Isle and Empires

Romanov Russia, Britain and the Isle of Wight

Stephan Roman

• Publisher: Medina Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781911487395
• eBook ISBN: 9781911487449
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

The tumultuous story of the Romanovs and their enigmatic relationship with Britain is brought to life in Stephan Roman's Isle and Empires, as he explores the misunderstandings, suspicions and alliances that created an uneasy partnership between two of the world's most powerful Empires.

The Isle of Wight was at the heart of this relationship, an island off the south coast of England that intimately linked the British royal family and the Romanovs. Peter the Great drew inspiration for the first Russian naval fleet from his sailing trips around the Island, and Alexander I was immortalised by a hilltop monument built for him on St Catherine's Down. Alexander II's beloved only daughter, Grand Duchess Marie, spent many years at Osborne House infuriating and irritating her mother-in-law, Queen Victoria. In contrast to the Isle of Wight's imperial and royal connections, Russian revolutionaries also made it their home, establishing a summer colony of radical political thinkers and writers in Ventnor.

In August 1909 the Island hosted the Russian Imperial family during their visit to Cowes Week, then the most glamorous yachting regatta in Europe's social calendar. A new era of Anglo-Russian collaboration was dawning and seemed destined to become a dominant force in 20th century global politics. The Tsar's visit to Cowes was deliberately intended to set the seal on this new alliance. Less than ten years later the Romanovs had been overthrown, with the British government and royal family accused of betrayal and complicity in their deaths. Isle and Empires is a journey into a world of Imperial glory and power, family rivalry, wars, intrigue and alliances.

It is also a story of Russia's revolutionaries, spies and terrorists, and the refugees fleeing Tsarist oppression who found shelter and safety both in mainland Britain and on the Isle of Wight. These events reverberate to the present day and much of what happened when the Romanovs ruled Russia continues to set the pattern for the current relationship between the two countries.

1

The wreckage of Imperial Russia

Those who survived would never forget the horrific scenes that they witnessed that May afternoon on the shores of the Dniester river in Bessarabia. Thousands of refugees from every class of Russian society crowded on to the banks of the fast-flowing river that marked the frontier between the newly emerging Soviet Union and the Kingdom of Romania. This was like a great wave of fear and desperation, crashing on to the last surviving sandbank of Imperial Russia.

Many of the refugees had been on the road for months and years, fleeing the advance of the Red Army and the agents of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Others had fled the violence and terror unleashed by the White armies as they retreated into Southern Russia. Most of those arriving on the banks of the River Dniester were now reduced to a state of poverty, desperation and abject terror. The Russian Civil War, which had started four years earlier in 1918, was now nearing its end. It had been a brutal struggle, leading to the deaths of between eight and twelve million people, through famine, disease, and violent conflict. Millions more were either displaced or had fled into exile.

By the end of 1920, the Bolshevik Red Army of Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin had largely destroyed the opposing White Army, despite the support that the latter was receiving from Britain, France, Germany and the United States. The Whites were a loose confederation of monarchists, socialists and democrats, who were bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviks and led by Generals such as Pyotr Wrangel, Anton Denikin, and Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Between 1918 and 1919 the Whites had made significant advances and successfully captured large swathes of territory across Siberia and Southern Russia. At one point, their armies even threatened Moscow. However, in the autumn of 1919, the Red Army launched a major counter offensive and drove back the White Army.

On 8 February 1920, the seaport of Odessa in the Ukraine fell to the Red Army. This had been a haven for over 500,000 refugees escaping Bolshevik rule. A flotilla of British and French naval ships managed to evacuate around 16,000 soldiers, government officials and civilian refugees. Thousands more gathered on the harbourside but were unable to board the ships as there was not enough space to take them all. As the last ships drew away from the quayside, whole families prayed together and then committed suicide. It was a sight that those on the departing vessels would never forget.

The fall of Odessa was followed by the collapse of White Russian armies across the rest of Southern Russia. The Crimea was their final redoubt but by early November it was clear that the peninsula could no longer be defended. Between 13 and 16 November 1920, a mass evacuation of White soldiers and civilians was ordered by General Wrangel. 146,000 people were transported to safety from the ports of Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch and Yalta.

