-apparent of Russia - was made clear, both parents were devastated, but Alexandra was positively shattered, feeling that she had "cursed" her son with her own rather over-bred British-Germanic bloodline, and she somehow felt that she had - through genetics - personally failed her son, her husband, and the province of Russia which was considered hers by the "Divine Right of Kings" still prevalent at that time as a guiding moral precipitator for people of royal lineage.

They kept Alexia's condition a secret as best they could, for as long as they could. It is doubtful that even with gossip and leaks outside the palace walls that the general population would even have truly understood the threat to Alexia's life - or the apparent threat to the stability of the Royal Family. Yet, given History itself, every monarch has to give credit for - and anticipate, as best they can - the least significant action or portent that could ultimately lead to one's own destruction. In the case of Russia, and Alexia's debilitating condition, all it would have taken in a society as vast as Russia - or her enemies - was one word for someone to undermine the throne in an effort to seize it for one's self.

Nicholai and Alexandra suffered in silence, but as intimate as life in a palace must be, there was no way to keep absolute secrecy. Even when one keeps a secret effectively, others are apt to notice that one is behaving differently, and it becomes obvious - even to the least subtile - that something is hidden. When something is hidden, this implies there is something to be gained.

The secret was impossible. It wasn't too long before Rasputin, a gifted psychic, healer (and all-around weirdo) made his appearance. To everyone but Alexandra, he was a charlatan, and what some Britons call a "king mixer", meaning someone whose function in life seems to be screwing up everyone else's plans and efforts. However, by circumstance, it seemed to Alexandra that Rasputin's efforts to cure their son of hemophilia were - for whatever reasons - far more effective than any other treatments provided or even attempted by the team of doctors assigned to the Romanovs.

It wasn't too long before Rasputin began to appear to have the political power of a Prime Minister. He "guided" Alexandra in matters of policy in Nicholai's absence, and Nicholai was virtually defenseless against Alexandra's defense of Rasputin, because Nicholai couldn't stand her heartbreak over the condition of their son. He, and his ministers, seemed to be doing all that they could, but as far as the "hope of Russia" - their son Alexia - there seemed no other alternative but to accept what seemed a working solution at the hands of Rasputin.

Rasputin eventually undid himself through his self-professed debaucheries, and was eventually murdered at the hands of what we might call "crown princes" - they themselves rather overbred and prone to debauchery, but sufficiently educated and bourgeois to know that Rasputin, left unchecked, would spiral Russia into total anarchy and chaos.

The crown princes took it upon themselves to poison Rasputin, and when poison alone wasn't sufficient, they shot him. It is unlikely they would have gone to such trouble on their own account; it is very likely that the coup d'etat was effected with full knowledge that the two crown princes also happened to be hop-heads - that is to say, opium addicts. Gentlemen of their class could never have carried out such a cold-blooded act - especially since Rasputin was credited with mystical powers and clung tenaciously to his depraved life - unless they had been persuaded that what they did was for the good of the Crown... the same Crown they still dimly hoped to inherit.

When Alexandra was apprised of the murder, she immediately assumed that the murder was a political attack against herself. She was very sensitive about her Germanic heritage, and her shortcomings as a "gracious" diplomatic hostess. She was socially crippled by a debilitating fear of strangers, and thus tended to put off people who did not understand Alexandra's reserve was not snobbish aloofness and disdain, but rather an inability to make "small talk" or to inquire about the niceties in social situations, as women -even monarchs - were expected to do at that time.

Soon after, Alexandra and Nicholai adopted a sort of "Off with their heads" policy that only aggravated the volatile situation - the volatility of which Nicholai and Alexandra had not even begun to measure. The two, separately and together, had been reared in such a total sense of "Tradition" that change, upheaval, and disorder were simply unthinkable, even inconceivable. It just wasn't DONE.

They really had no idea that people were starving, and they really had no idea that Russians were angry, and united in their anger against the Crown.

Nicholai and Alexandra, and their children, were eventually "evicted" from St. Petersburg, with a decree that they must soon become exiles. That news was somehow less traumatic for Nicholai and Alexandra than previous events. It would be fair to attribute the lack of shock to the fact that Nicholai and Alexandra were actually relieved once the "other shoe dropped."

