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| Tsar Nicholas II |
Since 1917, there have been persistent rumors in the former
Soviet Union as well as abroad that Tsar Nicholas II and his family stored
their money in bank accounts in Switzerland, England, and elsewhere. The myth
of the Romanov millions is one that refuses to die just like the old chestnut
that Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna. Just like the
latter, however, the former isn’t true at all.
In his memoir, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich devoted an
entire chapter to the Romanov millions and the tsar’s expenditures. As a cousin
and close friend of Nicholas II, Grand Duke Alexander was in a unique position
to put the myth to bed once and for all. In his chapter, he notes that the
Romanov bank accounts abroad did contain a lot of money. However, all of those
accounts were emptied during the advent of the First World War for fear that
they would be nationalized or confiscated since some of those accounts were in
German banks. All of these funds were transferred to banks in Russia.
In addition, the Tsar’s family had many assets that belonged
to the tsar personally. These included vineyards in the Crimea, monasteries
throughout the country which paid dues to the tsar, as well as the large vodka
monopoly. All of these enterprises were either sold to investors at some point
before World War One or, in the case of monasteries, they were granted
autonomy. The funds for these sales were also placed in Russian bank accounts.
Nicholas II not only sold his personal property, but he also
sold many family treasures. Some people might wonder whether he was a money
grubber or a skin flint since the amount of money that he collected would have
been well into the billions in today’s funding. The truth is much more
astonishing.
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra spent every last
penny of their personal income as well as the assets I have mentioned above
building hospitals, orphanages, and homes for wounded soldiers during World War
I. By the time of Nicholas II’s abdication and his eventual execution, the
legendary Romanov millions had shrunk to almost nothing. Everything had been
spent on charity.
As a deeply religious Orthodox Christian, Nicholas II
understood that his duty was not only to command the armies, but to create
charitable institutions on the home front for his subjects. The military
hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, some of them in the tsar’s own palaces,
were staffed by Tsaritsa Alexandra, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna (the
tsar’s sister-in-law), and his eldest daughters Olga and Tatiana. For many years,
many veterans who convalesced in these hospitals would remember the care shown
to them by the tsar’s wife and daughters. None of this would have been possible
without him investing his own funds to help those who were in need.
The story of the Romanov millions brings up an important
question for us to consider: What has your head of state done for other people
and how many of them have invested their own personal funds and designated them
for helping others? I’m sure that the answer would be many. However, there are
very few who would hand over their life’s savings to their countrymen in their
time of need. Nicholas II was just that kind of person. It is for this and the heroic manner in which
he met his death that the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him and his family
as saints.
