Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia

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Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia
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Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna, ca. 1914.
Born June 10, 1897
Peterhof, Russia
Died July 17, 1918
Yekaterinburg, Russia
Parents Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaievna of Russia (Tatiana Nikolaievna Romanova) (In Russian Великая Княжна Татьяна Николаевна) Tanya, Tatya or Tanushka (May 29 (O.S.)/June 10 (N.S.), 1897 - July 17, 1918) was the second daughter of Nicholas II of Russia and Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.

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[edit] Life

She was an elder sister of the famous Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, who was widely rumored to have survived the assassination of the Imperial Family. Other siblings in the family were Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, and the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. All of the children were close to one another and to their parents up until the end of their lives.

Tatiana Nikolaevna was described as tall and slender, with dark auburn hair and dark blue-gray eyes and a refined, elegant bearing befitting the daughter of an Emperor.[1] She was arguably the most beautiful of all the sisters in the opinion of some courtiers. "She was very tall and excessively thin, with a cameolike profile, deep blue eyes and dark chestnut hair," wrote her mother's friend, Lili Dehn. "... a lovely Rose maiden, fragile and pure as a flower."[2] "She was a different type from the others even in appearance, her hair being a rich brown and her eyes so darkly gray that in evening they seemed almost black," wrote her mother's friend Anna Vyrubova.[3]

Tatiana and her older sister Olga were known in the household as "The Big Pair." [4] According to a May 29, 1897 diary entry written by her father's distant cousin, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, she was given the name "Tatiana" as an homage to the heroine in Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin Her father liked the idea of having daughters named Olga and Tatiana like the sisters in the famous poem.[5] Like their younger sisters, the two girls shared a bedroom and were very close to one another. Tatiana was assigned a regiment of soldiers, the Vosnesensky (Ascenscion) Hussars and given the rank of honorary colonel. [6] She and Olga, who was also given her own regiment, would go out and inspect the soldiers regularly, an occasion they greatly enjoyed. [7] Tatiana was described as practical and with a natural talent for leadership. Her sisters gave her the nickname "Governess" and sent her as their group representative when they wanted their parents to grant a favor. Though she was eighteen months Tatiana's senior, Olga had no objection when Tatiana decided to take charge of a situation.[8] She was also closer to her mother than any of her sisters and was considered by many who knew her to be the Tsarina's favorite daughter. [3]

Tatiana's artistic talents were best expressed in handiwork and in her talent for choosing attractive fashions and creating elegant hair styles. (She) "had an extraordinary talent for all kinds of handiwork," wrote her mother's best friend Anna Vyrubova. "She not only made beautiful blouses and other garments, embroideries and crochets, but she was on occasions to dress her mother's long hair, and to dress her as well as a professional maid."[3]

In 1911, the fourteen-year-old Tatiana experienced her first brush with violence when she witnessed the assassination of the government minister Pyotr Stolypin during a performance at the Kiev Opera House. "Olga and Tatiana had followed me back to the box and saw everything that happened," Tsar Nicholas II wrote to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria, on September 10, 1911. "...It had made a great impression on Tatiana, who cried a lot, and they both slept badly." [9]

In 1914, she became an Red Cross nurse with her mother and Olga. They cared for wounded soldiers in a private hospital on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo. According to Vyrubova "Tatiana was almost as skillful and devoted as her mother, and complained only that on account of her youth she was spared some of the more trying cases."[3] As she grew into adulthood, she undertook more public appearances than her sisters and headed committees. Vyrubova recalled that she became better known to the public than her three sisters because of her attention to duty and her ability to engage those she met.

In their memoirs, both her mother's friend, Vyrubova, and lady in waiting Lili Dehn recalled that Tatiana, the most social of the sisters, longed for friends her own age but her social life was restricted by her rank and her mother's distaste for society. She also had a more introspective side, known only to her closest friends and family. "With her, as with her mother, shyness and reserve were accounted as pride, but, once you knew her and had gained her affection, this reserve disappeared and the real Tatiana became apparent," Dehn recalled. "She was a poetical creature, always yearning for the ideal, and dreaming of great friendships which might be hers."[2] Tatiana, like her mother, was deeply religious and read her Bible frequently.

Tatiana fell in love on at least one occasion. In an article in the December 2004 edition of the magazine Royalty Digest: A Journal of Record Peter de Malama wrote that his cousin, Dmitri Yakovlech Malama, an officer in the Imperial Russian Cavalry, met Tatiana when he was wounded in 1914 and gave her a French bulldog she named "Ortino." A romance developed between Tatiana and the young man during 1915, after Dmitri was appointed an equerry to the court of the Tsar at Tsarskoye Selo, according to Peter de Malama.[10] "My little Malama came for an hour yesterday evening," wrote Alexandra to Nicholas on March 17, 1916. "...Looks flourishing more of a man now, an adorable boy still. I must say a perfect son in law he w(ou)ld have been -- why are foreign P(rin)ces not as nice!" [11] Malama was killed in August 1919 while commanding a unit of the White Russians fighting the civil war against the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, according to Peter de Malama.[12]

