Best Quotes from The Flight Of The Romanovs by John Curtis Perry with Page Numbers

"Let us liberate the serfs from above or they will liberate themselves from below."

"What have we come to!"

"In chaos and panic, people ran in and out of the emperor’s increasingly crowded study."

"Despite many threats and attempts on his life over the past fifteen years, Alexander II had taken on no real cloak of security."

"When he had arrived on the scene, the heir asked the court physician, Sergei Botkin, how long the sovereign would live."

"The hydra of the revolution must be crushed, if the Romanov dynasty were not to be extinguished."

"His sweeping reforms—emancipating the serfs, shaking up the administrative apparatus, creating self-rule for territorial units—all seemed to be misconceived."

"With the premature death of Alexander II, the first and only great reformer tsar since Peter the Great, the Romanovs would lose an opportunity to lead Russia into modern life."

"A son’s conservatism and a father’s liberalism alienated the two Alexanders."

"The rigid protocol and organization of court life had momentarily collapsed."

I hope it will prove useful to you to have seen with your own eyes the devoted attachment of the Russian people to its imperial house.

No person with a heart would like war.

We have only two allies in the world, our Army and our Navy!

A Russian tsar must die in Russia.

A great swell of shouts and sobs would rise and last for ten or fifteen minutes until Reverend John would say, 'Not everyone has repented!'

The sun of the Russian Land has set down! . . . He has died just exactly as He lived in simplicity and piety.

Children are a great consolation, only with them one can have moral repose, enjoying them and being happy looking at them.

Alexander III wanted his parents to be remembered differently from all other Romanovs.

He had a muzhik or peasant air about him, almost a cultivated coarseness, that endeared him to many of his subjects.

The game of liberalism was over. Period.

Despite his deficiencies, Alexander had controlled the family as harshly and effectively as he controlled the nation; his unexpected death radically transformed the center of power in the dynasty.

The imperial persona, the prestige and power of the imperial office, remained intact, but a pygmy had replaced a giant.

Yet during the first days of his reign Nicholas beguiled everyone with his good manners, modesty and seeming candor.

I know virtually nothing,” he confessed. “The last sovereign did not foresee his death and did not let me into anything.

People began to joke that the young tsar was like a feather pillow: He bore the impression of the last person to sit on him.

More than ever our family needs to remain united and firm, in accordance with your grandfather’s behests.

How painful, how sad, and how dangerous!

Nicky gave his mother Fabergé Easter eggs. . . . The delighted Minnie reportedly said to Fabergé, 'You are an incomparable genius!'

The grimness of Russian village life remained remote from the consciousness of these lords of the manor.

But rich and poor spoke differently, dressed differently, thought differently. It was as if the poor were centuries behind the rich.

"To collect all that as quickly as possible. Sergei hated blood and mess so much!"

"What do you think," Dmitri asked. "Will we be . . . happier?"

"Only the devil knows what is happening to the Black Sea fleet."

"I have a constitution in my head; but as to my heart"—and he spat on the floor.

"If the Emperor does not accept the Witte programme, if he wants to force me to become Dictator, I shall take this revolver and kill myself in his presence."

"Where do we have a strong authority, acting with reflection and continuity? One becomes more and more fearful for the future. Everywhere is arbitrary rule, indulgence, weakness."

"I am happy to die for the tsar."

"May God help me and all of you!"

"All Russia is a madhouse."

"He was running scared, changing palaces, trying to avoid a death that was already inescapable, already creeping up on him."

I welcome you in these solemn and anxious days through which all Russia is passing.

The great wave of patriotism and loyalty to the Throne which has swept our native land is to me, and presumably also to you, a token that our great Mother Russia will carry on that war.

This unanimous impulse of love on the part of my people and their readiness to sacrifice everything, even life itself, gives me the necessary strength, calmly and steadfastly to anticipate the future.

I am certain that each of you, at your respective posts, will help me to bear the trials which are sent to us.

Great is the God of the Russian land.

Nonetheless, despite the debacle, the Russian sacrifice had been of very great aid to the French.

The Russian attack on the eastern front... denied the Germans a quick victory.

A human being is an animal which can adjust to anything.

We witness the unprecedented sight of a revolution carried out not from below, but from above.

Either we sit back with folded arms and wait for the humiliation of Russia, or we take heroic measures.

The February 23rd food riots that broke out in Petrograd exploded like a natural force, a volcanic eruption.

Now was the time to deal again with Russia’s arch-enemy, the German kaiser.

His voice dropped on this last phrase.

Absolute power always isolates.

In the evening of the 26th, Rodzianko sent Nicholas a telegram pleading with him to 'save Russia' by making constitutional concessions.

