White Crow: The Life and Times of the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia, 1859-1919

by Jamie H. Cockfield

Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002, 310 pages

Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich has long remained an enigma. He is usually briefly described, then dismissed, in most works on the Romanovs. In a few sentences, reference is usually made to his political inclinations, which were decidedly un-imperial and considered infuriatingly leftist by many; and to his historical work, usually with an eye to his interest in gossip and intrigue. He has been presented as a man of intellect and malice, either praised as the only member of the Romanov Dynasty able to recognize the coming disaster and offer salient-though ignored-advice against it, or as the prime instigator in plots against Nicholas II. He was, according to these accounts, either a gifted scholar who undertook important work in the last years of Imperial Russia, or a man who took a perverse delight in investigating then disseminating scandal in the guise of research. Celebrated and reviled, he was executed by the new Soviet regime in 1919; sixty years later, he was the only assassinated member of the Romanov Dynasty to be pointedly excluded from the 1981 canonization of the Imperial Family by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Previously, too little has been known of the Grand Duke to sustain any lengthy examination of his life. Prince David Chavchavadze's The Grand Dukes was one of the few works to devote any real space to him, and even so, in a work published in 1990, the portrait relied heavily on previously published materials and family memories. Access to the immense cache of Romanov archives in Moscow was, at the time, limited and exceptionally difficult to obtain. A few further references over the years that followed helped fill in isolated bits of information, or offered tantalizing hints of a rich life, but no one attempted to present a comprehensive examination of Nicholas Mikhailovich or analysis of the pivotal role he played in the last years of the Russian Empire.

Thankfully, this situation has now been more than rectified in White Crow, the first biography of Nicholas Mikhailovich, and a realistic, insightful look at the Grand Duke and his influence. American historian Jamie Cockfield, Professor of History at Mercer University, has tackled one of the least known figures in the Romanov Dynasty, at the same time successfully evoking the wealth of contradictions surrounding his life. This is an utterly convincing examination of a flawed personality, a man of dominant intellect hampered by an exaggerated view of his own abilities, and tendency to wallow in prurient tales.

Cockfield describes Nicholas Mikhailovich as "the only Romanov who was a true intellectual," a man with "almost nothing in common with the other members of his clan." Noting that many Romanovs-and, indeed, much of Russia-considered the Grand Duke a misfit (hence the book's title, White Crow, from the Russian slang expression belaia vorona), Cockfield explores at great length this notion of the family outsider, a situation which arose not only from his quick mind and egalitarian leanings, but from the physical distance imposed by his childhood in the Caucasus.

In White Crow, the author draws heavily on a number of previously untapped and unexplored sources: not only the State Archives of the Russian Federation, but little known deposits of the Grand Duke's letters at various European institutions, and the scattered unpublished memoirs of many of those who knew Nicholas Mikhailovich. What emerges, combined with a host of published materials, is not only the story of the troubled last years of Imperial Russia and the life of one of its leading figures, but one of the most successful Romanov biographies as well.

Cockfield fully explores the Grand Duke's childhood and early family life, with its diverse influences and geographic isolation from the Imperial capital of St. Petersburg. In a few pages, he provides what is arguably the best portrait of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaievich, his subject's father, ever committed to paper. Michael Nikolaievich is revealed as a warm, loving father, an intelligent, far-thinking and well-respected man whose children regarded him with a mixture of devotion and awe. In examining Nicholas Mikhailovich's mother, Grand Duchess Olga, the author takes great pains to look at the rumors surrounding her alleged Jewish paternity, rumors which were certainly prevalent within the Romanov Family as well as Russian society. No definitive evidence exists, as Cockfield demonstrates, and Nicholas Mikhailovich himself became increasingly anti-Semitic, as he grew older. Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna emerges as an indifferent mother, with little affinity for her children, who in turn seemed to have little affection for her.

A host of previously unpublished letters illuminate Nicholas Mikhailovich's childhood in the Caucasus, at the same time fully revealing the characters of his siblings. A wealth of detail can be found-little things like the sour marriage between the good-natured George Mikhailovich and his bitter wife Marie Georgievna, a state of affairs that may have driven him into the arms of infamous ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska. Cockfield explores the Grand Ducal world of palaces, incomes, privilege, and estates, in depth, providing a thoughtful analysis of precisely what responsibilities the position entailed and what benefits it offered.

One of the most important segments of the book focuses on the Grand Duke's political leanings. Through an impressive accumulation of evidence, Cockfield reveals that Nicholas Mikhailovich was never quite as radical as most historians make him out to be. The popular idea that the Grand Duke was a Freemason, too, is fully explored in great detail. In the end, Cockfield finds that such assertions are "completely based on hearsay" which "was probably just assumed by his enemies, given his politics," to be true. Indeed, the Grand Duke's own writings were often critical of Freemasonry, a point every other author seems to have missed.

Other important aspects of the Grand Duke's life receive equally insightful treatment: his military career; his personal relationships, including his thwarted romance with Princess Helene of Orleans; and his literary friendships with, amongst others, Tolstoy, which resulted in an extraordinary exchange between two of the most prescient men of late Imperial Russia. At the center is the Grand Duke's scientific and historical work. Nicholas Mikhailovich, who served as President of the Imperial Geographic Society and the Imperial Historical Society, was responsible for a number of impressively-detailed works on his ancestors, with a special concentration on the era of Alexander I. The Grand Duke, writes Cockfield, "possessed an almost childlike excitement about his research," which resulted in his passionate and consuming interests. Of interest, too, Cockfield notes that there is no evidence, contrary to what has often been alleged, that after his own research Nicholas Mikhailovich supported the idea that the peasant Feodor Kuzmich could have been Alexander I.

During the tumultuous years of the First World War, Nicholas Mikhailovich made no secret of his open contempt for Nicholas II and his consort, and their relations with Rasputin. His letters to the Imperial pair, as well as to family and friends, were filled with rumor and innuendo, conceived, as Cockfield notes, with, no doubt, a fair bit of glee on the part of the author, who loathed those whom he considered intellectually weak. Cockfield devotes much space to an exploration of Rasputin's murder, using interesting and previously unpublished documents to further illuminate the life of Prince Felix Yusupov, at the same time criticizing several well-known published sources. He openly questions author Edvard Radzinsky's veracity regarding several passages which appear in his biography of Rasputin, and notes that British historian Orlando Figes has refused to address inquiries over similar suspect allegations made in his work on the Revolution.

Happily, Cockfield takes a long, hard look at the 1981 canonization ceremony which pointedly excluded Nicholas Mikhailovich as, in the Church's words, "a socialist, an atheist and a Mason." By this time, Cockfield has done much to set the record straight, and he writes: "He was indeed liberal, but he was no socialist. He may have been a Mason or even an atheist but there is no real evidence that he was either, and usually masons are not atheists. In obtaining its 'evidence' of these grand ducal shortcomings the Church could only have relied on sixty-year old gossip. Moreover the reasoning in this decision violated the Church's own rules, which state that martyrs are to be forgiven their earthly sins."

In the end, the author admits that Nicholas Mikhailovich "was certainly no saint and probably not the most pleasant of people," though he sees him as "the most outstanding and respectable Romanov in the twilight of the Empire." This is an important book, in both its depth and its detail. Most important, it is rich in critical analysis of its subject, something that has been noticeably absent in many of the recent biographies of lesser members of the Romanov Dynasty. Clearly the product of years of passionate interest, White Crow is a vital addition to any Romanov library.