Word: russian
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Stories. When Victoria's granddaughter, German Alix of Hesse, came to her new Russian home as affianced bride of the Cesarevitch, the emotions of an emotional people ran riot, mingling curiosity and doubt with vague glamorous expectations and pity. Of Anglo-German lineage-would she sympathize with Slavic-Byzantine fancies and foibles? Profoundly religious, she had resisted a change of faith, then, suddenly veered, passionately to avow Greek orthodoxy-was it for love of the Cesarevitch, or for ulterior reasons? Considering the influences of liberalism, political if not moral, at her British grandmother's court-would she encourage...
...paid very little attention to Alexandra; but the various grand duchesses took pains to make her difficult position yet more difficult with their resentful jealousies. Bashful, awkward, guileless, Alix, now Alexandra Feo-dorovna, disdained the gentle art of flummery, and was only took frank in her disapproval of Russian frivolity...
Most glittering and ceremonious of festivals was the last Russian coronation, May, 1896. Each in her gilded coach, two empresses followed in slow procession, the first, Dowager Empress Marie, to be greeted with huzzahs of adoration; and the second, Alexandra, with a sudden silence, variously interpreted. Baroness Buxhoeveden, friend and lady-in-waiting to the last empress, says the crowds were struck dumb with holy awe. But Princess Radziwill, member of the St. Petersburg aristocracy Alexandra failed to please, calls the dumbness "a solemn, ominous silence . . . majestic absence of emotion on the part of the multitude...
...Significance. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was variously accused of misguiding her royal spouse, of sympathizing traitorously with her Vaterland during the War, of antagonizing the Russian aristocracy, and terrorizing the peasantry-in short, of causing downfall to the Russian empire. That this one woman should be held responsible for the inevitable revolt against centuries of abuse is patently ridiculous. But she served as convenient symbol-though less charmingly than Marie Antoinette...
...relationship that ended only hours before the tragic finale, the Baroness depicts her mistress as devoted mother, and faithful servant of Russia, indefatigable in charity, painstaking in her advice to the tsar. The Princess, on the contrary, emphasizes Alexandra's ineptitude for social leadership; her temperamental incompatibility with Russian subtleties of mood and method; her stubborn persistence in meddling with political affairs which she did not understand...