But events were outpacing the tsar; Petrograd was now talking of abdication.

Until three o’clock this afternoon I thought I should abdicate in favor of my son Alexis. But now I have decided in favor of my brother Michael.

May God help Russia.

Now that I am about to be freed of my responsibilities to the nation, perhaps I can fulfill my life’s desire—to have a farm, somewhere in England.

He stressed that his refusal to accept the crown was conditional and ultimately depended upon the decision of the constituent assembly.

"When are you going to Tsarskoye Selo, Your Majesty?"

"The only thing left is to let our officers put on civilian dress when they are off duty. Only this can perhaps save them from the arbitrariness and the arrogance of the revolutionary soldiers."

"Russia without a tsar . . . it is impossible, it can never be that way."

"I personally see that the Provisional Government has lost its balance, being completely in the power of the Soviets of workers’ deputies. And if the Provisional Government does not prevail, total anarchy and the collapse of Russia will follow."

"I think very soon. What do people say about all that, Mordvinov?"

Emotions ran high all around. Many officers wept; two or three even fainted.

"I believe in God and in the army! Neither could abandon us right now!"

All the members of her small suite were present. One of them, Countess Mengden, was charming as ever, though she had just received news that her older brother had been murdered by a mob of soldiers.

"A return to the old regime is impossible and I would never consent to such a retrograde step."

Nicholas had thus not only lost all power over others; he had also lost his own freedom, and most Romanovs would never see him, his wife, or his children again.

Somehow there was hope.

It is the only consolation in our difficult time.

I still remember the cold drops of perspiration forming on my forehead as I watched my husband sticking his hand deep in every possible hole in the rock-face.

God help us, the Russians. . . . Now one should hope that free Russia will reach her ideals.

What an awful, difficult time! We all live by gossip, suggestions, hopes—and memories.

In spite of a shortage of funds, he would gamble and lose at the Teheran Club. When the terrible year of 1917 finally ended, at midnight on December 31st Dmitri made three wishes.

The first Romanov to flee Russia was Kyril. Demonstrating foresight or perhaps the same sheer luck that had saved him during the explosion.

People in the street were openly expressing their sympathy for the Romanovs.

If I am elected to the famous Constituent Assembly, I will vote for a Republic.

We transferred everything to small cocoa tins . . . we hid those tins in a deep hole at the bottom of a rock by the sea-shore.

"Lenin was ready to give them all three: peace, land and blood."

"All in all, the Bolsheviks had thus far captured and slaughtered an emperor, an empress, four grand dukes, five grand duchesses and four princes of the blood."

"Their laughter was a brittle facade, masking the tension and fear within."

"The sailors forming a guard functioned both to protect the imperial family and to keep them from escaping."

"Every one of us should remember that only by his own behavior can he justify his origins as a grand duke."

"The war of statuary could not satisfy Lenin’s need for vengeance."

"Rumor not true. Ex-tsar safe. All rumors are only lies of capitalist press."

"Here we were the Romanovs, being saved from our own people by our arch-enemy, the Kaiser! It seemed the ultimate degradation."

"It became a race between the ingenuity of the concealer and the imagination of the searcher as all the obvious places... were exhausted."

"Minnie handled all this with supreme grace and dignity; she remained cheerful and optimistic."

The family discussed who should accompany Nikolasha on his campaigns, fearing that the "black plague," the two Montenegrin ladies with their immense capacity for political intrigue, would be among that number.

Her Imperial Majesty also said that from information She had received She had reason to hope that the Emperor is still alive.

Minnie’s loyal Cossacks declared that they would actually break down the doors with their own fists if necessary.

The empress had agreed to leave but only on the condition that the British take aboard their ships all the sick and wounded and all other people in Yalta wanting to get out of Russia.

Minnie said that a Russian empress could not flee if so many Russians were abandoned.

Just as the Marlbrough was pulling away from the shore, a Russian ship passed close by, her decks lined with scores of imperial guardsmen.

With his attachment to Mother Evgeniya, Nikolasha began to articulate his belief that he too should submit to the will of God.

During his illness Lady Marling nursed him, he said, "as a mother would nurse her dear child or a woman in love—her lover."

Olga was perhaps the only Romanov who seemed at ease with common people, to know how to talk to peasants and to gain their confidence and friendship.

But I had to get through somehow.

"As we have seen, few refugees carried any resources except what they had within their minds and could conceal on their persons."

"People from all walks of life now fled Russia."

"But the new environment did offer complete mental freedom."

"Many other Russian refugee aristocrats, particularly the men, never recovered from the shock of being plucked out of their home environment."

