Alexander Mikhailovich, the Grand Duke. History of the Russian Empire

Grand Duke Romanov Alexander Mikhailovich was born on April 13, 1866 in Tiflis. Most of his life was associated with the development of the fleet and aviation. This member of the royal dynasty remembered his design projects, short-term leadership of sea trade and active activities during the emigration after the Civil War.

Childhood and youth

The Grand Duke was the son of Mikhail Nikolayevich and the grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. Tsar Alexander III he was a cousin. The last autocrat Nicholas II was his cousin nephew. Mother of Alexander - Olga Fedorovna - by origin was a German. She was the daughter of the Baden Duke Leopold.

In childhood, the future king of Nicholas II had several closest friends. One of them was Alexander Mikhailovich. The Grand Duke and heir to the throne were almost the same age, with a difference of two years. Like many secondary representatives of the Romanovs' house, Alexander chose a military career. He entered the Metropolitan Naval School, which he graduated in 1885. The young man received the rank of midshipman and was enrolled in the Guards crew. The choice was not accidental. Guards crew was a prestigious naval unit in the Imperial Guard.

Trip around the world

In 1886, Romanov Alexander Mikhailovich went on a round-the-world trip, starting as a midshipman. The Grand Duke rounded the planet on the armored deck corvette Rynda. On the eve of Christmas the ship entered the territorial waters of distant Brazil. Alexander Mikhailovich even paid an official visit to the local Emperor Pedro II. The monarch met the Russian visitor in his high-altitude residence Petropolis, where he waited for the zenith of a hot southern summer. In just a couple of years, Pedro renounced the throne, and Brazil became a republic.

The Grand Duke made a stop in South Africa. There he became acquainted with the life and hard work of Dutch farmers. From Cape Town, the longest transition of the Rynda began - to Singapore. The ship spent 45 days on the open sea, and all this time his crew did not meet a hint of approaching the land. According to the memoirs of Alexander Mikhailovich, every second home in the Chinatown of Singapore was an opium dump where amateurs of a popular drug then gathered.

His 21st birthday cousin of the then king met on his way to Hong Kong. Then he spent about two years in Nagasaki, where he went on voyages to India, Australia and the Philippines. In Japan, the Grand Duke visited the Emperor there and even learned the basics of the local language. Rynda returned to Europe in the spring of 1889, passing through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Before being home, the Grand Duke visited the Queen Victoria of England, who accepted Romanov with cordiality, even despite the difficult period of British-Russian relations.

Alexander Mikhailovich had his own yacht "Tamara". On it, he also made several trips. In 1891 Tamara traveled to India. Soon after that trip Alexander Mikhailovich became commander on the destroyer "Revel" In 1893 he, together with the squadron, went to North America. Frigate "Dmitry Donskoy" and other Russian ships were sent to the New World on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its discovery by Columbus.

Marriage

In 1894 Alexander Mikhailovich, the Grand Duke, was already in the rank of a senior lieutenant. Soon after this promotion he married. Alexandra's wife was Ksenia Alexandrovna. The Grand Duchess was the younger sister of Nicholas II. She knew her future husband from early childhood - he regularly visited Gatchina, where the children of Alexander III grew up.

Slender tall brunette was the only love of young Xenia. She told her first about her feelings to her brother Nikolai, who was calling his friend Alexander just Sandro. The wedding of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess took place on July 25, 1894 in Peterhof. The couple had seven children - six sons and one daughter (Irina, Andrei, Fedor, Nikita, Dmitry, Rostislav and Vasily).

Care of the fleet

In 1891 Alexander Mikhailovich began publishing the handbook "Military Fleets", which became an extremely popular publication in the Russian fleet. In the same year, his mother Olga Fedorovna died. The Grand Duke paid much attention to the state of the Pacific Fleet. In order to strengthen it, Alexander spent several years preparing the program for his strategic reform. The document was presented to Nicholas II in 1895.

At that time, the Far East was restless - there were unrest in China, and Japan rapidly modernized and began to claim the title of the main power of the region. What in these conditions did Alexander Mikhailovich do? The Grand Duke suggested proceeding from the premise that a rapidly developing Japan would sooner or later declare war on Russia. In his youth, he spent two years in the Land of the Rising Sun, and during this time could see for himself the progress that the island empire had accomplished in a short time.

However, the warnings of the Grand Duke caused irritation in St. Petersburg. The more senior military and dynasty members treated Japan as a weak opponent and did not consider preparation for a complex campaign necessary. Time showed that they were wrong. Nevertheless, the program was never adopted. In addition, because of disagreement about the future of the fleet, Alexander Mikhailovich himself was briefly sent to resign. The Grand Duke returned to the service in 1898, becoming an officer on the battleship of the Coast Guard "General-Admiral Apraksin."

Design achievements

The service on Apraksin gave the Grand Duke invaluable experience, which formed the basis of his design work. In 1900 the military finished the sketch of the seagoing battleship of the Coast Guard "Admiral Butakov". He became a rethinking of Apraksin. Together with Alexander Mikhailovich, the chief ship engineer of the Moscow port Dmitry Skortsov worked on the project.

Another fruit of the Grand Duke's design works is a project of a battleship with a displacement of 14 thousand tons. He received sixteen guns. The identical project was completed simultaneously with Alexander Mikhailovich by the famous shipbuilding engineer Vittorio Cuniberti. This sketch was the foundation for the construction of class "Regina Elena" ships. The difference between the idea of Cuniberti and the Grand Duke was only that the idea of the Italian, in contrast to the variation of Romanov, still was realized.