To tell the truth, they were sick of being monarchs, and sick of ruling Russia. Both had been reared with the idea of duty, responsibility, honor, etc., and both had been imprisoned by the expectations exacted of them through family and anyone else versed in the history of monarchical obligation. What an opportunity, then, must have loomed, for the much-in-love couple, to have the opportunity at playing Mr. and Mrs. Nicky and Sunny - as they addressed each other privately - rather than as His or Her Royal Highness, Their Majesties.

The entire Romanov family, then, daydreamed about the idea of being ordinary citizens in a democracy such as America was rumored to be. It was understood that they would retain as much of their inherited wealth as suitable to keep them "in station" - a normal situation of the upper classes at the turn of the century. They would no longer live in palaces or even mansions - but they would not be beggars. In short, they would be "average."

Destiny did not allow this pretty notion of change and acceptance. Instead, the Romanovs were gunned down in an isolated room, gathered together for what they thought was a last portrait to posterity. It is rumored that the Romanov daughters were somewhat protected - that is to say, it took them longer to die - because they had jewelry sewn into their corsets. Mere gemstones do not withstand the impact of bullets. If the bodies were pillaged after their death, it would have been a disappointment to the grave-robbers looking for one last tax to place upon the royal family.

The coup d'etat that murdered the Romanov dynasty was as effective in its ends as any assassination ever is; not at all, if the goal is to stabilize the masses by eliminating a central problem. The "central problem" as some believed the Romanov dynasty appeared to be,  was an obsolete figurehead. But, the masses tend to forget why a figurehead represents them in the first place... because the history of a nation has compelled it so.

When a system of government changes, or becomes obsolete, the duty falls upon the masses - or those represented - as well as it does upon the established ruler(s), to understand there is a needed change or transition. The Romanovs did understand, albeit obliquely, that times had changed, and that "something" must be done to change the course of Russia at that time.

Nicholai, himself, was ready to simply abstain, and to remove himself and his family from the Crown. Alexandra, herself, was practically ready to skip and leap her way out of the palace; she who had never loved public life and had always alternated between resignation and despondency that she was obligated to the Crownship at all. She would have loved nothing more than to take her daughters and her son to a society where responsibility called no more upon them than it would any other citizen; responsibility to local laws, adherence to accepted moral strictures, duty to Church and Family, and the freedom to devote herself solely to Motherhood and to being a good wife to Nicky.

Had Alexandra been able to do this, she is likely to have raised her children with an exceptional education, sensitivity, and awareness of social and civic responsibility to their Fellow Men.

The Romanovs were murdered as nothing more than symbolism. The murder pretended to be justified by complaints against Imperialism and inherited wealth and power. This was a fiction created by a mere handful of people who wished to change the structure of the entire governmental eco-system on this planet. The nation of Russia has for centuries maintained one of the largest empires of all - the currency of human labor and resource.

What better way, then, to manipulate history than with the idea of substituting the Crown with "benevolent despotism"? Russia, over the next several decades, became the absolute model of benevolent despotism... "What we do is for Your Own Good." (So shut up, or die.)

To overthrow Democracy, one must manipulate oral tradition to make it appear as if a handful of rulers were one step away from being slave-masters. No one "wants" to be a slave; tell the people that their rulers are one step away from selling them and shipping them to nether regions, and the masses will revolt.

But the masses do not revolt at Idealism; they revolt against Form. Yet, they also worship Form, for Form represents familiarity, a code, a tradition... It is the Unknown that they fear, and consequently, the masses tend to subscribe to that which they know, and even a bad habit is at least a familiar one.

Until Humanity learns to observe the "Spirit in Nature" and to learn to distinguish Thought from opinion, and Ceremony from appearance, it will continue to be addicted to its own pattern of Pageant and Religion. The true separation of Church and State is absolutely imperative - though we have our doubts as to the possibility within the third dimension - to removing the very paradox of conflict from Humanity.

If humans were less likely to adore their masters, their masters wouldn't be. It is human nature itself, at a young age, that continues to feed its own rage by seeking an idealistic form, and that no form is "perfect" within our dimension, causes a predictable reaction through the very people who created and supported the form. They rebel at what they, themselves, created.

A coup d'etat is not the answer. Murdering society's creations does not cure the cancer that is within Society. Change must come from within, and it must be done peacefully. Oft-times, you would be surprised by how the so-called "Resistance of your Oppression"  is tired of resisting or oppressing, and would be happy to go its own way, once freed of the karmic Lesson that bound it in the first place.

Let the Lesson go.

Love, Galadriel
06/11/2003
Revolution/romanov.htm