"The real strength of refugee families seems to have emerged from the women who, in some cases, experienced an odd sense of liberation."

"We lived side by side with life but were afraid of meeting it."

"Those Russians in Constantinople did not much enjoy it, finding it backward and crowded with narrow, congested and dirty streets, but the city soon took on a Russian accent, so numerous did the Russian diaspora there become."

"At least the Romanovs were familiar with a world beyond Russia and knew other languages."

"Few major intellectuals chose to remain in the Communist world."

"Never involved in politics, except for her firm stand against the Soviets, she preserved the dignity of the throne and upheld the imperial tradition."

"Life at Choigny contained none of the splendor of Imperial Russia. Guests to the house were received modestly, the dining table was covered in oilcloth, and the grand duke wore clothing that obviously had been darned."

"Religion was integral to his life. Nikolasha found the godlessness of Communism as distressing as any other aspect of it."

"He judged the Communists to be morally bankrupt and stoutly expected that the underlying faith of the Russian people in the Orthodox Church would ultimately destroy the Soviet regime."

"Nikolasha had moved to Genoa, to live in Italy as a guest of his brother-in-law, King Victor Emanuel. ...Restless, like his fellow exiled kinsmen, and not wanting to be a political embarrassment of any kind to his Italian hosts."

"The grand duke suggested a social democratic monarchy, an idea that Kyril would snatch away from him in the future."

"The army, Nikolasha declared, 'should be la grande muette [the great mute].' As his own record demonstrated, he had always been loyal to this principle."

"I am merely a citizen and a soldier, anxious to return home in order to aid his fellow-citizens and his country."

"Wrangel responded that the future of Russia had to be decided by its people."

"The most prominent leaders of the Soviet regime would be assassinated. Uprisings then would start in other big cities."

"Nikolasha recognized that he had to articulate a political platform, remembering that a lack of guiding principles had disabled the White movement during the civil war."

We believe in Russia. We watch what is going on there. We know that monarchy can be reborn only through Russia alive, through Russians living on the Russian land.

And you forget that in spite of unacceptable government, in spite of disgusting authorities, Russian life is constantly evolving; Russia is being renewed; it grows and strengthens, and the Russian people are being revived with her.

Terror or no terror, millions of Russians had climbed the social staircase. Peasant girls, before 1917 doomed to bleak lives in patriarchal village households, were now becoming engineers, pilots and factory managers.

This was a phenomenon in which all Russians could take pride.

...the predominance of the spiritual over the material.

We know that monarchy can be reborn only through Russia alive, through Russians living on the Russian land.

Capitalism has degenerated into another way for a small minority to enslave people. ... the nation has survived under the onslaught of destructive forces. Now it recovers.

Is it not the construction which is underway there the cause of the Russian people itself, its true desire to rebuild the Motherland?

The sacred name RUSSIA is gleaming brightly.

You change when you marry.

In this severe hour, when Germany with almost all the nations of Europe has declared a crusade against Communist-Bolshevism... I address all loyal sons of our Motherland with an appeal: help as you can the overthrow of Godless Bolshevik power and the liberation of our Fatherland.

For him, 'Russia did not exist until June 19 191.'

"Militsa... remained dependent upon the largesse of the British royal house, and this provided her with the shell but not the substance of a royal life."

"I have been dreaming all my life about riding in an ambulance; finally my dream has come true!"

"...the Bolsheviks had taken everything away from her but had left her 'with one privilege—to be a private person.'"

"Olga built a chapel in the house so that she could have services regularly under her own roof."

"The great thing was to find a farm... I love Canada—the large & lovely country & the most friendly kind & helpful people."

"Why create unnecessary bitterness?"

"Olga’s letters were simple and matter of fact, testaments to her sturdy independence..."

"I realized that at the age of nearly forty I was about to change deliberately the entire structure of my existence."

"She made a most agreeable impression... and indeed on everyone she met at Yale. There was not a trace either of shyness or of condescension."

"Leave me alone."

"I have never been afraid of anything."

"The secret to success... was to feel the vehicle and to look only forward, never at the wheels."

"Natalia did not conceal that she was a Romanov. She chose a wild career, professional motorcyclist."

"Even more by the preoccupation of the revolutionaries with their own survival in a bitter seesaw civil war."

"In squalor, they survived."

"Peace meant that the Bolsheviks would now have the opportunity to become interested in the Iskander family."

"Most of their descendants have dispersed and gradually become ordinary citizens."

"The lavish rose garden... continued to bloom."

"Her family photographs sat proudly on a shelf in the shabby Androsov apartment."

"On the alert for incendiary bombs dropped by German aircraft."