Many thousands of White army soldiers and civilian refugees could not reach the boats in time. They were abandoned in the Crimea to fend for themselves. These unfortunates soon found themselves at the mercy of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee, which had been created by the Russian Communist Party and was tasked with bringing revolutionary justice to the region. Heading the Committee were two of the most ruthless individuals in the history of the Bolshevik Red Terror: the Hungarian Bela Kun and his accomplice Rosalia Zemlyachka. Between them, they were responsible for ordering the deaths of 50,000 prisoners of war and anti-Bolshevik civilians in the Crimea. Over the course of the following year another 60,000-70,000 men, women and children were tracked down and executed.

The Red Terror was an organised campaign of political repression which lasted throughout the four years of the Civil War and was responsible for the deaths of anywhere between 200,000 and 1.3 million people. Exact numbers will never be known as the Cheka, the Bolshevik Secret Police, did not keep particularly accurate records of its victims.

Many of those who were killed were members of Russia’s former ruling class, including Tsarist government officials, aristocrats, army officers and intellectuals. It was easy for the Cheka to accuse such people of sympathy and complicity with counter-revolutionary activities. Peasants and workers, however, also became victims of the repression, particularly wealthy peasant farmers, or ‘kulaks’, as well as merchants and workers from the urban areas.

Throughout 1919, as the Red Army consolidated its grip on former White held territories, there were mass executions in Rostov-on-Don, Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa. In Baku, in April 1920, the Cheka organised what was described as ‘the week of the suppression of the bourgeoisie’, when thousands of government officials and their families, together with all the officers of the Azerbaijani National Army, were gunned down in batches of a hundred on Nargin Island, a short ferry ride from Baku.

In May 1922 those who now gathered in fear and panic on the Russian side of the Dniester river knew that they could expect little mercy when the Bolsheviks caught up with them. They were desperate to cross the river to safety in Romania.

Amongst them was my grandfather, Emil Konradovich Romanovsky, who had been a senior official in the Tsarist administration, working for the Office of Imperial Posts and Telegraphs. His family were originally from Western Russia and before the Revolution he had been working in St Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan. He was accompanied by my grandmother, Jadwiga Niewierkiewicz, the daughter of an affluent Polish-Lithuanian family from Vilna (later renamed Vilnius) and by their two small children, my aunt Natalia and my father Viktor. They had been refugees since 1919 and were now penniless. During their flight from Moscow they had been threatened with violence, cheated, robbed, and left for destitute. Somehow, they had survived and now sat huddled together, praying that they would find a way to cross into Romania.

My grandparents rarely talked about what they witnessed that May afternoon in 1922. It was as though they preferred to shut from their minds the memories of the tragic scenes that had unfolded around them. They said enough, though, for this eye-witness account of the final tragedy of Imperial Russia to be handed down through the generations.

Any attempt to cross the Dniester and reach the small town of Soroca in Romania was a major challenge for refugees weakened by years of illness, fear and lack of food. Many of them could not swim, and the cold river water would soon claim the lives of those who were not fit and strong.

Entire families took to the waters, roped together and hoping to reach the other side of the river. They had come so far that they would rather die than turn back and face the terror of living in a country in which they no longer believed, and where they felt sure that their lives and their futures would be held forfeit.

There were screams, prayers, and cries for help. Many were swept away by the strong currents, never to resurface. Others used luggage, crates and bundles of clothes to help them float, but too often, these rapidly filled with water and dragged down those clinging to them. A few survivors made it across to the other side and stood gazing back in horror at the heads of those bobbing on the waters, drowning in the middle of a river which in the spring sunshine looked so gentle and benign.

This was the final wreckage of Imperial Russia, the debris and detritus of an Empire that, in the end, could not save itself or protect its own citizens. This was like the sinking of a great ocean liner, or the wreck of a fabulous imperial yacht, where security was an illusion and overweening confidence was tragically misplaced. In this remote south-western corner of the former Empire, the final drama of Romanov Russia was being played out.

