February 11–18, 1999

slant

A Very Tsarry Show

By Peter Burwasser

The Nicholas and Alexandria show at the new Riverfront Arts Center in Wilmington, DE, is dazzling in many ways. It is filled with rare treasures, including Fabergé jewels and objets d'art, opulent ballroom gowns and finely braided military outfits, beautiful paintings, and one incredible golden carriage. The exhibit also purports to be an educational overview, tracing the youth, early ascendancy to the throne, marriage, and finally, the murder of Nicholas and Alexandria, along with their children and family dog at the hands of the Bolsheviks.

As splendid as the exhibit is to behold, from a historical perspective, the entire enterprise is utterly appalling. As if on cue, people wandered out of the massive display of artifacts and photographs muttering about what fine people the last Romanov Tsar and his brood were, and how horrible it was that they were summarily executed by the evil communists. But revolutions do not occur in vacuums. There was catastrophic dysfunction in the last days of Imperial Russia, yet the Wilmington exhibit chooses to interpret the history as merely a case of the wrong man at the wrong time, ignoring the cancerous decay of a nation that Nicholas personified.

You can say what you wish about Lenin and his Bolshevik cronies, but the consensus about Nicholas the Second, the last Tsar of Russia, is consistent among students of Russian history. He was mentally ill-equipped for the job, lived in obscene luxury while millions of his subjects faced starvation, and was a vicious anti-Semite who sent murderous Cossacks rampaging through Jewish communities in pogroms that foreshadowed Kristalnacht in Nazi Germany.

When his bumbling armed forces were routed by the Japanese in 1905, a crowd of Nicholas' faithful subjects petitioned their holy father, as they referred to the Tsar, to hear their grievances. In response, his troops fired into the massed peasants, killing hundreds. Nine years later, at the outset of World War I, his generals sent thousands of troops to the Austrian front, equipped only with wooden training rifles, where enemy machine gunners mowed down row after row of the Tsar's fresh troops while tears streamed down their faces. These events are depicted in the show as mere footnotes in the life of a loving father and husband, and not the colossal foibles of a leader of a great power.

Ironically, one of the few mentions of Jewish life under the Tsar Nicholas in the Wilmington exhibit was the inclusion of a handmade booklet presented by the Jewish community of Kishinev to Nicholas and Alexandria on the occasion of their wedding. The irony is that it was in Kishinev that the first, and among the most violent pogroms took place. In one Jewish household, the elder members combined cynicism and an instinct for survival when they sent a beautiful young girl to answer when the Tsar's emissaries pounded on the door, calling for the Jews. With her blue eyes, red hair and turned-up nose, the Cossacks believed her when she told them, "no Jews here."

That brave spirit was my grandmother. The Nicholas and Alexandria exhibit, with its shameful whitewashing of the moral and political bankruptcy of Nicholas and his blithering associates, does a grave disservice to the suffering and sacrifice of my Babushka, and her fellow Russians of all persuasions.

Peter Burwasser is City Paper's classical music writer. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, contact City Paper news editor Howard Altman at 215-735-8444, ext. 208 or via e-mail, altman@citypaper.net.