In the Cabinet of Ministers

In 1903, the joyful news came to the palace of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. He was promoted to Rear Admiral. Before that, the Grand Duke had been captain on the Rostislav battleship for two years. Now Alexander Mikhailovich focused on the bureaucratic service. He joined the Council on Merchant Shipping. Alexander persuaded the tsar to transform this agency. In November 1902, the Council became the General Directorate of Merchant Shipping and Ports, and in fact - the Ministry.

The inspirer and main defender of the new department was the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich himself. The Russian fleet needed a separate institution that could protect its trade interests, Romanov believed. However, no matter how well-intentioned the noble was guided, he had to face serious resistance from the other ministers. They did not like that a member of the royal family interfered with the work of the government. Almost the entire Cabinet of Ministers turned out to be oppositional to Alexander Mikhailovich. His colleagues did everything to convince the emperor to dissolve the General Administration. This was done in 1905. Thus, the offspring of the Grand Duke did not last for three years.

War with Japan

With the onset of the Russo-Japanese War, the Navy of the Russian Empire was faced with a most serious test. Alexander Mikhailovich, who gave him much of his life, took a lively part in that campaign. He began to direct the actions and preparation of auxiliary vessels belonging to the Voluntary Fleet. Then he was headed by a committee that organized a collection of donations to strengthen the military squadrons.

In 1905, following the liquidation of his own ministry, Alexander Mikhailovich became commander of a detachment of destroyers and mine cruisers, put into operation on the people's means. When the question arose of sending the Second Pacific Squadron to the shores of the Far East, the Grand Duke opposed this decision, considering the ships not sufficiently prepared. Already after the end of the Russo-Japanese war the first cousin of the Tsar took part in drawing up programs and plans for restoring the fleet that had been destroyed during the campaign.

Admiral and patron of aviation

In 1909, the Grand Duke became vice-admiral. In the same year, his father Mikhail Nikolaevich died. For two decades he was the Governor of the Caucasus, another 24 years - the chairman of the State Council. Mikhail Nikolayevich had six children, and Alexander lived longer than all his brothers and sisters.

In 1915 the Grand Duke became an admiral. However, his activities concerned not only the fleet. Alexander Mihajlovich has made much for formation of domestic aeronautics. It was at his initiative in 1910 that the Sevastopol officer aviation school was established. Moreover, the uncle of the tsar was the chief of the Imperial Air Force. During the First World War, the Grand Duke inspected both ships and aircraft.

Revolution and Civil War

The February revolution dramatically changed the life of all the Romanovs. Members of the imperial family were removed from the army. Alexander Mikhailovich was fired from the service, having kept his uniform. The Provisional Government allowed him to settle in his own Crimean estate. Perhaps only a timely move to the south saved citizen Romanov. Together with him, Ksenia Aleksandrovna and their children moved to the Crimea.

Alexander Mikhailovich did not leave Russia until the last moment. During the Civil War Crimea several times passed from hand to hand. When the power temporarily transferred to the Bolsheviks on the peninsula, the Romanovs were in mortal danger. Then the Crimea fell under the German occupation. After the Brest peace, he was not kept long by the foreign allies of the whites from the Entente. It was then that Alexander Mikhailovich together with his family decided to leave Russia. In December 1918, he went to France on a British ship.

Emigration

In Paris, Alexander Mikhailovich became a member of the Russian political meeting. This structure was created by opponents of the Soviet government in order to represent the interests of their country at the Versailles Conference. At the end of 1918 the First World War was over and now the victorious countries were going to decide the fate of Europe. Russia, which before the Bolsheviks came to power honestly performed its duty to the Entente, was deprived of representation in Versailles because of a separate peace with Germany. Supporters of the white movement tried to intercept the fallen banner, but without success. Alexander Mikhailovich used all his resources to persuade foreign powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks, but also unsuccessfully.

Attempts of emigrants, as you know, did not lead to anything. Among many, the Grand Duke left for Europe, hoping to return to his homeland soon. He was by no means an old man who had recently stepped beyond the fifty-year threshold, and was counting on a better future. However, like other white emigrants, Alexander Mikhailovich remained until the end of his days in a foreign land. His residence he chose France.

The Grand Duke was a member of many emigre organizations. He presided over the Union of Russian Air Force Pilots and took part in the activities of the Russian All-Military Union created by Peter Wrangel. Romanov helped a lot of children who found themselves in emigration in the most vulnerable position.

The last years of his uncle Nicholas II's life were spent writing his own memoirs. In print, the memoirs of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (The Book of Memories) were published in 1933 in a Paris publishing house. The author died shortly after the appearance of his work on the shelves of stores. He died on February 26, 1933 in the resort town of Roquebrune on the Cote d'Azur. The Alpes-Maritimes became the place of rest and remains of the wife of Grand Duke Xenia Alexandrovna. She survived her husband for 27 years, having died on April 20, 1960 in British Windsor.

Memoirs of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich today are an interesting monument to the turning-point of the national history. After the fall of communism, the memory of Romanov himself in his homeland, like many other representatives of the royal dynasty, was finally restored. In 2012 in St. Petersburg he was installed bronze bust. The author of the monument was the sculptor and member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts Albert Charkin.