Eventually, a few fishing boats appeared from the Romanian side of the river, but this was too late for the many who had long since perished in the water. Some of those that still possessed money or jewels waited for the fishing boats and managed to buy their passage across to the other side of the river. Others were then robbed as they reached dry land and what they had believed to be safety.

My grandparents had decided that they would not risk their lives, or their children’s lives, trying to swim across the river. Neither could they afford to pay the extortionate fares demanded by the fishermen. They sat quietly on the riverbank waiting and watching. It would not be long before the Cheka arrived to do their regular sweep of the area and arrest or execute those trying to escape.

It was towards midnight when a small boat appeared. A fisherman from one of the villages near Soroca had spotted the family group huddled together for warmth. He tied up his boat and walked across to them, then asked my grandfather if he could take the family across the river. My grandfather opened his hands in supplication as if to explain that he had nothing to give the fisherman in return. The man stared at him and then, grasping both my grandfather’s outstretched hands, he said in a clear and confident voice, ‘God will repay in his own way, and in his own time. I require no money from you’.

There was not enough room in the boat for the whole family, so the fisherman tied a rope to one side of the boat and told my grandfather to hold on to this as he ferried them across to Soroca. The moon was high in the night sky as they edged their way across the river. Behind them they could hear gun shots and screams. The Chekist guards had arrived and were executing those refugees who were still waiting to escape.

The water was dark and murky and filled with debris. Bodies brushed against the side of the boat, their heads occasionally bobbing up amongst the weeds. My grandmother saw a beautiful Russian shawl, richly embroidered with red, cream and blue flowers float past her. It reminded her of a precious shawl that she had once owned in her childhood in Vilna, and for a moment she wanted to pick it up and wrap it around her, even though she knew that it would be soaking wet and could provide no warmth or comfort.

A few feet behind the shawl she spotted the body of an attractive young woman, her blonde hair tied in plaits, her arms outstretched in a final gesture of desperate hope. The shawl and the young woman floated on past them, and it seemed to my grandmother that this scene marked the end of every certainty and security that she had ever known. A moment of chance and fortune separated her life from that of the young woman, whose destiny lay now amongst the reeds and mudbanks of the Dniester river.

When they reached the other side of the river, the fisherman insisted that the family come back to his house for food and rest. He could see that they were utterly exhausted, and he did not want them spending the night outside in the cold. They ended up by staying with him for six months. During this time my grandmother fell ill with typhoid fever and lost much of her hearing. In her delirium she conjured up scenes of life that she had known before the Revolution. The baroque churches and cobbled streets of her beloved Vilna, her eccentric aunt in St Petersburg, who insisted on paying for her to become a professional photographer, and her travels to the dark woods and deep blue lakes of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

All these scenes she saw vividly as she lay ill in the fisherman’s small wooden cottage on the banks of the Dniester. Every dream ended in a nightmare, though, in which she saw a young woman with a colourful embroidered scarf wrapped around her, crying out and begging to be admitted to the house. When my grandmother awoke there was only the sound of the wind blowing across the river, banging the window shutters noisily against the timber walls of the wooden cottage.

After her recovery, they spent many weeks travelling through Romania and Poland before they finally reached my grandmother’s home city of Vilna, where they settled in a large eighteenth-century house used by the family. This stood in the city centre near the former Bishops’ Palace. This is where they would stay till the Second World War ripped their lives apart and they once again became refugees, scattered to the various corners of Europe. My grandfather was spared all this. He died in August 1939, on the eve of the German and Soviet invasions of Poland.

Till his dying day, my grandfather never abandoned hope that the Tsars would be restored and that he and his family would then be able to resume the life they had enjoyed in Russia before the Revolution. He would wander the streets of Vilna, tapping on the cobbles with his stick, as he made his way towards the Church of the Holy Spirit: the grandest Orthodox church in the city. He felt an exile and longed to return to his beloved homeland. In the Church, he would light candles to the memory of his sisters and brothers, nephews and nieces, all of them swept into oblivion by the violence of the Revolution and the Civil War. He was never to see any of them again and never knew if any of them had even survived.

