Free The Last Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky Page B

waiting for the present-giving to commence. Then shouts rang out—people were suffocating in the crowd. Someone thought the dainties were being passed out! They pressed in. As this mass of bodies began to move, they fell into the trenches, and the crowd trampled over their heads, crushed their rib cages.
    At dawn the broken corpses were carted out.
    Twenty-two years later, also at dawn, also in carts, the corpses of Nicholas and his family would also be carried away.
    When Minister Witte got into his coach that afternoon to attend the continuation of the festivities, he had already been informed about the two thousand dead on Khodynka Meadow. But by the time the brilliant carriages approached Khodynka everything had already been carefully cleared away—there was no trace of the catastrophe. The sun was shining, all of Europe’s aristocracy was in the pavilion, and a large orchestra was performing a cantata in honor of the coronation. The bedecked public milled around on the field. The sovereign was present as well. Constantly at his side was the governor-general of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, organizer of the coronation ceremonies.
    Nicholas was embarrassed and distressed. Everyone noticed.
    ——
    “18 May, 1896. Until now all has gone smoothly, but today a great sin occurred: the crowd that spent the night on Khodynka Meadow waiting for the food and mugs began to press on the structures and there was a terrible crush, and I must add terribly that about 1,300 people were trampled. Learned of this at 10.30.… The news left a repellent impression. At 12.30 we had lunch, then left for Khodynka, to attend this ‘sad national holiday.’
    “From the pavilion we watched the crowd surrounding the stage, where they kept playing a hymn and ‘Be praised.’
    “We moved on to Petrovsky [Palace], where we received several deputations at the gates.… I had to give a speech.… Dined with Mama. Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”
    Meanwhile, the empress-mother had a very clear understanding of what had caused the Khodynka catastrophe. She had mastered her husband’s principles of rule. A command system (autocracy) functions only when the pyramid is crowned by Fear. With the death of the strong emperor, Fear had begun to wane. And just as an organism declares its illness with a high temperature, so with this terrible catastrophe the system had declared what was for her most ruinous: Fear had waned. Nicholas was a weak tsar.
    His mother decided that Fear must return. The punishment must be harsh. Was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, her husband’s own brother, guilty? All the better. It was he who must be punished as an example. Then Fear would return.
    She demanded the immediate creation of a commission of inquiry and punishment for the guilty parties. Nicholas agreed. One other thing she demanded: the cancellation of all entertainments, including the evening ball being given by the French Ambassador Montebello.
    This is the conversation concealed in his note “Dined with Mama.”
    “We left Mama’s.”
    For the first time, Alix took a stand against his mother. She would not allow the husband of her beloved sister to be fed to the wolves. She would not allow the entertainments canceled. Sergei Alexandrovich was right: everything should go on as if nothing had happened. A coronation occurs once in a lifetime, the ball must takeplace. (In the depths of her soul she tried to drive out this new, bloody presentiment: first a wedding in the wake of a funeral, now these corpses on Khodynka Meadow. She hoped that the ball and the music and these triumphs would wipe them from her memory.) And again Nicholas consented.
    “Went to the ball at Montebello’s.”
    Yes, to the horror of the new emperor’s friends, Nicholas and Alix danced at this ball.
    As before, constantly at Nicholas’s side was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich: Moscow had already dubbed him the Duke of Khodynka.
    Then, on the following days:
    “19