Tatiana and all of her family doted on Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby," who suffered frequent attacks of haemophilia and nearly died several times. Her younger sister Maria also reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life. The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had to be ordered to continue by their mother, Tsarina Alexandra. Olga Alexandrovna said she believed all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and believed they were carriers of the haemophilia gene like their mother. [13]

[edit] Captivity and death

The family was arrested during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and imprisoned first at Tsarskoye Selo and later at private residences in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, Siberia. Tatiana was traumatized when she, her sisters Olga and Anastasia, were harassed by their guards aboard the steamship Rus that ferried them from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg in the spring of 1918. The guards were looking for jewels that had been sewed into the clothing of the grand duchesses. Their English tutor, Sidney Gibbes, was haunted for the rest of his life by the memory of the terrified screams of the grand duchesses and his inability to help them.[14]

An icon depicting the Imperial Family as passion bearers.
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An icon depicting the Imperial Family as passion bearers.

At Yekaterinburg, she occasionally joined her younger sisters in chatting with some of the guards over tea, asking them questions about their families and talking about her hopes for a new life in England when they were released. On one occasion one of the guards forgot himself and told the grand duchesses an off-color joke. The shocked Tatiana ran from the room, "pale as death," and her younger sister Maria scolded the guards for their bad language.[15] She "would be pleasant to the guards if she thought they were behaving in an acceptable and decorous manner," recalled another of the guards in his memoirs.[16] Tatiana, still the family leader, was often sent by her parents to question the guards about rules or what would happen next to the family. She also spent a great deal of time sitting with her mother and ill brother, reading to her mother or playing games to occupy the time.[14]

On July 14, 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a private church service for the family and reported that Tatiana and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their knees during the prayer for the dead.[17]

She was twenty-one when she was murdered along with her family on July 17, 1918 in the cellar room of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The murders were carried out by a death squad under the command of Yakov Yurovsky. In 2000, she and her family were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. The family had previously been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1981 as holy martyrs.[18]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967, p. 133.
  2. ^ a b Dehn, Lili, 1922. "The Real Tsaritsa", ISBN 5-3000-2285-3
  3. ^ a b c d Vyrubova, Anna. "Memories of the Russian Court". alexanderpalace.org. Retrieved on December 10, 2006.
  4. ^ Massie, p. 135
  5. ^ Maylunas, Andrei, and Mironenko, Sergei, editors; Galy, Darya, translator, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, 1997, p. 163
  6. ^ Bokhanov, Alexander, Knodt, Dr. Manfred, Oustimenko, Vladimir, Peregudova, Zinaida, Tyutyunnik, Lyubov, editors; Xenofontova, Lyudmila, translator; The Romanovs: Love, Power, and Tragedy, Leppi Publications, 1993, pp. 198-199.
  7. ^ Massie, p. 136
  8. ^ Massie, p. 133
  9. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 344.
  10. ^ De Malama, Peter, The Romanovs: The Forgotten Romance, in Royalty Digest: A Journal of Record, December 2004, p. 184.
  11. ^ Furhmann, Joseph T. The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Nicholas and Alexandra: April 1914 - March 1917, Greenwood Press, 1999
  12. ^ De Malama, p. 184
  13. ^ Vorres, Ian. The Last Grand Duchess, 1965 p. 115.
  14. ^ a b Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 2003, p. 140.
  15. ^ King and Wilson, p. 242
  16. ^ King and Wilson p. 242
  17. ^ King and Wilson, p. 276
  18. ^ Shevchenko, Maxim (2000). "The Glorification of the Royal Family". Nezavisemaya Gazeta. Retrieved on December 10, 2006.

[edit] References

  • Alexander Bokhanov, Dr. Manfred Knodt, Vladimir Oustimenko, Zinaida Peregudova, Lyubov Tyutyunnik; Lyudmila Xenofontova, translator; The Romanovs: Love, Power, and Tragedy, Leppi Publications, 1993.
  • Lili Dehn, The Real Tsaritsa, 1922. [1]
  • Peter De Malama, The Romanovs: The Forgotten Romance in Royalty Digest, December 2004, p. 184.
  • Joseph T. Fuhrmann, The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Nicholas and Alexandra: April 1914 - March 1917, Greenwood Press, 1999
  • Pierre Gilliard, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court ISBN 0-4050-3029-0[2]
  • Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 2003. ISBN 0-4712-0768-3
  • Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967. ISBN 0-5754-0006-4
  • Robert K. Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 1995 ISBN 0-6794-3572-7
  • Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, editors; Darya Galy, translator, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, 1997.
  • Maxim Shevchenko, "The Glorification of the Royal Family," a May 31, 2000 article in the Nezavisemaya Gazeta, [[3]
  • Ian Vorres, The Last Grand Duchess, 1965. ISBN 1-5526-3302-0
  • Anna Vyrubova, Memories of the Russian Court, [4]
  • Charlotte Zeepvat, The Camera and the Tsars: A Romanov Family Album, 2004. ISBN 0-7509-3049-7

[edit] External links

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