It was my father who, escaping Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland in 1946, came to Britain where he settled and married my mother, the youngest daughter of a family then living in Southport, Lancashire. From an early age, my father would tell me stories of our family’s lost homelands in Russia, Poland and Lithuania. As I lay safe and secure in my English home, I would dream of snowy landscapes, magical towns with star-spangled cupolas where my ancestors had once lived, and wolves roaming through dark green forests.

Later, as I grew older, I learned about the suffering that my family had experienced as they fled a country in revolutionary turmoil, about the pain and loss of war and exile, and a sense of never quite belonging. On my father’s side I needed to go back three generations before I could find any sense of stability or continuity. Both my father and grandfather had lost their homelands.

I tried hard to imagine what it must have been like to flee the country where you had grown up and where you had confidently expected that you would spend the rest of your life. My grandfather was over fifty years old when he decided to flee Moscow. He had had a long and successful career in the Tsarist imperial administration and would have had the prospect of a comfortable retirement ahead of him. Instead, he ended his time in Russia crouching on the banks of a fast-flowing river, fearing death by execution or drowning.

I found myself thinking more and more about Imperial Russia; what had caused its collapse and the impact that this had had on the millions of people who believed it was their home, somewhere they would always belong. They never imagined for a moment that they would one day become refugees, without shelter, sustenance or support.

Here I am, a British citizen, with a grandfather who was born a subject of the Russian Empire and had always imagined that his descendants would live and breathe the same air he did and love the country that he so admired. The Russian revolution changed this forever, as it did for so many citizens of the former Romanov lands.

As I reflected more and more on my family’s history, I became increasingly intrigued by Tsarist Russia and its complex and often difficult relationship with Britain. It seemed to me that in this lay the seeds of much of the distrust and suspicion that still colours the partnership between the two countries until the present day.

This book is an attempt to bring together two important themes for me. It is an exploration of the historical relationship between Britain and Imperial Russia during 300 years of Romanov rule, but it is also a personal quest, in that it unites two parts of my own family history and background. As I reflected on the tragic sequence of events that had brought the Romanovsky and Dunn families together, hitherto separated by thousands of miles and completely different cultures and societies, I became fascinated by the fraught relationship that had developed between Imperial Russia and Britain and may have inadvertently led to the collapse of the Tsarist Empire.

2

A tumultuous relationship

In many ways, there was much that could have made the two countries close friends and allies. In the early years of the relationship there were no obvious areas of competition or rivalry. The two countries did not share any land borders and neither sought any territorial, maritime or trade expansion at the expense of the other.

A growing sense of mistrust began to emerge in the eighteenth century but it was another hundred years before it reached its full expression, when Russia and Britain found themselves at war in the Crimea over the decaying Ottoman Empire. This was the only time in their history when the two countries were engaged in a direct military conflict. A growing suspicion of each other’s ambitions in Persia and Central Asia clouded the relationship throughout most of Queen Victoria’s reign.

These events in themselves...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Note on Use of Russian Names and Dates
• PART I - THE PROLOGUE
• PART II - THE EARLY ROMANOVS AND BRITAIN: INSPIRATION AND DISENCHANTMENT 1613-1800
• PART III - TSARS ALEXANDER I AND NICHOLAS I: ALLIANCE & CONFLICT 1800-1856
• PART IV - WIGHT RUSSIANS
• PART V - TSARS ALEXANDER II AND ALEXANDER III AND ROYAL FAMILY TIES 1856-1894
• PART VI - BUILDING A NEW ANGLO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE 1894-1907
• PART VII - THE 1909 RUSSIAN IMPERIAL VISIT TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT
• PART VIII - THE COLLAPSE OF IMPERIAL RUSSIA AND THE END OF THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE 1914-1918
• Family Trees
• Notes on Bibliographic Sources
• Acknowledgements
• Index